Aimee Mann - Smilers
SuperEgo/Stomp
By Andrew P Street
There is a clatch of LA-based singer-songwriters who write beautiful, evocative, lyrically-adept records, with cascading Beatles-esque melodies and classic arrangements, who are broadly ignored by the rest of the world.
Folks like Jon Brion, Andy Prieboy, Grant Lee Phillips and Michael Penn - songwriting geniuses all - but perhaps the best known of these obscure toilers in the field of song is Aimee Mann. Forever known for two reasons - the worldwide 80s hit ‘Voices Carry' by her then-band ‘Til Tuesday.
Smilers is not a masterpiece - the closest she's come, in my opinion, would be 2002's glorious Lost In Space - but her gift for an effortlessly memorable song has diminished not a jot. Single ‘31 Today' takes a simple conceit and paints it in broad lyrical brushstokes, while the aforementioned Phillips weighs in on the co-written True Believer.
In fact, the only misstep is the over-simple operner Freeway, where Mann's usual gift for elegant simplicity edges into cliché. However, lovers of classic songwriter and ebony-black humour will, rightly, be Smilers.