THE HI-LO COUNTRY

CARTER BURWELL

Rating:

Original Review: Very often in film music, the western genre brings out the best in a composer. An opportunity to create a big, expansive theme with orchestrations that allow a reverential tip of the hat to the late, great Aaron Copland is often too tempting to pass up, and the list of composers who have produced some of the best scores of their careers for cowboy movies grows longer every year. The latest addition to the index is Carter Burwell, whose score for Stephen Frears' The Hi-Lo Country is inarguably one of the best of his career to date.

A realistic tale told with a gritty edge, The Hi-Lo Country is adapted from the popular novel by Max Evans and stars Woody Harrelson and Billy Crudup as lifelong friends "Big Boy" Matson and Pete Calder, simple cattle ranchers from the isolated town of Hi-Lo, New Mexico in the late 1930s. Returning from the service in World War 2, Pete and Big Boy find that life in Hi-Lo has changed considerably - all the local smallholdings have been bought up by opportunist businessman Jim Ed Love (Sam Elliott), Big Boy's younger brother Little Boy (Cole Hauser) is working for Love, and the beautiful Mona (Patricia Arquette), who had been courted by both friends before the war, is now married to Love's foreman. Before long, tensions rise between Big Boy, Pete, Love and Mona, with potentially catastrophic conclusions for all involved.

Complementing Oliver Stapleton's burnished, dusty cinematography is Burwell's surprisingly impressive and large-scale score, which effectively highlights his emerging talent as one of Hollywood's rising stars. The six cues that make up the original score have a distinct atmosphere of their own, and a certain something which earmarks them as being uniquely Burwellian. Traditional orchestrations for guitar, harmonica and squeezebox combine with the familiar deep bass, the deliberately leisurely pacing and the stylised use of cymbals inherent in many of Burwell's earlier works. Throughout the playing time, the music somehow manages to evoke images and feelings of heat, of rawness, of isolation, of desperation, and provides a noble, if a little morose, counterpoint to the garrulous antics of Big Boy and his associates. Save for the main theme, it is by no means an uplifting, joyous piece of music, but one can only marvel at the way Burwell's techniques bring these emotions to life.

Burwell's main theme, heard on solo guitar during the latter half of the opening cue 'To Kill A Man' is allowed to swell magnificently during the expansive 'The Cattle Drive' and the conclusive 'On To California', marking one of the few instances where Burwell makes significantly larger use of a full symphony orchestra. Although it shares none of the panache of its predecessors, the theme is still heavily rooted in the grand traditions of Bernstein, Tiomkin and Moross, with broad and sweeping string strokes combining effortlessly with a bank of powerful trumpets that celebrate a life on the open prairie. In the eyes of many score fans, myself included, Burwell has long been considered a competent composer who unfortunately lacks the ability to write truly great melodies. He has answered his critics here, and then some.

A lovely sub-theme for oboes and strings is heard in 'Josepha's Cabin' and towards the end of 'Big Boy's Death', underscoring the tender but sadly illicit courtship between Pete and a young Mexican girl from across the border, while 'Silver Springs' brings the accordion much more into play, with a sombre motif similar in tone and structure to his famous main theme from the film Fargo. Unfortunately, Burwell's score is totally overshadowed on disc by a set of old fashioned country ballads that dominate the first half of the CD. Although each song does feature in the film at some point (if memory serves, one or two of them are actually performed on-screen), it would have been nice to have heard more of Carter's work. As it stands, we will simply have to be grateful we can hear it at all.

Unless you are dedicated fan of the genre, the songs really make for tough going. I admit to having a healthy appreciation for members of the modern "country rock" movement like Shania Twain, Faith Hill, Garth Brooks and the like, but as soon as the singers start dressing in gingham or a Stetson my interest wanes. Of the nine song tracks, the unlikely combination between Nashville legend Willie Nelson and popular alternative dance musician Beck on "Driving Nails In My Coffin" makes for a completely surreal listening experience, while other tracks by yodellers Don Walser and Hank Williams and Mexicana artists Hermanos Ayala and Johnny Degollado could make your ears bleed if they caught you on a bad day.

Track Listing: Running Time: 53 minutes 37 seconds

TVT Soundtrax 8290-2 (1999)

Music composed and conducted by Carter Burwell. Orchestrations by Sonny Kompaneck and John Bell. Featured musical soloist David Torn. Recorded and mixed by Michael Farrow. Edited by Adam Smalley. Album produced by Carter Burwell, Dawn Solér and Marty Stuart.

Cinemusic Online: Review by Roderick Scott (***1/2)
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