Oct 222008
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From the album Meaningless. Released in 2001 on his own label.
Jon Brion- Bass, Guitar, Vocals
Rich Costey- Engineer
Jim Keltner- Drums
Greg Leisz- Pedal Steel
Benmont Tench- Piano
The video is a live, sort of, version of I Believe She’s Lying from the album. Here are a couple of more tracks.
Congrats to and a patented RTH No-Prize for townsman saturnismine.
I believe this song is all Brion, as is most of the album. Keltner, Leisz and my boy Tench are on another track.
“Meaningless” is my least favorite song on the album, because it rocks out so unconvincingly. (Paradoxically, the album overall suffers a bit from too many ballads. Confusing, I know.) But I do think there’s a slightly unpredictable hitch in the song’s construction, so it doesn’t entirely warrant dismissal as boilerplate power-pop.
“Ruin My Day” is a favorite of mine, but I can imagine it driving some RTH-ers batty!
I’ve actually seen Jon at the Largo — it was pretty dang impressive. Count me as a fan — though I really don’t care for the Huckabees stuff. And his old-school “orchestral” soundtrack work is pretty dull.
I don’t have a song by song musician credit but I did note the Mann co-wrote I Believe She’s Lying.
The Punch-Drunk Love and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind soundtracks were the best representatives of Brion’s scoring skills, I think. Good oddball stuff, often quite moving. Huckabees was crap (as was the film).
holy shit. i was RIGHT?
be afraid…VERY afraid….
Sometimes the titles of certain songs are more telling in the wrong way than they ought to be.
I actually prefer his contributions to Ro Sham Bo over most of Meaningless, esp “Same Thing”. I like Meaningless, but really, really wanted to like it more. Atlantic rejected the album, and while trying to sort out independent release, some cyber-squatter stole jonbrion.com, so this album kind of came and went, didn’t it? Like he just moved on.
Haven’t seen him live, would love to. I have a few recordings of his shows and some are very cool, some are godawful (mostly when he’s doing the crowd-pleasing sing-along numbahs).