Most Hollywood soundtracks are ignored by most record -buyers - and most of the time, this is perfectly understandable. The music of Cold Mountain is different, however, for one very obvious reason. It contains five songs sung by Jack White of The White Stripes, who are arguably the coolest band in the world today. The film concerns Jude Law's search for lost love Nicole Kidman in the aftermath of the American Civil War, and White has a small role as a travelling musician. He sings three traditional bluegrass songs, adds new lyrics to another and performs one original, an acoustic blues number that would have fitted neatly on to last year's smash hit album Elephant. The results are very impressive, and bear comparison with the music on the seminal country tribute O Brother Where Art Thou? The rest of the material here is decidedly mixed, it's true, with some standard Hollywood instrumental slush and a truly awful tear-jerker written by Sting and performed by Alison Krauss. Still, with the judicious use of a skip button, this is definitely a soundtrack that deserves closer attention than most.
