Music Monday: Inside Llewyn Davis

So here's a treat for Monday.  NPR is streaming the soundtrack for "Inside Llewyn Davis" - the upcoming Cohen brothers film.  The movie focuses on fictional folk-singer Llewyn Davis, played by Oscar Isaac, emerging in the Greenwich music scene in the 1960's.  Like O Brother, Where Art Thou?, this Cohen creation has a soundtrack produced by T Bone Burnett.  The album is a compilation of classic and new folk songs mostly performed by Oscar Isaac, but also featuring the talent of Justin Timberlake, Marcus Mumford, Carey Mulligan, Stark Sands, and a host of others.

The soundtrack as a whole is just delightful!  But here are a few stand outs:


"Fare thee well (Dink's Song) - Oscar Isaac and Marcus Mumford.  A few lines into this song, my eyes actually welled with tears.  It's just an intensely sweet song and this duet is fantastic - easily my favorite from the album.  Also, with the announcement of their break, this may be the last "new Mumford" we get for a while.  But seriously, these two should cover something or do a whole album together or something.  If for some reason, the streaming doesn't work for you, here's their cover on YouTube:

"The Last thing on My Mind" - Stark Sand.  Plain ol' lovely folk music

"Five Hundred Miles" - Justin Timberlake, Carey Mulligan, Stark Sand (all three staring in the film).  Lovely song - no, not The Proclaimers' "500 Miles."  This offers some lovely harmonies, the first song of JT's I've actually liked, and [oh my word!] Carey Mulligan's sweet voice!  "Mr. & Mrs. Mumford" need to be a thing at some point.

"The Auld Triangle" - Chris Thile, Chris Eldridge, Marcus Mumford, Justin Timberlake and Gabe Witcher.  A great folk a capella that includes Mumford and JT - I think they just checked every box in one song.

Farewell - "a previously unreleased recording" of Bob Dylan's "Farewell."  Love Bob Dylan; love this song!

Check out the soundtrack and let me know which were your favorites :)

I love Bob Dylan.

I don't even remember when I started liking him so much.

I remember Pastor Eric sharing a few songs during Bible class. I remember my high school English teacher having us analyze "Blowin in the wind" for poetry class. But I think I officially fell in love with Dylan's lyrics after hearing Amanda Ghost's cover of "Every grain of sand." Everything to social-critiquing folk to reflective ballads--I have so much respect for him.

Dylan, whose artist name is based on poet Dylan Thomas, is such a master of vocabulary. He has such a handle of the English language and molds it into mysteriously powerful messages:

How many roads must a man walk down

Before you call him a man?

Yes, n how many seas must a white dove sail

Before she sleeps in the sand?

Yes, n how many times must the cannon balls fly

Before they're forever banned?

The answer my friend is blowin in the wind

The answer is blowin in the wind

Today is his 70th birthday, which sparked this series of thoughts. In honor of that, I definitely might watch part of this after work. It includes a bunch of footage from his concerts in the early 1960's.

The man is by no means perfect, but his iconic style and revolutionary music is inspiring as it is historic.


Happy Birthday, Bob Dylan!

Favorite song - Every Grain of Sand:

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There's a dying voice within me reaching out somewhere
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair

Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break
In the fury of the moment I can see the master's hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.

Oh the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer
The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay

I gaze into the doorway of temptaition's angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer's dream, in the chill of a wintry light
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's somone there, other times it's only me
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand