Album review: Various artists - 'Palermo Shooting OST'

The music of director Wim Wenders’ new film is a crash course in straddling the divide between insouciant European cool and life on the American fringe; something the quietly legendary Wenders has been doing for years. Here, though, he sets his existential scene in his native Dusseldorf for the first time in over a decade, yet curiously the OST rings with a distinctly Western twang. Iron And Wine, Calexico and The Velvet Underground’s (Lou Reed has a ghostly cameo) contributions are the sound of beardy beatniks sat on dusty porches, and the first of Grinderman’s original offerings tears at the fug of dustbowl loneliness. Weirdly, the German contributions seem neutered to fit this same stars’n’stripes-clad mould - Thom sounds like Nickelback stuck in the ‘80s and Monta could make a living as a Benjamin Gibbard impersonator - and it’s left to Europhile Beirut to conjure that traditionally European sound. The electrified danse macabre rhythm of Grinderman’s second new song suggests a fateful end for Wenders’ protagonist, but nevertheless this should leave you at a crossroads of musical discovery.

Laura Snapes

8 out of 10