Rebuilding is a poignant new film about recovery and resilience from American director Max Walker-Silverman and starring hot property Josh O’Connor as a stoic rancher looking to rebuild his life after a wildfire destroys his land. A quiet and sensitive picture, the makers decided the artist to bring its musical side to life was folklore forager and discerning composer Jake Xerxes Fussell, who in turn enlisted the services of producer and musician James Elkington to share the load.
This power couple have plenty of proof of their productivity, most recently with Jake’s lovely When I’m Called album, which James produced and played on, plus 2022’s Good and Green Again, with James in the chair again. For this project, the pair collaborated remotely until near the end, with Jake sending James guitar samples—often improvised—that James would then tweak and expand, usually keeping the original demo at the piece’s core, until it felt finished.
The mood of the music often feels like a continuation of When I’m Called, with many of the seventeen tracks built on Jake’s picking lines and fleshed out with pedal steel and subtle strings. There is a clarity and spaciousness to the music that brings to mind albums like Yo La Tengo’s Old Joy soundtrack, plus hints of classics like Ry Cooder’s incredible Paris, Texas.
A fairly obvious example of the latter comparison is the gorgeous Things We Lost, with its acoustic steel guitar part, but there is less dust here and more warmth, especially when the brass parts see the music out. And this warmth permeates the album, giving the music a lightness and an optimism that is often found (if you listen hard enough) in Jake’s work. Songs like County Z illustrate this well, with easy pedal steel and very pretty but minimal piano notes riding over a strummed acoustic guitar line.
Elsewhere on this set of seventeen miniatures, pieces like Contemplating the Moon add bursts of strings to reverb-heavy banjo to provide depth to the music, while Mountain Time brings in electric guitar to a gently driving rhythm, evoking outdoor space and landscape. Even better is Cowboy Without Cows, a slow-moving piece of melancholy guitar, with subtle pedal steel notes hovering and bass strings buzzing.
Like most of the tracks on here, it is almost minimalist in structure, but manages to capture the magic of cinematic landscape and human emotion within its notes. There are many more isolated moments to consider here (the bright percussion versus low electric guitar notes is a delight on Glow in the Dark, for example). Still, the album’s overriding strength is its ability to hang together as a whole and to beautifully capture the spirit and essence of Walker-Silverman’s film.
Rebuilding (November 14th, 2025) Fat Possum
Pre-Order Rebuilding: https://fussellandelkington.ffm.to/rebuilding
Rebuilding the film opens in theatres in New York on November 14th and rolls out nationwide on the 21st.