Rome

Danger Mouse is apparently into every other cool musical thing that has ever happened, so really, it makes perfect sense that the man born Brian Burton also digs vintage Italian soundtrack music. After discovering the style in his college film courses, Burton spent over four years collaborating with contemporary Italian soundtrack composer Daniele Luppi and musicians who recorded some of the classic soundtracks of the style's golden age. (Most excitingly, vocalist Edda dell'Orso, whose wordless wails are possibly the single most identifiable aspect of Italian soundtrack music, provides her singular magic on the otherwise instrumental opener "Theme of Rome.") Burton and Luppi are working entirely within the style on these 15 tracks, making no attempt to update or homogenize the music they love, down to using vintage equipment to capture the sounds. Only the appearance of Jack White and Norah Jones on three tracks each firmly places the album in the present, and even then, both singers dial back on their familiar vocal tics to better suit the songs. White's love of this kind of dramatic old-school pop has been hinted at before -- see his wife Karen Elson's haunted psychtronica LP The Ghost Who Walks -- and his theatrical vocals on tracks like the swelling "The Rose With The Broken Neck" fit surprisingly well. The chronically-underrated Jones flourishes in these lushly gorgeous settings, enough to make the listener hope she does a full Danger Mouse collaboration someday. Sinking into Rome transforms even the most mundane day into something beautiful.