10/08/2012

LAWLESS Original Movie Soundtrack by NICK CAVE and WARREN ELLIS

lawless, nick, cave, warren, ellis, soundtrack, music

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have composed the music to the new film Lawless - starring Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, Guy Pearce, Gary Oldman and Jessica Chastain. It tells the true story of the Bondurant Brothers, bootleggers who take the law into their own hands during the prohibition era, with bloody and explosive consequences. The soundtrack features rootsy bluegrass, gospel, country and contemporary songs performed by Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Emmylou Harris, Ralph Stanley and Mark Lanegan. In fact they put a band together especially for the soundtrack 'The Bootleggers'.

Haunting and complex soundtracks to The Proposition, The Road and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford stand solid testament to the fact that Nick Cave and Warren Ellis are arguably the most gifted composing partnership of recent times. The soundtrack to Lawless is an amazing album in its own right.

Original music is mixed with some innovative vocal tracks by renowned guest performers, adding lustre to the sound of The Bootleggers, the fittingly named band that Cave and his collaborator Warren Ellis formed for the project. 'There are, for example, two versions of Velvet Underground’s song White Light White Heat, one a rollicking country-rock rendition with Mark Lanegan, the other performed by bluegrass veteran Ralph Stanley in his distinctive vocal style. Emmylou Harris, one of the all-time greats of country music, joins The Bootleggers for So You’ll Aim Toward the Sky, originally by Grandaddy, as well as for Townes Van Zandt’s The Snake Song.

Mark Lanegan contributes Link Wray’s Fire and Brimstone, and performs Captain Beefheart’s Sure ’Nuff . To complement these inspired cover-song choices, Cave and Ellis wrote a new number, Fire in the Blood, which comes in three wonderfully contrasting versions: Emmylou Harris sings it beautifully, then Ralph Stanley gives an intense rendering in his wavering old voice, then Harris repeats it with greater yearning.'

nick cave and warren ellis

If this surfaces on vinyl it will be an audiophiles treat.

The film is based on the novel 'The Wettest County In The World' - 'Based on the true account of Matt Bondurant's grandfather and two granduncles, Lawless is a gripping, white-knuckle fable of bootlegging, brotherhood and revenge. White mule, white lightning, firewater, popskull, wild cat, stump whiskey, rotgut - whatever you called it, 1920s Virginia was awash with moonshine. The Bondurant Boys were notorious gangsters who ran liquor though Franklin County during Prohibition and in the years that followed. Lawless is their story.'

The album will be released on September 10, 2012, and a new Willie Nelson song (a version of which plays over the film end titles) will be included as a bonus track.

As another collaboration between director John Hillcoat and writer Nick Cave (The Road, The Proposition) the film is highly anticipated. The advanced screenings in Cannes testified to it's slowburning violent power with a cast that put in intense performances. View the trailer below...

www.nickcaveandwarrenellis.com

Lawless will be released on 31 August 2012 www.lawless-film.com