FEDERALE ISN’T SHY about their influences—it’s pretty obvious that the Portland band longs to make snow angels in the red dirt of legendary spaghetti western director Sergio Leone’s dusty realms.
The group’s latest, All the Colours of the Dark, is 11 expansive, operatic desert symphonies that attempt to shadow the movements of composer Ennio Morricone in his scoring of Leone classics. Even the album’s title acts as tribute to the genre, with its European spelling of “Colours.” Federale’s last release was 2012’s The Blood Flowed Like Wine, and their music was featured in Ana Lily Amirpour’s Iranian feminist vampire western A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night in 2014.
While it’s unreasonable to expect too much originality from a band that’s so deeply rooted in the soil of an icon like Morricone, All the Colours of the Dark finds Federale vastly refined and refreshingly creative. Their instrumentals come the closest yet to capturing the living, breathing feeling of the Italian composer’s work. Standout track “Almería” punctuates swelling wildness with the signature thuds and grunts of Morricone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly theme, while the elastic, harmonized whistling on “Run, Man, Run” rivals that of his themes in other Leone films. On All the Colours of the Dark, Federale repurposes their favorite elements of the great composer’s scores, sometimes to stunning effect.