Magnolia

Every Friday night, Jon Brion performs a reportedly rather popular cabaret act at a nightclub in L.A. When he's not composing music for Paul Thomas Anderson films, that is. So far, Brion has written the music for three of Anderson's films - Sydney, Punch-Drunk Love and Paul Thomas Anderson's best film, Magnolia. Which also happens to be Jon Brion's best score to date.

Although the score has some serious temp track problems - parts of the score sound really close to Hans Zimmer's music for The Thin Red Line, while other cues are quite similar in sound to "Schindler's Workforce" from John William's Schindler's List - this is a charming and very beautiful score. It's fully orchestral, performed by a decent sized orchestra.

Aimee Mann's songs is an important part of the film, and this is often the only music people remember after having seen the film, despite the fact that Brion's score is at least equally important and often very prominent in the film, with long, beautiful cues. It's at times a very classical score, with traces of Philip Glass and John Adams. This is especially true in the two long - ten minutes! - cues, which revolves around ostinatos and very rythmic staccato figures. These two cues are the highlights of the album.

The rest of the score is dominated by long, drawn out cues, performed by soft, muted strings. All very nice, although it sometimes seems like the score takes itself too seriously for its own good. A little pretentious perhaps.