Nick Cave and Warren Ellis - 'The Road OST' (Phantom Sound and Vision) Released 04/01/10

As choices go to score the screen adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s harrowing The Road, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis couldn’t be better matched. As a duo that both together and separately have plumbed the depths of human love, sorrow and depravity – in a suitably gothic manner, naturally – their sombre violin and piano instrumentals seem tailor-made to accompany the film’s stark landscape and raw emotional content. After several tracks from the soundtrack appeared on their mightily impressive compilation White Lunar, the full-length follows in much the same vein, wringing maximal feeling from the most minimal of components.

The score neatly traces the film’s narrative arc, from the recurring central theme provided by openers ‘The Road’ and ‘The Far Road’ through the tribal drone of ‘The Cannibals’ and the temporary haven provided by ‘The Beach’. Cave and Ellis have followed The Road’s sparse psychogeography, leaving long stretches of desolate wasteland punctuated only by sudden upsurges in fear, tenderness and sorrow. Outside of a screen context though, the songs that have the most visceral impact are the ones most detached from the story itself – lilting lullaby ‘The Mother’ is both beautiful and gut-wrenchingly sad, and ‘The Church’ is an all-too-short but pivotal vignette. Best of all is ‘The Journey’, managing to encapsulate the entire record’s twin peaks of warmth and foreboding in four haunting minutes.

My one proviso about The Road is its predictability - there are no dramatic shifts away from the pair’s standard, achingly beautiful pace. In some ways it seems a little churlish to complain about the pair doing what they always do – after all, Cave’s edgy tension and Ellis’ gorgeous violin work are as affecting as ever. It’s perhaps enough to say that while the overly dramatic nature of both Jesse James and The Proposition required aggressive and direct musical accompaniment, the subtler nature of The Road demanded that the pair remain at their most understated. The results are typically lovely but far more specific in intent, and are at their most resonant when paired with the film’s ambiguous imagery.