Despite a surprisingly wide-ranging array of credits in both television and feature films, Christophe Beck is still best-remembered for his stint as composer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer - but 2003 looks like it could be a breakout year for him.  He's scored, somewhat amazingly, no fewer than nine movies, including the critical hit Confidence, popular hit American Wedding and also Under the Tuscan Sun, starring Diane Lane; and this all follows The Tuxedo, which may have been a rather silly film but nonetheless was (I think) the first Beck score to be released on CD.  And now this is the second.

It's a very light and airy score, cleverly evoking sunny Mediterranean climes while retaining something of a modern air.  If you like, it's perhaps what Il Postino would have sounded like if Thomas Newman had scored it.  While the director Audrey Wells, in her liner notes, says that the score is based around three ideas - a clean and modern style, an homage to Nino Rota and a comic/romantic expression of Italian life, I feel that in truth Beck has written in a pretty consistent style throughout and indeed has managed to fuse those three aspects (especially the first and last) into a very satisfying, consistent-sounding score.  It's always a little worrying to see a 48 minute album being made up of thirty different tracks - many of them running under a minute - but to his credit, Beck's music all flows together very well and completely avoids feeling too bitty.

I'm never entirely convinced when Hollywood composers tackle these inherently European movies, feeling that they're often best left to the likes of Morricone, Yared, Bacalov or whoever, but Beck manages to eschew the overblown approach that would have ruined everything and he keeps everything pleasantly low-key.  I don't think it will win any awards or set too many pulses racing, but in terms of an "easy listening" (not meant in a derogatory way), highly-pleasant album it's certainly a winner.  Hopefully Beck will now get the kind of project that will really show us what we can do; in the mean time, this album - available on Hollywood Records - will do quite nicely.

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