Ostensibly a collection of Cooder's film music, the two-CD Music by Ry Cooder delivers the cinematic quality of a good soundtrack album but packs the kind of ferocious jams--featuring crack players such as John Hiatt, Jim Keltner, David Lindley, and Jim Dickinson--that you'll never hear on a John Williams score. Cooder's melancholy acoustic and electric-slide moans are a constant, though the material shifts from the plaintive piano tune "I Like Your Eyes" (from Johnny Handsome ) to the border-town ballad "Across the Borderline" (featuring Freddy Fender) to the grit-and-spit stomp of "Bomber Bash" (from Streets of Fire ). From cowboy serenades to contemporary exotica, from Paris, Texas to Alamo Bay , Cooder's soundtrack legacy is a strangely unified cross section of an American master's finest and most varied work. --James Rotondi
Track Listing
Long Riders Archie's Funeral (Hold To God's Unchanging Hand) Jesse James Greenhouse See You In Hell Blind Boy Across The Borderline I Can't Walk This Time Sunny's Tune Angola Klan Meeting No Quiero Southern Comfort Highway 23 Theme From Alamo Bay Goose And Lucky East St Louis Cruising With Rafe Cancion Mixteca Canoes Upstream Goyakla Is Coming Bound For Canaan Maria King Of The Streets Swamp Walk Bomber Bash Train To Florida Bound For Canaan (The 6th Cavalry) I Like Your Eyes Johnny Handsome Feelin' Bad Blues Viola Lee Blues Nice Bike Houston In Two Seconds Paris Texas
