From what I understand, this album has been 5 years in the making. Danger Mouse and Italian composer Daniele Luppi have both been inspired by the music of spaghetti westerns, and Ennio Morricone in particular, and wanted to try to do something similar. Both men wrote the music, and then recorded it in Italy. They were able to gather the choir and musicians, now mostly in their eighties, that had worked for Morricone on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to be their session musicians. The outcome is fantastic.
This album is a tip of the hat to the beautiful film score work of Morricone without ever being derivative. To listen to one song randomly from the whole, is to do yourself a disservice. This is an album that needs to be internalized in its entirety. There are nine instrumental songs, and six with singing. Of the six, the vocal duties are split between Jack White and Norah Jones. The singing on their own albums is so dissimilar, that before you hear the music, you'd never guess how well it actually works, and it does work.
The lyrics are filled with loneliness, lost dreams, a troubled world, and being your own worst enemy. The tone matches the music so well, and it's so absorbing, that I've found myself lost inside of it, humming it to myself at work, and now have listened to the relatively short album (35 minutes) at least a dozen times already.
I'm a sucker for a good soundtrack, and even though there's no film to go along with the music, there might as well be for the images it evokes in the listener.
Do yourself a favor and pick up this little gem:
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