Time for a game of six degrees of Paul Thomas Anderson. The Boogie Nights director is a close friend of ex-'Til Tuesday singer Aimee Mann, who's married to Sean Penn's singer-songwriter brother, Michael Penn, who scored and cameoed in Boogie Nights. For years, Mann has collaborated with Jon Brion, the white-hot producer-multi-instrumentalist most famous for working with Anderson's girlfriend, Fiona Apple. Mann and Brion (with a little help from Penn) provide the new music that is behind Anderson's Magnolia.

Like Boogie Nights, the young filmmaker's latest is operatic in both structure and scope, inseparable from Mann's thwarted-love songs, which Anderson admits shaped his script. Even without the cinematic connection, Mann's nine-song contribution comprises her most creative, catchy work, finally transcending the "Voices Carry" singer's Beatles/Elvis Costello influences. From her spooky cover of Three Dog Night's Harry Nilsson-penned "One" to the droll, quietly anguished first single, "Save Me" (". . . from the ranks/Of the freaks/Who suspect/They could never love anyone"), these are shrewdly observed, ornately rendered pop miniatures that triumph within and beyond Anderson's acutely emotional epic. Supplemented by two absurdly apt Supertramp oldies ("Goodbye Stranger," "Logical Song"), a Nineties Top Forty gem (Gabrielle's "Dreams") and a fragment of Brion's grand Magnolia score, Mann's breakthrough is another rarity: the perfect pop soundtrack.

Burdened by the same musical roots that bless Mann, her hubby's latest is, by contrast, more of the same overly derivative classicism that lent Penn's debut 1989 hit, March, instant accessibility and rendered his subsequent work blandly redundant. Although MP4 at times echoes the elegance of the Mann/Brion collaborations ("Beautiful"), it never achieves their ardent wit, even when piling on the guitars and topical themes (the millennium-targeted "Lucky One"). Penn lacks Mann's distinctive deadpan and goose-bump-inducing gloom. When his album is over, it's over. Mann's can haunt you for years. (RS 834)

BARRY WALTERS

Share

• Email
• Stumble
• AIM
• Del.icio.us
• DiggThis
• Fark It!

(Posted: Feb 17, 2000)