Normally, a musical liaison between a chart topping hip-hop producer and a cult indie singer-songwriter would be an unlikely concept indeed, but as we have discovered over recent years, Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse, refuses to be restricted by genre boundaries.
Not that he was ever a true 'hip-hop' producer in any case, his time in Gnarls Barkley notwithstanding. The Mouse's lofty reputation stems from 2004's Grey Album, where he ingeniously mixed Jay Z raps with musical samples from the Beatles' White Album, incurring the wrath of EMI in the process. Since then, he's also worked with the likes of Beck, the Black Keys and Bright Eyes, hardly a roll call of hip-hop royalty, as well as collaborating with James Mercer of jangle-popsters The Shins earlier this year on the excellent Broken Bells project.
Dark Night Of The Soul sees Danger Mouse teaming up with the late Sparklehorse frontman Mark Linkous, who had recorded a series of bleakly melodic, critically acclaimed albums over the past 15 years before committing suicide in March. This collection of his songs, recorded last summer with a host of star vocalists and his more famous friend at the production controls, was finally released last week after further legal wranglings with EMI.
Rather like the most recent offering from another of Danger Mouse's clients - Gorillaz (he produced Demon Days in 2005, although not Plastic Beach) Dark Night Of The Soul suffers somewhat from too big a cast list as the great and the good line up to work with Linkous. Not only do we have such indie luminaries as Gruff Rhys of the Super Furries, Black Francis of the Pixies and Julian Casablancas of the Strokes, but also Iggy Pop, Suzanne Vega and even legendary film director David Lynch, who produced a book of photographs to accompany the project.
The problem this creates is that most of these vocalists are so recognisable, the tracks they front more often than not end up sounding very similar to their own records, leaving Dark Night Of The Soul struggling to settle on one cohesive style. For example, opener Revenge, with the Flaming Lips, could have been lifted straight from Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, while the demented hollering of Francis and Iggy on Angel's Harp and Pain respectively doesn't really sit comfortably with Linkous's spectral, understated melodies. Even Danger Mouse's trademark mellow beats and fuzzy, fairground soundscapes sound a little incongruous here, while Linkous is largely content to sit in the background.
The most effective songs here feature less showy, more easily integrated artists like Jason Lytle (ex-Granddaddy) whose high, plaintive vocal lends itself well to the wistful Jaykoub and Everytime I'm With You. And it's only on the last two songs - Vic Chesnutt's apocalyptic turn on Grim Augury, where he chants menacingly about 'catfish wriggling in blood and gore in the kitchen sink' and Lynch's distant murmuring over distorted piano chords on the title track - that this album really sounds like a dark night of the soul, evoking the nightmarish imagery that characterises so many of the latter's own films.
Rating: 6 out of 10. Some good moments, and enjoyable throughout, but not the triumph it could have been and lacking the consistency of other work by both Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse.
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