Washington DC [US], November 28 : When directors Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar asked long-time collaborator Bryce Dessner to score the Netflix drama Train Dreams, the composer knew he wanted to escape the usual studio routine, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
"I wanted to get away from my computer," Dessner said. "A lot of film scoring is done in front of a picture, often with advanced technology. This was the opposite."
For about a week, Dessner, a fan of the Denis Johnson novel on which the film is based, holed up at Flora Recording & Playback in Portland, Oregon, the same studio his band The National uses.
There he recorded with vintage gear - upright pianos, harmoniums, old acoustic guitars and ribbon microphones - set against the studio's shiplap walls. Those analogue sounds were blended with modern synths and processed electronics to capture a score that is "devastating, at times almost whimsical, but always beautiful," Dessner explained.
The biggest challenge, he noted, was the "big sense of loss at the heart of this story." The music had to convey the deep empathy for Robert Grainier (played by Joel Edgerton) without overwhelming the film. "I had to find a tone that was between light and dark, moments of levity and playfulness while allowing the bigger things to bloom," Dessner added, as quoted by the outlet.
Dessner also teamed up with rock legend Nick Cave to write the film's eponymous theme song, which plays over the end credits. "Nick was at the top of our list," Dessner said, praising Cave's "literary" songwriting style. While Cave was on tour, Dessner sent him score material; Cave, also a fan of the novel, wrote lyrics over the tracks. The result is a three-to-four-minute piece that fills the film's sparse dialogue with powerful emotion. "He's someone who can put all these feelings into words - he does it so beautifully," Dessner remarked, highlighting the lyric "I can't begin to tell you how this feels."
Dessner described Cave as a "hero" and called the collaboration, their first together, a career highlight. "He's a really respectful and humble and elegant collaborator," Dessner says of Cave. "He was very open. A lot of times good songs can just happen. Sometimes it takes eight months to make a great thing, sometimes it's overnight. This one happened pretty quickly," as quoted by The Hollywood Reporter.
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