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Ang Lee has said that he has taken many chances recently in his career (everything surrounding The Hulk was one big chance), and for Brokeback Mountain, Lee would avoid the sounds of an American Western artist and choose Argentinean musician/producer/composer Gustavo Santaollala to write a delicate underscore and produce several songs for the film. A regular collaborator with director Alejandro Gonz‡lez I–‡rritu (21 Grams), Santaollala announced his presence in American film score composing with his award recognition for The Motorcycle Diaries. Now based in California, Santaolalla has produced for the Mexican bands Molotov and CafŽ Tacuba and continues to produce songs for American soundtracks. While Santaolalla's music for movies has involved a certain amount of experimentation, his work here is highly predictable, conservative, and subdued. The film had song usage in mind from the start, and Santaolalla wrote multiple classically-inclined country ballads for Emmylou Harris and Mary McBride that have both been very well received by Country music collectors. The album's emphasis on these songs causes the overall emphasis to be quite lively, although the older hits by Steve Earle ("The Devil's Right Hand," 1987) and Linda Ronstandt (the Buddy Holly cover, "It's So Easy," 1977) are tired and misplaced. The original songs (and adaptations) by Santaolalla , despite the considerable interest from the mainstream, are not all eligible for Oscar consideration. A committee from AMPAS deemed some of the song content ineligible because it is "not clearly audible or intelligible," and the Golden Globes side-stepped the traditional songs completely by nominating the title theme of Santaolalla's own score for an award.

The Santaolalla score was separately nominated for a Golden Globe as well, and this is exactly the kind of nomination that drives traditional film score collectors nuts. Santaolalla's underscore is definitely underplayed in the film, although its influence is strong. Its Western simplicity will not turn heads for those orchestral score fans, and Brokeback Mountain is therefore not recommended for that crowd. Santaolalla's ensemble consists of acoustic guitar, slide guitar, and a small string section. Very minimalistically rendered, Santaolalla returns to the same chord progressions (a theme of sorts) over and over again, never varying the content much but definitely sending us off with an inspiring flourish of this theme in "The Wings" (a highlight cue for the entire year, despite the score's overall shortcomings). If there were to be a significant criticism leveled at Santaolalla for his underscore, it would be that his music is sonic mush rather than kind of emotionally deep accompaniment that the film may have benefited from. There is no structural framework for the various settings, nor are there defined motifs for different aspects of each character's lives. A very short running time for each orchestral cue (13 minutes total) causes these non-descipt cues to become quickly lost on album (a sad circumstance that even the avid Country collectors are bemoaning), and for score collectors interested in a Western score that bridges the gap between Western elements and an orchestra, try All the Pretty Horses from a few years ago. But Country fans will swoon for Santaolalla's easy sounds and well-produced country songs, and it is in light of this achievement that the album is selling like hotcakes.   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

• Music as Written for Film:  ***
• Music as Heard on Album:  **
• Overall:  ***

Total Time: 43:21