Casino Royale (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Now in its fifth decade, the James Bond film series has outlived the Cold War concerns that spawned it--not to mention the acting careers of a Sean Connery replacement or three. Indeed, its musical sensibility has often been the cycle's most reliable artistic link across the decades. While the arrival of latest Bond Daniel Craig inspired the producers to forge a long-overdue prequel plot gambit ("How Bond became Bond") for their Casino Royale redux, composer David Arnold's fourth Bond score helps bridge the past while subtly pushing it ever forward. The album's absence of a pop-song title single (though the melody of the Arnold/Chris Cornell-composed "You Know My Name" is interpolated into the underscore) isn't terribly shocking, considering the waning fortunes of recent efforts in the genre. But other traditions continue, with the full-bodied score here subtly infusing the elegant spirit of original Bond maestro John Barry into Arnold's own mix of brooding tension-builders and the dynamic, brassy rhythms of his signature action cues. The latter even gingerly cross over into the synth-charged club milieu of Eric Serra's GoldenEye score, a sensibility that was reviled as sacrilege by Bond aficionados a decade ago but that's since become a staple of mainstream film scoring. Arnold brings it all full circle with the muscular coda "The Name's Bond...," a lovingly authentic, barely revamped workout of the epochal Barry/Monty Norman theme that anchors the series to glories past. --Jerry McCulley