While the world always awaits the inevitably monumental arrival of a new Bad Seeds album, Cave and Ellis have been carving out a prolific parallel career sculpting superbly evocative movie soundtracks and theatre scores.
Usually built around Cave’s sonorous piano and Ellis’s wringingly emotive violin, these started in 2005 with John Hillcoat’s savage outback western The Proposition.
They then soundtracked 2007’s The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (starring Brad Pitt), Hillcoat’s The Road, Mexican crime thriller Days Of Grace, Amy Berg’s 2012 murder documentary West Of Memphis and Hillcoat’s Depression-era bloodbath Lawless, bringing in Willie Nelson and Mark Lanegan. No wonder there’s only been time for two Bad Seeds albums, but they’re the better for it.
This score for David Olehoffen’s adaptation from a Camus short story set in Algeria’s war of independence is one of their best, weaving gnawing loops and desolate piano and violin over the haunting central motif./o:p
