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A mutual admiration for Jack Kerouac's work bonded alt-country vet Jay Farrar and indie-rock dignitary Ben Gibbard, who had never met before collaborating on this soundtrack for the documentary on the famous beatnik. The words are Kerouac's, from his days in Big Sur battling addiction and depression. The music is a mix of light acoustic guitars, pedal steel, harmonica and drums. Fairly split between Gibbard's fey tenor and Farrar's forlorn baritone, the stream-of-consciousness prose already contains a sort of intrinsic rhythm, which lends itself perfectly to the sparse instrumentation within.