Composer
Joe LoDuca acknowledges that his primary inspiration in composing music for the television series Leverage came from other series in the adventure/caper category dating back to the 1960s, such as Mission: Impossible. "It is the best heard music of
Quincy Jones and
Lalo Schifrin," he admits in the liner notes to this soundtrack album, "with all its funky beats and jazz inflections." Other influences include the soul-jazz of ‘60s stars like
Cannonball Adderley and
Ramsey Lewis. So, the beats are syncopated and prominent, and the organ fills match up against horn punctuations in a style that is dated, but still striking. Of course, scoring a series with a variety of sorts of episodes has required
LoDuca to come up with some other sorts of sounds, too. "Can't Go Home Again," for example, is an Irish rock song that would be at home on a
Pogues record. "Mumbai International," as its title implies, is a pastiche of Indian music. "Tank Fight" crosses strings with heavy metal and thundering drums that could have been played by
Phil Collins. "Father Daughter Dance" is French-styled, leading into a series of cues that have a folk feel, culminating in "All My Decembers," which sounds like it escaped from the score for Ken Burns' Civil War series. And apparently there are even more side streets to
LoDuca's musical work on the show. Several of the disc's annotators make special mention of an episode calling for theater music, including, as
LoDuca himself puts it, "a Broadway showstopper about bread mold." Sadly, it is not included here. ~ William Ruhlmann