Crash and Burn (Whatever - Aimee Mann)

Member Name: greenierexyboy

Product:	Whatever - Aimee Mann
Date:	19/10/09 (96 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Intensely tuneful, lyrically supreme

Disadvantages: None. No, really

There's nothing that sweeps away the general vibe of 'peace on Earth, good will to all men' quite as effectively as discovering that the best selling album by a female solo artist in history is 'Come On Over' by Shania Twain.


**Man, I Feel Like A Woman. A Cloth-Eared Woman, At That**

I'll allow you to drink that in for a second. Yes, THAT Shania Twain.

If you're the sort of person who actually bought that record...stop reading now. I'll be dealing with music, and that's obviously a scary concept for you.

If you're wondering what sort of person WOULD buy such a smorgasbord of hackery and pap, allow me to introduce my former financial director, Rob. Rob, bless him, can always be relied upon to provide limitless ammunition for mockery (tearing a hamstring by gently backheeling a football, rugby tackling a small French child in a 'balance-lossage-on-skis' moment, describing any woman who meets with his approval as 'top quality!' in his avuncular Kray Twins accent). And could also be relied upon to announce his arrival at the office with his BMW's stereo on full blast, all the windows open and M People's 'Search For The Hero' radiating from the epicentre at a terrifying 760 miles an hour.
And, of course, Rob liked Shania. And his razor-sharp critical facilities can be best summed up by this exchange from the summer of '99.

Rob: 'Are you seriously telling me you don't like Shania Twain, Pete?'
Me: 'Rob, does anything you know about me suggest for one moment that I would? Her songs are ghastly...why the hell do you like her?'
Rob: 'Well...you'd give her one, wouldn't you!?'
Me: 'Ah, how could I have been so foolish? I never noticed the sticker that said 'buy this CD and the artiste promises to sleep with you.''

It doesn't have to be that way...


**That Don't Impress Me Much. Not Initially, Anyway**

If we go back still further, into the 80s, we arrive at a time of OTT production values and hilarious hair, of which the first album by Boston new wave band 'Til Tuesday was a fine example. Despite containing an American top ten single with its title track 'Voices Carry' , the rest of its payload of overwrought and overproduced songs (it's never encouraging to have tracks named 'Love In A Vacuum' or 'Don't Watch Me Bleed') seemed as nothing next to singer/bassist Aimee Mann's second-only-to-him-out-of-A-Flock-Of-Seagulls topiary. (Oh, and the fact that the single was allegedly about Mann's relationship with the band's drummer, one of a legion of musicians that she's romantically entangled with down the years). With that in mind, surely they'd never be anything more than a footnote to the era of Miami Vice, the huge gated drum sound, and men thinking snoods were fashionable?

And indeed, they were. But not before something strange occurred. The second album had Mann's hair looking even more enormous on the front, but as she asserted more creative control, she suddenly became patchily good at the ole songwriting lark. Obviously, with the album being better, it sold less: that's how the record business works. And the final 'Til Tuesday album is the ultimate demonstration of this fact: in a fashion scarcely believable to anyone who'd gnashed their teeth through their debut, 'Everything's Different Now' is a stone-cold lost classic of the decade...like 80s Fleetwood Mac, if they'd been any good. Of course, the record company were clueless as to how to promote it, nobody bought it, band disintegrates, record company gets on back of allegedly troublesome artist and asks her to co-write with that horrendous Diane Warren woman who did stuff like that Turn Back Time rubbish for Cher...it's a sad old tale, and one that would recur in various guises throughout Mann's career. Off she went, ostensibly into the wilderness.

In reality, she was biding her time. By 1993, she was free of the manacles of 'Til Tuesday's record contract, had bobbed her hair just like Bernice in the short story, and had recorded a solo album, paying for it herself and shopping it around record companies. The record was produced by Jon Brion, another musician-turned-beau-turned-ex-beau, and kept the fabulous tunes of the last 'Til Tuesday album whilst welding it to a different musical palette: proper instruments and proper playing, magnificent vocal harmonies and arrangements, and a veritable riot of antique keyboards. It didn't take long for her to get picked up, and with a striking, atypical look ('beaky, intellectual-looking eaglet' according to the 6'1 Mann) and an album that critics were having kittens about, surely nothing could go wrong? Surely...?


**Ka-ching...Or Maybe Not**

1) I Should've Known - We kick of with some inauspicious noodling, as a drummer gets a feel for his kit and guitarists check their tuning. One might worry that the button marked 'Jazz Odyssey' has been pushed by mistake, but then it gradually lurches into focus in the form of a humungous 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door' riff. When Mann's voice turns up, it's declamatory bordering on shrill, as she dissects the end of a relationship with laser-guided precision. It's a break-up song. Get used to it. When the chorus comes around Mann dials back the vocal volume but it's a mile wide anyway, and that's as nothing next to the riot of guitars, pump organ, chamberlain and mellotron that constitutes the breakdown bit at the end. Even if it IS a slight red herring (nothing else on the record rocks as hard), it's still one of the greatest opening tracks in the history of recorded sound.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=0P-8P5fevuY


2) Fifty Years After the Fair - with session legend Jim Keltner on drums and Byrds legend Roger McGuinn providing his inimitable 12-string guitar and backing vocals, Mann proceeds to provide the greatest Bangles song that the Bangles never did. (Some would have it that I know a bit about the Bangles, so my opinion holds weight). This is most definitely a good thing: an utterly irresistible dark pop song, almost insanely tuneful and harmony-encrusted as the singer confronts her belief that all one's good expectations of life and relationships are doomed to be shot down in flames...and having thoroughly explored the arguments, decides she was right all along.

3) 4th of July -
'Today's the 4th of July, another June has gone by,
And as they light up our town I just think what a waste of gunpowder and sky...'

Having asserted a worrying degree of mastery over the rocker and the pop song, here Mann completes the set with 'the ballad'. Our heroine sits alone in her flat, watching the Independence Day fireworks out of the window, and ponders the detritus of her relationship. With a vocal displaying the restraint you'd associate with the truly bereft (take note, Mariah and Celine), the most stripped-down arrangement on the album (largely acoustic guitar and a background wash of mellotron) and an utter heartbreaker of a lyric that some bloke called Elvis Costello reckoned was the finest he'd heard in years...crumbs, if the whole album were as good as the first three songs it'd be the greatest ever made.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3S7HAvibdvc

4) Could've Been Anyone - Of course, the album can't maintain the standards of that opening salvo, and so now we sink from greatness to 'rather good'ness. An uptempo jangling pop-rock song, feverishly dissecting another failed relationship: one does have to wonder if potential paramours were ever put off by the high probability that their personal failings would be laid bare on record at some point. Maybe they took the sanguine viewpoint that 'I'll be immortalised on CD as an abject tosser for all eternity, but at least it'll be to a cracking tune.'

5) Put Me On Top - Now, Ms Mann's output has another string to it: as well as 'the ones that are blatantly obviously about break-ups', there's the 'ones that could be about her troubles with record companies...but could equally be about break-ups too. Damn her and her talent for allegory.' This is the latter. Hell, with a title like that it could be about sex instead/too. A mature AOR song, the type which you could imagine Alanis Morrissette singing if she could indeed sing, or write. Or understand the concept of irony.

6) Stupid Thing - 'Oh you stupid thing...speaking of course as your dear departed...'

An interesting subset of the 'breakup ones' are 'the ones about Jules Shear'. Mr Shear (who wrote the Bangles song 'If She Knew What She Wants') and Ms Mann were an item during most of the 'Til Tuesday years, and most of that band's final album talks about little other than the demise of their relationship. And this ballad is another one, and the temptation to say 'for crying out loud woman, just let it go will you?' should be tempered by how utterly gorgeous it is: as one critic put it, 'to inspire so many great songs, this man must be a mountain of charisma. Or mustard in the sack.'
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=VKXsm60PNcs


7) Say Anything - A far more urgent, uptempo-but-downbeat-and-viciously-accusatory sort of break-up song. (I know I'm making something of a joke out of this recurring theme, but at least on this record they are executed superbly, and it's no mean feat that the female side of such matters is relentlessly examined without alienating the male population). Jon Brion (who wrote the music, co-writing the lyrics with Mann) betrays his muso tendencies with a number of blazing guitar solos, but still remembers to turn in an excellent, hummable rock ditty.

8) Jacob Marley's Chain - Now the album diverts into slightly more arcane territory for a couple of songs, commencing with this eccentric little baroque waltz-cum-march. We start with a simple picked acoustic guitar, gradually sliding in cymbals and bass, before climaxing as a riot of antique instrumentation (chamberlain, pump organ, even kazoo) and big, thumping military drums. This time La Mann concerns herself with more general human misery, the Chain of the title being an allegory for the little things that went wrong in your life that you have to keep dragging along with you. Or, more pithily:

'Well, I had a little metaphor to state my case,
It encompassed the condition of the human race,
But to my dismay it left without a trace,
Except for the sound of Jacob Marley's chain.'

9) Mr Harris - And in what must have been quite a strain for Mann as a songwriter, here we have a blissfully straight and optimistic love song, which might sound frightfully clichéd but for the fact that the object of her affections is approximately 937 years of age. Yes, we're talking a love song to a (much) older man, who 'looks like Jimmy Stewart in his younger days'. Well, I suppose it could have been 'runs a chain of lapdancing establishments named after himself', so one should be careful before one disapproves. In execution, it's a lovely orchestrated ballad with strings, piano and oboe.

10) I Could Hurt You Now - And now, another slice of pop-rock declamatory accusation: the girl can't help it. The formula continues to be subverted by Jon Brion's cornucopia of antique keyboards: 'conventional' guitar pop with a constant, marginally unbalancing background of little tunes and noise, erupting from unexpected speaker angles, as if constructed by a man who'd only just discovered the concept of stereo...it's great stuff. Listen sonny boy, you just don't get it, do you?

11) I Know There's A Word - Mann kicks back into acoustic strumming mode again, as she searches for the happiness that would be so certainly be hers if it weren't for all those useless men and greedy record companies who don't understand what she does. Obviously this isn't a particularly jolly ballad, but it has a lovely string arrangement courtesy of Jon Brion: small wonder that he'd be one of Hollywood's most sought-after soundtrack guys within a few years.

12) I've Had It - The album finishes with two absolutely magnificent songs: first up is this lovely, almost Simon & Garfunkel-esque exploration of the death throes of 'Til Tuesday. Largely finger-picked on acoustic guitar, but with another fabulously low-key-but-complex arrangement of outré percussion, more ancient keyboards and woodwinds, this manages the fearsome trick of being downbeat but simultaneously uplifting: maybe we should all appreciate the moment we're in, because there's always the chance that this IS it, and to expect more would be greedy.

13) Way Back When - The final song is an excellent distillation of what makes this record special: Mann's welcoming, conversational voice and wonderful lyrics are welded to a great tune and a gloriously eccentric Brion arrangement: with a toy piano holding centre stage over (deep breath) drums, bass, two electric guitars, two acoustic guitars, standard piano, optigan, hammond organ, marimba, two sets of pipes and a trombone...you really have no idea what this song sounds like, do you? Well, you could easily imagine it playing in a Wild West saloon, if that helps...especially the outrageously hammy tack piano solo at the end. Utterly incongrous, totally brilliant. You really should buy this record, y'know.


**From This Moment On**

Of course, it did all go wrong. Mann's record company, Imago, went bust, leaving her with a splendid album and no promotion budget. With the laudable attitude of believing that a wall falls down if you bang your head against it for long enough, she kept going, and next up delivered the not quite as good (but still pretty good) 'I'm With Stupid' in 1995, which may be the only album in history to feature a song about the late Tony Banks MP. Critics raved, hardly anybody bought, and her new record label Geffen started rattling the sabre. Her next album was rejected for 'not featuring any hit singles' (a fact which didn't put off director Paul Thomas Anderson, who used the songs to inspire his endless movie 'Magnolia'. You know, the one with the shower of frogs and Tom Cruise playing the nasty self-help guru), so after a protracted struggle Mann bought the rights back from label and released it herself. A sage move: 'Bachelor No. 2' (released in 2000, recorded earlier) might even be better than 'Whatever' to some ears. From hereon in Mann released all her albums under her own SuperEgo imprint, netting much the same sales levels as she did on the majors but, owning all the rights herself, doing far better financially out of it.

PT Anderson isn't the only person in the visual media to have been impressed. Mann and her band featured in Buffy The Vampire Slayer playing a couple of songs in The Bronze and becoming the only musical guest ever to get a speaking part: 'Man, I hate playing vampire towns.' She also played a toe-sacrificing nihilist in the Coen Brothers' immortal stoner classic The Big Lebowski, as well as cropping up in an episode of The West Wing. And she met singer-songwriter Michael Penn, a man with similar record industry woes behind him. They became part of a loose group of musicians and other performance artists coalescing around the Largo nightclub in LA, which begat a show named 'Acoustic Vaudeville' that Mann and Penn have occasionally toured.

(The thing about this superb show is that Mann and Penn play upon their reputations as peerless purveyors of misery by having stand-ups do their 'between-song banter'. Watching the pair of them cringe and wet themselves laughing as the award-winning Patton Oswalt mercilessly mocked them from the side of the stage (apparently Mann should be ashamed that her Magnolia song 'Save Me' failed to prevent Phil Collins 'and his monkey love song' from winning an Oscar) is one of my favourite in-concert memories).

Mann and Penn married in 1998, and it's tempting to see this as artistically (as well as personally) significant for her: all happy and coupled up, she no longer had the vast seam of relationship angst to mine from. Things were ok for a while: her next album, 2002's 'Lost In Space' was as lyrically bleak as ever (and sonically unusually sombre for Mann) but still remembered to contain a few quite magnificent songs. But a bit of a rot set in with 'The Forgotten Arm' in 2005: a concept (eeek!) album about two fractured lovers on a roadtrip, was quite impressive as a continuity exercise but somewhat lacking in memorable numbers. Mann continues to wander the same midtempo '70s Elton John' territory on this year's '@#%&*! Smilers' (you can guess what the '@#%&*!' stands for): it's a bit better, but still way short of her highpoints.


**You're Still The One. Because One Is The Loneliest Number That You'll Ever Do**

But let's forgive her: one shouldn't expect one's favoured artistes to have to endure the heart of darkness purely for our gratification. She's earned her cult status with a fantastic back catalogue, and in a fairer world it would have earned her a bit more material reward too. One does wonder if she'd want it, though.

Still, those of us who like the idea of a meritocracy believe the world would be a better place if Aimee Mann was selling 34 millions copies of an album, and Shania Twain was having her toes lopped off.


(Originally on Ciao)

Summary: An absolute masterclass in the art of singer-songwriting