Russ Pay – Double O Heaven Greatest Bond Themes

The soundtrack for From Russia With Love featured a track called “Gypsy Camp,” which as you might guess, is an acoustic guitar driven piece that accompanied Bond’s visit to a Turkish gypsy camp, where among other things, he had to endure such horrifying trials as drinking a lot and watching a semi-nude catfight between Martine Beswicke and Aliza Gur. Man, Aliza Gur…ummm, wait? What was I talking about? Oh, OK. Anyway, I can’t say for sure that “Gypsy Camp” inspired Russ Pay to record this strange but entirely enjoyable album full of swanky guitar covers of Bond themes, but it was a way for me to mention Aliza Gur, so I went with it.

Double O Heaven features ten tracks — nine familiar Bond themes plus one additional song called “Sean’s Theme” — consisting of Pay’s guitar and, from time time, lush background accompaniment. There’s a lot more work put into these arrangements than you would get in an album you could dismiss as a novelty. I particularly like his versions of “We Have All the Time in the World” (especially since that song gets so little attention), “Goldfinger”, and “You Only Live Twice.” But then, “You Only Live Twice” (not to mention “Nobody Does It Better”) is pretty much custom made for this type of treatment. You can even throw it on for a romantic dinner, if regular Bond soundtracks seem too nerdy and/or bombastic to facilitate a swank, candlelit evening filled with champagne and ending no doubt with a close up of a woman’s abandoned high heel shoe as the two of you fade out of focus while lying down on a fuzzy carpet.