I first encountered Aimee Mann in the mid-1980s, when ‘Til Tuesday’s hit “Voices Carry” made its way around my college dorm floor via shared cassette tapes (played on Walkmans by the richer kids). The distinct vibrato of her seductive vocals still pull me in after all these years. Through the Lilith Fair era in the 90s and into her latest work, her voice is like a nostalgic, empowering dog whistle for me — and it still sounds terrific.
No matter how depressing or downbeat some of her lyrics can be — and they are — she still takes me to my happy place. Whether it’s a fond remembrance for an era punctuated by strong female singer-songwriters or the once-upon-a-time years of strikingly original independent movies like Magnolia (her soundtrack for that film is one of my all-time favorites), she’s consistently struck a happy chord in my life. Last week’s show at the Lobero was made even happier with the addition of her longtime friend Jonathan Coulton as an opener, and they also partnered on a few duets.
While there was nothing particularly surprising in Mann’s show — with the exception of one song, “Suicide is Murder,” played at the piano from her most recent project Queens of the Summer Hotel, a would-be musical based on the autobiographical book Girl Interrupted (the same one that inspired the 1999 movie with Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie) — in her case, no surprises is a good thing because her voice and her songs are just as good as ever.
The setlist included some old favorites and some deep cuts, with her deceptively witty lyrics as ear pleasing and thought provoking as ever. She started the show with “Fifty Years After the Fair” from 1993’s Whatever, then launched into “Susan,” from 2000’s Bachelor No. 2 (Or, the Last Remains of the Dodo) with some nice harmonies from her band on great lyrics like “Oh Susan, the hope of fusion / Is that the halo will reappear / It may be pure illusion / But it’s beautiful while it’s here / I had some trouble with the goodbye / I checked my Roman candle supply / And watched the vapor-trail in the sky.”
How can you not appreciate someone who writes like that?
The bitterly poignant “You Never Loved Me,” from the 2017 album Mental Illness, was up next, followed by a much lighter series of songs bringing Coulton back to the stage and talking about their playful songwriting adventures with AI. As Mann told us, when she prompted AI to write something in the style of Aimee Mann, it came up with doing a “sad ballad about coming to terms with the aging process,” to which she replied, to peals of laughs, “Fuck you — you don’t know me!”
The pair performed three entertaining tunes together — ”Melancholy Melodies,” “Patient Zero,” and “Rollercoasters” — then Mann was solo again for several more songs, including “The Moth” (a great 2002 song I wasn’t familiar with), and the beautiful “Save Me” from the aforementioned Magnolia soundtrack, which Mann hilariously references on her Instagram page with the citation “lost an Oscar to Phil Collins.” (Fun(ny) Fact: Collins’s Oscar was for “You’ll Be in My Heart,” from the Disney movie Tarzan.)
While Mann was slyly funny throughout the night (for example, after leaving the stage and returning for the encore and cheers from audience members requesting specific songs, she deadpanned, “We have two more songs we’ve selected for you.”). Coulton, on the other hand, was laugh-out-loud funny for much of his opening set, both with and without Mann, with songs like “Millionaire Girlfriend,” “Shop Vac,” “Creepy Doll,” and “Redshirt,” inspired by the Star Trek trope that the character in the red shirt is destined to die. I really want to put him into a Gilmore Girls of Santa Barbara show, so he can be the troubadour to comically narrate our lives.
Meanwhile, while that’s still “in development,” we have something else to look forward to: our friends at Goldenvoice recently announced the reunion of Aimee Mann’s ‘Til Tuesday at the Cruel World Festival 2025. See cruelworldfest.com for details. If you hear the dog whistle, like I do, I’ll probably see you there.
