Sometimes I have trouble sleeping, though certainly not as much as Rust Cohle, the existentialist-shaman half of the cop duo in HBO's new series True Detective, played by Matthew McConaughey opposite Woody Harrelson's bright if bull-headed detective. Whenever my circadian rhythms go all Sun Ra Arkestra, rather than call on Cohle's trademark fistful of Quaaludes to sort things out, I'll flip on the DVR and relive chunks of the spooky crime procedural, set mostly in rural Louisiana in 1995, which has been making my Sunday nights a hell of a lot weirder for the past month. I won't spoil the plot, but I will say that writer/creator Nic Pizzolatto (
a first-time showrunner, to use a recently-minted industry term) and his team are doing excellent, harrowing storytelling on par with what you've come to expect in the wake of series like The Wire and
Red Riding.
"Great," I can hear you say, "but what's the Nashville connection?" Remember when we told you that T Bone Burnett, master songwriter-producer and husband of ABC's Nashville co-creator/producer Callie Khouri, would be handing over the music production reins to Buddy Miller? You may recall that Burnett cited a full plate of outside commitments as his reason for leaving. One commitment not mentioned at the time was his role in curating music for True Detective's soundtrack, as well as recording originals with the likes of Carolina Chocolate Drops' Rhiannon Giddens and jazz diva Cassandra Wilson.
As Burnett recently told Mother Jones, his goal is for his music choices to play as much a part in telling the story as the dialogue or the camera work. Take a look at a few of them after the jump.
***NOT EXACTLY SAFE FOR WORK.*** Even without the nipple or two that's in there, your boss would probably look at you sideways if he or she didn't know what this was. Before we go any further, MJ's article skipped the thing that hooked me instantly: the ingenious hallucinogenic title sequence that's the best I've seen since ... hell, I dunno if I've seen one this good. The sublimely unsettling cut "Far From Any Road" from Albuquerque husband-and-wife duo The Handsome Family fits the story like the proverbial glass slipper.
Both of the main characters have important strengths, but Cohle is my guy. Grim though he can get, he cuts right through the B.S. that Harrelson's Marty Hart often puts in his own way (enjoy some
uproarious extrapolationsfrom a clever blogger). Cohle spends a near-unhealthy amount of time poring over old case files, and I'd be hard-pressed to find a song that better encapsulates 14 hours spent looking for a pattern in reams of rotting corpse photos than Captain Beefheart's "Clear Spot."
Hart doesn't seem to think that much of his mistress, but Burnett wanted her to have some weight. Their scenes together are pretty evenly weighted; as audience, we could look through Hart's eyes, or we could look through hers. To help tip the perspective, Burnett added "Train Song" to the score, a delicate 1966 single by English folkie Vashti Bunyan.
The series premiere ended with an exhortation by Cohle for the detectives interviewing him in 2012 to "Start asking the right fucking questions." To sum up the previous hour's emotional roller coaster, Burnett looked to The Black Angels, currently the premiere psych band from Austin, Texas, whose "Young Man Dead" played over the credits. Tix are on sale now for their show Feb. 21 at Mercy Lounge, with the great Roky Erickson; more on that to come next week.
Episode 4, which aired on Sunday, also ended on a near-cliffhanger, right after a mind-blowing single-tracking-shot action sequence. Not content to let us come down from that, Burnett programmed "Honey Bee (Let's Fly to Mars)," a hard and fast cut from Nick Cave's Grinderman, over the credits. Check out a live version from the band's Letterman appearance to get the full, menacing effect.
Have your own favorite music placement, or opinions on local artists that should get a spot on the popular program? Tell us in the comments.
