James Newton Howard has really come into his own in recent years, scoring massive films one after the other, earning enormous levels of critical success and firmly establishing himself on Hollywood film music A-list. The problem I find with him is the frequency with which the temp-track bleeds through into his music. Probably his most entertaining album, Dinosaur, is really little more than a first-rate Jerry Goldsmith compendium and his newest score The Emperor's Club is pretty obviously based on Thomas Newman's Scent of a Woman for much of its running time.

The opening track is astonishingly similar to its counterpart in Newman's score. The melody's a bit different but the structure and orchestration are almost identical. I honestly don't know how film composers can live with themselves for doing this, but still, they do. Howard's just as bad as James Horner ever was.

The rest of the score alternates between Scent of a Woman and some very pleasant, low-key pieces dominated by the guitar of the ubiquitous George Doering. The highlight piece is "25 years later", a beautiful piece for solo violin and guitar. The album's all very pleasing on the ear and makes for a remarkably smooth and attractive listen, but there's very little substance behind it and the 29-minute running time is unquestionably as much as could be sustained (though I suspect its length is because the score itself is so short rather than for any artistic decision).

There's not a lot to say about this one. I find that apart from in his action scores, Howard has very little musical identity of his own and even the stuff that doesn't ape Thomas Newman could be by pretty much anyone. Nothing special about it, but then again nothing wrong with it either.

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