V/A: O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2LP, soundtrack) [MERCURY]

Why you'll love it

This 2LP set from Lost Highway and Mercury is pressed in the EU. The soundtrack won the Grammy for Album of the Year, topped the Billboard 200 and has sold more than eight million copies in the US.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

The Coen brothers decided the music mattered so much to their Depression-era Mississippi odyssey that they recorded the soundtrack before they shot the film. T-Bone Burnett gathered bluegrass, country, gospel, blues and Southern folk, nearly all of it newly recorded, with Harry McClintock's 1928 "Big Rock Candy Mountain" among a handful of vintage gems.

Dan Tyminski sings lead on "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" for the Soggy Bottom Boys, with Harley Allen and Pat Enright, giving George Clooney's character his voice. Ralph Stanley takes the a cappella "O Death," Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch share "I'll Fly Away," and "Down to the River to Pray" and "Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby" are spellbinding. Bright songs like "Keep On the Sunny Side" and "In the Highways" sit against dirges such as "Lonesome Valley" and "Angel Band."

It also took CMA Album of the Year and sparked a concert at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, filmed as Down from the Mountain. "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" appears here in several versions, and in two decades nobody has asked us for fewer.

Also at Kops: more O Brother, Where Art Thou? on vinyl · browse Soundtracks

Tracklist

Listen

On Lost Highway / Mercury (cat# 088 170 069-1), a reissue of the 2000 soundtrack.