Michael Kamen has his share of critics, but over the last few years he's proved himself to be one of the most versatile and consistently high-quality film composers around.  Ironically, arguably his two finest scores have come on films where initially I thought he was a very strange choice, given his lack of experience with similar subject-matter - but from out of left field he produced music for the delightful animated fantasy Iron Giant, one of the most intricately-detailed and beautifully-drawn pieces of film music in a very long time, and the elegiac Band of Brothers for Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks's noble miniseries.   Even less likely than those two projects, however, was Kevin Costner's third directorial outing, Open Range, an attempt to recapture the same audience that loved his previous western, Dances with Wolves.

Initially - as with Dances with Wolves - Basil Poledouris was announced as composer, but he was unceremoniously fired and Kamen - who'd written the score for Costner's most successful film as an actor, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves - was brought in as a replacement.  Kamen's music has always been very personal and, when required, expansive - qualities that would put him in good stead for a thoughtful western like this - but he has never written in the traditional Hollywood Coplandesque vein which has been how westerns have been scored, whether by Jerome Moross or Elmer Bernstein, Basil Poledouris or Bruce Broughton, since time immemorial.  

Kamen's approach is to simply do it his own way.  I couldn't imagine his somewhat idiosyncratic style fitting in the western movie idiom, but it works well.  The score opens with a typically expansive theme - half Robin Hood, half Band of Brothers - that shows once again that those people who criticise him for not coming up with big themes just don't actually listen to his scores.  Then, after the big theme, comes a moment of introspection with a new theme, this time for solo piano, in "Card Game".  Kamen's orchestration choices are sound throughout, as ever - his integration of guitar and reliance on gentle string and woodwind themes produces a warm and particularly pleasant sound.  There are, though, moments of darkness inherent in the story and hence the score, and these darker passages are when Kamen really lets loose with his unique brand of orchestration, with what sound like they may be piccolo trumpets producing a somewhat unnerving sound while darting in and around an oboe line.  Not the easiest parts of the score to listen to, but impressive.

Slightly disconcerting is that one of the themes (yes, there are several) sounds like the old tune "White Cliffs of Dover".  In fact, it sounds just like it.  A coincidence of course, but one that always seems to leap out while listening to the album.  In fact, that theme is developed into a song, sung by Julianna Raye, who is Kamen's cousin.  It's a lovely song that is surprisingly unanachronistic (unlike some of the others he's written in the past for historical films).

This is an impressive and passionate score from Kamen which marks a welcome return to the scoring scene for him (the last movie he did was X-Men, whose score was a bit ho-hum - though it sounded like genius compared with the wretched music in the sequel).  And he's got a few more movies on the horizon too - hopefully he can maintain this level of quality.

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