I can’t think offhand of an upcoming film score that I’m more eager to hear than Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ work for “The Road.” Their dark, elegiac score for “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” which wove together a panoply of Americana with a smattering of modern influences, was one of the great overlooked achievements of last year.
Of course, “The Road” reunites Cave and Ellis with director John Hillcoat, with whom they collaborated on “The Proposition” — the fascinating Outback “Western” that Cave himself also scripted. “The Proposition”‘s score was another sonically dense, richly atmospheric affair, and I expect them to repeat the feat on “The Road.”
All of which brings me to this interesting little interview with Cave, taken while he was recording for “The Road” in London. He’s long been one of the most articulate, intelligent guys in rock music, and he offers quite generous insight here into his deliciously strange creative process. There’s also this rather matter-of-fact perspective on working for film:
The whole film business, everything is done by committee, it would seem. So what you feel about what you’ve created is highly irrelevant in the process of making a film. You hand something in and the worth of it is judged by people you’ve never even seen, so it’s mentally frustrating in that way, but at times it’s hugely enjoyable because the kind of agony of original creation, of having to think of the actual idea and the theme and what you’re going to write about and all that kind of stuff, which is really very difficult, the toughest part of songwriting for me, is not there. You’re simply supplied everything by what’s on the screen.
Maybe so, but it doesn’t seem to hinder his genius all the same. It’s safe to say, given the bizarre Academy rules in this category, that his work for “The Road” will be shafted once more, but no matter. He has become one of the most distinctive and exciting composers in the medium.
It strikes me that Cave’s own recordings with the Bad Seeds have always had something of an “end of the world” feel to them. It’s difficult to think of a more perfect match for “The Road.”