Nick Cave/Warren Ellis The Proposition OMPS

While the sight of musicians and rock stars turning up as actors in feature films has been commonplace ever since Elvis first hit the screen in Love Me Tender, only a handful have received a screenplay credit.  This is, believe me, a good thing.  Paul McCartney may be one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century but Give My Regards To Broad Street proves he’s no William Goldman…or even Joe Eszterhas for that matter.

Nick Cave, frontman of the Bad Seeds, is a notable exception.  In addition to his career as a songwriter and musician, he’s a poet, novelist, and now a screenwriter with the release of the grim Australian western The Proposition.  If you’re familiar with Cave’s work, the film is likely just what you’d expect from him.  A violent, brooding, extremely literate work about three outlaw brothers on the Australian frontier, heavy with Biblical overtones and steeped in details of the region’s history and the period.

Cave collaborated with Bad Seed violinist Warren Ellis on the score, creating an atmospheric and haunting soundscape that perfectly suits the dusty, sun-drenched images on screen.  But anyone picking up the soundtrack album expecting a new Bad Seeds album is in for a disappointment.  The music is more closely akin to Ellis’ work with his other band, the instrumental group the Dirty Three, heavy on violin and piano with mostly wordless vocal contributions from Cave.

Disassociated from the words and images of the film, The Proposition soundtrack often seems adrift.  This isn’t necessarily a criticism of the music.  I don’t think film music should necessarily be designed to be listened to on its own and the few soundtracks that do stand on their own merits as listening experiences are composed by acknowledged masters of the form, names like Herrmann and Morricone.  Cave and Ellis’ areas of musical expertise lie elsewhere and, perhaps wisely, they have erred on the side of caution here, serving the film’s needs before their own.

As a result, the album isn’t a particularly rewarding listen.  Many of the tracks are like song snippets, half-finished musical ideas that could be fleshed out but weren’t.  This is immediately apparent in titles like “Moan Thing”, “Gun Thing” and “Sad Violin Thing”.  Even the more fully-realized tracks like “The Rider Song” tend to just peter out instead of come to a natural conclusion. 

Even so, The Proposition is an enjoyable album, particularly for fans of the Dirty Three.  Warren Ellis is a terrific musician (if you ever get a chance to see him perform live, either with the Bad Seeds or the Dirty Three, do it) and it’s rewarding to hear him given more of a spotlight here.  Cave’s mournful voice drifts in and out, singing deliberately repetitive lyrics that blend in with the music instead of being at the forefront as they would in a traditional song arrangement. 

I liked the film The Proposition quite a bit and highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in westerns.  The Proposition album doesn’t quite work on its own but hardcore fans of Cave and Ellis will definitely want to pick it up.