Sony Classical release Nicholas Britell's score for Free State of Jones. The movie is an action-drama set during the Civil War, and tells the story of defiant Southern farmer, Newt Knight, and his extraordinary armed rebellion against the Confederacy. Banding together with other small farmers and local slaves, Knight launched an uprising that led Jones County, Mississippi to secede from the Confederacy, creating a Free State of Jones...

For the score for Free State of Jones, Nicholas Britell worked closely with the film's director Gary Ross and editor Juliette Welfling, to determine the musical approach to each scene. Britell used a string ensemble with added mandolin, trumpet, guitars, banjo, piano, and percussion in a bid to create the sound of an ethereal civil war band.

The end results speak for themselves. This does give a musical impression of the time period (albeit one that modern media has slowly styled over the years). The approach is not a million miles away from John Barry's work on Dances with Wolves (1990) and also brings to mind Alan Silvestri's music for Back to the Future III. In fact tracks like 'They Took Everything' have a distinct Barry flavour to them.

The album contains 18 tracks (34 min, 38 sec) and will be welcomed by fans of the movie. While I did enjoy it, there are a few too many music cues to make this an essential purchase, but it does wonderfully capture the time period, but with a modern approach.

7

Darren Rea