We ♥ Jon Brion
Local musician makes good with dark pop sensibilities and superb soundtrack music
by Antero Garcia
“There are some people I'm interested in who are making films that I would be happy to work with, and in this case a couple of them called. Simple as that,” producer, musician and film composer Jon Brion explains about crossing paths with such cutting edge, current directors as Paul Thomas Anderson, Michelle Gondry and David O. Russell.
For a musician of Brion's caliber — someone who every Friday for more than five years has been playing at West Hollywood's Largo, mixing a penchant for pop with an urge to delve into the experimental — it really is as simple as that.
In addition to having a critically acclaimed solo disc and a smattering of albums he produced, Jon Brion is also an acclaimed film composer. Having scored the last few film scores for Paul Thomas Anderson, including Magnolia and Punch Drunk Love, Brion lately branched out, working with Michelle Gondry on the score for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and David O. Russell on the recently released I ♥ Huckabees. In each instance Brion finds a musical theme that closely connects with the film's emotional content.
“Hopefully there's some core notion you get early on that you hone down an area that the score inhabits, be it a stylistic thing or a presentational thing — a very clear theme that has the emotional DNA of the movie, that there's something connected on that level. If you have that, you can spit out gazillions of variations on that to your heart's content.”
Playing with an almost commercial sounding theme, the I ♥ Huckabees music quaintly captures the longing and quirky nature of Russell's “existential comedy.” Further, Brion sings a two-minute song, “Knock Yourself Out” on the soundtrack that demonstrates the philosophical nature of the film's characters. Brion sings in his signature voice about searching for “something unattainable that you can't live without.”
“I was so proud of myself for keeping it down to one and a half verses,” Brion says of his brief song. “I'm just happy that the words say their piece in the amount of time — there's not an extra bride or anything, it's just like, ‘OK, here is the point.’”
For much of his life, Brion has been committed to honing a perfect pop song. He looks for a great melody and pairs it with carefully metered and rhyming lines. After grafting these two pieces together, Brion's life work is ultimately discarded as simply dispensable pop — though it's lyrical content is of the same depth as most “serious” art.
“I think it's just a very funny, creative format,” Brion says with a chuckle. “I know — especially if its melodic, there are people who are dismissive of it. If it's not obviously dark then people think it's not heavy, which I think is a real misnomer.”
As for Brion's music, his sole solo album, Meaningless finds Beatles-esque melodies paired with dismal lyrics of depression and personal breakups. At first, the juxtaposition of upbeat melodies with dejected lyrics is disconcerting. Of course, this too is all part of Brion's carefully constructed pop plan.
“To me it's nice to have a balance of dark and light because I don't think either thing explains the way things are,” Brion explains about melding happy melodies with dark lyrics. “I don't think either thing is completely honest to the complexity of life”
Though Brion has produced and played instruments on countless records including those of Macy Gray, Badly Drawn Boy and — yes — that's also him playing the lead guitar line on the Wallflowers' hit “One Headlight,” he explains that he feels he is most collaborative while working on film scores.
“The film scoring has just my name on it but I've begun to wonder if I should start to put the director's name on it” Brion says modestly.
Unlike most film composers that work largely in a secluded environment, Brion insists on having a close working relationship with each film's director.
“I actually tend to work playing to the film like it's a silent film. The director and I sit and watch the movie and I play music with them there and we discuss it.”
The effort is time consuming and Brion admits to getting frustrated occasionally during the scoring process. However, ultimately, it's clear that the results are more dynamic than most flat film scores today. Further, Brion notices that all three of the directors he has worked with share similar personality traits.
“They all have pretty crazy metabolisms,” Brion explains. “They can all operate at that humming bird metabolism. Even if they all have a severe drop off, they've all got that. They are always multi-tasking all the time.”
And though Brion enjoys the fast-moving nature of each director, he admits it's a trait he also sees in himself. With a huge repetoire of songs that have never been released to the public, Brion's personal catalog of songs covers nearly every topic, something that contiues to show up on each of his film scores. For Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, for example, Brion discusses love in terms of memory in an aged original song, “Strings the Tie to You.” Of course Huckabees benefits from Brion's preexisting songs as well.
“The soundtrack is songs of mine that have been lying around that I've never released. They are instrumental versions of these preexisting songs. A lot of the songs that the score is based on are as much as 15 years old. It's stuff that's just a part of the library of crap in my head.”
Besides the film scores recently released, Brion is also awaiting the official release of the third Fiona Apple album, the second that he has produced. However, the album's release has been postponed month after month as the label claims it fails to yield a commercial single. However, the latest word is that it'll be put out early next year — though Brion isn't holding his breath.
“Eventually all that stuff is going to leak out on the Internet and I feel bad for [Apple] and that's something I don't want,” Brion says. “Also you have to remember that a few years ago, she was all but ready to quit the business, and if they keep making decisions like this, who would blame her?”
In addition to working on a solo album and unwinding after the current Huckabees frenzy, Brion is currently collaborating in an improvised trio with musician Matt Chamberlain and former Soul Coughing member Sebastian Steinberg.
“We've started a weird improvisational band. It's the opposite of most recording projects I've been involved in. It's just absolutely ‘that's what we played. . . that must be the record!’” Brion says with a laugh. Continuing to disregard the traditional path for musicians in any environment, Brion thrusts the musical vocabulary forward.
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