Rome

The great, and only, disappointment with Rome is that once you've heard the album, you'll want to watch the movie it accompanies. Except there is no movie.

Rome does one better than conjure nostalgia; it puts those vintage signifiers in service of fine, contemporary songs.

Rome has a fascination all of its own. [Jun 2011, p.121]

Few records will be made this year with such love and devotion, and you'll be able to tell it too. It's delicious.

The pair tracked down musicians who worked on Sixties spaghetti westerns, then added Jack White and Norah Jones as singers, resulting in a delicious album, redolent of easy listening but with all flabbiness removed and replaced by a modern warmth and elegance.

Burton's Rome is a fascinating re-envisioning of romance and danger. It has all the components of a classic and makes for the perfect soundtrack to inject something wonderful into a dull day. Richly rewarding.

Hopefully, listeners who have had their tastes whetted by Cat's Eyes and the cult Italian Beat At Cinecitta compilations will fall in love with this entrancing and gorgeously out-of-step album.

Norah Jones and Jack White sing on three tracks apiece, respectively languid and predatory, the end result being a short but perfectly-formed portal to a different state of musical mind.

With such grand ambitions achieved, great music produced, and a five year journey concluded and justified, Morricone would be proud: Rome was well worth the wait.

Unquestionably, it is beautifully done. [Jun 2011, p.80]

Even the addition of pop icons to the Rome album can't allow it to rise above its previously stated goals. There is little, if nothing, wrong with Rome, but rather, it is limited by the confines it sets up for itself.

As a whole, Rome is cinematic without being overwrought, its sound evocative of a certain vintage while still firmly rooted in the present.

Of course the question arises: is Rome the greatest thing 2011 will offer? Hardly. Nevertheless, I'll vouch to name it the most ambitious album of the year.

Whilst the modus operandi suggests something rather derivative, somehow the album achieves more than fan-boy indulgence; managing to be stylish and atmospheric without being too slick or insubstantial.

As much credit as the pair deserve for creating a modern approximation of Ennio Morricone, Rome is more likely to lead to watching one of Sergio Leone's classics than replaying the album itself.

Lovingly detailed, atmospheric, and oozing the Technicolor glow of a smoke-stained '70s movie screen, Rome is awfully hard not to cheer for, even when it's stuck on autopilot, as rarely do pet projects feel this alive and sumptuous.

For all of its glorious string flourishes, vivid visual allusions, and bursts of choral splendor, the best parts of Rome are truly left to the imagination.

Take a finger to your fast-forward button, however, and without Jones' handful of mediocre performances, Rome breezes past with all the tinkling, indefinable intent of a lost Michel Gondry film score.

White's natural eeriness and Jones' diffident eroticism certainly fit a sound built around mystical melodrama and chilly Euro heartbreak, but their voices are such complimentary opposites that they turn out to be what gives Rome much of its distinctness, keep it from being just another record collector (or film collector) exercise in getting everything period-perfect.

With guests such as Jack White and a surprisingly bearable Norah Jones, Rome makes a fine fist of recreating the elegance of prime 1960s Euro-pop. All good, no bad, and never ugly.

More vocal tracks would be nice, but Rome is as much about sublime instrumentals--made of celesta, harpsichord, Hammond organ, strings, nasty funk guitar and those weird-ass choirs--as lead singers, just as Sergio Leone's great Westerns were as much about fantastic landscapes as acting. Just switch your cell to "vibrate" and enjoy the show.

Rome has the undeniably high-end vibe of an A-lister's lark. After all, what kind of no-name can book the recording studio once employed by Ennio Morricone?

Burton and Luppi don't entirely lose their identities in the desert vistas of Rome--the record has all the crisp conciseness of a Danger Mouse production--but they might have created a better story than a record.

While the sounds are fantastic, the compositions tend to slip by, just another Mediterranean sunset.

It's the quality of the material--not just the three vocal takes each by Jack White and Norah Jones, but also the supple and atmospheric instrumental interludes-- that elevates Rome beyond Pastiche and into the realm of cinematic enchantment. [May 2011, p.105]

With the musical inspiration behind it all available to hear, the whole exercise ultimately seems a bit pointless and leaves Danger Mouse looking more a dilettante than a genuine auteur. Nonetheless, Rome remains an occasionally breathtaking pastiche.

While it's difficult to imagine there being a large demand for this kind of music, it's impressive how little the producers and performers behind Rome seem to care. Like a lot of love letters, it exists as much for the sender as for the recipient.

Inevitably, the result is cinematic in scope and evocative of a spaghetti western, but often feels little more than an exercise in jumping through those hoops.

Rome does sound like the result of five years of Very Serious Effort, except instead of honing a few rough spots, the hubris-driven tinkering ended up chipping away all the soul from what could have been a jaunty and lively homage to some of the best movie music ever made.