Herald rating: *****
(Superego Records)
Review: Russell Baillie
If you'd fallen under the spell of singer-songwriter Aimee Mann earlier in her haphazard career (see story above) then the year is turning out rather well.
There's already been her album of songs for the movie Magnolia and now, sharing a four of the film
songs, her long-delayed third solo album finally arrives - though it does take a bit of tracking down through import or the internet. It's worth the hunt.
If titles like The Fall of the World's Own Optimist suggest barbed Costello wordsmithery within, funnily enough that song is a co-write with the spectacled one.
Elsewhere, the 13 tracks exhibit Mann's own acerbic lyrical approach (at its best on the bittersweet anthems Deathly and Driving Sideways), with all given nicely detailed intimate arrangements which exhibiting various degrees of pop-classicism.
That's whether its shades of Bacharach (on Calling It Quits, Nothing is Good Enough, It Takes All Kinds), Beatles (How Am I Different?), or something breezily old-Californian (Red Vines, Ghost World).
Mann's songs here may not provoke in everyone an urge to do something like make a sprawling movie, as it apparently did with Magnolia director Paul Thomas Anderson.
But her mix of melodicism and lyrical pungency are something quite inspirational. A fine comeback and a great album.
