Aimee Mann: Mental Illness

AIMEE MANN: MENTAL ILLNESS (2017)

1) Goose Snow Cone; 2) Stuck In The Past; 3) You Never Loved Me; 4) Rollercoasters; 5) Lies Of Summer; 6) Patient Zero; 7) Good For Me; 8) Knock It Off; 9) Philly Sinks; 10) Simple Fix; 11) Poor Judge.

Bad omen #1: Aimee Mann's new album is going to be called Mental Illness. Given that Aimee Mann had pretty much been singing about various kinds of mental illness since at least her first solo album, and maybe even before that, it is not a good sign when, more than twenty years into her solo career on the whole, she puts out a record called Mental Illness. It's like The Rolling Stones putting out an album called We Like To Rock, or KISS putting out an album called Made Up Again, or The Pogues putting out an album called For Those Who Like To Drink. It does not spell tragedy, but it brings on inescapable associations with a lack of ideas.

Bad omen #2: the new album is going to be almost entirely acoustic-based. While in her live performances, Aimee had drifted towards quieter, less and less amplified sounds for the entire past decade, on most of her studio output the sound of the electric guitar, be it played by herself or additional members of the band, was very crucial: she always had a great ear for tone, and always knew how to make that electric guitar pick on, amplify, and send deep into space all that emotional tension that began in her singing. A completely unplugged performance from her can never have that kind of strength — it suggests whining without anger, light depression without a vortex to pull in the listener.

Unfortunately, all these premonitions come true when you actually put on the record and give it a loyal spin — or two spins, or three and four spins; it will not take long, since the eleven songs clock in at under forty minutes. Mental Illness, Aimee's first proper solo album in five years, is a nice-sounding record consisting of earnestly written and carefully performed material, but it never amounts to anything more than a pleasant background listen if you're in the mood for a slice of lazy, intelligent, introspective, unobtrusive melancholy. The songs simply do not stick around this time: while such highlights from Charmer as the title track, ʽSoon Enoughʼ, and ʽLabradorʼ, still keep me going and I find myself returning to them on a very regular basis, here there is never a feeling that you receive some fresh insight — for the most part, everything feels like an inferior retread of past glories.

Now, perhaps, it's just me. If you have never been a major admirer of Aimee and just find her stuff to be modestly pleasant, listenable, routine singer-songwriter product, then Mental Illness is just more of the same old crap, interchangeable with everything else she's done. If, however, you agree with me that she has been one of the most talented, melodic, intelligent, insightful song­writers of the 1990s and the 2000s — probably in the top five or so singer-songwriter spots from that period — then you cannot help holding unreasonably high expectations, and experiencing sharp disappointment when they are not realized. I mean, after all, she is getting on in years, older than the Stones in their Bridges To Babylon phase and McCartney in his Flaming Pie era, so it is unwise and ungenerous to expect her musical genius to keep re-flaring over and over. But then, in order to re-flare, the genius has to receive favorable conditions; and this idea of going all quiet and acoustic is not a favorable condition.

If you have heard the first song and the first single of the album, ʽGoose Snow Coneʼ (the name actually refers to the facial expression of an Instagram cat called Goose — see, she wastes her time on Internet kitties, too!), you know exactly what is in store for you: simple, quiet, tender, melancholic folksy melodies without any melodic adventurousness. The chords all stay close to each other, the vocal modulation is kept to a minimum, and there is basically just one melodic phrase sung throughout the entire song, with minor variations. Tasteful arrangement — acoustic guitar, a bit of chimes, a bit of a chamber effect with added strings, nice harmonic interplay with the backing vocalists — but nothing whatsoever to remind you of the fire that once used to burn bright and angry underneath all the melancholic coating.

It would be too easy, perhaps, to deride an artist for being ʽStuck In The Pastʼ, as she admits on the second track in a mixture of self-aggrandizement and self-derogation ("Guess I'm the last / I live in memory of vapor"), but there is nothing wrong with grass-was-greener nostalgia for old veterans as long as you got that proverbial fire heating it up; this song, however, offers very little except a lulling slow waltz tempo and a few examples of Aimee's aging, but still lovely falsetto on the chorus — even as she keeps falling back on the same old chord changes that she'd already explored many times. Rinse and repeat: this easy-flowing, insufferably-even, pleasantly forget­table current will carry you on for forty minutes before safely and carefully depositing you on some sandy bank without a single bruise or tear in your pants. It is not a matter of being different: on the contrary, it is a matter of not being able to make a proper difference, coming up with a pack of tunes that, atmosphere-wise, sound like raw demo versions for the same old classics.

On the adulatory side of things, she is still going very strong as a lyricist — this is, in fact, her first album where I'd definitely insist that her poetic talents took serious precedence over her musicianship, and even though the major themes of her poetry remain the same, she is capable of finding new ways to express them, ranging from simple clever lines like "falling for you was always falling up" (ʽPoor Judgeʼ) to morose character portraits like ʽPhilly Sinksʼ (if you don't listen carefully, it's about a broken guy, and if you do, it's about a conniving womanizer). And repeated listens slowly, very slowly bring out some subtly nuanced hooks, like on the chorus of the aforementioned ʽPhilly Sinksʼ, or on the accept-your-miserable-fate refrain of ʽLies Of Sum­merʼ — except that, at best, each of these hooks still sounds like a weak shadow of some of her classic hooks, and no matter how I coax myself into it, the magic never comes.

It is still nice, and each new release from Aimee is a bit of a present anyway, but at this point, after the mediocre work with Ted Leo (who, by the way, is still here, contributing background  vocals), it looks like she might never again rebound the way she did with Charmer — granted, it is not impossible that all she needs to do is pick up that electric guitar again, but it really seems as if her spirit might have mellowed up to the point of no return. Which is not a tragedy, because we still have all the old records, but... sad.

Aimee Mann & Ted Leo: The Both

AIMEE MANN: THE BOTH (w. Ted Leo) (2014)

1) The Gambler; 2) Milwaukee; 3) No Sir; 4) Volunteers Of America; 5) Pay For It; 6) You Can't Help Me Now; 7) The Prisoner; 8) Hummingbird; 9) Honesty Is No Excuse; 10) Bedtime Stories; 11) The Inevitable Shove.

Although, technically, this is not at all an «Aimee Mann» album, exactly one half of it does be­long to Aimee Mann, and the Aimee Mann spirit is so pervasive throughout that the record begs being reviewed in this section — especially because it is not highly likely that I will ever get around to writing about its second creative force, the indie rocker Ted Leo, formerly of Citizens Arrest, Chisel, The Sin-Eaters, The Spinanes, The Pharmacists, and The Whatchamacallit (a.k.a. «Gee, I've Been In So Many Bands Now, I Couldn't Remember Their Fucking Names, What Am I, Fucking Bob Dylan Or Something»)?

Anyway, «The Both» is indeed a 50-50 collaborative project between Aimee and Mr. Leo, who had begun with a joint concert tour in 2012, and eventually ended up in the recording studio with each other, pooling their respective talents to generate forty minutes of previously non-existent musical vibes. And I do mean pooling: both artists worked together on every bit of the material, rather than just doing it Abbey Road-style, right down to singing together on each song (in com­plete unison or, more frequently, in lead / backup mode). And it shows: while I am not too fa­miliar with Ted Leo's usual style, there is definitely an Aimee Mann musical presence inside each of the tracks. Even in the unexpected choice of ʽHonesty Is No Excuseʼ, an obscure track from Thin Lizzy's self-titled debut of 1971, as the album's only cover version.

Ted Leo's main role, as it seems, is in making The Both Aimee's «rockiest» album since God knows when — maybe since the days of her early solo albums, before Magnolia forever locked her in a state of introspective maturity. The arrangements are classic «indie rock» — crunchy, distorted, but not particularly heavy electric guitars playing time-honored folk-rock chord sequen­ces, with practically nothing standing between them, the vocals, and the rhythm section. The re­sult is a little monotonous, but those fans of Aimee who'd spent the last fifteen years complaining about her losing power might think of it as one big ball of compensation for all those years.

The songs, unfortunately, are far from spectacularly written or innovative. Emotionally, all is drenched in Aimee's usual intellectual-melancholic juices, which Leo is only too happy to share — whenever he joins her in a duet or a slice of harmony, it's like two old lovers grumbling about whether their past was any good and whether they still have a future to live out. If anything, The Both is really close in spirit to The Forgotten Arm, which, if you remember, told the story of two unhappy people, but was sung only by one of them — now that mistake has been corrected, and Leo is the out-of-luck boxer, and Aimee is his girlfriend. Something like ʽNo Sirʼ even borrows some of the chords and much of the atmosphere from ʽKing Of The Jailhouseʼ, although the final result is much more timid and less openly cathartic. And a song title like ʽYou Can't Help Me Nowʼ — well, remember ʽI Can't Help You Anymoreʼ? Quiet desperation is no longer just the English way. The bitch has spread over to the States, and is catching quickly.

Only one moment stands out for me: ʽHummingbirdʼ, a song that mostly sticks true to its title, leisurely humming its one-phrase way through the time passages, culminates in an ear-splitting psychedelic chord right after the final refrain ("I got a message from the hummingbird...") that suddenly, for a brief moment, pushes the song into breathtaking «astral» mode. But then it ends — instead of exploring that move further, following the hummingbird to the stars, they just sort of let it out of their hands, gone in a flash: a great moody idea cut too short for comfort.

Other than that, it's just a decent enough album for fans of Aimee (no idea how enjoyable it would be for fans of the other guy). We could simply admit that she is old and spent, but Char­mer had just shown that this was far from the case. More likely, it is simply that these two people are not a particularly good match for each other, and each of them should probably do his/her own schtick, without trying to work out some sort of compromised average. In my case, I'd like to hear more Aimee and less Leo (who sounds absolutely colorless as a singer to me, though I'm sure he is a good pal and a sentient human being, if the two took up together so well); others might wish for the opposite. I'd also like to have elegant melodic resolutions instead of choruses that simply run themselves into the ground to make way for memorability (ʽInevitable Shoveʼ, ʽPay For Itʼ, etc.). I do give the album a weak thumbs up, since it is honest and it was fun to hear Aimee pick up the basic dirty rock'n'roll guitar after such a long break. But it certainly isn't even close to «essential Aimee Mann» — way too lazy songwriting.

Check "The Both" (CD) on Amazon
Check "The Both" (MP3) on Amazon

Aimee Mann: Charmer

AIMEE MANN: CHARMER (2012)

1) Charmer; 2) Disappeared; 3) Labrador; 4) Crazytown; 5) Soon Enough; 6) Living A Lie; 7) Slip And Roll; 8) Gumby; 9) Gamma Ray; 10) Barfly; 11) Red Flag Diver.

Okay, I happily admit to having been wrong. This is by no means an innovative or unpredictable record, but it definitely soars above «mediocre». Essentially, this is Smilers done right. Same laid back atmosphere, same laziness, same meditative vocals, same silly synthesizers, same humble­ness — but with more electric guitars, deeper production, and, most importantly, with better writ­ten songs. This is at least as consistent as Forgotten Arm, maybe more so, and it has a couple instant classics for all future gold compilations.

Since the themes of the record do not differ much from Aimee's usual bag — mainly character assassinations, varying only in degrees of abstraction — it is gracefully short, curtseying out of sight some time before the fourty-minute barrier is over, and for most people, there will probably be a couple pieces of moody, but insubstantial filler, making its charms even shorter (me, I do not care for the dreary-slow waltz of ʽSlip And Rollʼ). And that is good: humble albums have to have humble lengths, even if a three year period might seem like a long enough term to write up a CD all the way to its limits.

Cut to the chase: ʽCharmerʼ (the title track) kicks in with a ridiculously catchy «kazoo synth» melody, attenuated by some friendly vocal humming companionship, and this makes it into the most irresistible album opener since ʽHumpty Dumptyʼ — ten years, give or take. The lyrical matter (a sarcastic jab at the quintessential charismatic leader, cleverly set for election year) does not really matter — all that matters is that silly-sweet synth pattern, drifting in and out of Aimee's free-flowing, intelligent singing. Which is what makes Aimee into a first-rate artist: she could just as well be singing about tying her bootlaces, and the song would still produce the same impres­sion — but the lyrics are quite clever anyway.

That strange passion for synthesizers that got rekindled with Smilers is still with her — and, ap­parently, cooks her up a good name with today's critics, some of which nostalgize quite heavily about their long-gone days of listening to 'Til Tuesday. Not that anything on Smilers or here really sounds like anything that Aimee did in her 'Til Tuesday days — that was in a different world — but it is a possibility that Aimee herself regards this new passion as a rejuvenating move. More power to her, anyway, if it helps her write songs as fine as ʽCrazytownʼ, where the synth line acts as a sorrowful counterpart to her conspicuously «light» vocals. "The girl lives in crazy town / Where craziness gets handed down / Whoever's gonna volunteer / Will only end up living here" is fairly bleek, but her intonations introduce the picture as amusing rather than tragic — and that's good old Aimee for you, always throwing on a cloak of ironic intellectualism over simple emotions, just the way we like it.

The best number on the album, however, is neither ʽCharmerʼ nor ʽCrazytownʼ. It is ʽSoon Enoughʼ, a noble epic in the vein of old warhorses like ʽDeathlyʼ — in fact, I could easily see it making its way onto the Magnolia soundtrack, provided P. T. Anderson still had some spare foo­tage in the vaults for a «new director's cut» or something. It is undescribable — it's all in the vo­cal hooks this time, and the hooks are mostly intonational and could only come from Aimee — but it is the perfect combination of a little melancholy, a little irony, and a little desperation on top of a bombastic arrangement (capped off with a screechy guitar solo). It's just the kind of song that Smilers so desperately needed to get to the appropriate level.

Other good ones include ʽLabradorʼ (sounds like a Forgotten Arm outtake with all these «tired» harmonies, but an unjustly lost one), the harder-rocking ʽGamma Rayʼ (with a sci-fi battle betwe­en the «cosmic» synthesizer and the psycho guitar, as would befit the title), and the rootsy ʽBar­flyʼ, whose guitar hook and nonchalant attitude could almost reflect a J. J. Cale influence. But honestly, most of them are good.

In the end, it was all well worth the wait and the non-forgetting. Aimee is not young anymore (al­though I do have to say that she generally sounds younger here than on Smilers — maybe it's be­cause the singing is «clearer», not as much loaded with deep nasal twang as it was), and her re­cession into black holes, dark corners, introspection and humility will bar her from making a Bachelor No. 3 or a Found In Space, but she still has her head on, she still rocks when she wants to, and if she can still write one great song per year on the average, that is actually more than is needed to keep her on a steady payroll. At this time, we probably couldn't expect any bet­ter — count this as a fully satisfied thumbs up, and one of 2012's best.

Check "Charmer" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Charmer" (MP3) on Amazon

Aimee Mann: @#%&*! Smilers

@#%&*! SMILERS (2008)

1) Freeway; 2) Stranger Into Starman; 3) Looking For Nothing; 4) Phoenix; 5) Borrowing Time; 6) It’s Over; 7) 31 Today; 8) The Great Beyond; 9) Medicine Wheel; 10) Columbus Avenue; 11) Little Tornado; 12) True Believer; 13) Ballantines.

The "conceptual" framework is gone, but the problems, unfortunately, remain. Everything on here is fairly lightweight, starting with the ironic title (apparently copped by Aimee from an In­ter­net board reflecting some guy's frustration over other people's abuse of the smiley signs) and en­ding with the fact that the record is entirely free of electric guitars. This is Aimee Mann unplug­ged, if you don't count the cheap synthesizer sound on 'Freeway' and other tracks.

That in itself might not be difficult to take if not for the fact that the melodies are hard to be bowled over. A large part of the magic of Lost In Space, for instance, were its numerous clever ideas on how to create and dissipate atmosphere — where electric guitars were as necessary and useful as chimes and background vocals and strings and noises and subtle mix dislocations — and I'm not sure the spell would have eventually worked if it were just Aimee and her acoustic. But on Smilers, time and time over again, that's just how it goes. The only track where there's a little "sonic mystery" present is 'The Great Beyond', whose 'go, honey, go into the ocean' really manages to convey a bit of 'going into the ocean', and it feels out of place.

And then you start noticing how there's really a lot of recycling and how — oh my goodness — maybe she really doesn't have anything more to say? What is there in the slow, dreary waltzing of 'It's Over', for instance, that wasn't already present in the slow, dreary waltzing of 'Nothing Is Good Enough'? And, to boot, that song also had a catchy chorus which this song lacks entirely. At least give us one of your trademark brethtaking falsetto lines, then. What? Still no dice?

The promoted track was 'Freeway', a lively pop tune that, on the surface, is about as good as any lively pop tune from Aimee, but the wailing synthesizer waves that prop up Mann's rhythm track can be passed off as cheesy, and the whole effort seems just a tad lazy to properly guarantee the song's status of Main Attraction Center. Perhaps a false impression, but it hasn't worn off; isn't that particular circular structure a bit too familiar in pop songwriting? Lazy. Lazy.

At this point, however, let us step back a bit and consider the circumstances. There's a song on here called '31 Today' (actually, it may be the best song on the album, with beautiful vocal dyna­mics, although once again we could all live without the crappy synth pattern), one of Aimee's usual odes to depression, but don't let it consciously fool you — she isn't "31 today", as she was born in 1960, and, although her amazingly good looks could still fool plenty of innocents, what we have here, in 2008, is a perfectly well established singer-songwriter with nothing whatsoever left to prove. Even her usual moroseness doesn't hit nowhere near as hard because, really, she's got nothing left to be morose about — she has a family, a decent income source, she's quite content about her small, but steady fanbase, and she's already ensured herself a firm place in the halls of fame — the real ones, well away from Cleveland.

And in that respect, Smilers is a lazy, pacifying, derivative album because, logically, it could hardly be understood how it could be anything else. Maybe if she were politically conscious, but she never was; she is a one hundred percent introvert who wouldn't want to pretend that she's got, oh, I dunno, environmental concerns, if she really hasn't got them. The only extrovert tune on the album is 'Borrowing Time', which one could interpret as a heartfelt call to action — 'the kings of yesterday falling, but you'll come when destiny's calling, get up, get up, you're borrowing time' — but, as she herself has explained many a time in interviews and onstage, it was a song originally written for Shrek 3 — and it didn't even manage to make it into the movie!

So I guess it wouldn't be either wrong or particularly painful to admit that with Smilers, Aimee finally outlives her prime. Which doesn't mean she won't be able to churn out more of these pleasant, but relatively mediocre collections in years to come, and more power to her, because I can totally see how the dedicated fan would still praise this to heaven. Heck, I am no dedicated fan, and I still give this a thumbs up, just don't make it your first purchase.

Aimee Mann: One More Drifter In The Snow

AIMEE MANN: ONE MORE DRIFTER IN THE SNOW (2006)

1) Whatever Happened To Christmas; 2) The Christmas Song; 3) Christmastime; 4) I'll Be Home For Christmas; 5) You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch; 6) Winter Wonderland; 7) Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas; 8) God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen; 9) White Christmas; 10) Calling On Mary.

This should be as good a place as any to expound the Teleology Theory of the Christmas Album. This constantly self-regenerating beast has a nasty tendency to produce a population explosion around the end of each upcoming year, but the motivation behind the explosion is quite different from procreator to procreator. Christmas Albums fall into the following categories:

— the money album, the idea behind which is for the starving artist to make a couple quick bucks from the fans (hard to blame—don't you need a new Lamborghini for Christmas?);

— the dedication album, the idea behind which is the artist's firm conviction that there is no better gift for the fans than another Christmas album — surely, all the previous ten billion Christmas albums must become irrelevant and outdated the minute The Artist enters the studio to record a new one;

— the money-dedication album, the idea behind which is to make a money album, but to state in every subsequent interview that the idea really was to make a dedication album. This is arguably the most common category.

Every now and then, however, there appears a fourth category: the intelligent Christmas Album, an extremely rare breed since it requires a complicated combination of parameters. Chief among those is the requirement that it be an album that is more about the artist than about Christmas, because, after all, there is only one Christmas and we know all about it, whereas the same cannot be said about artists.

Of course, fans of any particular artist will always want to argue that it is this particular artist's Christmas Album that is the most intelligent of all, even when we're very clearly dealing with a money album, but it is possible to be a bit colder and more objective about these things, especi­ally if the default emotion is to detest Christmas albums. In the light of this, I'm happy to say that I don't find anything detestable about Aimee Mann's Christmas album, One More Drifter In The Snow, because, totally true to her identity, on this record she invents (or, at least, strongly up­holds) a new sub-genre: Christmas music for loners.

In other words, it would be completely useless, maybe even ridiculous, to throw it on at a lively Christmas party, or, in fact, any Christmas party. It is, however, a very cool record to put on if, by any chance, you happen to be spending Christmas alone (at the most — with your other, but not too heavy on the champagne). Certainly this is not a depressed album — Aimee is not that weird — but it is an album to be played at a quiet volume in a small darkened room. Aimee herself quotes the Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra Christmas albums as chief inspiration, records that weren't specifically targeted towards the party spirit either, but we've come a long musical way from there, and One More Drifter dispenses with the commercialism and superficiality in an even rougher way than Frank or Dean could ever imagine way back then.

There are chimes, and strings, but the arrangements are chamber-like, never symphonic, and on most of the standards — 'White Christmas', 'Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas', 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen', etc. — Aimee's morose singing rises way up high above the mix, sugges­ting you're having a serious little conversation with the artist rather than merely having yourself another merry little Christmas. Strong surprises are few: 'You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch' from the Dr. Seuss legacy, and two originals — Michael Penn's 'Christmastime' and Aimee's own 'Calling On Mary'; the former is sort of bland, but the latter is quite strong, sounding very much like an outtake from the Forgotten Arm sessions (same rootsy style) and embodying all that is significant about the album: an odd mix of happiness and loneliness, contention and desperation.

Aimee's intentions are, in fact, immediately clear: the song that opens the album is not 'Jingle Bells', but rather Jimmy Webb's somewhat grim 'Whatever Happened To Christmas', so that the album is established as a protest against the cheapening and the commercialization of the holiday (or, in fact, of everything). Given that the album failed to chart on the Billboard at all, I suppose it matched its purpose fairly well. If you happen to be somehow torn between the idea of hating Christmas albums and the necessity to own one, One More Drifter In The Snow may be just what you need. If you're an admirer of Aimee's charisma, One More Drifter In The Snow is quite a must-have rather than a slight footnote. Either way, it's a thumbs up, and a good excuse to throw all your friends out on Christmas' Eve and just get drunk in the good old-fashioned way.

Aimee Mann: The Forgotten Arm

AIMEE MANN: THE FORGOTTEN ARM (2005)

1) Dear John; 2) King Of The Jailhouse; 3) Goodbye Caroline; 4) Going Through The Motions; 5) I Can't Get My Head Around It; 6) She Really Wants You; 7) Video; 8) Little Bombs; 9) That's How I Knew This Story Would Break My Heart; 10) I Can't Help You Anymore; 11) I Was Thinking I Could Clean Up for Christmas; 12) Beautiful.

Every serious artist deserves a concept album, and who's more serious than Aimee Mann? The Forgotten Arm is a mini-musical (it's a bit too fragile and tender to be called a "rock opera") built around an imaginative story of an alcoholic boxer teaming up with a "white trash" girl and their futile attempts to battle their problems. The subject matter reflects Aimee's private fetishism (she's known for her own addiction to boxing), but, more importantly, it presents her as some sort of a female Bruce Springsteen, injecting herself into "other people's lives" and functioning as a self-appointed spokesman for the lower depths.

Whether this elevates her art or, on the contrary, makes it more cheap and superficial, is a useless question to discuss. The main problem, as far as I can see, is one that almost inevitably crops up on most concept albums: there's somewhat too much of the concept and somewhat less of crea­tive songwriting. Of course, on the "positive" side, The Forgotten Arm is a more energetic al­bum than Lost In Space: the tempos are generally faster, the guitars more prominent and crunchy, the mo­rose depression reserved for just a few of the tunes, while the others are busy building up other kinds of atmosphere relevant to the story.

But on the "negative" side, too many of the songs do not register on my scale even after quite a few listens, and this is coming from someone who "got" Lost In Space not earlier than the fourth time around. This time, though, the subtleties just refuse to come out. It's mostly decent folk-rock — decent, but hardly magical. Aimee sings like she really means it — and, of course, she does mean it; it's her story, her message, her impersonations — but it is hard to get rid of the nagging feeling that the story comes first and the melody comes next. It is also not insignificant that in some recent interviews she'd also stated that the idea was to intentionally emulate the atmosphere of an early 1970s roots-rock album, to make something in the vein of The Band or Tumbleweed Connection; if so, she'd clearly paid more attention to the arrangements and "vibe" of it all than to the soul power of the notes themselves. The irony, of course, is that without great melodies, roots-rock arrangements only make the whole experience blander.

A typical example is 'Beautiful', the closing number that is supposed to wind things up on a gene­rally optimistic note after the characters had been royally messing up their lives for the previous eleven tracks. Its chorus, as far as composition goes, is lazy: Aimee does change to her falsetto on the line 'why does it hurt me to feel so much tenderness?', but, as much as I adore her falsetto, the enchantment just doesn't work; the notes are clumsily strung together, there's no adequately har­monic effect, and nothing ends up registering in my head. Maybe it's not laziness; maybe it was an in­tentional wish to write something so discoherent (Carole King, who also had a song with the same title, not coincidentally used to write in the same manner, but somehow generally came out with better results). Yet this is pop music, after all, not opera, and I don't think we were supposed to judge The Forgotten Arm according to the criteria of Ma­dame Butterfly in the first place.

Even the good choruses are lazy: 'That's How I Knew This Story Would Break My Heart', 'I Can't Help You Anymore' and 'I Was Thinking I Could Clean Up For Christmas' essentially make their points — three songs in a row! — by having their titles chanted over and over again. That's char­ming chanting, to be sure, but that's not enough for Aimee; I'm perfectly certain she could charm anyone by walking down the street and chanting random storefront signs if she wished to.

In the end, my favourite songs turn out to be exactly those two that had already been previewed on the live album: 'Going Through The Motions', since it's the power-poppiest number on the record, and 'King Of The Jailhouse', its direct opposite — a slow, lumbering piano ballad, densely satu­rated with fantastic vocal flourishes, maybe Aimee's greatest ever vocal performance that locks tenderness and desperation into a single tiny capsule and wedges it in the ear forever; the transition from the disturbed, panicky confession of 'Baby there's something wrong with me!..' to the quiet, submissive, but still achingly painful desperation of '...that I can't see...' literally takes my breath away every time I hear it (and it is repeated way more than just a few times, believe me). There's nothing on the album that reaches the same emotional heights even remotely. It is not excluded that these two songs were, in fact, the first that were written (given that they'd already appeared a year ear­lier) and the rest of the story "grew" around them in a progressively declining fashion.

Worst of all, I don't even "get" the story. I do not feel that Aimee succeeds in making these cha­racters come alive. For all she's worth, she is still being Aimee Mann, and Aimee Mann is a per­son as much removed from an alcoholic boxer and his drugged-out girlfriend as she is from an Afghani shepherd. Am I wrong? If so, she is not trying too hard to change my opinion. It may even be an interesting story — in someone else's hands — but what I see is a smart, way too se­rious, way too sentimental, intelligent woman who'd rather be reading about the misfortunes of alcoholic boxers in the latest paperback than being able to live them out herself. In the end, I pre­fer to forget altogether that there is supposed to be some sort of story here — the whole thing comes across easier when you discard the conceptual trappings wholesale.

So, in the end, it is not easy to consider The Forgotten Arm a great success; it is easy to believe that Aimee has overreached a bit. Not that it spoils her reputation in any way, and it is still one of the sincerest and most impressive artistic statements of 2005 — or maybe even of the entire de­cade, which has been relatively scarce on honest, simple statements from intelligent people, and for that reason, thumbs up are guaranteed. But as far as rock operas/musicals go, it's certainly no Quadrophenia. And it is perhaps not a coinci­dence that Aimee, despite a certain amount of critical praise, has so far not ventured to repeat the attempt.

Aimee Mann: Live At St. Ann's Warehouse

AIMEE MANN: LIVE AT ST. ANN'S WAREHOUSE (2004)

1) The Moth; 2) Sugarcoated; 3) Going Through The Motions; 4) Amateur; 5) Wise Up; 6) Save Me; 7) Stupid Thing; 8) That's Just What You Are; 9) Pavlov's Bell; 10) Long Shot; 11) 4th Of July; 12) King Of The Jailhouse; 13) Deathly.

From the few extra snippets I've seen on Youtube and other God-blessed sources, Aimee is not a "great" live performer. Her simple, realistic (or, to be more precise and more obscure, "post-neo-realistic") take on things ensures that in her live show, she carefully avoids all the elements of an actual "show". In her 'Til Tuesday and early solo days, she at least used to wiggle her behind a bit — then realized it wasn't such a pretty sight and became a major competitor for Dylan as "The Most Frozen Celebrity Onstage".

Not that the fans should mind — for all we know, the world is suffering from a surplus of lively stage performers, and the "frozen" attitude is arguably the best attitude for the kind of music Aimee is writing these days. More disturbing is the fact that the audio aspect of the live perfor­mance adds next to nothing to the studio experience; Mann doesn't care much for jamming, im­provising, or even slightly rearranging her old songs. Out of the thirteen songs on here, only 'Long Shot' is clearly different in that a lengthy (and good) guitar solo concludes the performance; every other difference is microscopic at best.

Of course, if you do not set yourself a specific major goal of capturing extra fans with your live per­formance, that's all you need to do: just go out there, stand like a statue with your eyes closed, and concentrate exclusively on delivering the goods in a faithful manner. So what's the point of releasing a joint DVD-CD edition of this experience? Make money? But it's supposed to be un­der­stood that Aimee doesn't care much for money, money can't buy her... never mind. Satisfying fan demand? She doesn't seem to be that much of a fan-loving person either.

Let's just settle temporarily on the idea that she wanted to have this herself, as a little souvenir of the glory days to nostalgize to twenty or thirty years on. She does look great — so thoroughly un­cool in her rigid suit and tie that it makes her the coolest being on Earth. And she sounds great — not a note out of place, actually, maybe even a wee bit more confident on oldies like 'Stupid Thing' and 'Sugarcoated' than a decade earlier. The setlist is predictably skewed in favour of the then-currently promoted Lost In Space... not, with only two songs on the CD and an extra 'Hum­pty Dumpty' on the DVD; instead, the setlist is relatively evenly scattered through all of her solo output, so much that some recommend this as a decent substitute for a best-of package — I really don't know about that, since she's so frustratingly consistent you'd have to buy all the albums anyway. As an added bonus, she also "previews" two of the best songs from her next record, The For­gotten Arm.

That's about all there is to say, really. The CD, I think, is expendable, a pleasant trinket to peruse once all the other records have been played a million times; the DVD, however, is well worth putting on if you, like me, are fascinated by this idea of "humble intelligent beauty", equally un­bur­dened with MTV-style trappings and militant anti-commercial supercool behaviour. It also gives you one more excuse to whine and wonder about how in the world this kind of music — so catchy, so easily accessible, so fun, and so heart-rending at the same time — could ever lose out in the public conscience to the likes of Shakira or Beyoncé. Well, don't tell me, I do know the an­swer: it's pretty hard to have a nipple slip from under that suit and tie thing.

Aimee Mann: Lost In Space

AIMEE MANN: LOST IN SPACE (2002)

1) Humpty Dumpty; 2) High On Sunday 51; 3) Lost In Space; 4) This Is How It Goes; 5) Guys Like Me; 6) Pavlov's Bell; 7) Real Bad News; 8) Invisible Ink; 9) Today's The Day; 10) The Moth; 11) It's Not.

The lyrics get really dense on this album. The subjects are the same, but she's learned to present the message under a thick layer of metaphors, allusions, allegories, and red herrings — perhaps that's an inevitable result of working together with the likes of Costello. Like all of us, she is hu­man, of course, and so cannot escape an occasionally painful cliché ( 'The moth don't care when he sees the flame, he might get burned, but he's in the game' makes for a nice rhyme, but isn't it inexcusable to still go on writing about moths and flames in the XXIst century?), but most of the time, she steers her verbal ship with an ever increasing level of self-confidence.

But I will do Lost In Space an injustice if I concentrate on its lyrics. When you have a record that is heavy on the words and subtle on melody, it's a very natural temptation — but it has to be avoi­ded, since it gives a distorted picture of one's true impressions. Many people have commented on the album's 'maturity', not always taking it for a good sign; many have acknowledged that, as Aimee gets more and more skilled at poetry (or in 'verbosity', if you want to see it that way), she is neglecting melody — where 'melody' is understood as 'energy'. That was also my own original impression: Lost In Space took somewhat more time to sink in than anything that preceded it. Chances are this will be your impression, too. Well, fight it. Give it another chance. It isn't a fast-going record, and unless you're in a major hurry to get somewhere, you should lower your own speed so as not to get too far ahead of it where you can no longer discern its beauty.

It's just that Aimee Mann is a total introvert, and as she gets older and left with less and less to prove, her introvert nature takes major hold of her. You'd think that the settling of her legal and personal problems would eventually cause her to brighten and lighten up, but guess again: Lost In Space is even more somber and dreary in tone than the Magnolia soundtrack. There are no bright, shiny pop-rockers whatsoever on this album; most, if not all, of the songs are in a minor key, many feature lonesome, depressed acoustic passages, the guitar solo breaks range from omi­nous to creepy, and the only reason the whole thing does not want to make you kill yourself on the spot is that it's never intended to: for all of Aimee's bitterness and disillusionment (or, rather, "un-illusionment" — "dis-" would imply that she once had illusions, but I've always thought she had already experienced her first nervous breakdown in the womb), she's never suicidal about it.

Therefore, do not dive into this expecting crunchy power-pop riffs and youthful ecstasy. After all, she's almost 40 here, and no one ever saw her give the AC/DC pledge of eternal youth. Lost In Space is experienced best of all in a situation where you're really lost in space, so if you're step­ping out of your shuttle suspended on a fragile string, don't forget to pack an Ipod with this record — wonderful way to enjoy your last half-hour of living. However, in the likely event of your not being able to either reproduce or simulate this situation, a decent alternative is to save it up for a quiet evening after a whole day of nerve-wrecking problems. I happened to catch this particular situation exactly, and in the process it made me a better man, or at least I'd like to think so.

Now, I promised I'd be talking about the music rather than the lyrics, but it's also pretty hard. As usual, Aimee does not shower you with hooks; she has this strict ratio of one hook per good song and two hooks per masterpiece, which makes all the songs seem slightly overlong (five minutes for 'Invisible Ink'? what is this — Emerson, Lake & Palmer?), but also helps her, I think, to stay so impressively consistent over decades. That said, she does strictly adhere to this rule, and each song on the album has something to say, and I find no truly weak spots.

But even more impres­sive than the hooks are the arrangements and the moods they create. 'Hum­p­ty Dumpty' is warm autumn, with its growling electric guitars and acoustic jangle; the title track is winterish, with falling-snow electric organ and the deep gritty grumble of the chorus; and 'The Moth', true to its trite, but fun lyrics, gives you deep night with candles... and the rest are perhaps just different shades of the same autumnal, winterish, and nocturnal landscapes. Even the laziest songs are all soaked in this somber vision so much they're at least evocative — 'Today's The Day', for instance, has a quasi-musical box-style chiming guitar arrangement that gives it the required mystery aura.

Above all, you do get this feeling of being completely stranded: Lost In Space com­pletes the process of converting a lively, still very much out-of-this-world Aimee Mann into somebody from a faraway planet, unable to understand or to be understood. If you find this offensive for the tastes of humanity, feel free to draw the line. I find this honest, and far more sincere, mature, and hard-hitting than ninety nine percent of "depressing" shit-music that is being made today by youn­ger and simpler minds. And what began as an intellectual delight for the brain ends up being, if not the heart's favourite, then at least the heart's special Aimee Mann album. Thumbs up for all the beautiful melodies — and more thumbs up for all the darkness.

PS. If you can get it, the expanded 2-CD deluxe edition is highly recommendable; not so much for the bunch of live performances (Aimee's limitations as a live performer will be discussed in the next review) as for four B-sides and outtakes that are just as good as any of the eleven songs on the album proper, especially the baroque harpsichord-and-strings gorgeousness of 'Nightmare Girl' and the pop-rocker 'Observatory' — the latter adds a wee bit of fresh, upbeat liveliness to the rigid solemnity of it all.

Aimee Mann: Bachelor No. 2

AIMEE MANN: BACHELOR NO. 2 (2000)

1) How Am I Different; 2) Nothing Is Good Enough; 3) Red Vines; 4) The Fall Of The World's Own Optimist; 5) Satellite; 6) Deathly; 7) Ghost World; 8) Calling It Quits; 9) Driving Sideways; 10) Just Like Anyone; 11) Susan; 12) It Takes All Kinds; 13) You Do.

Subtitled The Last Remains Of The Dodo, whatever that may symbolize apart from showing the lady's knowledge of paleontology and Alice In Wonderland. She may be right, too, though, if by "Dodo" she means "songwriting that incorporates melodicity, intelligence, and self-restraint", because that's what Bachelor No. 2 is all about. It may or may not be her best record, but it's the one I find hardest of all to criticize.

Back on the ground from the God-substituting creationism of Magnolia, Aimee returns to her self-righteous manhating business, but she has obviously "wised up", and it would be stubborn and shallow to insist she's still writing about her breakups (or breakdowns, for that matter). So, yes, it's the easiest interpretation for lines like 'what was started out with such excitement now I'd gladly end with relief', but it's not the only one possible — the lyrics become open for more than one way of interpretation, and I can't recall any laughable moments, either. She may not be stri­ving for the heights of the great poets, but she's at least on the level of an Elvis Costello — not coincidentally, the latter is credited for co-writing 'The Fall Of The World's Own Optimist'.

I'm not sure if it was really necessary to include three songs from the Magnolia soundtrack, but, considering that the fourth one ('Nothing Is Good Enough') is a vocal version of the instrumental tune on the soundtrack, I guess they weren't really written specifically for the film, but were ra­ther just temporarily "donated" from Aimee's main project, so this cannot serve as even a tech­nical criticism. As for the main project, its retail release was significantly delayed because, appa­rently, Aimee's record label did not deem it commercially viable and ordered her to come up with more hit singles (probably something along the lines of 'Baby One More Time', which was riding up the charts at the time?), leading her to buy out the publishing rights and distributing the record through her web site (apparently, she managed to ship 25,000 copies all by herself!). Which is all the more ridiculous particularly since Bachelor No. 2 is one of Aimee's most accessible records — certainly far more so than the bleak follow-up Lost In Space — and that just about any song on it could easily function as a single, being far more memorable and enjoyable than ninety per­cent of today's MTV garbage.

Musically, she continues to tone down the grungy guitar slash of I'm With Stupid and continues in the Magnolia vein — acoustic and piano-driven stuff, backed up with electric sound a-plenty, but also strings, accordeons, brass, and anything that can be shaped into a solid wall of sound whenever she feels like it. The mood is bitter throughout, but not suicidal or anything: she's not doing this for the sinister purposes of Paul Thomas Anderson, but for her own needs, and she may be pissed at the world, but that doesn't prevent her from enjoying being there; the result is a bright, but angry, inquisitive, but self-assured, record that, third or fourth time around, proves definitely that Aimee is no fluke, but rather one of the most treasurable songwriters of our times.

She is also making some of the prettiest use of her voice you'll ever hear — for instance, on the radically brief snippet 'Just Like Anyone'. She doesn't have a particularly strong voice, and her range isn't particularly wide, and she doesn't know much in the way of "vocal gymnastics", but, like a female Paul McCartney, she knows what it takes to get one trapped in the beauty of the human voice. Or maybe, to use a closer comparison, rather like Suzanne Vega, whose musical style she sometimes approaches on the quieter songs here — especially on the track that is, inci­dentally, titled 'Susan' (any relation?..).

It is joyful to realize there are still writers/performers in this world who can dress their anger into complex colorful forms — for all the fury packed in the lyrics of 'Calling It Quits', preaching against the corporate greed of record companies, it has one gloriously uplifting melody, punctua­ted by marching style brass flourishes; and the middle eight section on 'How Am I Different' flows like a luscious honey stream, but the words are, in fact, 'just a question before I pack — when you fuck it up later, do I get my money back?'

It is just as joyful to witness the brilliance of the God-given talent for songwriting so close up front, like on 'Red Vines', a song which could have been utterly generic pap but where, instead, the vocal melodies in both the verses and the chorus take unpredictable, but delightful and com­pletely smooth twists. If the tune is familiar to you, observe this twist on the ascending 'everyone loves you...' after the first two 'regular' lines, or how the 'cigarettes and Red Vines' chorus is not immediately followed by the rhyming 'I'll be on the sidelines', which would be decent for a so-so songwriter, but by the 'contrapunctus' of 'baby you never do know' — and how normal this sounds, original, but normal. It's all relatively simple, but something tells me it should all be your average musicologist's delight.

If, like me, you tend to be frequently annoyed by singer-songwriters — which is only natural, because most of the time most singer-songwriters strive to be annoying — I can only state for myself that Bachelor No. 2 is one of the least annoying annoying singer-songwriter albums I've ever had the pleasure to listen to, and this sentence alone sets it up in a class of its own. And this, in turn, guarantees a rock-hard thumbs up from the brain, whereas the heart, already accustomed to being seduced by Ms. Mann's charms, follows suit.

Aimee Mann: Magnolia Soundtrack

AIMEE MANN: MAGNOLIA SOUNDTRACK (1999)

1) One; 2) Momentum; 3) Build That Wall; 4) Deathly; 5) Driving Sideways; 6) You Do; 7) Nothing Is Good Enough; 8) Wise Up; 9) Save Me; 12) Dreams [by Gabrielle]; 13) Magnolia [by Jon Brion].

This is that rare example of a movie soundtrack that stands well on its own terms — a fairly appropriate instance, too, since the battalions of admirers and haters of Magnolia the movie and Magnolia the soundtrack intersect, but do not overlap. I feel very fortunate, therefore, that I can safely state: I admire the movie — one of the bravest and quite hard-hitting in its bravery epic creations of the 1990's — and I think its soundtrack fits its atmosphere perfectly. Not only that, but the movie's wide-reaching goals almost certainly help Aimee overcome her own artistic limi­tations and finally match her exciting, moving music to broader themes than relationships fucked up for no apparent reason other than that relationships have to be fucked up, or else what sort of fucking relationships are they?

Maybe the four-year break in recording helped, too: the eight originals, plus Aimee's cover of Harry Nilsson's 'One', are all stunning — not a single melody fails to stir up feelings (one semi-exception is the instrumental 'Nothing Is Good Enough', which works much better with vocals on Bachelor No. 2 — not that the slow, hypnotic keyboard-and-strings-driven waltz isn't delightful on its own, but she must sing!).

Few things are more tragic to savour in the soul than one's own loneliness, and unless our genes somehow fail to elevate us to the level of Homo sapiens sapiens, we all feel this sometimes. That's what the movie was about; and this is why, not coincidentally, the soundtrack album opens with 'One' — for all I know, One could have been the title of the album. Inability to be under­stood is an integral part of a broken relationship (the other integral part of it is, of course, inabi­lity to cope with the inability of being understood), so it is quite a smooth and unbroken current that carries you from superficial whining about your messed up life into the deep sea of realizing there must be more serious, and more scary, reasons that underlie this mess. So, if Whatever and I'm With Stupid were basically bitter, but still shiny, pop, this soundtrack is gloomy and hopeless from the beginning to the end (even more hopeless than the movie, which still offered some sort of redemption from the nightmare — but that was actually its weakest part).

'One' is a cover that achieves perfection — it is somewhat over-arranged compared to Nilsson's intentionally minimalistic performance, but even its over-arranged details preserve the spirit of the original. 'Wise Up', reflecting a climactic moment in the movie, is one of the bitterest, most heart-breaking songs of the decade, where both the lyrics and the music basically just tell you that the only way out of your misery is to accept it as something natural and inescapable: 'it's not go­ing to stop, it's not going to stop till you wise up... so just give up'. But it isn't presented as an op­timistic conclusion — right on its heels comes 'Save Me', where Aimee implores to 'save me, save me from the ranks of the freaks who suspect they can never love anyone'. Uh?

Musically, the songs here completely drop the grungy wall-of-sound of the last album and are much more accessible to the "general pop audiences", which is perhaps natural since such was the intention of the movie as well, but I do not see that as a problem as long as the melodies are won­derful, and they are. Most are propelled by pianos rather than guitars, but there's still room for the usual highly melodic guitar solo on songs like 'Deathly' and 'Driving Sideways', and 'Momentum' nibbles a bit at free-form jazz before settling into normalness.

The only weakness of the record is that it is, after all, a soundtrack, and so, as a completely unne­cessary bonus, we get two well-known Supertramp tunes, Jon Brion's instrumental 'Magnolia' theme (yawn), and Gabrielle's 'Dreams', a song that plays an important role in the movie but is otherwise a cheap dance-pop throwaway. Also, four out of nine songs were later reused by Aimee on her next solo album, which might make the buyer loath to own both records — but that is rather a weakness of Bachelor No. 2 than its predecessor. The predecessor hits so hard that it would be unimaginable it could fail to make Aimee Mann a household name, and, of course, it did, and quite deservedly so. Thumbs up for one of the most perfect combinations of artistic growth and commercial success in recent — and generally quite pitiful — history.

Aimee Mann: I'm With Stupid

AIMEE MANN: I'M WITH STUPID (1995)

1) Long Shot; 2) Choice In The Matter; 3) Sugarcoated; 4) You Could Make A Killing; 5) Superball; 6) Amateur; 7) All Over Now; 8) Par For The Course; 9) You're With Stupid Now; 10) That's Just What You Are; 11) Frankenstein; 12) Ray; 13) It's Not Safe.

I think lyrically, this album is a step forward because this time around there are two main lyrical themes rather than one: "I'm So Pissed Off At My Boyfriend Of Long Ago" occasionally alterna­tes with "I'm So Pissed Off At My Record Label Of Not So Long Ago". Not for one second do I believe that these particular subjects worry or should worry you, the reader, so let us treat them the way they should be treated: hollow pretexts to make moody music that has an equal probabi­lity chance of being inspiring or being fucked up. Incidentally, almost every review of this album that I've seen makes a big point of the album's first lyrical line going 'you fucked it up', but it's hard to understand what the fuss is about: this is 1995, not 1965. Maybe it's the sweet little girl aura of Aimee's and the tender tone in which it is being pronounced that befuddles the writers.

Overall, I'm With Stupid is Whatever Vol. 2, but with most of the sissy twelve-string jangle extricated and replaced with grungier guitars and power-enhanced chords — to sound more "mo­dern", I guess. The poor duped Roger McGuinn makes no more guest appearances, and it shows. When this album is at its worst — which, fortunately, is very rare — it's hard to distinguish the proceedings from zillions of results by billions of female artists with broken hearts and broken electric guitars wasting away taxpayers' money. Maybe no one would say that in 1995, but 'fif­teen years after the fair' it shows rather painfully, I'm afraid.

On the other hand, billions of female artists still don't got what Aimee's got, and that's an ability to write a soul-catching melody. After I've distanced myself from the lyrics of 'Sugarcoated' and managed to imagine the song in a more interesting arrangement, I am overwhelmed by its power and melodicity, reminiscent of Lennon's later-years style. 'Ray' is even better, its sweet melancho­lia finding perfect support from the electric piano in the background (yes, despite all the moder­nistic trappings, it is the sharp ringing of that piano that stands out as the most memorable sonic moment on the entire album). 'You're With Stupid Now' is a rare gem of an acoustic ballad here, and also a rare case when you can detach the chorus — 'what you want, you don't know, you're with stupid now, so on with the show' — from its surroundings, provide it with your own meaning, however deep you want to make it, and find it all the more beautiful.

Besides, my quibbles mostly lie with the rhythmic backbones of the songs: lead guitar work on most of them is as powerful as ever, with colorful solos planned and laid out just as expressively as the vocal melodies. (Sometimes they take on a slightly atonal, avantgarde manner, but only when the song might beg for it, as in the intentionally bizarre 'Frankenstein' — a metaphoric tune, of course, but ending in a truly Frankensteinish near-cacophony of street organ music crossed with free jazz at the end). I do not like the opening of 'Superball' at all, but once it unfurls all of its banners, I end caught up in the fun.

Who knows, maybe some day Aimee will want to re-record the album, or at least parts of it, using an approach that panders less to current trends on the market (even if those trends weren't all that bad in 1995). Then again, everything should probably stand as a document of its time; if we can enjoy those early Duran Duran records, there's no reason why simplistic grungy guitars should cause our conscience to lump a gifted songwriter like Mann with all the inferior substitutes. Thumbs up, thumbs up, by all means. The picky brain is always hard to please, but, fortunately, the sappy heart always takes precedence over the sucker.

Aimee Mann: Whatever

AIMEE MANN: WHATEVER (1993)

1) I Should've Known; 2) Fifty Years After The Fair; 3) 4th Of July; 4) Could've Been Anyone; 5) Put Me On Top; 6) Stupid Thing; 7) Say Anything; 8) Jacob Marley's Chain; 9) Mr. Harris; 10) I Could Hurt You Now; 11) I Know There's A Word; 12) I've Had It; 13) Way Back When.

You have to truly admire a person who can take one particular experience in his/her life, no mat­ter how traumatic, and turn it into a subject matter for a zillion artistic statements. For Aimee Mann, the ex-cofounder of 'Til Tuesday, this subject matter was her breakup with fellow artist Jules Shear. (Granted, prior to that, she had a breakup with fellow artist Michael Hausman, but let us presume that that particular breakup served as her subject matter for 'Til Tuesday).

What this means is that I am not qualified, in any major capacity, to review Whatever. It is an album about breaking up, from top to bottom, and should have born the sticker PARTICULAR­LY RECOMMENDED FOR BROKEN HEARTS ALL OVER THE WORLD both on initial and subsequent releases. Fate has so far guided me kindly, preventing my heart from breaking, and so I am tempted to sneer at the album's emotional monotonousness rather than identify with it. But then it also makes you wonder — just how stuck up one must be to spend all of one's creative energy lamenting a three-year old breakup?

Oc­casionally, Mann herself acknowledges that her mind may be bent on this one problem to a some­what sharper angle than it should: 'It's one of my faults that I can't quell my past - I ought to have gotten it gone' ('4th Of July'). But the thing that irritates me most of all is the absolute self-righteousness of it all: song after song, it is the ex-partner who carries one hundred, no, one thou­sand percent of the blame. Just look at this: 'This is for the one who was false, who taught me about building walls' ('I Could Hurt You Now'); 'Oh you stupid thing, it wasn't me that you out­smarted' ('Stupid Thing'); 'I should've known you would betray me but without the kiss' ('I Should've Known'); 'Someday you'll wake up and say... now she's got the river down which I sold her' ('4th Of July'). Makes Bob Dylan and Lindsey Buckingham look like little lollipop kids. The most ironic thing of it all, of course, is that the more she tries to convince herself and the audience that 'I got rid of that ghost', the clearer you understand that 'that ghost' hardly leaves her in the shower, let alone in a recording studio.

Now comes the good news. In the hands of a non-talent — and the world, these days, is all but ruled by breakup-harboring non-talents armed with noisy guitars and unloved pianos — these so-so lyrics would have been set to equally so-so music, with the album relegated to the trash heap immediately upon release. But if Aimee doesn't have a world vision fit for a great artist, she certainly knows how to compose solid pop melodies. Most of these songs are memorable, with a well-found combination of early Nineties production techniques and Sixties jangle-pop values (it's no coincidence that Roger McGuinn himself guest stars on 'Fifty Years After The Fair'). If Mann's work in 'Til Tuesday today sounds somewhat dated (it was an Eighties band, after all), then Whatever, released to a world that had learned to appreciate the values of grunge, still manages to sound fresh and alive, with lovely acoustic work, colourful electric tones, and various small surprises along the way (e. g., the 'marching band' emulation on 'Jacob Marley's Chain').

It is these melodies and arrangements that save Whatever from drowning in its self-pity — be­cause it is very easy to distance yourself from the lyrics and just enjoy the record for its strengths. The interlocking guitars on 'Fifty Years After The Fair' epitomize the Nineties' capacity of crea­ting sheer sonical loveliness; 'Could've Been Anyone' slyly quotes the opening chords from the Byrds' 'Mr. Tambourine Man' (you have to look for it, though), and wisely opts for intelligent, complex combinations of 12-string and electric guitars instead of the three-chord slash that, say, an Avril Lavigne of today would have plopped onto it; 'Way Back When' is Kinks-derived Brit pop that borrows, not steals, from cheery vaudeville and adds but a slice of graceful melancholia; and so on, and so on.

In short - Miss Mann's lyrics may leave a lot to be desired (in terms of variety, at least), but her musical tastes are impeccable and her musical skills undeniable. And so, even if, like I said, I still don't feel qualified to pronounce judgement on this, I can easily relate to the music with my heart — and let it whisk the negative judgement from the brain and turn it into a positive one. Thumbs up, most definitely.