MUSIC REVIEW: DANGER MOUSE & DANIELE LUPPI - 'ROME'

The Stellar Producer Works with Cinematic Sounds to Extend an Empire

By: Andrew Shaw

May 18, 2011

(EMI) Jack White recently explained that he composed lyrics for his tunes on Rome by driving around with the tunes playing in his car. He allowed the words to come, melodic phrases to present themselves, and themes to gently pull and guide. There is an air of definition about that process that describes the sedimentary construction of the entire collection.

Rome, a collaborative album principally between stellar-producer Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) and Italian composer Daniele Luppi, has been a long time coming. It's taken around five years of composing, assembling an old orchestra, and recording the sounds on a bunch of antique analog equipment. The wait is over. Jack White and Norah Jones arrive to register their presence, and as usual, Danger Mouse achieves a kind of alchemy by bringing together diverse and contrasting elements.

There really is an atmosphere of details being layered upon one another. Something sandy gets poured over something silky. Course twine stiches cardboard together. Cotton threads through paper. Nothing is synthesized, everything is organic. Luppi's arrangements exist in the informing shadow of Ennio Morricone. Moods are tempered like anti-heroes from the Spaghetti Westerns that flickered across screens when this recording equipment was first used. There's much reflection, much analysis of motive, and then there's action. Danger Mouse nurtures effects from the sound machinery that make you believe that everything here smells of wood or aged leather and red wine. White and Jones revel in the atmosphere, carefully established by their hosts. Nothing less than archetypes are explored, from gambling priests to fallen matadors, problem queens, and roses with broken necks.

“The Rose with the Broken Neck” chimes in like a checklist of motives for a man on a revenge mission -- a man with nothing but hurt, loneliness, and a damp will to conclude whatever affairs are in motion. “The plough on the farm / the train on the track / the tracks on my arm / the train in a wreck...” White's rhymes gently cascade through the smoothest of melodies. They display an easy word association that exposes something of his subconsciousness. We learn as much about the way he thinks as we do what he's thinking.

Norah Jones has an effect of adding class to everything she touches. Surrounded by such a wealth of pedigreed artists in such a project, it's hard to imagine who else could have been cast to fill her role. “Cast down, it was heaven sent / to the church, no intent to repent / on my knees, just to cry” is a rhyming structure in “Black” that mirrors Jack White's easy rolling vocal deliveries in other tracks. Again, here's a lonely protagonist tripping through the city streets, locked in her own private ritual amid the mayhem of something big.

There is a definite European air to the collection. This is modern, cutting-edge stuff, but the instrumentation is the traditional display of Italian cinematic sensibilities. “The Gambling Priest” is a mixture of smooth strings, spiky top-end electric guitar, and a bass line that makes you want to follow someone in disguise. The feel is that of street art that has become legitimate on the walls of continental galleries. Analysis of these archetypical rogues and vagabonds may well just reveal some deeper, unconventional truths in all of us.

"Rome" is a poetic title with as many implications as there are people who know the city and its influence on Western history and culture. Modern innovations sit on top of ancient cultures, and somehow the two compliment each other. Legend tells that two orphaned brothers, suckled by a wolf, began the citadel which then became the heart of an empire. The Roman Empire survived by adapting to the environments it conquered whilst retaining its philosophical, political, and material integrity. We could wax lyrical about Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi; we could make artful guesses about their alter-egos being Romulus and Remus. We could draw fanciful comparisons of their stories and how this weighty project must have felt like an attempt to build Rome -- an achievement which we know took more than a day. Again, this would be a tempting, daydreaming exercise in addition to the atmosphere as a whole.

More focused than 2010's Dark Night of the Soul, this is an album that feels more compact yet has a broader vision. Thankfully, this has Danger Mouse's fingerprints all over it, so an easy sense or clear definition isn't expected to be made. What can be expected and what is delivered is yet another event in music. As much as the tunes themselves, Rome, with its accompanying videos and interactive online movie -- 3 Dreams of Black, directed by Chris Milk -- here is another installment from an artist who takes Pop Culture and makes something substantial that will endure.

Simply put, Rome is one of those charismatic outings that arrives as one of the best considered, intelligent, and artful experiences. The people sound unhinged, if not entirely crazy, so you may not want to live there, but you're also not going to want to say goodbye.

Standout Tracks: “The Rose With The Broken Neck,” “Black,” “The Gambling Priest”

For Fans Of: Ennio Morricone, Air, Calibro 35