T Bone Burnett’s 2000 O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack was, as you might have heard by now, a masterful, standard-bearing amalgam of old-time country and contemporary bluegrass that just sounded old. Four years and several soundtracks later, it’s all been downhill from there. Most of Burnett’s post-Brother projects have followed roughly the same formula with diminishing results, from the pleasant if unremarkable Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood to the deathless, dour Cold Mountain.
Burnett’s latest, the soundtrack to the Coen Brothers’ Tom-Hanks-in-Mississippi comedy The Ladykillers, is his best work since O Brother, in part because it’s less a solemn, strenuously authentic experiment than a gleeful, cross-cultural grab-bag of decade-spanning gospel and modern-day rap.
Several of the tracks here are traditional numbers that appear in multiple forms. “Trouble Of This World” gets three airings, from Bill Landford & the Landfordaires’ 1949 version to a contemporary gospel rendition from Rose Stone with the Venice Four to a gospelized hip-hop version from southern rappers Nappy Roots (who supply three tracks here). The incongruous juxtaposition of their “Trouble In, Trouble Out” with Sam Cooke & the Soul Stirrers’ gospel standard “Jesus I’ll Never Forget” is just one of the disc’s countless sublime pleasures.
Despite the formidable presence of artists such as Donnie McClurkin (the wonderful “You Can’t Hurry God”) and Blind Willie Johnson (“Let Your Light Shine On Me”), it’s Nappy Roots who make the strongest impression, breathing life into what might otherwise have been an airless, if noble, historical exercise.
