★★★★★
Mann was once described by National Public Radio in the US as "one of the top 10 living songwriters along with McCartney, Dylan and Springsteen" - a declaration she probably dismissed out of hand, but it may have weighed on her for a short while. Her last album, 2008's ridiculously titled @#%&*! Smilers, was a rare misstep, a seemingly hurried and self-conscious set of songs that failed to catch fire in the same fashion as her usually dependable and articulate pop-rock...
- recordcollectormag.com
2013-04-02
★★★★★
The title of Aimee Mann?s new album says it all, and while she may question the sincerity of charm and the charming, she?s guilty of it as this album slinks up and takes you, eventually. The title track and opener grabs immediately with its incessant bass, on which rides Ms Mann?s vocals and a melody that just gets crawls into the mind. There?s Disappeared?s lazy ambience coupled with Labrador?s simple piano led ballad. These three are pretty much a template for the album...
- www.music-news.com
2012-10-22
★★★★★
I know a lot of fans of independent acts always ask themselves and their likeminded friends why the bands they think are amazing don't receive the popular praise they rightfully deserve. Pavement is always my first example, Cut Your Hair and Gold Soundz are perfect pop hits that never were as big as they should be. My second example is always Aimee Mann. Wistful yet upbeat, nice to listen to, I can think of no reason why everyone hasn't heard of her...
- www.noripcord.com
2012-10-15
★★★★★
Charm is an interesting thing. You can't buy it and it's damn hard to manufacture. Aimee Mann has it in spades, though she'd deny it vehemently, and has in interviews for this, her eighth solo album and first in four years. Mann is an inveterate composer of sad songs, and on Charmer they come wrapped in the sugar frosted shell of '70s power pop. "When you're a charmer, the world applauds/they don't know that secretly charmers feel like they're frauds...
- www.musicomh.com
2012-09-20
★★★★★
It's a tad ironic that prolific singer songwriter Aimee Mann begins this, her eighth studio album, with a song that paints charmers as manipulators who use their skill to woo people. It's ironic because Aimee Mann herself is one of the most charming musicians I've encountered; from debut solo album Whatever in 1993 to her breakthrough work on the Magnolia soundtrack right through to 2008's pop-infused Fucking Smilers, Mann has never been lacking in charm...
- music.thedigitalfix.com
2012-09-20
★★★★★
It was Leonard Cohen who famously wrote, "And you know that she's half crazy / But that's why you want to be there" about his title character "Suzanne". The appeal of crazy women to apparently sane men is a common phenomenon. In fact it is almost a male rite of passage. Now this is not meant to demean mental and emotional illness. This is a serious topic worthy of sober discussion. However, this is a rock and roll record review and not the place for such a conversation...
- www.popmatters.com
2012-09-20
★★★★★
To announce that the new Aimee Mann album is "a collection of perfectly composed and performed ruminations on various, subtle miens of the human condition" will come as a surprise to no one. Her oeuvre, including the Grammy- and Oscar-nominated work on Magnolia, and even the early 'Til Tuesday stuff, has been pretty much blemish-free for over three decades. Why then would we expect anything less than excellence from her new offering, Charmer...
- filtermagazine.com
2012-09-20
★★★★★
Perhaps most famous for the powerful sequence in the film Magnolia, when all the characters sing along to her track One, Aimee Mann has been producing solidly entertaining records since the early 1990s. Gifted with a lazy American drawl, her singing style is not the most commercial but she has a distinctive feel, allied with a gift for cutting and acute observation...
- www.music-news.com
2012-09-06
★★★★★
Aimee Mann's songwriting is absolutely fucking exquisite. There's just no other way to say it, really, that hasn't been said before, and there's no better proof in the pudding than Mann's best-of release, Ultimate Collection...
- www.popmatters.com
2011-01-20
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