Nick Cave and The National’s Bryce Dessner have joined forces for the title track to Netflix’s upcoming film Train Dreams. 

The track was co-written by both artists, and they produced it alongside Luis Almau. Dessner also composed the film’s complete score, representing his second collaboration with director Clint Bentley following their work on 2021’s Jockey.

Train Dreams features Joel Edgerton as a railroad labourer, alongside Felicity Jones and William H. Macy, and it adapts Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella.

The collaboration came together with remarkable speed despite initial scheduling concerns. “When we started thinking about making a song for the film, Nick felt like the perfect artist to do it,” Bentley explained. “It turns out that Train Dreams is one of his all-time favourite books, but he initially feared there wouldn’t be time to do something because he was getting ready to go on tour.”

Cave’s commitment to the project intensified after viewing the completed film. “Then he watched the film and was inspired to write something and the whole thing came together really quickly,” Bentley noted.

The director described being “blown away” by the finished track while acknowledging the surreal nature of the experience. “I’ve been a fan of his for such a long time and there I was, not only having a really lovely conversation with him about life and art, but he was also reading lyrics to me that he was writing for a film I made,” Bentley reflected. “It was a really special moment.”

The artistic synergy between Cave and Dessner proved seamless throughout the creative process. “They were both very open artistically in the process,” Bentley observed. “The piano music that Bryce laid down as the bed of the song feels like an extension of the gorgeous score he created and then Nick’s lyrics just seem to grow organically out of that.”

Listen to a snippet of the track above.

Cave continues his international tour with the Bad Seeds following the conclusion of their North American dates, which included a performance at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. The band released their most recent album, Wild God, in 2024.

Train Dreams arrives in select cinemas on November 7th before streaming on Netflix from November 21st. The soundtrack will be released digitally on November 7th, with vinyl editions following on November 14th.