“Never judge an album by its cover.” I still swear by that. But,
\nwith Aimee Mann’s latest,
\nBachelor No. 2<\/i>, its hard not to: it’s so slim that I’ve lost
\nit three times in the past 3 weeks, it’s been in a sea of paperwork
\nand bills each time. The good news though:
\nBachelor No. 2<\/i> is so quirky and flat out good, you’re
\nwilling to kill a half hour to search your apartment for it.<\/p>\n
Mann, once passed on from label to label like a beer bong at a
\ngreek party, knows how to market herself. With the success of the
\nMagnolia<\/i> soundtrack, which featured mostly Mann’s tunes,
\nBachelor No. 2<\/i> has three of those gems on it. And they’re
\nclose to the back of the album, forcing you to listen to her new
\nmaterial while keeping you fixed as you wait for the familiar tunes
\nnear the end of the album.<\/p>\n
Mann’s voice is reminiscent of her peers, such as Lucinda
\nWilliams and even Margo Timmons of the Cowboy Junkies. And with the
\nhelp of Jon Brion (who orchestrated Fiona Apple’s majestic
\nWhen the Pawn<\/i>…) Pearl Jam guru Brendan O’Brien and her
\nbeau, Michael Penn, Mann is able to forge an original voice that’s
\nunmistakable, for most of the time.<\/p>\n
On tracks like “How Am I Different,” “Red Vines” and “It Takes
\nAll Kinds,” she veers dangerously close to sounding like a Prozac
\nspokesperson. But other tracks, such as the orchestrated “Calling
\nIt Quits,” the coolly playful “The Fall Of The World’s Own
\nOptimist” and “Satellite” give the album a much needed
\ncohesiveness.<\/p>\n
Lyrically, Mann veers from being flat out brilliant to a really
\ngood writer in an introductory to Poetry Class in college. In fact,
\nthe opening lines of “Ghost World” have been uttered by far too
\nmany students I know already. “Finals blew, I barely knew my
\ngraduation speech\/and with college out of reach\/if I can’t find a
\njob\u2026” Yes, good poetry does mean simplicity sometimes, but
\nthe overdramatic chorus just doesn’t gel with the plain, spoken
\naccount of the first part of the song.<\/p>\n
As original of a talent as Mann is,
\nBachelor No. 2<\/i> reaches greatness on certain occasions while
\nleaving other songs to float aimlessly in between. Maybe it was
\nMann’s stress with shopping the album around to a different label,
\nbut the album just doesn’t have the mournful, beautiful flow that
\nMagnolia<\/i> had that gave her a new life in the music world.
\nStill, her voice and playful arrangements keep you coming back to
\nBachelor No. 2<\/i> and it remains a frontrunner for “Best album
\nto listen to while you’re bummed” so far this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":25449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6181],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-36655","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-aimee-mann","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36655"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36655"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}