You have to approach the music for There Will Be Blood in preparation for a specific mood of unyielding despair and occasional fright. The narrative of the score is completely non-existent, Greenwood making no attempt to develop and nurture motifs in a way that helps convey any part of the film's plot. Instead, he applies his ensemble as a blunt tool of emotional abuse on a scene by scene basis. That performing group is intentionally slim, with about half the cues performed by a string quartet with or without a piano and the other half handled by the fuller string section of the orchestra. There are seemingly no brass, woodwind, or percussion contributions. Rather, Greenwood applies various techniques to the strings to give them different performance aspects, such as the mad plucking and striking of layers in "Proven Lands." The only exception to the ensemble restriction seems to come in "Prospectors Arrive," where an almost synthesizer-like effect in the treble lends a disturbing tone to slight waltz rhythms performed by piano and minimal strings underneath. Listeners are left grasping for any semblance of warmth in this extremely dry and exhausting ambience. There is faint tonality that struggles to emerge in "Oil," and "HW/Hope of New Fields" conveys the score's only consistent melodic grace that will resemble Golden Age restraint for some listeners. Even here, though, the tone is sparse and lacking any redeeming characteristics outside of very basic, unhappy turmoil. Two early cues exhibit the far ranges of Greenwood's scope in exploring these depths of futility. The extremely minimal high string meandering in "Open Spaces" establishes the cinematography of the picture in its initial scene while the subsequent "Future Markets" shifts the cellos into high gear as they ambitiously tear through Bernard Herrmann-like figures of suspense. The barely-controlled chaos in this cue dissolves into actual wildness by the latter half of "Eat Him by His Own Light," the piano and strings presenting totally discordant layers that are emulated by the equally disturbing "Stranded the Line" late in the score. An intellectually intriguing choice by Greenwood is the long and simplistic crescendo in "Henry Plainview," a cue that suggests unyielding focus but almost no complexity for the lead character. Ultimately, there's no light at the end of the tunnel for the music in There Will Be Blood; whereas some later Greenwood scores offer variably tonal resolution at their conclusions, this score provides no such release. It's an intentionally disheartening, sparsely brutal conveyance of classical minimalism that will test your patience with its atonal hopelessness. Expect its short album presentation to leave you as gloomy (or annoyed) as ever.   @Amazon.com: CD or Download