Beginning with Whatever, Aimee Mann’s 1993 solo debut, the renowned Pop/Rock singer/songwriter has used melancholy as though it were another instrument in the studio. She’s never been afraid to admit that sadness is a palpable presence in her nine-album catalog.
But even with that consistent and pervasive moodiness threading through her material, Mann has an infectious way of investing those dark emotions with almost spritely melodies, creating a discernible tension between the messages within her songs and their upbeat delivery methods. She readily admits that she has long thought about doing an entire album’s worth of material where the musical atmosphere matches the downcast nature of the lyrics, but it wasn’t until she followed her last solo album, 2012’s Charmer, with a peppy 2014 Rock release from The Both, her full bore duo with Indie Rock icon Ted Leo, that she felt the time was right for a full album mope-a-thon.
“The Both was such a snappy Rock trio that I felt that side of me was definitely taken care of,” Mann says. “I wanted to do something that was completely different. I was in the mood for it and I was in the mood to stay in that mood. Sometimes you want to do a record that’s a potpourri and sometimes you want to do a record that’s all one thing.”
The resulting album, last year’s Mental Illness, was inspired by the emotional travails of a few of Mann’s close friends and subsequently translated into one of the most quietly powerful works in her discography. With a spare yet stellar backing band, a gently strummed acoustic guitar and the occasional swell of strings, Mann turned her friends’ low points into high art.
“In the past couple of years, I had a lot of people around me who were struggling with mental illness,” she says. “Bipolar or PTSD or pathological lying, some really crazy stuff, and I really wanted to write about it.”
Mann’s instincts have paid off. Mental Illness was recently nominated for a Best Folk Album Grammy. Given her long Pop/Rock résumé, which includes her stint as the voice and bass of ‘Til Tuesday in the ‘80s, one might expect her to be at least somewhat chagrined over being nominated in a “Folk” category. But she thinks it makes perfect sense.
“Honestly, if you look at the Pop categories, I definitely feel a lot closer to Folk,” Mann says. “I don’t feel like I have anything in common with Taylor Swift at this point. (That music’s) very heavily produced, lots of dance elements and it just doesn’t have anything to do with me. I did conceive this record (where) the major influences were kind of classic Folk — not Peter, Paul & Mary, but a little bit of the second wave, like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, very guitar-based. Sometimes it was only acoustic guitar. Inevitably, you wind up putting more instruments on than you intended, but that was the original intention, to keep it very stripped down.”
One of the great ironies surrounding Mann’s new album is that one of her most widely publicized new songs is pointedly about mental illness and yet does not appear on her album, Mental Illness. She contributed the gorgeous and poignant “Can’t You Tell” to the “30 Days, 30 Songs” campaign that protested the Trump presidency in song, but it arrived too late to make the project’s initial tracklist (it was added as the project expanded to its current “1,000 Days, 1,000 Songs”).
“I’m pretty sure we had already finished (Mental Illness),” Mann says. “I forgot that they’d asked me to write that song and (it) was like, ‘OK, deadline,’ and I was like, ‘Oh my God!’ So I wrote and recorded it in two days. There wasn’t any time to think about it, but I love that song. It’s a little hastily written — I would probably write a bridge for it (now) — but there’s something about it.”
“Can’t You Tell” was written from the perspective of Trump in the run-up to his election win, painting him as running to spite his doubters, but not actually wanting “the job.”
“It’s sad, if you think about it. Not that I’m not angry and outraged, but it’s all very pathetic,” Mann says. “There’s a lot of pathos in this scenario. It does have that flavor of tiptoeing around alcoholic dad, doesn’t it? Like, ‘What kind of mood is dad in? Has he started drinking already? Can I make it up to my room before he notices me and starts yelling?’ It’s interesting that he doesn’t drink because he is such an alcoholic parent; the volatile temper, playing different people in the family off each other.
“Did you read Fire and Fury? It paints a picture of him as explosive and angry and being a real shit stirrer, but yet there’s a side of him that’s a real people pleaser, and that’s a side that allows him to be manipulated by different factions in his life. And that’s not comforting either.”
With Mann’s complete reliance on balladry for Mental Illness, the setlists for her subsequent tours have been more sedate than her usual live presentation. As in the album itself, the impact of the show is contained within the songs. At the same time, she’s found a workaround for performing catalog songs in an acoustic setting.
“The show in general is quieter because we don’t have electric guitar,” she says. “I always include older stuff, it just depends on what seems to flow naturally, one from the other. There are songs we’re playing without electric guitar, but we have a brilliant keyboard player (Jamie Edwards) who can sound like he’s doing eight things at once, so we do manage to make it sound full but blended in with the new stuff.”
In addition to her current tour, Mann has a lot of irons in the fire, including work on two musicals — one based on her 2005 boxing-themed album The Forgotten Arm and the other a completely original production. She’s also toying with the idea of following up Mental Illness with something extremely similar, although her creative whims can turn on a dime.
“This last record was really satisfying, and I feel like having a Mental Illness Pt. II, because it’s a deep topic,” Mann says. “I think my great love is in quiet, sad, folky songs, but we’ll see when we get there. Maybe by that point I’ll be ready for another Thin Lizzy-inspired record.”
Aimee Mann performs Friday at Madison Theater. Tickets/more info: madisontheateronline.com.
This article appears in Jan 17-24, 2018.
