Various Artists
Crazy Heart (New West)

This is a soundtrack album, so I should start by admitting that I haven’t seen the movie and Jeff Bridges’s much-lauded leading performance. I’ve seen the trailer, and I’ve seen movies like Tender Mercies and Walk the Line, so I’ll assume the story is about a country singer battling his demons with the help of a good woman.

That’s all I need to know. In fact, it’s more than I need, because my ignorance of the big-screen source leaves us alone with the music, free to listen to this mix of new songs by T-Bone Burnett, Ryan Bingham, Stephen Bruton, and others—plus classics from Buck Owens, Waylon Jennings, Townes Van Zandt, the Louvin Brothers, and Lightnin’ Hopkins—without having our hearts tugged or tears jerked by associations with plot and character and all their diabolical tricks.

Then again, simply setting the movie aside is impossible. Bridges sings on six of the tracks here, and costar Colin Farrell (yes, Colin Farrell) sings on two. Their voices are solid, authentically world-worn, and you can’t help thinking, “Hey, they sound great—just like the real thing.” Bridges’s bass-y, oak-toned delivery reaches into the pensive strum and pedal-steel on “Hold on You”, conveying slow-burning regret for the woman who slipped away and took a better world with her. And he’s soulfully muted on the elegaic waltz of “Brand New Angel”, one of the collection’s standouts.

Farrell ably holds up his own end of the bargain in a duet with Bridges on the honky-tonkin’ “Fallin’ & Flyin’?” (featuring the brilliant tears-in-your-beers refrain: “Funny how fallin’ feels like flyin’ for a little while”), and in his solo vocal on the uptempo “Gone, Gone, Gone”. But just how much of this is sporting effort—how much of it is the work of gifted amateurs who’ve spent their artistic lives acting rather than singing—becomes moonshine-clear when Waylon Jennings shows up in the middle of the proceedings, taking two minutes of his two-chord 1975 track “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way” to offer a master class in country music’s blend of weariness, defiance, and hard-bitten humour.

Don’t let that turn you away, though. The band that Burnett has put together here is consistently excellent, full of nuance and restraint. There’s also a pair of truly haunting ballads: Sam Phillips’s smoky “Reflecting Light” and Bingham’s maddeningly pretty “The Weary Kind” (the theme from Crazy Heart and winner of a Golden Globe a few days ago for best original song). Add to that an odd little piece of a cappella by Robert Duvall (yes, Robert Duvall), and top it off with those glimpses into the shining past of American music, and you’ve a record that creates a new favourite with every second play.

Download this: “The Weary Kind”

Ryan Bingham performs "This Weary Kind" from the Crazy Heart soundtrack .