The Proposition (OST)
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis
(Mute)
Early in his career, Nick Cave was more of a mood than anything else. Overloaded with verbiage, laced with irony, gore, theatrical grandstanding and horrorshow atmospherics, his mid-'80s masterworks - "The Mercy Seat," "Cabin Fever!," the definitive version of Dylan's "Wanted Man" - all painted vivid pictures indeed, but to call them "songs" would almost be a disservice. An album by Cave was a guided tour through a yawning, creaking, feverishly burlesque haunted house, vibrant and cinematic and gleefully over-the-top; it wasn't until his more recent work, beginning arguably with 1997's The Boatman's Call, when anything like "craft" was employed to frame these aural nightmares. Even today, when Cave's clout as craftsman is enough to earn him Q Magazine's Classic Songwriter Award, as well as innumerable critical comparisons to the likes of Leonard Cohen, his skills as a musical scenarist remain unsurpassed. Case in point: the soundtrack to John Hillcoat's Australian Western The Proposition (which opens in New York today), an often stunning evocation of Cave's own script which is about the moodiest thing he's recorded in years.
And that's no exaggeration, because unlike Cave's last proper release (2004's excellent double LP Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus), The Proposition offers virtually nothing but mood. Being a film score, the bulk of its material is incidental music with little or no vocals; we don't even hear Cave sing until thirty seconds from the end of track two, and that's just humming. Even when actual vocals appear in "Down to the Valley" (track four), the lyrics are all but indistinguishable. His voice is just another undertone, floating between plucked mandolin and droning violin courtesy of auxiliary Bad Seed and Dirty Three member Warren Ellis. In a sense, then, this is a very different sort of Nick Cave album: the necessities of the soundtrack have led him to shelve his trademark wordiness and let the film's images speak for themselves. But what makes The Proposition succeed as a record, paradoxically enough, is the way its instrumental meanderings conjure images of their own - even for those of us who haven't had the pleasure of seeing the film.
It's difficult to explain, really, because the ingredients are simple enough: just Cave's piano and Ellis' violin, augmented with touches of electric bass and a few other instruments. The arrangements are unwaveringly spare; the structure uncompromisingly nebulous. Themes crop up and reappear, lending a kind of narrative form to the music befitting its soundtrack status. There's little of the bombast usually associated with Nick Cave, and when a song does swell to a noisy crescendo, it's in a decidedly unexpected way - like the almost industrial rhythmic feedback squalls which close "The Rider #2." This sense of distinctness from Cave's Bad Seeds work might just be the album's greatest asset: coming into it, one might think they know what to expect from a soundtrack for a Western by Nick Cave, but The Proposition's austere sense of understatement comes as a pleasant surprise.
The only real drawback, in fact, is that this is a soundtrack, and its unity of mood can make any attempt at stretching feel awkward. In fact, the oppressiveness of The Proposition's cinematic atmosphere is such that its one true standalone track ("The Rider Song") sticks out in unflattering sharp relief, a fully-formed tune - and a pretty damn good one at that - amidst snatches of dreamlike, mournful minimalism. Even "Down to the Valley" and "Clean Hands, Dirty Hands," the soundtrack's only other "real" songs, seem to have more in common with the wispy, moaning score than "The Rider"'s conspicous craft; formless things, almost ancient-sounding, buoyed only by Cave's sonorous, muffled vocals and Ellis' John Cale-like violin. Such moments can make for a disjointed listening experience, especially without the film to give us context; chances are that "The Rider Song" would sound just fine while the credits were rolling, but on the album, it feels more like an ill-placed, if beautifully photographed montage sequence.
Still, that doesn't mean the world of The Proposition isn't a nice one to visit; far from it, in fact. This is the kind of CD you'll want to have in your car at all times, just to make sure it's handy for those impromptu late-night rides down dark, misty highways. It can be a frustrating listen at times: five of its sixteen tracks clock in at less than two minutes, and six are variations of themes "The Rider" and "The Proposition," the combination of which leads to a lot of abrupt stopping and starting in the album's flow. But put this disc on in the background, approach it as a soundtrack to whatever's going on around you, and the mood it creates is intoxicating. From Nick Cave, could we expect anything less?
Nick Cave
The Proposition
Buy It
on Amazon
See Also: Reenact The Proposition in the comfort and safety of your home!
(Mute)
Early in his career, Nick Cave was more of a mood than anything else. Overloaded with verbiage, laced with irony, gore, theatrical grandstanding and horrorshow atmospherics, his mid-'80s masterworks - "The Mercy Seat," "Cabin Fever!," the definitive version of Dylan's "Wanted Man" - all painted vivid pictures indeed, but to call them "songs" would almost be a disservice. An album by Cave was a guided tour through a yawning, creaking, feverishly burlesque haunted house, vibrant and cinematic and gleefully over-the-top; it wasn't until his more recent work, beginning arguably with 1997's The Boatman's Call, when anything like "craft" was employed to frame these aural nightmares. Even today, when Cave's clout as craftsman is enough to earn him Q Magazine's Classic Songwriter Award, as well as innumerable critical comparisons to the likes of Leonard Cohen, his skills as a musical scenarist remain unsurpassed. Case in point: the soundtrack to John Hillcoat's Australian Western The Proposition (which opens in New York today), an often stunning evocation of Cave's own script which is about the moodiest thing he's recorded in years.And that's no exaggeration, because unlike Cave's last proper release (2004's excellent double LP Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus), The Proposition offers virtually nothing but mood. Being a film score, the bulk of its material is incidental music with little or no vocals; we don't even hear Cave sing until thirty seconds from the end of track two, and that's just humming. Even when actual vocals appear in "Down to the Valley" (track four), the lyrics are all but indistinguishable. His voice is just another undertone, floating between plucked mandolin and droning violin courtesy of auxiliary Bad Seed and Dirty Three member Warren Ellis. In a sense, then, this is a very different sort of Nick Cave album: the necessities of the soundtrack have led him to shelve his trademark wordiness and let the film's images speak for themselves. But what makes The Proposition succeed as a record, paradoxically enough, is the way its instrumental meanderings conjure images of their own - even for those of us who haven't had the pleasure of seeing the film.
It's difficult to explain, really, because the ingredients are simple enough: just Cave's piano and Ellis' violin, augmented with touches of electric bass and a few other instruments. The arrangements are unwaveringly spare; the structure uncompromisingly nebulous. Themes crop up and reappear, lending a kind of narrative form to the music befitting its soundtrack status. There's little of the bombast usually associated with Nick Cave, and when a song does swell to a noisy crescendo, it's in a decidedly unexpected way - like the almost industrial rhythmic feedback squalls which close "The Rider #2." This sense of distinctness from Cave's Bad Seeds work might just be the album's greatest asset: coming into it, one might think they know what to expect from a soundtrack for a Western by Nick Cave, but The Proposition's austere sense of understatement comes as a pleasant surprise.
The only real drawback, in fact, is that this is a soundtrack, and its unity of mood can make any attempt at stretching feel awkward. In fact, the oppressiveness of The Proposition's cinematic atmosphere is such that its one true standalone track ("The Rider Song") sticks out in unflattering sharp relief, a fully-formed tune - and a pretty damn good one at that - amidst snatches of dreamlike, mournful minimalism. Even "Down to the Valley" and "Clean Hands, Dirty Hands," the soundtrack's only other "real" songs, seem to have more in common with the wispy, moaning score than "The Rider"'s conspicous craft; formless things, almost ancient-sounding, buoyed only by Cave's sonorous, muffled vocals and Ellis' John Cale-like violin. Such moments can make for a disjointed listening experience, especially without the film to give us context; chances are that "The Rider Song" would sound just fine while the credits were rolling, but on the album, it feels more like an ill-placed, if beautifully photographed montage sequence.
Still, that doesn't mean the world of The Proposition isn't a nice one to visit; far from it, in fact. This is the kind of CD you'll want to have in your car at all times, just to make sure it's handy for those impromptu late-night rides down dark, misty highways. It can be a frustrating listen at times: five of its sixteen tracks clock in at less than two minutes, and six are variations of themes "The Rider" and "The Proposition," the combination of which leads to a lot of abrupt stopping and starting in the album's flow. But put this disc on in the background, approach it as a soundtrack to whatever's going on around you, and the mood it creates is intoxicating. From Nick Cave, could we expect anything less?
Nick Cave
The Proposition
Buy It
on AmazonSee Also: Reenact The Proposition in the comfort and safety of your home!
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