The gorgeous collection of tracks, titled End of the Day, saw Barnett taking a more minimalistic approach to music-making, putting lyrics and wit on the back burner to allow the movie to shine.
Similarly, film composition might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Neil Young. The name might have you humming the opening strums to ‘Harvest Moon’ or longing to delve back into the discography of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, but your first thought probably isn’t the soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch’s 1995 gem Dead Man, as Farout reports.
Still, like Barnett, Young ventured into the world of film scoring, creating a selection of improvised instrumentals for the western. Perhaps fittingly, the collection of songs would inspire Barnett in her own work, as she recalled during a conversation with The Line of Best Fit.
Barnett admitted that she hadn’t grown up around Young’s music, but she stumbled upon his compositions for Dead Man on the recommendation of her manager. “When Nick sent me this,” she remembered, “It was obviously so different to the other stuff, and I was really captured by it.”
The soundtrack certainly was a departure from his solo work and from his output with Stills, Crosby and Nash. A far cry from the baroque pop stylings of ‘Our House’ or the sentimentality of ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’, the record saw Young improvising and experimenting with electric guitar, working in tandem with the film. It has since garnered a cult following.
Barnett was particularly taken by how the record sounded both improvised and “sure of itself”, a description that could often be applied to her own work. She was so inspired by Young’s work that she even borrowed his techniques for making it while working on End of the Day, recording “in real time” with the film playing in the same room.
It’s clearly a technique that works or one that Young and Barnett have both mastered. While both soundtracks thrive in their improvisation, breathing life into the movie they accompany, they never lack certainty or clarity in their direction. Without Dead Man, End of the Day may well have been a completely different score.
