nick cave and warren ellis - THE assassination of jesse james by THE coward robert ford

The recurring theme of ‘Rather Lovely Thing’ forms the backbone, as Ellis lets his violin run off into Southern-fried, folk-noir territory and Cave chips in with those meandering piano melodies that typified the ballads of ‘No More Shall We Part’ and ‘Lyre Of Orpheus’. We can only assume that the movie is not of the ‘smiley-feelgood’ variety too because, the more jaunty ‘Cowgirl’ apart, every track is laced with a sense of impending doom; conjuring up images of broken-hearted wives in mourning, lost loves and grisly, dastardly killings – this will not form part of your ‘getting-ready-to-paint-the-town-red’ mixtape. Ever. And therein lies a problem… Because for all its sombre beauty and elegance, the question remains: when on earth will you actually ever listen to this album? In the same way that instrumental hip-hop leaves you longing for an MC, the lingering, gnawing difficulty with a project like this is that we need to hear from Cave the lyricist; these melodies are crying out for his snarling observations and feel still-born without them. With a Bad Seeds album pencilled in for release no earlier than March 2008, this feels a lot like a starter course – appetising and tantalising, but not nearly enough on its own. It’ll keep you hungry, if a little frustrated.