Review by LarryG
3 stars out of 4
While there's little dispute about the high quality of her songs,
Aimee Mann has been deemed uncommercial, unable to get her recent work
released by a major label. Perhaps the best thing about the movie
Magnolia is that it led to the first release of a collection of Aimee
Mann songs in more than four years. Paul Thomas Anderson partly based
the film Magnolia, which he wrote and directed, on Aimee Mann songs.
The movie is filled with big themes: forgiveness, overcoming past
traumas and whether love can conquer all. Anderson creates some
poignant moments but takes a long time to get there and is pretty
heavy handed. On the Magnolia soundtrack, Mann finds as much emotional
insight and gets there a lot more subtlely. Mann's adult songs about
romantic dysfunction are so smart and her inner confusion is so
thought provoking that you can see why Anderson would want to use them
as a starting point for a movie.
On Momentum, Mann sings that, like many of the characters in
Magnolia, she's gotten used to her misery and almost finds comfort in
it. She sings, "even when it's approaching torture, I've got my
routine." Anderson's characters could easily be speaking Mann's words,
"I can't admit that maybe the past was bad/so for the sake of
momentum, I'm condemning the future to death so it can match the
past." Mann's Magnolia songs are generally mellow and don't grab you
like the carefully constructed Beatlesque and Byrdsy pop rock songs of
Mann's previous best work, her solo debut Whatever. Still, while the
low key music matches the usually sad lyrics, the songs are
interesting and often misleadingly upbeat. Jon Brion, who produced
Mann's solo records after she left Til Tuesday, gives Momentum his
typical everything but the kitchen sink production. An old fashioned
sax and clunky percussion give the song a festive tone that mocks the
confused words. With an oboe and piccolo among the instruments, Brion
creates an elegant, dreamy mood on Build That Wall. Anderson made
dialogue of the first line of Mann's Deathly: "now that I've met you,
would you object to never seeing each other again." Mann sings of
abject fear of the pain that can follow kindness. Deathly has a
mournful tone with restrained but sweeping guitar from Michael
Lockwood and keyboards from Patrick Warren, the bandmate of Mann's
husband Michael Penn. Driving Sideways is about a couple that can't
work together or get where they want to get. The sad music is produced
by Penn's producer Brendan O'Brien who also plays a slide guitar solo,
which is strangely reminiscent of Old Man River. You Do is a quiet
song with a nice vocal from Mann, trying unsuccessfully to convince a
friend that her man will never properly appreciate her. In the movie,
Anderson's love of Mann's music goes too far with his use of Wise Up.
He forces all the major characters, including Jason Robards who plays
a man on his death bed, to sing her song which says their pain will
not naturally stop and leaves unclear whether death or taking control
of your life is the answer. On the soundtrack, Mann makes better use
of the song with a very spare arrangement that's basically just
Benmont Tench's simple piano. Mann's songs, and the movie, finish on a
slightly optimistic note with Save Me. Mann still hopes for a romantic
savior and sees giving up on love as a sadder alternative to pain. The
music is hushed and moving, building slightly, mirroring the slight
increase in the lyrics' optimism.
Mann's songs are coherent, mature, and sad. They easily stand up
on their own without reference to the movie. Mann doesn't have a bad
song on Magnolia. Including a good, thoughtful remake of Three Dog
Night's One and an instrumental there are nine Mann songs. The rest of
the soundtrack is filler including two Supertramp hits which are
fairly prominently in the movie. If Magnolia doesn't satisfy your
hunger for new Aimee Mann music, you can buy Bachelor #2, which
includes three songs featured on Magnolia and ten other new songs,
from aimeemanndirect.com.
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