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FEATURE
Man
O’ MANN: Indie
Icon Still Rocks On Her Own Terms by Tom Lounges
That belief would be
way off base, for the Mann this writer encounters is upbeat to the point
of being almost “perky.”
“I guess I can
understand why people would think I’m this depressed person,” she
sighs, “because I do write a fair amount of pretty dark material and
can sometimes come off pretty heavy emotionally.”
Add to that her
unsolicited role as an indie music icon for the way the former
chart-topping pop singer of Til Tuesday (“Voices
Carry”), dared to tell the business suits who run the record
industry where to get off. Then
in spite of them, she carved out a very successful career on her own
terms with her own record label.
“There were
certainly a lot of bumps in the road for a while there, but I think
we’re doing okay now,” she said of her latest solo album -- Lost
In Space -- and the Super-Ego Records imprint she co-founded with
her former Til Tuesday cohort, Michael Hausman.
“It can be an
embittering experience,” she said of being a major label artist who
gets swept under the carpet as she did while signed with both Epic and
Geffen/Imago during the 1990s. “But
by the same token, it is very rewarding and exciting to take your music
back and take your career back and tell them all to go to hell.
You do what you have to do to get your music out there into the
world for people to hear it in a way that makes sense to you.
It’s a lot harder to do it all yourself, but when you look on
the charts or turn on the radio and hear a song of yours, it’s a lot
more gratifying to know you did it yourself.”
Her first solo CD with
Super Ego was 2000’s Bachelor
No. 2, initially just sold at live shows and via her web site, it
has since been made available to retail stores.
Taking two years of
her life to complete, Lost In Space, has proven to be worth the wait and
worth the extra time Mann gave it.
The CD became one of the highest charting releases on
Billboard’s “Top Internet Album Sales” chart the week it was released and is
doing quite well in brick and mortar stores as well, thanks to
Super-Ego’s new distribution deal with the RED.
Musically, Mann is in
top form on this 11-song set, which explores the human psyche and is
filled with lyrics about obsessions and addictions.
Yet the set has an overall commercial
flavor, while keeping Mann’s rootsy, cult-ish reputation intact.
That she can balance
between both worlds should come as no surprise considering that Mann has
remained an icon of integrity even though she earned numerous award
nominations for her work on the soundtrack to Paul Thomas Anderson’s
1999 film favorite, “Magnolia,”
which featured eight Mann songs. In
the case of a lesser artist, fans would
have shouted -- “Sell Out!”
Mann’s dedication
and fortitude to her music is unquestionable, given that she balanced
her red carpet accomplishments with a bare-bones unplugged tour dubbed
as “Acoustic
Vaudeville,” sharing the stage with her musician husband,
Michael Penn.
Other artists might
have exploited the high profile an Oscar and Grammy nod gives to less
noble and less sincere endeavors.
And who could dare to
throw stones at the person who co-founded the pro-indie music coalition
–– United Musicians –– with her hubby, Bob Mould and Pete
Droge. “It’s a
collective for artists who have left the major labels,” she explained,
adding that all artists under the organizational umbrella of U.M. share
resources. This current tour
finds Mann fronting a full electric band and playing songs that have
inhabited her world from the early Til Tuesday era through to those that
have been the most recent to spring from her creative pen.
Given the solid body of work that fills her ever expanding
songbook, it seems almost hard to fathom that Mann did not start her
musical journey until into her college years.
“I guess I was bit
of a late bloomer,” Mann concluded, “but once things started I knew
in my heart and soul that music is what I wanted to do with my life.”
And what she’s doing
with her life is music to our ears!
Aimee Mann performs on Aug. 8
@ Navy Pier’s Skyline Stage.
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Aimee
Mann’s stark, bleak and thought-provoking songs might lead one to
believe that the Grammy, Oscar and Golden Globe-nominated
singer/songwriter is coping with the “tortured artist” syndrome.