Aimee Mann, S+D

i like it quite a bit, my favorite of hers since lost in space.

I've been on the wagon for the most part since / Bachelor / but yeah, this one kind of hits the spot

https://www.facebook.com/TheSimpsons/videos/10154011704358697/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLg0J3HCGmM

the npr tiny desk concert was great, the background vocals are all over the place:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgYT7zB3w5M

Aimee interviewed about literary influences:

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/all-the-poets-musicians-on-writing-aimee-mann/

That was interesting, thanks

been digging on Bachelor No. 2 a lot recently. what a great record.

“Ghost world” is in my head all the time. The syncopation of “finals blew, I barely knew, my graduaaation speech”

There are so many great lines on it.

Such weirdly dated late '90s/early '00s musical tropes — specifically the way the guitars are strummed and drum beats played — in it too, but the songwriting stands up so well.

Always dug the Sgt Peppers trumpets on Calling It Quits also.

Case in point the heavily filtered drumming playing an indie take on The Funky Drummer Beat behind the lines "12th of June, a gibbous moon, was this the longest day?" around 2 minutes into Ghost World.

Brion gonna Brion

Hah. Though to be fair, the album credits five producers!

love that mid '90s-early '00s, Brion sound, shamelessly

Me too! I like Froom, but Brion comes off like Froom with perhaps fewer gewgaws. (I also love Jon Brion the performer, and also songwriter, which he does not seem to do that often anymore.)

Now you’re running round the parking lot til every lightning bug is caught. Punching some pin holes in the lid of a jar while we wait in the car.

happy 60th

I am scared literally any time a thread with a proper name of someone I like in it pops to life.

I saw somewhere yesterday that she was going to be 60 and I went through my now-normal routine of "how can that be/oh wait I'm old." Aimee has always been 10 years older than me, that just didn't used to sound so old.

Seriously. The last time I saw her perform more or less the same thing occurred to me. I'm definitely at the stage where I'm the age of or older than people I once thought of as old. And they're still old, except now I'm old, too!

Coincidentally, also the release day of Rush's "Hold Your Fire"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMSFqXGZ5TQ

now that i've met you
would you object to
never seeing each other again

Why hasn’t her cover of Avalanche been released yet?

It's out today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASjn1Z83g9c

Happy birthday!.

I'll be the first to admit I take her for granted, but she's great. Reading the comments on your (other) thread I've got to admit I never considered the/a Bryan Ferry comparison. She's certainly got the right cool and sense of craft, but there's always a heartbreak/ache lurking beneath the surface of her songs that someone like Ferry is too stylized or affected to allow.

Speaking of taking for granted, I used to think she was one of several like-minded Beatles etc. indebted singer-songwriters, but now that I think about it more it's probably my fault for not keeping up with her peers. Though as far as I know they've all retired or moved on to other things, at least as likely as them continuing on certain cult-y paths that I've missed. Jason Falkner, Joe Pernice, um ... Marshall Crenshaw? I'd love to hear her do a duo record with Neil Finn (who had a headstart in the biz but is just two years older than Mann).

Inspired by Alfred I've been re-listening to all her stuff, and it makes me feel conflicted, because it's all so good and ... all kind of sounds interchangeable. But not always in a bad way, just in tempo and feel and melody and instrumentation. But that's not bad, because the songs are all good!

always kinda thought that aimee mann would have been (more) amazing if she had been in a good band
(a better band than Til Tuesday)
in the mode of REM or i dunno, Wilco

Maybe if she’d joined Rush

boom

Goal was wide open.

and time stood still

I had no idea she had a podcast with Ted Leo. I can't wait to dive in. "The Art of Process with Aimee Mann and Ted Leo is the newest artistic collaboration from legendary singer-songwriters Aimee Mann and Ted Leo. Every other week, Aimee, Ted, and friends across the creative spectrum discuss the process of turning an idea into art."

https://maximumfun.org/podcasts/the-art-of-process-with-aimee-mann-and-ted-leo/

Ian Mackaye, Open Mike Eagle, Kim Gordon ...

If you're excited about that podcast, wait until you hear The Both!

That album was OK, I'm actually more excited about the podcast.

Don’t remember if I’ve said this before, but I remember seeing Mann at the height of my fandom for her & being utterly devastated at her lack of stage presence / charisma / “star quality”

I felt like she was the anti-Elvis.

Kinda like The Cars! I never really thought about commonalities between the two, but the craft, the deadpan, the midtempo slogs match up all sorts of ways. Both even headed to Boston to get their careers moving.

Was going to say, she could have written "Drive" and now I see she's covered it.

Good post. You're on a roll, bendy.

the anti-Elvis

Was she uncomfortable, ill-at-ease or just "too normal"? Are there any other artists you'd say the same about?

Michael J. Fox got no Elvis in him

And yet, she's always hanging with a bunch of Cali comedians, in videos, on stage, etc., so maybe she just likes playing the straight man?

Oh definitely. The most animated she gets is in those pre-recorded comedy videos. I'm totally fine with this though, she's always been "cool".

Christgau agrees iirc

idk… i saw her a bunch between idk 2005-2010? and she was always funny and charming and her band was always tight. maybe it helps that a few of those were her christmas show…

I see you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDmoMaj96JI

Apparently was set to tour with Steely Dan this summer but, according to Mann's post/comic strip, dropped because (what's left of) the Dan are/have dicks:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CbL2UESJxhD/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=a0e9598f-8b30-41d9-9d67-ff12c7ad0073

I'll always love this quote:

I’ve listened to Can’t Buy a Thrill a thousand times. It’s just a perfect record. Steely Dan have very complicated chord changes, it’s very modal. They also have a really harmonic sensibility that’s not like anybody else’s. The music breaks for long, long solos—and I hate jamming, I hate solos. But I guess making people play 20 solos and then putting them together really pays off, because all of them feel like melodic parts of the song. And there’s something to their music where you can tell that those guys are assholes, but but they also sound like they fucked up in a way that feels familiar.

All is forgiven if Donald just tells me what Brooklyn is about. https://t.co/5zUTzIhIjt

— Aimee Mann (@aimeemann) March 17, 2022

Maybe she was dropped from the tour after Steely Dan heard that she referred to them as assholes

Did she?

It's two quotes up, part of a Pitchfork interview