Aimee mann: corrosive historiographer of West Coast collapse
There’s something special about albums that nail it with their opening tracks and @#%&! Smilers reaches perfection immediately with Freeway’s tale of a character who’s “got a lot of money but can’t afford the freeway,” where every turn-off leads to old friends “who’ll sell you all the speed you want if you can take the blackmail.”
Mann has always dealt in cautionary fairy tales about the moral slough of modern LA but here her songs of urban crack-up and romantic ambuscades possess an eerier edge thanks to the addition of sickly Wurlitzers and clavinets to Mann’s warm, dark tones and melancholy MOR sound. Split between character studies of those who let the world drag them under and those who let it all fall away, …Smilers is a masterpiece from a songwriter who’s quietly chronicling the
blanched last days of a sunshine empire.
—Andrew Male, Mojo Magazine
Aimee Mann-@#%&! Smilers - sale priced CD-$13.99
Owner, founder, resident Mahler fanatic since 1975. Loves jazz, bluegrass, worldbeat, and old geezer blues rock by Canned Heat or Johnny Winter. Obsessed with 60’s and 70’s era John Lee Hooker. Don’t ask him about the Eagles.
