Albums that deal in “concept” can be pretty challenging without the skill-set and the resources to realize that idea. FORTUNATELY, Rome is by a couple of guys who have a stockpile of both resources AND skills, Danger Mouse and composer Daniele Luppi.

ROME pays homage to the lush and oddly beautiful film scores that accompanied the Spaghetti-Westerns of Ennio Morrocconi, where cool bass/drum grooves met sweeping string passages and other-worldly choirs and operatic pitch-singing.

The skills and resources of our maestros leads to a pretty serious home-run. What you hear is a deep understanding of the film-scores that are being paid tribute, mixed with DM’s studio wizardry. Couple that with casting Jack White and Norah Jones as the lead roles (they do the singing on non-instrumental tracks) and you have a perfect template. Still, dealing with an concept that focuses on movie-music, the last great challenge is making it gel into more than just 15 tracks of background music, and they do. It reads not like movie-music, but like a movie itself. As we travel through the different moods of the source-material, things stay stimulating and lyrical enough (even when Jones and White are off-screen) to keep your attention.

Not many people have what it takes to pull this kind of album off at all, and while it’s impossible to make this kind of work sound effortless, Danger Mouse and Mr. Luppi execute it as well as you can, careful to stay true to the idea and simultaneosly make it theirs, make it modern, and make it stand on it’s own.

Recommended track: “Two Against One (feat Jack White)”