Original Soundtrack: Cold Mountain: Cold Mountain

Whether it was a fluke or a symptom of America's eagerness to get in touch with its musical roots, the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou sold a lot of CDs. So it's little surprise to find Brother producer T-Bone Burnett calling the shots for the soundtrack to Anthony Minghella's Civil War drama Cold Mountain. Burnett has impeccable taste in traditional material, and here, he puts a special emphasis on songs about death ("Am I Born To Die"), meeting the beyond ("I'm Going Home," "Wayfaring Stranger"), and proto-existential laments ("The Cuckoo"), all of which are perfectly suited to the film's themes. Not that 19th-century traditional music doesn't offer songs on such themes in abundance, but Burnett has chosen his songs well–and his singers, too. Jack White comes to his Appalachian roots by way of Detroit, but his five tracks sound as heartfelt as any other. In the tangled world of roots music, "heartfelt" may not trump "authentic," but it still goes a long way. That said, there's no getting around the substandard quality of the two Alison Krauss tracks here: Krauss is in her usual fine voice, but her songs, penned by Elvis Costello and Sting, don't match the material that surrounds it. (Sting can give his song a title like "You Will Be My Ain True Love" if he likes, but it's hard not to hear O Brother's characters crying, "It ain't even old-timey!") Such interruptions aside, the soundtrack still works nearly as well on its own as it did when accompanying the film, and if it gets one listener to chase down the musical past, it's done a public service, as well.