Soundtracks are mostly a plague, golden for those artists lucky enough to place a song onscreen, pre-packaged compilations for lazy consumers, and aggravating collector’s items for completist fans. Only rarely are they about the music. O Brother, then, is the rarest of soundtracks: Glorious music, coherently programmed.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? is Joel and Ethan Coen’s retelling of the Odyssey in 1937 Mississippi, starring George Clooney as a chain gang escapee with a pomade fetish. It’s either a brilliant movie, or nuts. Doesn’t matter. It’s a been a grand pretext to hire T Bone Burnett to produce great music.
O Brother would be essential listening if the only decent track were the trio of Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch’s a cappella reading of Welch’s “Didn’t Leave Nobody But The Baby”. It’s a stunning song, and the meld of these three voices (they’re the sirens in the film, apparently) is of unparalleled beauty. It is the high point of an extraordinary album.
Burnett’s brief was to fashion a soundscape that summarized the 1930s, and he has done a remarkable job linking standards to obscurities to fresh compositions. The album opens with a chain gang version of “Po Lazarus”, credited to James Carter & the Prisoners, and closes nineteen tracks later with the Stanley Brothers’ “Angel Band”. Hard songs, both. Three different versions of “I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow” (two featuring Norman Blake, a third with Dan Tyminski singing lead) provide unobtrusive linkage throughout.
The most difficult task is taking worn classics such as “You Are My Sunshine” and “Keep On The Sunny Side” and making them sound alive, appropriate to the setting, and not at all like stale copies. Blake and the Whites, respectively, hit exactly the right balance on those two songs. Vintage recordings, such as the late Harry McClintock’s “Big Rock Candy Mountain”, fit neatly in.
Welch and Krauss team up on “I’ll Fly Away”, and that’s pretty spectacular. So is Ralph Stanley’s gripping a cappella “O Death”, so is the Fairfield Four’s “Lonesome Valley”, so is Krauss’ solo take on “Down To The River To Pray” So is the whole thing.