One of the overlooked films in Josh O’Connor’s incredible 2025 run is a small indie called Rebuilding, about a divorced rancher named Dusty who loses his land in a wildfire and ends up in a FEMA camp. The actor, born and raised in England, brings as much ease and conviction to that role as he brought to his beleaguered priest in Wake Up Dead Man, to his repressed folklorist in The History of Sound, and to his would-be thief in The Mastermind. Rebuilding is quieter than those films, more modest in its scope, as director Max Walker-Silverman continues to portray the American West as both beautiful and empty, overwhelming in ways both sublime and suffocating.
It’s hard to imagine two artists more attuned to those contradictions and complexities than Jake Xerxes Fussell and James Elkington, despite the fact that neither is any more Western than O’Connor himself. Fussell, the son of historians who traveled the Deep South before settling in North Carolina, conveys a sense of wonder that lends a cinematic quality to his reimaginings of old tunes. Elkington, who hails from a small village near London and emigrated to the Midwest in the 1990s, brings with him a deft picking style and a grounding in European folk traditions. They make old, sturdy songs sound not just modern but impervious to the passage of time, as though they could never be truly forgotten or made obsolete.
Together, they’ve devised a soundtrack as unpretentious as Walker-Silverman’s film itself. Rebuilding sounds like a true collaboration rather than just one of their solo albums without vocals. The pair, who previously worked together on two of Fussell’s albums, sent ideas back and forth before meeting up to improvise as they watched the film. They cite Ry Cooder’s score for Paris, Texas (a monument among soundtracks) and Angelo Badalamenti’s compositions for The Straight Story as touchstones, yet their songs are less weird, more downhome and settled than those travelogue soundtracks. Songs like “Mountain Time” and “Chili Roast Waltz” are amiable and neighborly, not to mention boundless and unquestioning in their sympathies toward the characters. Listen for the joy in “The Magic Boots,” with its banjo playing an ascending theme like an exclamation mark. Or listen for the trepidation in “Riding to the Ranch,” as these two guitarists convey so much simply in the timing of their notes. You don’t need to have seen the film to get an idea of what kinds of scenes these songs are meant to score or what kinds of emotions they’re meant to convey.
Or listen for the way the instruments tumble into place on “Prelude,” each connected to the other by streaks of pedal steel. That song in particular sounds both intimate and cinematic, which brings to mind the recent surge of pastoral ambient music (or ambient Americana or cosmic idyll or whatever you want to call it). Rebuilding is much more structured, more melodic although there are moments—like the lovely choir of crickets on “Daybreakers” or the mandolin arpeggios on “Contemplating the Moon”—that reach for something similar, recalling the work of SUSS and pedal steel sculptor Chuck Johnson. The music constantly toggles between foreground and background—like good ambient music so often does—as it explores landscapes both emotional and geographical.
The presentation of the album, with its cover featuring an abstract detail of a Western shirt, seems to suggest that these compositions are intended to stand apart from the film, to soundtrack the listener’s crises and recoveries and not just those of O’Connor’s rancher. That’s where the album might fall short. As vivid as these compositions are as a film score, they lack something we’ve come to expect from both artists. Maybe it’s vocals and lyrics, which add so much humanity to Fussell’s solo material in particular. Or maybe it’s the freedom to let songs determine their own path rather than adhere to visuals. Or maybe it’s just a little something extra to distinguish this humble collection from similar acts. Fenced in by the demands of the film, Fussell and Elkington make modesty both a virtue and shortcoming.
