And Brion Blooms Too

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

Jon Brion's album Meaningless could have been one of 1999's best solo debuts--but you may never get to hear it. Lava/Atlantic, Brion's label, decided the CD wasn't sufficiently marketable and never released it. "I was treated as if I had handed in my 'art record,' as if I had intentionally done some horribly self-destructive thing," says Brion. "I thought I handed in something that was reasonably commercial."

This month the Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter gets his chance to be heard. Brion, 35, composed the introspective instrumental score to Paul Thomas Anderson's film Magnolia (Anderson is a longtime friend of Brion's) and produced five songs on the sound track (including Aimee Mann's intimate cover of the Harry Nilsson standard One). Brion also produced Fiona Apple's terrific new CD.

Listening to a Brion-produced song is like entering a tastefully decorated drawing room. Brion--who plays piano, drums and guitar--often fills his music with warm instrumentation but never overwhelms a song's emotional content. In his own compositions, his lyrics are playfully pensive. "I wish I could say that we'd fallen from grace," he sings on Dead to the World, a song from his solo CD. "But we never made it to that place." Says Brion: "The willingness to fall on your face pays for the moments that are a little more transcendent." He's now shopping his shelved solo CD to other labels, but with the Magnolia sound track, Brion has already achieved a good measure of grace.

--By Christopher John Farley