Pitchfork

Jon Brion has emerged as the most successful of a new crop of film composers who have strayed from the independent music flock. Brion boasts a pop aesthetic honed by his songwriting with The Grays and Jellyfish, as well as his production work with Aimee Mann and Fiona Apple, and his buoyant soundscapes-- often bubbling with enveloping orchestral strokes and theatrical wall-of-sound presentation-- have, most notably, contributed to the maudlin grandeur of film directors P.T. Anderson and Michel Gondry.

A soundtrack is unavoidably linked to the film it accompanies, and I Huckabees-- a sprawling amalgam of shambolic character studies and psychobabble centered on a neurotic environmentalist's relationship with his "existential detectives"-- is so frantic that most scenes don't lend themselves to further elaboration. This might explain why Brion's Huckabees score is more understated and unobtrusive than most of his work; his penchant for underscoring quiet intensity is at odds with the film's series of shouting matches. Brion unexpectedly falls back on his talents as a singer/songwriter, composing five new "vocal pop rock" songs that have little relation to the film itself, aside from the obligatory closing credits OST tie-in.

Brion's pop songs may have comprised an interesting EP, but they feel arbitrary and scattered alongside the film's score. "Revolving Door" and "Get What It's About" are indebted to Elliott Smith and Aimee Mann's wry, self-deprecating ballads. The clear highlight is "Knock Yourself", a brief but enjoyable jangle-pop excursion accented with Brion's trademark orchestral flourishes.

Brion admits that most of this material was amassed from pieces he composed years ago, pieces which seemed to "click" when added to corresponding scenes. However, much of the soundtrack's material is weaker than his later work, and several tracks feel like embryonic versions of future compositions. The film's main theme, "Monday", derives its power from the same template that forged Punch-Drunk Love's woozy, lilting waltz. The piece is the score's strongest and most memorable instrumental. It gracefully bookends the film and the album despite intermittent missteps on both fronts, but it still feels strangely anonymous in the context of Brion's recent career peaks.

For the most part, Brion manages to subdue his typically conspicuous arrangements to temper the film's frenzied momentum. Its bumbling detectives are paired with a breezy Mancini-esque theme that subtly emphasizes the Pink Panther slapstick of the detective subplot. Atmospheric pizzicato strings, liberally applied bell chimes, and angelic piano glissandos allow tracks like the ethereal "Cubes", molasses-thick "JB's Blues", and lounge-y "True to Yourself" to elevate the film's subjective hyperrealism without seeming overbearing.

Brion has expressed dissatisfaction with most contemporary film soundtracks, and though his own work is a veritable antidote to the calculated emotion-extraction mechanisms of so many Hollywood film scores, I Huckabees marks the first perceivable softening of Brion's characteristic audaciousness. Though he hasn't made any concessions to the trappings of a standard-issue Hollywood soundtrack-- and the one-two punch of Punch-Drunk Love and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind set a high mark to follow-- Brion's Huckabees compositions are too often diversionary and fall prey to stagnation, making this a frequently inspired but ultimately uneven retread.