My Delicious Spaghetti Western

Ask the typical cinemagoer to name a spaghetti western soundtrack composer and they'll respond Ennio Morricone. Ask them to name another one and chances are they won't know any others. Enter this 16 track compilation from Italian soundtrack specialist label Dagored to prove that there is more to the spaghetti score than maestro Morricone.

Well, sort of.

One of the things that comes across forcefully when listening to My Delicious Spaghetti Western is just how difficult it can sometimes be to isolate the specific contribution of Morricone from those of his key collaborators like orchestrator/conductor Bruno Nicolai and guitarist/whistler/multi-instrumentalist Allessandro Allessandroni.

When one listens to the tracks credited to Nicolai, such as Buon funerale amigos… paga Sartana, it's hard not to think you are listening to Morricone himself. All the familiar tropes, from twangy guitars to trumpet solos to whistles and moans, are present and correct. Or maybe you are listening to Morricone, given that Nicolai would reputedly sometimes sign Morricone's work for quota reasons and/or rework his unused scores.

Though Allessandroni's co-authored contributions (with Francesco De Masi) aren't so obviously in the Morricone mould, they can still be heard to be noticeably closer to his style than the other composers on the disc. De Masi's solo efforts along with those of Lallo Gori and others, sound more obviously indebted to the models of the American western and largely come across as dull and uninspired by comparison. Gold is one exception, on account of some hideously over the top vocalising.

All told an interesting disc, but one that also makes you long for another release devoted exclusively to Nicolai's genre scores to better explore their relationship with those of Morricone. Or maybe the second volume More Delicious Spaghetti Western clears everything up…