AIMEE MANN

REALITY BITES: 

Aimee Mann keeps her cool on the revealing new Charmer

By: MATT ASHARE |
Published: October 15, 2012 http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment

INTIMACY ISSUES: Mann bares romantic wounds with wit and reserve

Last week, enigmatic songstress Tori Amos released Gold Dust, a classically styled collaboration with the Metropole Orchestra that takes 14 epic songs spanning her two decades as a solo artist and reworks them as baroque, cabaret-pop tunes. Just a couple of weeks earlier, dance-pop diva Pink delivered her version of a "grown-up" album, a playfully all-over-the-map collection of rockist power ballads, introspective acoustic folk, and, of course, dance-party anthems. Each, in its own gaudy, confessional way, fits nicely into a living-out-loud cultural milieu that values the vicarious thrill of the tell-all memoir and reality television. And both are more than likely to overshadow a very different kind of personal statement: the cooly reserved, artfully crafted retro-pop of Charmer, the eighth studio album by the LA-based singer/songwriter Aimee Mann.
    Mann knows a thing or two about being a charmer, or, at least, about fleeting nature of the charmed life. In 1985, she was a young, spiky haired, new-wave blond beauty fronting and playing bass in the Boston-based synth-rock band ’Til Tuesday when the very first single from their debut album became a hit on radio and, more importantly, MTV. Playing the part of a sheepishly stoic yet rebellious, leather jacketed lover caught in an oppressively buttoned-down relationship, Mann became a ubiquitous presence on MTV, as she acted out the drama of raging against the upper-middle class machine in her own coy manner. The song, "Voices Carry," catapulted ‘Til Tuesday into the emerging alternative mainstream. The video, with its cheesy narrative and clumsy overdubbed dialogue, won MTV's then coveted award for "Best New Artist." And the iconic image of Mann casting off the trappings of the good life to pursue her rock-and-roll dreams somewhat ironically left her trapped, for a time, in something akin to an ‘80s one-hit-wonder time capsule, as ‘Til Tuesday quickly faded from view.
    It would be the better part of a decade before Mann resurfaced as a solo artist in LA with 1993's critically lauded Whatever, an album that recast her as a whipsmart and sassy, seasoned songwriter with a keen talent for channeling wryly cynical observations into classic Beatlesque hooks and melodies. In her new guise, Mann's garnered praise from Elvis Costello and novelist Nick Hornby, to name just two prominent "critics." And her considerable contributions to the soundtrack for the Paul Thomas Anderson film Magnolia (1999), earned both an Oscar and Grammy nomination. She hasn't, however, come anywhere close to recapturing the commercial success she experienced with ‘Til Tuesday. And you get the sense that she's just fine with that.
    Indeed, until now, Mann's work has rather assiduously avoided touching on anything that might carry even the slightest echo of "Voices Carry." But it's been almost thirty years since "Voices Carry," bands as disparate as LCD Soundsystem, the Killers, and the Faint have cast the sound of ‘80s new wave in a more positive light, and, over the course of seven solo albums, Mann's unerringly established her bona-fides as a serious artist — so much so that she's finally willing to if not embrace, at least have a little fun with her ‘Til Tuesday past.
    To that end, she enlisted Tom Scharpling, a comic radio show host who served as a writer/executive producer for the show Monk, to direct a shot-for-shot satirical remake of the "Voices Carry" video, replete with dramatic overdubs, for "Labrador," a ruminative, mid-tempo rocker from Charmer that's also the disc de facto first single.  With characteristic understatement that clashes with and underscores the high drama of video's narrative, Mann recounts the dynamics of a dysfunctional friendship. "You lie so well, I could never even tell, what were facts in your artful rearranging" she intones against the easy strum of a guitar." And then, as the drums pick up and ringing piano chords enter the mix, she looks inward and admits, "I came back for more/And you laughed in my face and you rubbed it in/Cuz I'm a labrador/And I run when the gun drops the dove again."
    The contrast between the bright, hummable flow of the melody and the darker implications of the lyric are something of a Mann trademark. Paradoxically, the histrionics acted out in the video have never been her style. Although Mann's not afraid to mine her life for material, her delivery relies on sly subtleties, shifting perspectives, and delicately incisive jabs. On the disc's opening tune, the title track "Charmer," she takes aim at charismatic cad, leaning on a nostalgic analog synth hook as she observes, "When you're a charmer the world applauds/They don't know that secretly charmers feel like they're frauds." You get the sense that she's got someone specific targeted when she lands precisely polite punches like that. But she may also be speaking from personal experience.
    With only one of its eleven tracks clocking in over the four-minute mark, Charmer is a concise album, with few wasted words or notes. Mann approaches her art like a craft, carefully fashioning tight arrangements that suit her subjects, from the doomed lovers in the sprightly "Crazytown" to the resigned romantics in the more plaintive "Living a Lie," a beautifully sad duet with Shins frontman James Mercer. She does save the best line – "For every open arm there's a cold shoulder" – for herself, but she doesn't overplay it. For all the heated emotions that underpin the songwriting here, Mann's preferred mode is more smolder than burn, her voice more a whisper than a scream. Unlike Pink or Tori, who are more than happy to bare their wounds loudly, Mann creates allure by holding back just a bit, creating a kind of knowing intimacy that invites the listener in on the often devastating jokes. In the break-up ballad "Soon Enough," she's almost matter-of-fact as she nonchalantly concedes, "Soon enough you can say we made it up/Just for fun I guess/To make a mess/‘cause what's more fun than other people's hell." She got a point there. And she's also got what might be the best album of her career.