Director Cameron Crowe is known for paying very close attention to the soundtracks to his movies. For Elizabethtown, in which he revisits his Kentucky roots, Crowe has put together a low-key album full of gently moaning pedal-steel guitars, fretful mandolins, and men in full sensitive-balladeer mode. Whereas Almost Famous reached for the hedonistic 1970s, Elizabethtown tries to evoke a timelessly rootsy vibe through artists new (Ryan Adams, Wheat) and classic (Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac's Lindsey Buckingham) alike. Petty, Buckingham, and Kentucky natives My Morning Jacket all contribute new tracks, while Crowe and film scorer Nancy Wilson wrote the theme song, "Same in Any Language," for I Nine to perform. But once again, it's Elton John who pulls the chestnuts from the fire. Just as his "Tiny Dancer" was the clear highlight of the Almost Famous soundtrack, an old Elton epic overshadows the rest of the Elizabethtown lineup. Culled from Sir Elton's 1971 album Tumbleweed Connection, "My Father's Gun" is the kind of superb fake-roots song that paradoxically makes the others contributors sound arch. Go figure.
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Elizabethtown: Vol. 2
