First Listen: Danger Mouse And Daniele Luppi, ‘Rome’

Hot damn. NPR Music has Rome, the long awaited supergroup sideproject. You can stream it in its entirety here. Somewhere, Quentin Tarantino is pleasuring himself to this.

Stephen Thompson of NPR reports:

The long-anticipated brainchild of producer-composer Danger Mouse and Italian composer Daniele Luppi, Rome benefits from a bit of context. More than five years in the making, the project assembles many of the surviving performers of classic ’60s and ’70s Ennio Morricone scores — and, in half a dozen memorable cases, pairs them up with the vocals of Norah Jones or The White Stripes’ Jack White.

Naturally, Rome can’t possibly exceed the sum of its parts, with its successful composer and arranger in Luppi, its groundbreaking producer and composer in Danger Mouse, countless combined years of orchestra experience, a painstaking recording process with vintage equipment, and the juxtaposition of White’s fatalistic moan with Jones’ coolly detached croon. It almost has to sound better on paper than in practice, but it’s terrific in practice, too, as it alternates appropriately cinematic instrumentals with a handful of nifty showcases for its headliners.