For years, Jon Brion has been promising us another solo album. Last year’s soundtrack to I (Heart) Huckabees had some great tunes, but it may as well have been an EP; that’s like delaying Thanksgiving dinner and putting out another bowl of sliced bread on the table. Thankfully, we have Dean Drouillard and Dream at Harmony Motel: quirky, neurotic, immaculately produced pop music. The obvious Brion similarity shows up as soon as the singing begins. Drouillard has his own phrasing and vocal inflections, but the timbre of their voices is near-identical. Harmony Motel tends to avoid Brion’s vocal multi-tracking, though, leaving the singer to stand on his own. Though many of the songs, particularly the opening “Today,” are reminiscent of Brion’s studio bombast, Drouillard often works with cleaner, simpler arrangements to great affect. “Dum Do Da,” for instance, begins with a guitar and a three-note melody before adding layer upon layer of pop sweetness to the Dream At Harmony Motel cake. Much of the album evokes the lonely atmosphere of a smoky bar, particularly the staccato keyboards of “Never.” The appearance of a flugelhorn and female backing vocalists takes the song into suave Bacharach territory before the bridge melody stumbles outside looking for the Beach Boys. Drouillard has no trouble admitting his influences, finishing the album with a pleasant, if not particularly ambitious cover of the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows.” He’s at his best on “4 a.m.,” which continues with the late-night feel, finding the narrator searching for words when an old flame calls far too early for comfort. It’s a stripped down track that reveals his gifts as a composer and a lyricist without drawing any immediate comparisons; more of these, please. The album is not without weak points, however. The carnival waltz “Harmony Motel” and “Blue… Umbrella” are unnecessary instrumentals. “Blue… Umbrella” comes off as a Jeff Buckley outtake sorely in need of some lyrics. The track proceeds aimlessly for seven minutes, alternating between two sections that eventually gain volume but never really climax. “Valentine” pairs him with Jill Barber, who recalls Emmylou Harris but fails to transcend the song’s awkward country aspirations. Drouillard never juggles his influences quite as commandingly as the virtuosic Brion, but for an independent musician selling his record on CDBaby, even approaching the same ballpark is an undeniable achievement.

Windsor's Dean Drouillard is not a prolific singer-songwriter. Dream at The Harmony Motel is just his third album in four years. But he's evidently a perfectionist because this CD casts a charm from the moment you put it on. Sung with unhurried sincerity in the style of a Ben Folds or an Elliott Smith, Drouillard probes mostly matters of the heart in melodies with an ache of familiarity. The album, produced by Drouillard himself, includes several standout songs, including Valentine, 4 A.M., Today, and L.A. With his usual backup of drummer Adam Warner and bassist Wes Neal, Drouillard enlists several fellow players from the Toronto-area, where he now resides and is a mainstay at the city's artsy hangout, the Cameron House. The Harmony Motel, by the way, is an actual place in the California desert -- U2 slept there while shooting photos and videos for The Joshua Tree, and the film Crazy Beautiful was made nearby.

Dream At Harmony Motel is the aural equivalent of a cup of tea on a rainy day, fuzzy slippers on a cold kitchen floor or a Band-Aid and a kiss for a skinned knee. Drouillard's softly intoned folk-pop achieves the enviable task of being easy on the ears without being boring. With varied instrumentation and a roster of guests including Justin Rutledge on banjo, Jill Barber and Julie McDonald (A Northern Chorus) on backing vocals, Drouillard crafts something beautiful that pays gentle homage to influences such as Brian Wilson and Jellyfish. Guaranteed comfort and joy. Shannon Whibbs

A first listen will challenge one’s ears with continually shifting styles and the addition or subtraction of instruments, which are many and varied. The album, originally intended to take two months to complete, ended up requiring more than six months to finish and the end result is a collection of songs so carefully arranged and mixed they sound like a perfected liquid dream, sometimes spinning, sometimes serene. The instrumental third (and title) track sounds like a circus run amok, clowns sobbing and spinning in circles around a demented carousel. Not all the tracks are this edgy and full, though it juxtaposes nicely with the slower, acoustic guitar based tracks. Dean estimates he put over one thousand hours of effort into the final product and it shows; each listen of the album reveals delicately placed and intricate sonic delights that command careful attention and repeated spins. Lyrically this album follows the dreamy melodies with simple, if beautiful and occasionally melancholic, stories of love and love lost. At times there are clichés we’ve all heard before about relationships but it can be forgiven as they manage to sound as if they belong to the melody, unforced. Listening to Dean carefully place words inside the intricate arrangements, one gets the feeling these lyrics would easily be at home with the pop brilliance of the early to mid-1960’s with fuller, more experimental sounds of the following years. The album’s final track is a soft and spacey cover of the Beach Boy’s God Only Knows, a fitting inclusion with its straightforward but gentle words.