Virginia-born, Los
Angeles-based Aimee Mann remains one of the most inspired singers and
songwriters on the current pop scene, and I'm not saying that just because
she has taken up boxing and appears to be ready to go 10 rounds with Hilary
Swank.
The 45-year-old
artist has created a sexy but self-empowered and extremely literary body of
songs on five solo albums since 1993, and she has benefitted in the past
from collaborating with artists in other mediums: Witness Mann's brilliant
contributions to the soundtrack for her fan Paul Thomas Anderson's 1999 film
"Magnolia."
Unfortunately, her
latest release, "The Forgotten Arm," sinks under the weight of its
pretensions. Mann describes the 12-track disc as an extended story-song, or
a novel in musical form, and it follows two losers -- a drug-addicted boxer
and Vietnam vet and his small-town girlfriend -- as they cross the country
in search of a better life but wind up losing everything in Vegas.
There's nothing
inherently wrong with the idea of a concept album, and you'd have thought
that if anyone could pull off a good one, it would have been Mann. But the
problems start with the plot, which sounds like a Lifetime Channel
combination of "Leaving Las Vegas" and "Rebel Without a Cause"; continue
with the fact that Mann has nothing particularly interesting to say about
these characters, and are made worse by the monotonous nature of many of her
new melodies.
Saturday night at
Skyline Stage on Navy Pier, Mann wisely avoided the "artist with a new
concept album" cliche of presenting "The Forgotten Arm" in its entirety.
Instead, she sprinkled songs such as "Going Through the Motions" and "Little
Bombs" throughout her 75-minute set. But the new material didn't benefit
from being interspersed with older winners such as "Humpty Dumpty" or
"Driving Sideways" any more than it would have if she'd rendered it en
masse.
Since the old days
when she avoided talking onstage, Mann has developed into a witty and
winning performer. She introduced a sampling of tunes from "Magnolia" with a
crack that she experienced a career high "losing an Oscar to Phil Collins
and a cartoon monkey love song" ("You'll Be in My Heart" from 1999's
"Tarzan"). But even she seemed unenthused whenever she returned to "The
Forgotten Arm" with a hackneyed, "Our story continues ..." introduction.
Mann is such a
singular talent that she is incapable of delivering a completely bad show;
it's just that I've seen her give much stronger ones in the past. And
Saturday's gig did have the saving grace of her inventive and hard-driving
five-piece band: As the former leader of the New Wave group 'Til Tuesday,
Mann has never forsaken her rock 'n' roll roots, consistently choosing
musicians who push her, and this is a lesson many other singer-songwriters
(including former hometown heroine Liz Phair) should learn.
Opening for Mann were
three of the five members of the Minneapolis pop band the Honeydogs, whom
the headliner credited -- or blamed, as the case may be -- with inspiring
the story-song structure of her latest album via their 2004 concept effort,
"10,000 Years."
Alas, that disc is
even less successful than "The Forgotten Arm," and minus their rhythm
section at Navy Pier, Honeydogs leader Adam Levy and his bandmates were
simply insufferable, entirely too eclectic for their own good, and not
nearly the groundbreaking songwriters they seem to think they are.
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