Lawless - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Nick Cave & Warren Ellis
Lawless – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’s score and song collection for John Hillcoat’s 2012 Prohibition‑era crime drama, built around their studio ensemble The Bootleggers and a cast of distinctive guest vocalists. Rather than a conventional orchestral score, Cave and Ellis assemble a rough‑hewn blend of country, bluegrass, gospel, and stripped‑down rock, pairing new compositions with radically reworked covers that feel both period‑appropriate and eerily modern. The tracklist moves through songs like “Fire and Brimstone,” “Burnin’ Hell,” “Cosmonaut,” “Fire in the Blood,” “Sure ’Nuff ’N Yes I Do,” “White Light/White Heat,” and the closing instrumental “End Crawl,” with the LP edition adding Willie Nelson’s “Midnight Run” as a coda.
Central to the album’s character is the way Cave and Ellis use voices: Mark Lanegan brings a menacing, gravelly presence to Link Wray and Velvet Underground covers, Emmylou Harris delivers haunted, aching versions of originals like “Cosmonaut” and “Fire in the Blood,” and Ralph Stanley’s stark readings anchor the music firmly in Appalachian gospel and old‑time tradition. Cave himself steps forward only once on vocals, for a snarling take on John Lee Hooker’s “Burnin’ Hell,” reinforcing his role more as ringleader and writer than frontman here. Critics describe the soundtrack as by turns raucous and sombre, “authentic and revisionist,” arguing that this hybrid of roots music, art‑rock covers, and moody score cues stands on its own as a cohesive, noirish album whether or not you’ve seen the film.
Lawless - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Nick Cave & Warren Ellis
Lawless – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’s score and song collection for John Hillcoat’s 2012 Prohibition‑era crime drama, built around their studio ensemble The Bootleggers and a cast of distinctive guest vocalists. Rather than a conventional orchestral score, Cave and Ellis assemble a rough‑hewn blend of country, bluegrass, gospel, and stripped‑down rock, pairing new compositions with radically reworked covers that feel both period‑appropriate and eerily modern. The tracklist moves through songs like “Fire and Brimstone,” “Burnin’ Hell,” “Cosmonaut,” “Fire in the Blood,” “Sure ’Nuff ’N Yes I Do,” “White Light/White Heat,” and the closing instrumental “End Crawl,” with the LP edition adding Willie Nelson’s “Midnight Run” as a coda.
Central to the album’s character is the way Cave and Ellis use voices: Mark Lanegan brings a menacing, gravelly presence to Link Wray and Velvet Underground covers, Emmylou Harris delivers haunted, aching versions of originals like “Cosmonaut” and “Fire in the Blood,” and Ralph Stanley’s stark readings anchor the music firmly in Appalachian gospel and old‑time tradition. Cave himself steps forward only once on vocals, for a snarling take on John Lee Hooker’s “Burnin’ Hell,” reinforcing his role more as ringleader and writer than frontman here. Critics describe the soundtrack as by turns raucous and sombre, “authentic and revisionist,” arguing that this hybrid of roots music, art‑rock covers, and moody score cues stands on its own as a cohesive, noirish album whether or not you’ve seen the film.