Vicious, tongue-in-cheek and crotch-driven, the Grinderman album was half-helmed by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis—a pair of other-side-of-forty Aussies who clearly revelled in the winking depravity of it all. But anyone who has followed these two closely knows that, together or alone, these musicians are also as contemplative and thoughtful as they come, none more so than when they do soundtracks. They first linked up in this way to score Cave's screenplay for the western The Proposition, which played a little like a toes-getting-wet affair, complete with sections lifted and respun from Ellis' main act, The Dirty Three. But following that, their confidence has grown with each project, culminating in scoring this month's film adaption of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Despite the near-simultaneous release of that film's soundtrack, White Lunar is a two-disc collection of the best moments of these several projects, plus some odds-and-sods. Mainly using their primary instruments of Cave's piano and Ellis' peerless violin (although also flavoured by hits of keys, spoken-word and jarring samples), these soundtracks present a uniform sense of tense ambiance—like someone trying to enjoy a massage while in a straitjacket. This clearly suits the subject matter it's meant to complement, but if you're thinking that nearly two hours of it can get a little monotonous, I'm not going to tell you you're wrong. Like The Bad Seeds and Dirty Three itself, much of your appreciation of this music depends on patience and open listening. Despite having no real standout moment, White Lunar is ugly, beautiful and, in the end, highly compelling stuff.