We critical types aren't supposed to say this, but, er. . . America doesn't always have the best taste. The movies, records and books that top the charts are very infrequently the best available. That's not to say that the public doesn't occasionally make the right call, though, and the soundtrack to the Coen Brothers' period comedy O Brother Where Art Thou? is one of the most glorious instances of the country taking something quirky and wonderful to its heart. In fact, the album was much more successful than the movie; the film was a minor indie success, but the soundtrack topped the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart for several weeks, produced a well-received country single, and won four Grammy awards, including Album of the Year.
All of which is especially unusual given that none of the music is new. Although all but two of the recordings were new when the veteran producer and walking country-folk encyclopedia T-Bone Burnett was brought in to conjure the mood of the Depression-era south, the songs themselves were antiquated even during the time period depicted in the film (it's not for nothing that one of the characters refers to it as "old-timey music"). It's also integrated into the film in a unique way: O Brother isn't precisely a musical, where the characters break out into song and interrupt the narrative, nor are these songs a random collection of hits thrown together as a marketing tool the way most soundtracks are; instead, the songs are all actual parts of the narrative, as much a part of the environment as the hard-scrapple fields, floodplains, and swampy shacks encountered by the characters. Performers — several of whom likewise appear in the film — range from living legends like Ralph Stanley to young bucks like Gillian Welch, and a number of the album's best tracks form some of the movie's most memorable set-pieces. So successful was the soundtrack that it touched off a mini-revival of bluegrass, mountain music and old-time country, with many releases attempting to crib the popularity of the soundtrack (one of them was the curious "O Sister!: The Women's Bluegrass Collection"; why this was necessary is hard to understand, as almost half the performers on the original album were female.) It was an odd and endearing thing to see music fans all over the country seduced by songs written as much as a century before.
BEST TRACKS: The charming, up-tempo rendition of "Man of Constant Sorrow"; Ralph Stanley (half of the Stanley Brothers) giving a haunting a capella rendition of "O Death"; a raucous, hooting, stomper of a fiddle tune called "Indian War Whoop", performed in the film just before an execution.