The latest releases reviewed

NICK CAVE & WARREN ELLIS The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford Mute *****

Earlier this year Nick Cave and fellow Bad Seed Warren Ellis wrote an exquisite score to The Proposition, a Cave-penned Australian western. Their new score to Andrew Dominik's American western is even better. Featuring strings, piano and celeste, with spare percussion (drums and triangle) and electric bass, Cave and Ellis combine plain folk motifs with elegiac romanticism to produce a score of tender intimacy and bold expanse, at once lyrical and epic. Rather than contriving a pastiche of 19th-century pastoral Americana, their gradual development of simple themes and careful introduction of orchestral forces enable them to compose an involving musical and dramatic narrative which culminates in the beautiful and threnodic Song for Bob. www.mute.com

JOCELYN CLARKE

Download tracks: Rather Lovely Thing, Song for Bob

VARIOUS I'm Not There Columbia ***

What's interesting about the 33 Bob Dylan covers on the soundtrack to Todd Haynes's I'm Not There is how few stray from the original template. Unlike Haynes and his half-dozen actors depicting Dylan, the musicians seem reluctant to take chances. The most out-there it gets is when Antony & The Johnsons unfurl their spooky version of Knockin' on Heaven's Door. There's also Sufjan Stevens wringing new drama out of Ring Them Bells, Cat Power having a blast on Stuck Inside of Mobile . . . , The Hold

Steady mating Dylan with The E-Street Band on Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?, and Sonic Youth's title track putting a snarl in the proceedings. The rest either just phoned in their performances (Yo La Tengo, Mark Lanegan) or didn't quite get the sound they were hearing in their head (Iron & Wine and Calexico's Dark Eyes has delusions of greatness). www.imnotthere-movie.com

JIM CARROLL

Download tracks: Cat Power, Stuck Inside of Mobile . . . ; Antony & The Johnsons, Knockin' on Heaven's Door