Doing Kerouac justice

The mad-cap, frantically-kicking-and-dodging imagery of Jack Kerouac’s writings inspired some of the greatest literary/lyrical minds of the last half-century (from Alan Ginsberg and Tom Wolfe to Bob Dylan and Conor Oberst), testing them to constantly reconsider their own self-imposed boundaries of written creativity.

On their release “One Fast Move or I’m Gone,” Jay Farrar (Son Volt and Uncle Tupelo) and Ben Gibbard (Death Cab, Postal Service, Zooey Deschanel’s hubby aka Luckiest Man on Earth) provide the outstanding soundtrack to a documentary of the same name that chronicles Kerouac’s reclusive days spent writing his monumental novel “Big Sur.”

Farrar and Gibbard play seamlessly off each other, crafting a lilting alt-country knock-out that manages to showcase the immense talent of the two men while still allowing Kerouac’s unrivaled prose to take center stage.

While the album does droop from time to time (especially on the more bluesy Farrar compositions), the acoustic-tinged beauty of such tracks as Gibbard’s gorgeous “These Roads Don’t Move” manages to truly translate Kerouac’s wild piles of verse into refined musical grace.