The Bombay Royale

Bollywood is a catchall for the prolific, gloriously uneven commercial cinema of India, where the imaginative rear-ends the hackneyed in explosive bursts of song and dance. Some say Bollywood's golden age straddled the 1960s and '70s and the band called the Bombay Royale is busy recreating Bollywood music form the period, unearthing old songs and writing new ones in that style. Their CD, <em>You Me Bullets Love</em>, is programmed like the soundtrack for a lost Indian movie. With a colorful disregard for genre that never sounds artificial or forced, the Bombay Royale conjure Ennio Morricone and Syd Barrett within the same track, combining sitar and tabla with thrumming electric bass, Latin horns and psychedelic organ. The music has fire and drama and more often than not, it rocks.