Jay Farrar And Benjamin Gibbard — One Fast Move Or I'm Gone: Music From Kerouac's Big Sur

One Fast Move Or I'm Gone: Music From Kerouac's Big Sur

Atlantic/Warner

Kate Harper (CHARTattack)

10/29/2009 3:31pm

Jack Kerouac's 1962 autobiographical novel, Big Sur, is based on the author's three trips to a cabin in Big Sur, Calif.'s Bixby Canyon where he attempted to kick his alcoholism. These trips were ultimately unsuccessful, and Kerouac died in 1969 at age 47 of internal hemorrhaging caused by cirrhosis of the liver brought on by alcoholism.

Although Kerouac's most well known for 1957's On The Road, Son Volt frontman Jay Farrar and Death Cab For Cutie leader Benjamin Gibbard soundtracked One Fast Move Or I'm Gone: Kerouac's Big Sur, a documentary about Big Sur.

About 90 per cent of the lyrics draw from the novel, and the music is mostly sad bastard country. That's fitting, especially considering how much country music is about drinking, realizing you're doing it too much and drinking some more to drown your sorrows about drinking. It's also interesting to see Gibbard outside of his indie rock element, and it's worth noting he plays drums (in addition to his usual guitar) on the disc.

Unfortunately, most of the songs bleed together and sound exactly the same and One Fast Move Or I'm Gone isn't nearly dark enough considering the inspiration for the songs. The disc's main problem is the music and its dynamics (or lack thereof). It fails to translate the emotional anguish of a man who was completely unable to change and overcome his addiction and demonstrate just how truly sad, alone and isolated it made him.

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