ACL Program - Aimee Mann
I attended an Austin City Limits taping Tuesday night with Aimee Mann. All of us old-timers remember her as the lead singer for ‘Til Tuesday in the 80s. I, like a lot of people, became a big fan after the work that she did for the Magnolia soundtrack. Coincidentally, I happened to catch her acting turn as the female nihilist in Big Lebowski over the weekend on cable, but I digress.
She recently released a new album, @#%&*! Smilers, and played several tracks from it. Paul Bryan, who produced, also played bass and sang backup. In addition to Bryan, she had two keyboard players and a drummer. The guy on stage left who played piano and Hammond was wearing a Mean Eyed Cat t-shirt. I’m not sure how many if any of the backing band were local. There’s a heavy amount of keyboards and synthesizers in the new album and in the numbers she chose for the show. She had an acoustic guitar throughout the performance.
She seemed a bit stiff at the beginning and mentioned this after the first few songs. She was a bit freaked out by the cameras and said she felt that she had so much makeup on that if she moved her face, it would crack. She picked up on Terry Lickona’s pre-show comments to try to only get up to use the restroom in between songs. He asked that if you have to “let it go”, please do it then. She made several jokes throughout the night about that. She also felt she botched “Going Through the Motions”, a song from her concept album The Forgotten Arm, and said she was glad they wouldn’t use all of the songs. I’m assuming we won’t see that one in the final version next month when it airs.
Farther into the set, she told a story about being asked to write a song for an early scene in Shrek 3 and after being asked to revise it several times, including being asked to make it more like Fall Out Boy, the song was ultimately rejected and she brought it back its original form and completely changed the lyrics. It became “Borrowed Time” on the new album. She also mentioned before “Red Vines” that it’s about Magnolia director Paul Thomas Anderson. The original set list only showed two encores. I think they added “Calling It Quits” at the last minute. I enjoyed the performance and they definitely loosened up later in the set. Look for it to air in October. Also, check out Austin Kleon’s artistic take on the taping.
Set List:
Stranger/Looking for Nothing
Freeway
Phoenix
Save Me
Wise Up
Great Beyond
Going Through the Motions
Red Vines
Columbus Ave.
Little Tornado
31 Today
Borrowing Time
Today’s the Day
Different
One
Calling it Quits
Deathly