O Brother, Where Art Thou?
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Free Music Notes for O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Free Music Review: My Review
Hit: 5 Stars
Here is the review for each songPo' Lazarus - (1 star) The song tells a pretty good story but it sounds like it is repeating itself. You can't understand it.Big Rock Candy Mountain - (5 stars) I think this is one of the best songs ever because you can actually close your eyes and feel like you are in the big rock candy mountains.You Are My Sunshine - (3 stars) This song is good but also old and played out.Down To The River To Pray - (5 stars) Alison Krauss' vocals on this song is amazing. If a voice could put you to sleep this would be it.I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow (Acoustic Version) - (5 stars) This is the best version on the album.Hard Time Killing Floor Blues - (1 star) It just doesn't fit into the soundtrack. However, it fits in perfect in the movie.I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow (Instrumental) - (5 stars) Everybody is too busy listening to the words to realize how relaxing the music is.Keep On The Sunny Side - (4 stars) This song is a good song to cheer you up when you are down.I'll Fly Away - (4 stars) This is just a song I think everyone can enjoy at one time or another.Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby - (3 stars) I like te harmonizing of the vocals in this song.In The Highways - (1 star) These little girls voices annoy me bad.I Am Weary (Let Me Rest) - (4 stars) This song makes you think about your mother.I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow (Fiddle Version) - (2 stars) This does not sound right with just fiddles.O Death - (5 stars) I love Ralph Stanley. His voice fits this haunting song. No offense but he sounds like he is about to die but in this case that's a good thing.In The Jailhouse Now - (4 stars) This has a good beat. It is almost comical. It fits the movie and soundtrack perfect.I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow (Video Version) - (5 stars) Loved it in the movie and soundtrack. It also had an awesome video.Idian War Whoop - (2 stars) I doesn't really make sense for this type of soundtrack.Lonesome Valley - (1 star) This song is plumb ignorant. No offense to black people I'm not racist but I dont want to sit around and hear old black men singing about getting saved.Angel Band - (5 stars) This song defies all musical boundaries. Everyone likes it. You can almost set back and cry to it. It is a good reminder of passed loved ones.Free Music Review: Hook, Line, and Sinker
Hit: 5 Stars
Well, what to say about this album. This is the quintessential bluegrass album of our generation. I saw the movie, "O Brother, Where art thou?" and I was immediately hooked to this fabulous soundtrack. The movie was one of the funniest pictures that I had seen in years, and I believe that I saw it four times in one week. By the end of that week, I was singing along to every song, even before I was able to purchase the album. This is fabulous stuff... not just country, not just folk, but real-honest to goodness, bluegrass. I dance around by myself to this music when I am by myself. I sing it constantly. I can honestly say that if there is one soundtrack out there that will stay with me for the rest of my life, it is the "O Brother Where Art Thou?" soundtrack. My favorite tracks are the ones featuring Allison Kraus and/or Union Station. Dan Tyminski does one heck of a job as the lead singer of "Man of Constant Sorrow." (Who knew that George Clooney could lip sync that well?) Allison Krauss is one fabulous singer--showing her talents, and making a convert out of me from my normal classical interests, in "Down by the River to Pray" and "Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby." Old time hits like "Big Rock Candy Mountain" and "You are My Sunshine" are perfect as they are, and should not ever be re-done. Gillian Welch is great, but doesn't hold me quite as much as Krauss. The yodeling in "In the Jailhouse" is great... it will definately put you in a good mood. The girls that sing "In the highways" are as flat as can be, but you can excuse it because it's so completely perfect in the context of the film. "O Death" and "The Lonesome Valley" could have been omitted, in my opinion, but they do convey an important part of the story. All in all, I can recommend this album to everyone... if you listen to it long enough, even the most anti-Country music listener will be converted.
So, next time you're in the Mississippi area, don't forget your Dapper Dan Hair Pomade, your copy of the Odyssey (makes the story so much more interesting if you know the background), and most importantly, don't leave this album behind...who knows, maybe you could be the next "Soggy Bottom Boy."
Free Music Review: If you HATE "country" music, you'll LOVE this album!
Hit: 5 Stars
As a child I loved watching Lester Flatt & Earl Scrugs, live from the Grand Ole Opry every Saturday afternoon. They were fun. Their music was alive. It breathed. It had real blood pumping through its veins. As I grew a little older I left what had become "country" for more modern genres of music, as well as classical. The Rolling Stones had far more life in their music than did the crying-in-my-beer-becaue-I'm-running-around-on-my-wife claptrap that Nashville was (and still is) passing off as music.If I wanted to hear living renditions of material that mattered - "I'll Fly Away", "Angel Band", "You Are My Sunshine", "Keep On the Sunny Side", "In the Highways, In the Hedges", etc. - I had to either play them myself or find a rare band that had let Nashville pass them by. Old recordings of the Stanley Brothers were available, as were old recordings of other legendary bluegrass and gospel performers. But prior to the advent of CDs, and the re-release of archived material, they were painfully hard to come by, and often in poor condition.
And then I saw OH BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU. The movie is great, a hoot from start to finish. But I fell in love with Alison Krauss without having ever seen her. What an absolutely beautiful voice. And her band, Union Station (aka The Soggy Bottom Boys) are fantastic.
The three Peasall sisters are precious. To the best that I can find, their reording of Maybelle Carter's "In the Highways, In the Hedges" is the only recording of these children available. Unfortunately the album left off their rendition of "Angel Band", which ends the film.
To my pleasure however, immediately after the little girls' version of that song, the film follows with the 1956 recording of The Stanley Brothers singing the same song, which is on the album.
"Man of Constant Sorrow" ROCKS, no two ways about it.
Every song and artist on the album could be praised. Special kudos need to go to T. Bone Burnett for having produced the album, and to the Coen brothers for having done the entire project.
This music lives. It breaths. It has real blood pumping through its veins. It's the best album I've heard in many years.
Free Music Review: A Great Album
Hit: 5 Stars
I think this soundtrack is terrific. When I grew up in the fifties (yes, in California), I remember being addicted to old time music and listening to it on our tube mono upright phonograph. Of course I didn't realize it was old time music as a little kid. I just knew it was easy to latch onto. This CD reminds me how much the world and popular music as changed.As a kid TV only started to be in peoples homes when I was 3 or 4. Most families had a piano and of all the families living nearby all had kids and or parents that knew how to play. No one back then relied on Madison Avenue to tell them what to like because they just didn't play as prominent a role as today in peoples lives. If you wanted to have music in your life you just learned to sing or play an instrument. And if you were a kid fortunate enough to go to camp during the summer you got a big dose of music there also.
Growing up in a religious family you naturally got acquainted with music. I'm not a religious person anymore but the album sure takes me back. I think back when there was no TV, or internet people needed more solace in their lives and music was and is a direct link to that. Even the most upbeat toetapping songs on this album ("I am a man of constant sorrow") have the most brooding dark lyrics you can imagine - its a direct link to how hard life could be in the depression - and for blacks long before that. I remember singing songs in Sunday School at 4 or 5 years of age about heavenly rewards and such without thinking much about it at the time. Now I look back on it and I see in those experiences my parents dark view of how hard life can be and that you shouldn't look for rewards in this life. It's a very pervasive emotion behind a lot of music. The simple expression of the emotion in song is what lifts the spirit. You don't have to be religious to understand it but it does help if you've had exposure to it at sometime in your life. Like I say, I'm not religious and never go to church but this soundtrack just bypasses my brain and goes direct to the heart. I can't help but feel a little sorry for people who can't appreciate the simple joy of this album.
Free Music Review: "where they hung the jerk that invented work!"
Hit: 5 Stars
I was one of the first people to see the movie (on opening day) -- it's one of my all-time favorites -- and I must be one of the last people to hear this CD (great birthday present!). The only good thing about T-Bone Burnette's lack of success as a singer-songwriter (check out my review of the criminally deleted THE CRIMINAL UNDER MY OWN HAT from 1992) is that he has plenty of time to produce great records like this one!
It's a prime example of the "fabrication of authenticity," carefully selecting songs and musicians to recreate Depression-era America for the movie. One complaint -- with all the versions of "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" included here (2 vocal and 2 instrumental), it's a shame the Stanley Brothers version couldn't be one of them -- it was one of their signature tunes, and Ralph's for more years still. But Dan Tyminski is excellent, and Ralph Stanley sings a haunting acappella "O Death." Some of my other favorites include Chris Thomas on "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues," which goes with the Robert Johnson character in the movie, and "Big Rock Candy Mountain" in its original version by the Wobbly, Harry "Haywire" McClintock, with the classic line "where they hung the jerk that invented work"! The fiddle "Indian War Whoop" by the recently departed John Hartford is unbelievable too. And the closing numbers by the gospel group the Fairfield Four and the Stanley Brothers go together in a way that couldn't be improved on.
I uncovered a little-known fact about T-Bone & the Coens' sources -- the Soggy Bottom Boys are based on the real-life career breakthrough of the King of Country Music, Roy Acuff! Acuff played the Grand Ole Opry in 1938 for an audition, and was hired permanently, with a band that dressed up to look like exaggerated hillbillies. The Opry had Acuff change the band's name -- to the Smoky Mountain Boys. There's a photo of this band in the book COUNTRY MUSIC: FABRICATING AUTHENTICITY by the sociologist Richard Peterson, and guess what -- the Soggy Bottom Boys look surprisingly like the Smoky Mountain Boys!!