The soundtrack album for the film
Chelsea Walls
-- which marks the directorial debut of actor
Ethan Hawke
-- also happens to feature the first solo recordings from
Uncle Tupelo
founder and
Wilco
frontman
Jeff Tweedy
. However, those expecting a healthy dose of either
UT
's
punk
-fueled
roots rock
or
's smart and adventurous
pop
are in for a disappointment;
Tweedy
's twangy side has been in steady retreat over the past couple years, and the closest the album gets to showing a
country
influence is the presence of
"When the Roses Bloom Again,"
an unreleased song (with lyrics by
Woody Guthrie
) from the sessions that produced the
/
Billy Bragg
collaboration
Mermaid Avenue
. There's also another unreleased
cut, the low-key
"Promising,"
which wouldn't have been entirely out of place on
Being There
, along with a lovely live performance of
John Lennon
"Jealous Guy"
from
jazz
legend
Jimmy Scott
and two vocals from actor
Robert Sean Leonard
, who plays a songwriter in the film (and isn't a bad singer, though I don't know if I'd buy an album from the man). But the bulk of the album is made up of atmospheric and often atonal pieces performed by
and
percussionist
Glenn Kotche
, which usually amount to
minimalist
noodling from
on guitar and/or piano while
Kotche
holds down a rhythm. For the most part, this sounds like
film music
-- which is to say, taken outside of its context and divorced from its images, this music doesn't sound like much all by itself. The press release for the
soundtrack compares
's score to
Neil Young
's music for
Jim Jarmusch
Dead Man
, a comparison that's all too apt -- like
,
will be of interest to fans of the composer, but it's hard to imagine even completists pulling this off the shelf very often after a couple of listens. Better to buy
's album with
experimental
musician
Jim O'Rourke
, or
's groundbreaking
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
. ~ Mark Deming