Aimee Mann has come a long way from her new wave hair days with ‘Til Tuesday and their monster 80s hit, "Voices Carry." Here in the 21st century you’ll find that while she’s a lot less angry, she more than makes up for it in sadness. The reviews for her new album (what exactly do you call it, by the way?) are overwhelmingly positive and why not? Her voice is both completely natural and unnervingly dispassionate, much like Karen Carpenter’s, the 70s vocalist she’s been compared to more than once in her solo career.
Anyone familiar with Mann’s deceptively lightweight sounds on "Bachelor No. 2" and "Lost in Space" will appreciate how the title @#%&*! Smilers is a sly wink at those who dare to question her never-ending parade of somber songs. On the most haunting of the tracks, "True Believer," you can’t help but wonder if emotional heartache is best served by detachment until it hits you that detachment IS the price you pay for a broken heart. My favorite verse goes: "really when you come into the room it’s not helping me"…that hits a little too close to how it feels when you’re trying to get over someone and you thought you’d never have to see them again, but then you do. Love’s really all just a complicated mess sometimes, isn’t it?
On another stand-out, "Looking for Nothing", Mann sings with swaggering indifference:
Oh I’m not looking for nothing
Just spend my money and go
I’m not looking for nothing
To put me in the rodeo
And on "31 Today," where the singer wonders what has happened to her life, the apathy continues with lines like "taking shelter in the black cocoon" and the more tell-tale "I pretended that I felt a spark." It may cross your mind that’s it’s just too bleak to listen to an album so jaded by someone so young, but the beauty and peace of Mann’s music is well worth soaking in the sorrow. The album closes on a relatively (and I stress relatively!) upbeat note with the slightly cute "Ballentines." It sounds a little Beatlesque – think "When I’m 64" – but even a faster beat can’t turn a frown upside down.
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