Danger Mouse's 'Rome' is a fair tribute to that old Spaghetti Western sound, if you're into that kind of thing...

White, Jones, Danger Mouse and Luppi explore the sounds
of the Spaghetti Western in Rome.

Danger Mouse is arguably the most important producer of the last 10 years. After landing on the map with his Jay Z/Beatles mashup "The Grey Album," Danger Mouse has been the sound behind some pretty big records: The Gorillaz' Demon Days, Gnarles Barkley's St Elsewhere, Damon Albarn's The Good the Bad and the Queen, Beck's Modern Guilt and the Black Keys' breakthrough Attack & Release, not to mention his other projects like his collaboration with Sparklehorse and The Shins' James Mercer, Broken Bells.

What Danger Mouse has excelled at is giving these bands and other projects an amazing sound. Danger Mouse records have an unmistakable cinematic atmosphere -- they sound like big productions that fizzle and pop over the airwaves from some swinging hip time of the '60s of our imagination. In an era of constant nostalgia and digital recordings, it's a sound that lends these records a classic and timeless feel, a sort of audial legitimacy.

So it's no surprise to find him working with film composer Daniele Luppi on Rome, a film score for a film that doesn't exist. Jack White and Norah Jones, two darlings with just the right mix of artsy cred and box office appeal, were recruited to lend lead vocals to about half the songs (the other half are instrumentals). To complete the project, Danger Mouse also recruited musicians who worked for the Spaghetti Western genre's greatest composer, Ennio Morricone, including the choir from the soundtrack of the genre's greatest work, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.

As far as the choices go, Danger Mouse couldn't have done much better. The track's of Rome sound really great. They're a heady mix of Morricone's work and that neo-'60s soul Danger Mouse has perfected with Gnarles Barkley. He gets a lot of the sound and feeling of the originals, including some great references, like the track "Morning Fog," which recalls the haunting musical locket of El Indio, the bad guy in  For A few Dollars More.1  

That said, there's not much more to Rome than a cool sound. The vocal tracks with White and Jones are polished and well done, but that's all. There's nothing authentically haunting about the actual songs. It never achieves the level of emotional creepiness of something like Portise Head's Dummy, for example. And without the film, there's nothing about the project that makes it the equal of Morricone's soundtracks.

Perhaps that's too much to ask. But the point is, aside from listening to this a few times as a sort of hip, nostalgic take on the Spaghetti Western soundtrack, there's nothing else to give Rome staying power. It's a solid "Meh" on the thumb scale.




Footnote: 
1. I'm a huge fan of Spaghetti Westerns, particularly the Man with No Name trilogy. For that reason,  I might even be a better audience for this record than the average listener. Maybe not.