Mike Patton è Dio

There are certain perennials that show up on these lists year after year. As evidenced yesterday, Jack White (in one form or another) has a presence nearly every December. Nick Cave and Tom Waits are two other favorites who show up time and again. This year’s number eight album is another of these artists, is the person who has served as the strongest glue bonding this blog’s authors together musically from day one and is a big reason, I believe, this blog exists in the first place. Mike Patton’s Mondo Cane is unlike anything we’ve heard from him before.

As diverse as any artist in pop music today, and having delved

into circus punk, alternative rock, heavy metal, hip hop, avant-noise, trip hop and many, many other genres, Mondo Cane is probably his most ambitious project yet. These 11 tracks are Italian language covers of pop songs of the 50’s and 60’s. Patton’s well-established admiration of the work of Ennio Morricone (see A Perfect Place soundtrack and the Crime and Dissonance anthology released on Patton’s Ipecac label) is clearly an inspiration as he breathes new life into these songs. His Italian is perfect, having spent much time there in the last several years at his second home in Bologna. I don’t speak any second languages, but listening to this album makes me want to. I still have plans to print out the phonetic lyrics to these songs so I can sing along in my car. This collection is a complete departure from anything we’ve heard from Patton before, yet in many ways is also an amalgamation of several of his previous interests. Here he incorporates a 40 piece orchestra and a choir and the recordings are actually live tracks from European performances. Urlo Negro probably comes closest to the usual Patton screech. Che Notte! is one of the more upbeat songs and Ore D’amore rides a sleazy guitar and keyboard intro. But it’s the crooning on the slower ballads that really grabs me every time. Probably my favorite tracks are the two that close out the album, both pleasant and sweet emotional builders. These are the ones you’ll be most likely to hear me belting at the top of my lungs as I drive down your street.

This album is top 10 of the year for sure and is among my top 10 Patton albums as well. Plus it appears he’s sparked a new trend here as the oft-mentioned-in-this-blog Danger Mouse is planning a 2011 release of his own based on his love of Italian film soundtracks of the 60’s, the upcoming Rome. Perhaps the Italian soundtrack will become the next perennial on my best-of-the-year lists. If Mondo Cane is any indication of the future of this surprising trend in pop music, the future sounds good.

Happy 2011. Tomorrow, Portland rocks number seven.