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Liner Notes

"@#%&*! Smilers" by Aimee Mann

I guess it's no surprise that the music industry aims its products and its marketing campaigns at teenagers and young adults. Dissecting the lyrics of one of today's pop hits is a lesson in the cynical art of recycling clichés. 

These days making music is just one arm of an artist's portfolio. There are clothes to sell, videos to make, choreographers to audition and an agent to hire for that burgeoning acting career.  

So, it is refreshing to hear a musician make music for adults, tackling complex emotions with wit, humor and intelligence. It's almost an offense to apologize for. 

Aimee Mann has had one of the more interesting careers in pop music. She started with the new wave band 'Til Tuesday, which had one monster hit (it's taken some time, but I finally forgive her for that song) sometime in the last century. 

After that, she disappeared for a while. Apparently she put the time to good use. Her first solo effort came in 1993. After a few more releases, she accurately read the tea leaves of the future of the music industry and started her own independent label, SuperEgo Records. It was a prescient move, and accorded her the freedom to make records on her own time.  

She is not prolific, there are usually several years between releases, but she makes up for it by releasing a quality product. Her newest, "@#%&*! Smilers," is her best, and is as perfect as a record can get. This becomes more and more apparent with repeated listening. 

There is not a single misstep anywhere in evidence, from the instrumentation to the production to the CD art. The art, by Gary Taxali, stands on its own as an artistic statement. It is as lovely, witty and laced with dark humor as the music.  

The instrumentation is surprisingly sparse, but it's used to stunning effect. Most of the songs are basically acoustic guitar, drums and bass, but to add texture and the appropriate mournful flourish, she sometimes uses strings, piano, keyboards and on one song a horn section.  

My favorite songs on any Mann record are always the saddest. This time she rolls out several heartbreakers, including "Phoenix" ("you love me like a dollar bill, you roll me up and trade me in") with tasteful strings layered atop the acoustic guitar and piano, "Borrowing Time" which uses a horn section, something novel for her, and my personal favorite, "Columbus Avenue," with its infectious and melancholy waltz-time melody. 

Mann has always been a keen observer of human behavior, wrapping her razor sharp lyrics around lovely melodies. Her music is as accessible as any pop music you can imagine, except for those pesky lyrics. Lines like, "once you were like a walking heart breaking in motion" require a little effort, and who needs the aggravation, really?  

To my mind, she is in the top tier of American songwriters, making music beyond genre, but that is every bit as satisfying as the best art of any medium. She'll never sell records in Kanye or Christina or Justinian amounts. Pop music for adults? It sounds like heresy. 

Aimee Mann will be appearing at The National Monday, September 8.





 

"Tinderbox" by Fred Eaglesmith

 

For a Canadian, Fred Eaglesmith plays some mighty fine American style music. He's been at it since his first record came out, back when Reagan was president … dark times indeed. He always played what critics call "heartland rock," songs about small towns, rodeo clowns, drifters, grifters and men on the run from both their women and themselves. 

In 1997, he finally found a way to match his quirky tales with a new, junkyard musical approach, and the result was his masterpiece, 1997's "Lipstick, Lies and Gasoline." He followed that with another stunner, "50 Odd Dollars."  

These two records were clearly a new direction for Eaglesmith. The sound was moody and spacious, a sort of gothic type folk music. Producer Scott Merritt played up these theatrics with plenty of reverb, what sounded like junkyard percussion and Eaglesmith's lazy mouth vocal delivery.  

His records started to approach the scrap-yard sound of Tom Waits only with lyrics and singing by Bruce Springsteen. I sometimes wondered if Eaglesmith knew how avant-garde his new approach was, how downtown, how authentically American.  

Like Woody Guthrie, Eaglesmith is innovative by being a true folk artist, knowing that sincerity is the truest form of artistic expression, even more so than intelligence, or form or functionality.  

Lyrically he never strays far from his portraits of those on the margins of society, lovable losers and not-so-lovable scrofulous types on the grift for whatever they can beg, borrow and steal from life. His newest record, "Tinderbox" (which he calls "gospel music for unbelievers") is full of dusty road ballads about searching for salvation, fancy gods and taking a drive with Satan with the ragtop down.  

The production is much like overhearing a revival meeting held deep in the woods, off dirt roads or lumber tracks and overseen by an itinerant preacher who might have a flask in his pocket next to his cross. You can help but want to sing along, as the songs have that old-timey folk song feel to them. They might have been around since the 1930s. 

It's spooky, soul-rattling stuff, affirming and yet acknowledging of human frailties in all their seedy splendor. For the most part, the record sounds like he's recruited a pick-up band of sinners bent on redemption. There is a lot of foot stomping, banjo picking and gang vocals, which lend the overall effect of Sunday night repentance after a Saturday night debauch. 

There is one track that Eaglesmith no doubt thought was experimental, "Worked Up Field." The track features a woman's spoken monologue underneath a broken-down gospel song. The woman's story might be interesting on its own, but here it's distracting, unartful and unnecessary. He needn't strive so hard for what he already achieves naturally.  

But the vast majority of the time, Eaglesmith just plays and sings, leading the faithful in working out their salvation however they can. It's a powerful record full of raw emotions, dark human needs and salvation unbeheld. To my mind, Fred Eaglesmith is one of the most interesting and original songwriters working today.

 

Want more great CD reviews? Check out last week's review of Sera Cahoone and Amelia.