Critics Welcome Aimee Mann Back Into Their Hearts

From time to time, we like to round up the all-important, all-summarizing last sentences of the biggest new-music reviews. Under consideration in this installment is the new full-length by Aimee Mann, @#%&*! Smilers, which hits stores today:

• “Mann may not have found answers to all of life’s questions on Smilers— the search for self is perpetual, after all–but each attempt means refinements to her craft. This time, the strong songwriting and astute musical arrangements combine to make Mann’s latest her best album so far.” [Hartford Courant]

• “Midway through another nuanced collection of mid-tempo ’70s-pop-referencing tunes that document the lives of folks who manage only fleeting moments of happiness between protracted stretches of frustration, this L.A-based veteran songwriter runs head-on into what she typically approaches sideways. ‘I thought my life would be better by now,’ she sighs over an anxious keyboard riff in ‘Thirty One Today,’ a song about getting older (but no wiser) that’s so simple and catchy and scarily true that it opens an ordinarily shut door into Mann’s dimly lit, astutely rendered world.” [Spin]

• “Billed as a dramatic change in sound, but not really–there certainly are new instrumental textures, but basically it’s still a collection of Aimee Mann songs. Which means, since she couldn’t write a bad or even mediocre song even after extensive waterboarding, that it immediately springs to the top ranks of this year’s releases. Just the tonic for all those mellow, mopey female singer/songwriters littering the landscape.” [USA Today]

• “As a writer and performer of lovelorn, piano- and guitar-driven pop music, Mann stands with the best of her era. She can sum up universal relationship complications in three-minute, eminently hummable musical nuggets. Cases in point: smoldering love song ‘True Believer’; the earnest, string-laden ballad ‘It’s Over’; and ‘Columbus Avenue,’ where a street serves as metaphor for an ex’s downfall. Plus, on album standout ‘Phoenix,’ an elegantly turned melody accompanies a singer still working things out in her head as the highway takes her farther from a misguided lover.” [Billboard]