It may come as no surprise to learn that the soundtrack to a film that is said to throw the rule-book out of the window, is actually scored by a man renowned for doing much the same thing with records. Speaking of his own idiosyncratic take on famous songs during his stage shows, the mercurial Jon Brion relents: “it’s like spraying musical Raid on the classics, until each dying song flips on its back and wiggles its little musical legs in surrender.“
If this doesn’t give you some indication of the direction this soundtrack takes, I don’t know what could.
‘Punch-Drunk Love’ – the vehicle from which Adam Sandler looks likely to resurrect his ever so slight status amongst UK audiences – is the usual Sandler fare of guileless, dispirited thirty-something looking to transform his life with one mighty romantic lightning strike to his heart. And as usual, Sandler isn’t waiting too long before the delightful Lena (Emily Watson) stumbles into his life and erects that said conductor. But this is where all expectations finish. After director Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie-Nights/Magnolia) establishes the predictable romantic climate, he really goes and spoils it all by introducing the kind of dark, salubrious set pieces preferred by the likes of Lynch and Tarrentino; and although more stylistically consistent than say the directorial approach to the film, the soundtrack achieves much this same mildly twisted dual nature. Bit like ‘The Singing Detective’ meets ‘Sleepless In Seattle’.
Writing and recording with the likes of Lloyd Cole, Aimee Mann, Wallflowers, Elliot Smith, Eels, Jellyfish, and Mommyheads and Rufus Wainright as well as being a pivitotal member of underground ‘supergroup’ The Grays, Brion is certainly no stranger to the mutally exclusive or the extreme. A renowned experimentalist, Brion’s father was director of the Yale concert and marching bands, and his love of the ‘classic’ and the ‘vintage’ as much as the alternative has never been so attractively realised than on this soundtrack.
Brimming with sentimentality and oozing the punch-bowl liquor of a thousand and one vintage wedding receptions, ‘Punch-Drunk Love’ is a wonderful conflation of periods and stylistics – a veritable rich seam of vaguely familiar melodies and well acquainted hooks and signatures all wrapped in sparsely furnished interludes of madness (‘Hands and Feet’, ‘Alleyway’). It also strangely recalls the music-hall whimsicality of Badly Drawn Boy’s ‘About A Boy’ soundtrack, and gently waltzing Matildas like ‘Here We Go’ only add to this similarity.
‘Quoting’ everyone from Harry Nilsson (the Shelley Duval sung “He Really Needs Me“ from Nilsson’s 80’s ‘Popeye’ score), Carl Porter, Conway Twitty and Rogers and Hammerstein (the dreamily crooned, signature tune ‘Waikiki’) the album is a woozy, dreamlike realisation of a delicate fantasy; so much so in fact that the album should come in a pink bubble-cloud of reverie and dislocation.
With extraneous and peripheral elements that only add to the sense of daydream and displacement, Brion has created an instantly recognisable mental state. Whether it’s the distant, sometimes disembodied production, or whether it’s the lush traces of Cole Porter, this album really is like being in love.
Beck thinks Brion can do no wrong. On this occasion he really hasn’t.