A clas­sic Nick Cave sound­track is being released on vinyl for the first time

Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds band­mate War­ren Ellis have amassed a respectable back­log of movie sound­track work, bring­ing their haunt­ing ambi­ence to such down­beat films as The Road, The Propo­si­tion, and Hell or High Water. But their mag­num opus as scor­ers-for-hire accom­pa­nied a West­ern of a dif­fer­ent sort.

Cave and Ellis con­tributed indeli­bly eerie melodies to Andrew Dominik​’s out­stand­ing revi­sion­ist-his­to­ry pic­ture The Assas­si­na­tion of Jesse James by the Cow­ard Robert Ford, and for the first time you’ll be able to enjoy them with the warm­ing crack­le of vinyl.

Mute Records is releas­ing a remas­tered ver­sion of the orig­i­nal sound­track on 19 April – on 140g whiskey-coloured wax. This will be the sec­ond Cave/​Ellis joint on their books, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly put out a gold vinyl edi­tion of music from The Proposition.

The stark piano and string arrange­ments pro­vid­ed a tone-per­fect back­drop to the sto­ry of wannabe stick­up artist Bob Ford (Casey Affleck), and his craven attempts to get in good with folk-leg­end rob­ber Jesse James (Brad Pitt). While the film tack­led ideas about celebri­ty and obses­sion with a dis­tinct­ly mod­ern aware­ness, Cave and Ellis’ com­po­si­tions kept the film root­ed in an era far from our own.

Old-fash­ioned music sounds best on an old-fash­ioned medi­um, mak­ing this an excep­tion­al­ly appro­pri­ate pair­ing of mate­r­i­al and for­mat. Just the thing to set the mood for an evening of slug­ging moon­shine and obsess­ing over the neme­sis who isn’t even think­ing about you.

Nick Cave and War­ren Ellis’ sound­track to The Assas­si­na­tion of Jesse James by the Cow­ard Robert Ford will be released in the US and UK on 19 April. Pre-order your copy here.