Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi - 'Rome' (EMI) Released: 16/05/11

The concept of song being inspired by a film is a tried and tested formula, more often than not resulting in a brilliantly warped musical deviation from its original motion picture form.  The day after watching ‘Guys and Dolls’ in an Edinburgh hotel room, Pete Shelley penned the Broadway-less ‘Ever fallen in love with’ for the Buzzcocks,  and without Mr Miyaghi and an 80s martial arts  flick Natasha Khan would never have bagged Best Contemporary song at last year’s Ivor Novellos. However, rather unchartered ground is the idea of a film soundtrack inspiring an album...

One man who has never felt at home in safe and comfortable musical territory is the beautifully unpredictable producer Brian ‘Danger Mouse’ Burton.  Daring, innovative and consistently terrific, he is able to  craft a delicious and engaging melody from whatever he touches, previous works including chart-topping St Elsewhere with Gnarls Barkley, an amalgamation of Jay-Z’s vocals with the Beatles’ instrumentals on 2004’s The Grey Album and more recently his work with Broken Bells. So, the muse behind his latest project? Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s. After a lifetime’s obsession with the genre, Danger Mouse has teamed up with well-known Italian born composer Daniele Luppi to play homage to Ennio Morricone and other Italian film-composers of the 1960’s.

Perhaps even bolder than its surprising whip-cracking roots is the vocal casting choices, since Rome stars smooth blues starlet Norah Jones and everyone’s favourite Nashville guitarist, Jack White. Five years in the making, Rome is born from a noble but fairly bizarre inspiration, yet  therein lays its charm.

The album opens to ‘Theme of Rome’ and instantly silences the dubious. Any qualms of 'Rome' being a self-indulgent and experimental album are completely annihilated by the sheer sophisticated drama and wordless storytelling provided. Beginning with a simple; stranger marching into town percussion beat that is then slowly encompassed by a saloon guitar, and an ominous yet harmonised choir. This motif of alluringly graceful instruments being teamed with a subtle sense of foreboding is a recurrent and theatrical motif present throughout the album.

Seamlessly continuing on from the opening track is ‘The Rose with a Broken Neck.’ It is a melodic introduction to isolation and self-loathing, and enables Jack White to explore places he has never before wandered vocally. ‘Morning Fog’ is the first of several instrumental interludes, all of which act as playful xylophone equilibriums to break up the differing atmospherics created by having both male and female vocals.

Each one somehow manages to sound innocently childlike and menacing at the same time, the simple cinematic repetition creates a pleasant but dark atmosphere. ‘Seasons Trees’ is perhaps the lightest song the album and truly demonstrates the unforeseen success created by combining Jack White’s unhinged and troubled moans with Norah Jones’s clouded but consistently cool vocals. Jones is able to portray a more sinister and confident set of vocals than usual, and seems to relish in the femme fatal role ‘Black’ and ‘Problem Queen’ provide for her. One of the more figuratively named instrumentals ‘The Gambling Priest,’ allows Luppi to showcase the very best of Mediterranean guitar solos, whilst ‘Matador has fallen’ takes less of a cultural inspiration and instead illustrates the very best of the swinging 60s.

The standout track is probably ‘Two against one.’ Addictive, tarnished and self-absorbing, it is the definition of what makes 'Rome' a masterpiece and Danger Mouse one of the most talented producers around, and that is the simple skill of being able to combine old and new sounds or ideology together to create something modern and charming. Brave, cinematic and beautiful, Rome is one of the most polished albums that will be released this year.