Another year, another Aimee Mann gig. 15 months after her last visit to the 02 Indigo, Mann was back to plug her latest album - '@#%&*! Smilers'.
Opening with set with 'Stranger into starman' and 'Looking for nothing', tonight's set-list was certainly new album heavy, but the new songs - on the whole sounded as good , if not better in the live environment. Thankfully there was also room in the set for some older numbers such as 'Red Vines', 'Deathly', 'How am I Different', 'Wise Up'
For someone who always used to say she didn't really do inbetween songs chit-chat very well, Mann now excels in doing it, and does so with wit and charm - no more so than when she was having some early technical issues and also during her attempts to remember how to play 'Mr Harris' (an audience suggestion) - a track off her debit solo album - 'Whatever'.
For me however, it was another song off that album that was my gig highlight, the always sublime '4th of July', with along with her version of Supertramp's 'One', made up the encores.
All in all, and despite not playing enough older stuff, this was - for me - a better gig than her appearance at the same venue in 2007.
A quick mention about the support act - The Submarines. Delightful band (remind me of earlier Aimee) with a cracking album 'Declare a New State'. Worth keeping an eye out for .
2 comments:
Harry Nilsson wrote One.
Aimee was amazing.
Sadly the only thing I remember about The Submarines is "dancing on the death of the dollar"!
You are of course correct about Harry N writing 'One'. I obviously had a brain meltdown and thought of Supertramp's contribution to the Magnolia soundtrack.
Def a great gig, and I would certainly recommend checking out the submarines album, not bad.
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