The Slaughter Rule

This companion piece to the 2002 indie film offers instrumental snippets of Jay Farrar's original score along with a dozen cuts drawn from alt-country's moody songwriter wing. Nothing in Farrar's guitar-centric score--which consists mainly of brooding blues riffs and John Fahey-influenced acoustic numbers, colored occasionally by keyboards, feedback, and minimal percussion--would sound out of place on his 2001 solo album, Sebastopol. Recycled contributions from Neko Case, Ryan Adams, Uncle Tupelo (a hard-to-find cover of Gram Parsons's "Blue Eyes"), and the Flatlanders hold few surprises: they're all stellar, but none is exclusive to this disc. Most of the new tunes found here are conservative covers of country classics, including "Rank Stranger" (Vic Chesnutt), "When I Stop Dreaming" (Freakwater), and "Gathering Flowers for the Master's Bouquet" (Blood Oranges). Best of all are Malcolm Holcombe's hard-bitten rendition of "Killing the Blues" and the Pernice Brothers' gauzy take on "Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown?" --Anders Smith Lindall