I have always liked how expressively and beautifully Jon Brion can score a film, I felt in love with his soundtrack for Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘Magnolia’, and any movie scored by Brion has always triggered my interest from ‘Punch-Drunk Love’, to ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’, and ‘I Love Huckabees’ to name a few.
Brion is a multi-instrumentalist, but also an all-mighty producer, with tons of artists on his resume – his latest effort being Best Coast’s ‘The Only Place’, but he has also produced Aimee Mann and Kayne West – and no less than two infamous and never released versions of albums of two of my favorite artists, Elliott Smith (From a Basement on the Hill recorded in 2001 before he died) and Fiona Apple (Extraordinary Machine recorded in 2002-3).
This month, we will be able to hear his score for the upcoming 3D stop-motion animated film ‘ParaNorman’, produced by Laika, which tells the story of a little boy named Norman Babcock, who has the ability to speak with the dead, and who will have to use his paranormal gift to save his New England little town from ghosts, witches and zombies. I haven’t seen the movie yet, which will be released on August 17, but listening to Brion’s soundtrack manages to give a very good impression of the atmosphere of the film. With the course of 16 tracks, all transcribing a very cinematic imagery, we go through a roller-coaster of emotions, with heavy strings, scary synth, or desolated keys.
If I am not very precisely aware of the storyline, there’s a little bit of everything, with the synth-futurist first track ‘Zombie Attack In The Eighties’ to the melancholic-soothing-piano-driven ‘Norman At The Piano’, transforming itself into a scary-noir ambiance then a chase-pursuit in just 1 minute. The same very Brion-esque theme runs through the more poppy ‘Normans Walk’, or even ‘Norman Tries To Keep It Cool-Grandma's Got Your Back’, whereas ‘Alvin Attacks’ (a recurrent theme in ‘Alvin Again-Scary Bedroom’) starts like a Fiona Apple’s song. But it is just the beginning of a long and mute story told with a big orchestration, translating suspense, chases, pursuits, attacks, intense drama, sadness, and approaching dangers. There seems to be more sadness toward the end with the emotional ‘Resolution’, and ‘Oh And One More Thing’, which also carries some grandiosity and an electronic bubbling beat.
This is the sort of soundtrack you can listen to without images, as they will come to you immediately. The tempo and the atmosphere change several times during one unique track, which can jump from a very quiet moment to a large-scale string-assault, and the various melodic themes resurrect each other from one track to another, building a cohesive and symphonic body of work.
But after ten or eleven songs of this, it becomes quite difficult to realize where we are, ‘Zombies Attack’, ‘People Attack’ (which lasts around 16 minutes!),… I tend to think I have already been there, with more strings, less keys, a faster, a slower tempo…. It is an intense maze, a little overwhelming at times! But at the end, it doesn’t really matter as the tracks are not meant to be heard isolated from the rest, as they are inseparable of the whole movie soundtrack.
As I said, I haven’t seen the movie, Laika, the creators, have also produced the creepy ‘Coraline’ in 2009 (written by Amanda Palmer's husband!), but I don’t know if ‘ParaNorman’ will be as weird and scary, since it is advertised as an adventure movie. However, anxious or even macabre strings are all over Brion’s score, which is definitively giving a tone of fear and terror; if it is an adventure, it is a really scary and dangerous one.
ParaNorman Soundtrack Tracklist:
01. Zombie Attack in the Eighties
02. Norman at the Piano/Main Title
03. Norman’s Walk
04. Alvin Attacks
05. Enter Neil/Mr P/Ghost Walk/Ghost Dog
06. Goodbye Mr P/Historic Drama/Grounded/Heavy Visitation
07. Alvin Again/Scary Bedroom
08. Norman Tries to Keep It Cool/ Grandma’s Got Your Back
09. Moth Rock
10. The Dead Shall Be Raised
11. Zombies Attack
12. People Attack
13. Are We There Yet?
14. Aggie Fights
15. Resolution
16. Oh, and One More Thing
Here is the trailer, although very little of Brion’s magnificent score can be heard: