Aimee Mann – Concert Review

Australia had waited a very long time to see Aimee Mann performing live in concert. Too long. She is one of the great pop songwriters of the last couple of decades and although this status has not exactly been rewarded with a plethora of pop hits it has rewarded her with respect and an ardent following around the world.

The people that ‘get’ Aimee Mann, really get her – a good proportion of the audience that turned up to her concert at the Palais gave the impression of being familiar with just about every song she has ever recorded and they weren’t shy in displaying that knowledge by way of requests. It was like stumbling in to a meeting of a secret society. I regard myself as a long time and  solid fan of Aimee Mann’s work but I felt like a virtual ‘newbie’ amongst this crowd.

Aimee Mann was either delightfully spontaneous and random or surprisingly jerky and nervous. I’ve had both suggestions made to me since the concert and in reality the truth is probably half way between the two. It was a new audience for her and the fact that the Palais was noticeably less than full may have given her cause for concern. She did seem like she was feeling her way early in the show and her early interactions with the crowd did seem like slightly nervous attempts to break the ice.

She seemed to abandon the set list early in the show and play a combination of randomly chosen songs with those selected by the audience. This meant that songs from albums like Everything’s Different Now and Whatever were noticeable thin on the ground. The charming Amateur, That’s Just What You Are, Par For The Course were the only representatives from I’m With Stupid.

But the songs that were played were hardly disappointing. She extracted several songs from her Academy Award nominated soundtrack to the film Magnolia. Of these the duelling pianos of Momentum and  the intoxicating Build That Wall were  highlights. Her new album Smilers was also represented  – most notably by Freeway and 30 Today.

The rest of the set came from the albums Lost In Space, Bachelor No.2 and The Forgotten Arm (including the hypnotic Video) as well as a couple of B sides and rarities.

Of course the format of the tour did limit the choice of songs. Mann was joined by two musicians – both multi instrumentalists – Jamie Edwards and Jebin Bruni (who had featured on The Forgotten Arm).  While both are exquisitely talented and in conjunction with Mann herself, were able to cover a lot of musical bases quite brilliantly the three piece format probably eliminated some of the more buoyant, delectable pop-rock songs in Mann’s catalogue such as Fifty Years After The Fair, Lucky or Superball – all of which could have lightened up the overall balance of the set.

It comes down to personal taste really. My favourite element of Aimee Mann’s music is her ability to craft almost perfect pop melodies and deliver incisive and poignant lyrics in the context of such delightful confectionary. For others its her more melancholy and frankly ‘sad’ songs that weave a spell. There was more of the latter than the former but that didn’t prevent the concert from being satisfying.

An interesting contribution was the stripped back version of the Til Tuesday pop hit Voices Carry which deconstructed the song to its spooky essence.

I get the feeling that this is an artist for whom two concerts are never exactly alike. She has an exceptional catalogue and she prepared to delve into it and take some risks. And that surely is a good thing. Oh and it probably should be noted that her voice is just great. She wraps her vocals around these songs in a wonderful way and extracts every nuance from the music and the lyrics. Her singing is often taken for granted but it really is outstanding.

Hopefully it wont be another quarter of a century before she returns.