Aimee Mann’s soaring ballads are far from an 11-track helping of misery
Aimee Mann’s soaring ballads are far from an 11-track helping of misery.
Don’t go mistaking Aimee Mann’s Mental Illness for melancholy. Certainly, the familiar rich Karen Carpenter tones, the soaring strings and the relentless ballads all seem to add up to the American singer-songwriter’s ninth solo album playing up to critics’ catchcries that three decades of success have been built on relentless misery and metaphor – but these 11 tracks are far more than sob stories.
Mann is observationally acute, a direct and colourful storyteller who can turn an Instagrammed cat into a lesson on loneliness on opener Goose Snow Cone, perfectly detail a bar-room drunk’s spiralling despair in Philly Sinks and nail a celebrity journey from champagne hero to Patient Zero.
And when the world’s obsession with connectivity and privacy has sparked an epidemic of anxiety and endless self-help manuals, Mann’s genius is to cut through the lot with some candid self-examination. MENTAL ILLNESS, Aimee Mann (Southbound)
The idea of an indie supergroup is so compelling that when Midlake’s Eric Pulido harnessed together Band of Horses’ Ben Bridwell, Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos, Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle and Travis’ Fran Healy and started talking about a 21st-century version of the Traveling Wilburys, you could hear cyberspace yelping with pleasure.
Their first outing, though, unlike the Wilburys, who were born through happenstance and physical contact, has been put together through the social-media-driven style of cloud-based recording sessions. This, and the fact each lead man brought two personal tracks to the table, means Volume 1 doesn’t really break any ground – preferring instead to dig deep into the indie heartland. Highlights include Kapranos’ zany Hey Banana, Pulido’s Restart and Healy’s L.A. on My Mind, which borrow rollicking glam riffs, and the harmonies and horns of Bridwell’s Unlikely Force that have a distinctly Big Pink/ Bearsville vibe. Hints of Jeff Lynne production techniques through
Real Love show the boys might well hang on to that Wilburys comparison. VOLUME 1, BNQT (PIAS)
Mike Fabulous (aka Lord Echo) promises that Harmonies is the final instalment of his three-album exploration of clubland grooves constructed from the same ingredients (including Fat Freddy’s Drop’s Toby Laing, soul-child Mara TK, saxophonist Lucien Johnson and vocalist Lisa Tomlins) and a grab-bag of worldflavoured beats, skanks and shuffles.
But on the evidence of what’s taken the best part of three painful years to produce, that’s a shame, as the former Black Seeds dubsman has clearly now perfected that bridge between typical Kiwi shoes-off-inthe-grass, glass-of-sav reggae and the sort of high-sheen, smooth soul music that finds its way onto high-class DJ mixes.
While the tracks featuring Tomlins ( Low to the Street and I Love Music) and Laing ( Note from Home) rely on that unmistakable summer-evening horn section for their live feel, the real heart of the album lies in the more experimental tracks – usually featuring Mara TK’s vocals – that weave disco and 90s house ( The Sweetest Meditation swirls around a stunning vibraphone hook), African-influenced jazz rhythms ( Makossa No.3 is named after a Cameroonian music style) and unashamed bass-driven dub ( C90 Eternal would be at home on a crowded dance floor at 3am).
Because New Zealand has become a home to barbecue-friendly reggae, it’s easy to dismiss those who edge towards bass-heavy grooves as derivative, but Lord Echo has spent the best part of a decade investigating how to layer the history and influences behind soulful Caribbean music styles and arranging them with fresh, modern sounds. That Harmonies manages to be unashamedly enjoyable and a production masterpiece shows Fabulous is at the peak of his powers. HARMONIES, Lord Echo (Rhythmethod)