'Tuned In' review The Bombay Royale deliver Bollywood blast

"You Me Bullets Love" by The Bombay Royale

“You Me Bullets Love,” The Bombay Royale (HopeStreet)

As the term indicates, Bollywood movies are the Hindi-ization of Western cinema. Likewise, the soundtracks for Bollywood action/romance films from the 1960s and 1970s were a hybrid of popular Western genres from the era.

Melbourne, Australia, band The Bombay Royale revives, reinterprets and reinvents the spirited sound on “You Me Bullets Love.” The campy collection includes remakes of old Bollywood songs and original material written by Bombay Royale founder/saxophonist Andy Williamson (“The Skipper”), vocalist Shourov Bhattacharya (“The Tiger”) and others.

The result is a way-over-the-top mashup of surf-guitar rock, deep-grooving funk, soaring-synth disco and enough horns and strings to sound like a ska/mariachi combo. Tabla and sitar work into the mix, too, bringing the Indian subcontinent into the mix.

Meanwhile, Bhattacharya is a crooner, his hammy/manly vocals starkly contrasted by the cartoony/girlie voice of Parvyn Kaur Singh (“The Mysterious Lady”), whose nasal trill sails through the stratosphere.

“You Me Bullets Love” is more than a shticky situation: The musicians and singers are a talented lot, hitting exclamation-point notes in the brassy title track, frantically frolicking alongside the heavy drums and clapping rhythm of “Jaan Pehechan Ho,” spacing out in the retro-funk disco of “Sote Sote Adhi Raat” and churning in the boiling heat of “The Perfect Plan.”

The release is almost overwhelming, and it’s sure to freak out your neighbors — until it collapses in the epic closer “Phone Baje Na.” If this were a real soundtrack, that finale wouldn’t serve as a rousing last-dance number; instead, it would be the anti-climactic crowd-controlling exit song that would play during the credit crawl.

Rating (five possible): 3-1/2

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