SOUNDTRACK: AIMEE MANN-Bachelor No. 2 or, the Last Remains of the Dodo (2000).
Aimee Mann writes really pretty (often sad) songs. From seeing her play live (in person and on video), she is very upright when she plays. And I feel like this uprightness comes forth in her music. She is very serious–not that she isn’t funny, because she can be–but that she is serious about songcraft. Her songs, even when they are catchy, are very proper songs. I don’t know if that makes sense exactly.
It also means to me that most of her music sounds similar. She has a style of songwriting and she is very good at it. For me, it means that a full album can start to sound the same, but a few songs are fantastic.
“How Am I Different” opens up with a super catchy melody and a guitar hook that repeats throughout. “Nothing is Good Enough” is a bit slower and less bouncy. But “Red Vines” brings that bounce back with a super catchy chorus (and backing vocalists to punch it up). The piano coda is a nice touch.
“The Fall of the World’s Own Optimist” starts slow but adds a cool guitar riff as the bridge leads to a catchy, full chorus. “Satellite” slows things down as if to cleanse the palette for “Deathly.”
Now that I’ve met you
Would you object to
Never seeing each other again
The chorus is low key but the verses have a great melody. It stretches out to nearly six minutes, growing bigger as it goes with a soaring guitar solo and better and better rhymes.
“Ghost World” has some wonderful soaring choruses while “Calling It Quits” changes the tone of the album a bit with a slightly more jazzy feel. It also adds a bunch of sounds that are unexpected from Mann–horns, snapping drums and in the middle of the song, the sound of a record slowing down before the song resumes again. It’s probably the most fun song on the record–unexpected for a song with this title.
“Driving Sideways” seems like it will be a slower downer of a song but once again, she pulls out a super catchy intro to the chorus (with harmonies) as the rest of the chorus trails on in Mann’s solo voice as we hang on every word. It ends with a tidy, pretty guitar solo.
“Just Like Anyone” is a quiet guitar song, just over a minute long. It’s a surprisingly complete song and shows that not only can she pack a lot into less than 90 seconds, she should do it more often.
“Susan” is a surprisingly boppy little number that bounces along nicely on the two-syllable rhythm of the title character. “It Takes All Kinds” slows things down with piano and gentle guitars and “You Do” ends the album with Mann showing off a bit of her falsetto.
This is in no way a party album, it’s more of a quiet autumn day album. And it’s quite lovely. Thanks, Nick, for reminding me of it.
[READ: May 20, 2019] “It’s a Mann’s World”
Nick Hornby wrote High Fidelity and became something of a musical expert because of it. As such, he wrote a half a dozen or so musical review sections for the New Yorker.
This was his first and, as one might guess from the title, it is about Aimee Mann.
He begins by talking about the British magazine Mojo and how every month they ask a musician what he or she is listening to. He says that many musicians of a Certain Age seem to have abandoned rock and roll and are listening more to jazz or classical. They are doing this “for reasons I can only guess as: Prokofiev! Ellington! Take that Hanson and Wu-Tang Clans fans! ”
These performers seem to suggest that pop music is dead. Much in the way that people say fiction is dead. Meanwhile good, talented musicians continue to make albums that people continue to listen to and good talented authors continue to write novels that people continue to read. (more…)
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