I'm With Stupid

I've gone on a bit of an Aimee Mann binge this last week. This was due to my partner Annette (thanks madam) who sometimes points out those bits of cardboard and plastic and aluminium that once were dear friends but which now just fill up the racks. She picked out "Lost In Space" to play for a long trip in the car (I suspect she was really looking for Joni Mitchell). When she arrived back home, slightly tired, she still managed to rave about "how could we forget this one" and so on. She'd been so immersed in the songs that the cd played one and a half times through before she relaized that she was hearing them for the 2nd time. My interest was defintely tweaked again.

Mann is one of those performers whose records I play constantly until I reach an almost sickening and complete saturation point. For a long time after that, playing them actually revolts me. Luckily, the memory of the disgust fades - just like the pain of a broken bone in many ways.

So I should have just listened to the tracks I love and let it be but I couldn't simply do that. Instead, to round off this all new obsesive Aimee experience I played all her solo albums again and again. I listened to all those 80s releases by 'Till Tuesday (sometimes irksome, sometimes proto-solo). I acquired some live boots (mainly dire with a quavering voice quite prominent). I even acquired some solo Jon Brion stuff (to see how important he is to her work - a bit but not as much as I'd thought he would be). I don't have anything marvellously insightfull to say about her, just some little points that make her special for me:

Her vocal delivery is complicated, intruiging and exasperating. It's so obviously drained and depressed and downbeat even when the lyrics imply some other emotion. It's slightly lazy and couldn't give a fuck but irritated all the time too - "yeah, i'm singin' this, so what?". When this fits in with the lyrics and the tune it works spectacularly well but, in some cases, it can seem like an affectation. I'm sure this isn't true - she's probably just singing the only way she knows how - but it's one of the things that sits in the back of my mind when a song seems to be treading water.

There are always at least 3 great tracks on each of her solo releases. These are songs that I truely feel are some of the very best old style pop music I've ever heard. Take "Bachelor #2": It has "How Am I Different", "Deathly" and "Susan", all of which affect me deeply for one reason or another. "Whatever" has "Fifty Years After The Fair", "Mr. Harris" and "I've Had It" - these last 2 have quite cloying subject matter but, never-the-less, they still manage to bring a tear to my eye (it's a bit like the effect old Hollywood tear jerkers have on me - what an old softy I am). And "Magnolia" has the sublime "Save Me" - a touchstone in the film and on the recording - which is as good as 3 songs rolled into one.

I suppose it's the off kilter melodies that make them so special but the meticulous production also helps. However, I'm completely ambivalent about the sound of and arrangements on the records. Many times, the glossy sheen and attention to detail (it's those damned 80s again) can derail even the best songs. But when she took a small path down a more grungey lane (in "I'm With Stupid") I feel cheated - "hey, where's the chamberlain"?

Luckily I didn't sicken myself with the Aimee Mann stick this time around. I may even take a couple with me on my short holiday next week...