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Review of Punch-Drunk Love (Jon Brion)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... only if you have seen the film and understand the reasons behind the convoluted sound effects, inconsistent recording quality, and blatant song imitations.

Avoid it... if you value your money, your sanity, and your belief in the integrity of film music.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Punch-Drunk Love: (Jon Brion) In an attempt to take his career down a road to serious audience consideration of a dramatic nature, Adam Sandler stars in this film by director Paul Thomas Anderson, who was the (questionable) visionary behind Boogie Nights and Magnolia. The plot of Punch-Drunk Love involves an inept salesman who gets caught up in a phone sex extortion scheme while attempting to woo the love of his life, and even if that premise alone doesn't seem strange enough, we'll just leave it there. While the arthouse-style film was generally regarded as a colorful and visually spectacular effort, Anderson's writing for the picture left much to be desired, and it managed to repulse many critics in the process of also confusing audiences. Punch-Drunk Love exists in a musical limbo area, not demanding a score of any one particular type of Hollywood norm, and what Anderson ended up requesting was an approach similar to that of Magnolia, for which Aimee Mann had written cultishly popular song material. In its general character, Punch-Drunk Love plays in the construct of an old musical formula, but the production doesn't allow the music to take that line directly. Composer Jon Brion, as advertised, evokes percussive elements from Lou Harrison, Jon Cage, Spike Jones, and Rosie the Riveter. If this sounds like unfamiliar ground for most film score collectors, then prepare for the equation to get even stranger. The film's dreamy, almost drug-induced atmosphere translates without any deviation into the personality of the score, with Brion merging a seemingly haphazard mismatch of several musical genres into one nearly psychotic package. A vintage Hawaiian style is revived in Punch-Drunk Love, but like the film, you can't determine if that 1960's/early 1970's style of lazy pop-kitsch is being mocked or affectionately resurrected in a positive light. At times you'll be erroneously convinced that Brion was attempting to create an atmosphere of parody. So convoluted is this score's overarching flow (despite the obvious intent to adapt well known songs into a song and score mix) that you sometimes can't figuring out what Brion was trying to do at all. Depending on your expectations, that might be a good thing, but if you require cohesion at any level in your soundtracks, and you have no tolerance for extreme synthetic manipulation of sound effects in your music, then you may as well quit reading here.

The parts of Punch-Drunk Love that follow a song-like musical format make sense, and the four or five songs in the film and on album do set a very distinct, whimsical atmosphere for the film. But Brion's original song, "Here We Go," as well as his underscore, is extremely confusing and, at times, unbearable to attempt to comprehend in terms of musical structure. If scores are graded on how much sense they make, then Punch-Drunk Love flunks the task outright. But given that love often doesn't make sense either, perhaps the composer's point is well made. The aforementioned original song is a shameless Beatles imitation, almost to such a level that it becomes fascinating, but it is the score that will raise eyebrows. To follow the convoluted tale, Brion writes a piece of music that borrows from nearly every genre of film music. A few cues stay true to that vintage Hawaiian style. Others raise the Mediterranean spirit of love with a small Italian ensemble, while even other expressions of love use a traditional orchestra of a small size to attempt a romance theme straight from the Golden Age of Hollywood. A stock horror cue is followed a few minutes later by an attempt to capture Bernard Herrmann's choppy strings at a moment of heated emotions. But the truly bizarre nature of Punch-Drunk Love is put on display in three of its first four cues, when orchestral and electronic elements are mutilated both badly and on purpose. Sound effects and musical samples are mixed at unnatural rates, including the sounds of waves and seagulls distorted to ridiculous speeds in "Tabla," with the quality of the sounds sometimes degenerating into random voices and the banging of garbage can lids. Making the situation worse is the intentional reduction of sound quality to varying levels in each cue (in an attempt, possibly, to make the score consistent with the era of the songs). Thus, you end up with mutilations of sound effects and orchestral tuning sounds that make no attempt to be consistent from cue to cue. When considering that Thomas Pasatieri orchestrated this effort, one can only conclude that this is the exact kind of experimental muck that Thomas Newman would produce if severely doped up and confined to his studio for a month straight. Despite Brion's creative intentions, the result is entirely unlistenable, and the volume isn't even great enough to make Punch-Drunk Love useful as a tool with which to irritate your neighbors. All we needed was a Middle Eastern female vocal to complete what is possibly the most irritatingly incoherent listening experience from the film score community in the entire decade.  *

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 44:12

• 1. Overture (2:09) • 2. Tabla (2:59) • 3. Punch-Drunk Melody (1:43) • 4. Hands & Feet (3:42) • 5. Le Petit Chateau (1:36) • 6. Alleyway (0:55) • 7. Punchy Tack Piano (1:25) • 8. He Needs Me - performed by Shelley Duvall (3:31) • 9. Waikki - performed by Ladies K (3:56) • 10. Moana Chimes - score adaptation (3:02) • 11. Hospital (1:21) • 12. Danny (Lonely Blue Boy) - performed by Conway Twitty (2:13) • 13. Healthy Choice (2:10) • 14. Third Floor Hallway (3:23) • 15. Blossoms & Blood (2:05) • 16. Here We Go - performed by Jon Brion (4:47) • 17. He Really Needs Me (3:08)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The insert includes no extra information about the score or film. The album comes in a folding cardboard slipcase (instead of a jewel case) and the CD is very difficult to remove from the package.

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