@#%&* SMILERS

"I've always been fascinated with eccentric personalities," says Los Angeles singer songwriter Aimee Mann. On Smilers, her seventh solo CD, Mann presents thirteen exquisitely-crafted new songs about the inner life of people living far from the bright lights of success or fame. Some of them are wanderers searching for meaning on the road, others look for it in a shot glass or by losing themselves in the blue trance of a tv set, and still others believe their deliverance will come through money. From the punch drunk characters haunting the twilight world of a dusty downtown boxing gym, to a onetime financial big shot who's returned home after taking a tumble, Mann paints spare, vivid portraits of people who seem to always wind up with the smallest slice of American pie. The songs are soulful, empathetic and somehow ultimately hopeful and optimistic. Says Mann; "When I write about them -- the narcissists, performers, eccentrics, know-it-alls - it helps me recognize some truths about the world and about myself."

       The title Smilers gets its name from a phrase Mann has long used to humorously lampoon the unrelentingly happy, shiny, smiley-faced pop culture that surrounds us all today. "I read an article that said that across all cultures, the single thing that people respond to most is a smiling cartoon face," says Mann. "A friend of mine and I used to laugh at how there's always somebody in an office or on the street who smiles all the time and is the first one to say, 'hey, smile!'  I get that all the time from people who say 'why can't you be more smiley? So we jokingly nicknamed them @#%&! Smilers. You can provide your own curse word there. I think everybody knows someone like that." The record goes behind the smiles to get at something a little deeper and a little more revealing. Smilers reaffirms Mann's place as one of pop music's most distinctive songwriters, with an exceptional talent for beautiful melodies and insightful lyrics that go beyond platitudes.

   Smilers took shape during the last two years as Mann was releasing her concept album, The Forgotten Arm (2005) and then her seasonal CD Another Drifter in the Snow (2006). "After doing a concept album I wanted to go back and just do a set of songs that were not linked quite so tightly," she says. "I didn't have a specific vision I was after so I kept writing and after a while the album began to take on its own sound." She approached the making of the record almost like a novelist or journalist approaches a story, finding characters, learning what makes them tick, and writing and rewriting until something clear begins to emerge. Many of the songs underwent further evolution in rehearsals in 2007 as she and producer Paul Bryan settled on a sound that they liked.

Where previous Mann albums have frequently tended toward a lonesome, spacious sound, Smilers sounds fuller and larger, with uncommon touches. “We tried not to echo any previous albums…for this one we wanted to use a different palate, thus replacing electric guitars with distorted Wurlitzers, Clavinets, and analog synthesizers. We wanted the rhythm section to sound full and organic with detailed, interwoven keyboards on top. We also knew we wanted to have real string sections and horn arrangements for select songs.” The rich arrangements provide a wonderfully captivating counterpoint to the haunting, plainspoken poetry of Mann's lyrics. For Smilers, she and Bryan preferred to refine their ideas in rehearsals and then keep the studio work brief to unleash a certain spontaneity, keeping takes of each song to one or two apiece. "It keeps the music fresh. It makes it much more of a real musical experience," says Mann. "It makes it a little closer to something live and real."

   Smilers also reflects a unique creative phase in Mann's career. After the runaway success of The Magnolia Soundtrack, which received nominations for an Oscar, a Golden Globe and a Grammy, Mann's music and career took a new direction. "Magnolia got me focused on the idea of music and movies in a different way," she explains. "I started looking at songwriting from a different angle. Forgotten Arm I wrote as a sort of soundtrack to an imaginary movie. It’s a great way of looking at songwriting. It gets me out of my own head and into the head of another character.  I don't have to write about myself all the time."  That feeling was liberating, and endows much of Manns' new work with a vivid, almost visual story-telling sense that makes her music jump off the CD.

  Smilers opens with "Freeway," an almost Cars-esque synth-pop song that was inspired by a drug-addicted friend who had came to LA in hopes of getting clean and making a break with the past. The track "Stranger into Starman” was spurred by an afternoon crossword puzzle and the memory of an Anne Sexton poem that made an anagram out of the word "rats" -- morphing it into  "stars." As Mann describes it, "it’s about glorifying people who don't deserve the glory."  The song "Looking for Nothing," as Mann explains, was inspired by a couple of ex-boxers at her gym. The song is about "that moment in life where you get older and stop chasing after that thing you always thought would make you happy. It’s when you let go of the trapeze bar and nobody's caught you yet and you don't know if you're going to hit the ground."

 "Phoenix" delves into love's impotence in the face of the world, and the aftermath of a relationship gone sour: "Its hard to know when to cut and run," the character sings; "You balance heartache with your fun."  The song "Borrowing Time" plays out like a vaguely menacing Snow White-style fairy tale; "The needle has pricked her little finger/She wants the beautiful child the blood will bring her," but it has echoes of a cautionary tale that could apply to a modern innocent's path in Hollywood. "31 Today" says Mann, is slightly autobiographical, recalling the feeling of insecurity she had as a young artist living in Boston. “The song captures the anxiety of getting older and feeling that you really should have it together more than you do.” As her character sings: "Drinking Guinness in the afternoon/taking shelter in the black cocoon/I thought my life would be different somehow/I thought my life would be better by now."

 "The Great Beyond" looks at the outdoors and the wilderness not as an adventure but as a dark refuge from society. The track "Columbus Avenue," a reference to the San Francisco street, plumbs the tale of the sad ambition of an addict, asking "What is Columbus Avenue to you now?/A place where you failed to make your story  go over?/A place where you bailed and let the bottom drag you under?" And "Little Tornado" and Ballantines" (named after the classic American beer) are portraits of troubled personalities and the chaos and healing they can provoke. "Medicine Wheel" is based on a poem written by Mann's sister, the painter and artist Gretchen Seichrist.

Another song on Smilers, "True Believer," was written with Grant Lee Phillips, a Cafe Largo pal and maverick singer songwriter who toured with Mann for Another Drifter in the Snow. Says Mann, "I had some music and a sketch idea for a chorus for this song and Grant came in with this wonderful idea of how to turn the song into a ghost story."

Longtime Mann fans will find that Smilers has plenty of the tunefulness they have come to expect from her albums. New fans will be struck by the power of her spare language. Smilers is a welcome return of unparalleled songcraft.

Aimee's Bio

From her work in the 80’s with MTV favorite Til Tuesday through her acclaimed solo discs “Whatever” and “I’m With Stupid” in the 90s, Aimee Mann has always been at the forefront of contemporary songwriters. The close of the millennium brought her greatest success, with the simultaneous releases of Bachelor No. 2 and the soundtrack to the film Magnolia, which garnered nominations for an Oscar, a Golden Globe and three Grammys. After a decade in which her music often took a backseat to corporate mergers and contractual obligations, the message was clear: Aimee Mann is here to stay.

From “Voices Carry” to the Oscar-nominated “Save Me,” Mann has always been known for her clever, literate, and dryly witty takes on emotional sabotage and self-destruction. Though happily married to Michael Penn (with whom she has toured extensively in a double-billed “Acoustic Vaudeville”), her fascination continues with “the freaks who could never love anyone.” With a songcraft often compared with the Beatles and Badfinger, Mann frequently pairs the bleakest of poetry with soaring, infectious melodies.

Mann continued her solo career with the 2002 release of Lost in Space the second release on SuperEgo Records, the label she co-founded with manager and former Til Tuesday bandmate Michael Hausmann. The opportunity to release her own CD’s independently allowed Mann the power to soar creatively. With Lost in Space Mann produced an album of songs that, like a book of stories or a novel, work collectively to become something more than the sum of the individual parts. “There were aspects of liberation that hadn’t even occurred to me. I became more creative all-around, in terms of marketing and promoting the record as well as writing and recording.” To that end, Mann commissioned graphic-novelist Seth to create a forty-page booklet that accompanied the disc version of Lost In Space.

Lost in Space Special Edition followed in 2003, featuring a second disc containing six live recordings, as well two B-sides and two previously unreleased songs. In  November 2004 Aimee released her first live album and DVD with Live at St. Ann’s Warehouse recorded at a series of July 2004 shows in Brooklyn.

In 2006 Mann released what might be considered her most daring album yet with the critically acclaimed The Forgotten Arm. In a natural progression of her literary writing, the album is a concept album that follows the story of two lovers who meet at the Virginia State Fair. The main character is a boxer who is sent off to fight in the Viet Nam war, the CD explores the themes of love, war, drugs and ultimately recovery and redemption.

The Forgotten Arm is, like so much of Aimee Mann’s music, really about the inexorable pull of co-dependency in human relationships. “The King of the Jailhouse / and the Queen of the Road,” Aimee Mann sings on one song, “think sharing the burden will lighten the load / so they pack up their troubles in an old Cadillac / that's her in the mirror, asleep in the back.”

Aimee Mann also released a Christmas album titled One More Drifter In The Snow. "I wanted to do a Christmas record that reflected the whole range of emotions that people have around Christmas." Aimee said, "I thought a lot about the feeling I had about Christmas as a kid, the almost spooky beauty and mystery that the holiday has, and wanted to do something that echoed that musically." Harkening back to the classic Christmas albums of the 40’s & 50’s the CD features several classic songs and some lesser-known but no-less-classic songs: the Jimmy Webb song "Whatever Happened to Christmas," which opens the record; "Christmastime" written by Michael Penn; the brilliant "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" from the Dr. Seuss cartoon "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," featuring Grant Lee Phillips' inspired narration; and an original song, co-written with producer Paul Bryan, "Calling On Mary."
In conjunction with the holiday inspired album Ms. Mann has also launched an annual sell-out Christmas tour, incorporating various comedic hosts and fellow musicians who vary from town to town. This year’s tour included host Paul F. Thompkins and guest appearances from Jackson Brown, Nellie McKay, Ben Lee, Ben Gibbard, Patrick Park, Sean Hayes, Chuck Prophet, Josh Ritter, Joe Henry, Grant Lee Phillips, members of the Decemberists and Morgan Murphy.