Aimee Mann — Queens of the Summer Hotel

As established, I love Aimee Mann. Nobody does what she does better. I’d say nobody does what she does. Her songs resonate with me in a way hardly anyone else’s do. And she’s well established her ability to sing frankly about issues of addiction, mental illness, broken relationships and broken people. Her last album carried the bold title of “Mental Illness.”

So when it was announced her next album was going to be an adaptation of songs she had written for a theatrical version of “Girl, Interrupted” – well, that didn’t seem too unusually dark for her. I never read the book or saw the movie and for a lot of reasons have some hesitation regarding entertainment around mental illness, particularly women’s mental illness. That doesn’t mean I never read or see such things, at all, but it does mean there’s a lot I just can’t countenance.

Then the first single came out, with the title “Suicide Is Murder.” Hoo boy. That one, I’ll admit, took me a while before I could give it a listen. I knew it was Aimee, I knew it would be all right (which is not the same as saying her characters have happy endings), but it was also gonna take me a bit before I could hear it. I’ve been involved with too many people who have walked too close to that line, and known too many who have crossed it, to hear those words without having that experience echoing in my brain.

But then I finally did listen . . . and yes, it was fine. It was good. In fact, it’s a beautiful song. Her delivery is precise, controlled, perfectly contained. It is, make no mistake, a hard song to listen to. She’s not romanticizing self-destruction (and never does), but she’s also not candycoating the alternative to stay. But she does deliver the awful message I wish were enough of a deterrent:

But beware, cause anyone who knew you
Will be cursed, and part of them will also die
There’s no end to the asking of the question:
Why?

I knew I wanted this on vinyl, so I preordered it direct from SuperEgo late last year, and with delays it came just after Christmas. Although it came with an immediate digital download, I managed to avoid listening digitally more than once or twice. (When I listen on vinyl, I’m mostly paying attention; it’s not just background.) But that just built my anticipation, and once it arrived, I put it on and played it regularly. It is splendid. Theatrical of course, given its original purpose, but perfectly so. You don’t need to know the book to understand the record; it just asks you to listen. Instrumentally more varied than her last release, and colorfully so. It’s a great listen.

It’s also a gorgeous package – Aimee Mann always pays a lot of attention to how her products look, and I really appreciate it. This one even has a printed liner inside the jacket, a pointless bit of beauty that I love.