Here’s an image hard to get out f your head: wiry singer-songwriter Aimee Mann, chronicler of the emotionally fragile, whaling the tar out of somebody in a boxing ring.
You’re as likely to find her in boxing gloves than with a guitar these days. An exercise routine has turned into a passion, and Mann will even go a couple of rounds with her bass player to keep in shape while on tour.
During a recent interview, Mann talked animatedly about picking up the fine points of the sport, and how she applies it to her job.
“It’s really difficult,” she said. “That’s what I like about it. There’s always something new to learn.”
Mann, 44, named her new album “The Forgotten Arm” after an obscure boxing term for a surprise punch. It’s a loosely constructed concept disc about – you guessed it – a boxer, and a woman who ran away with him in the 1970s.
With Green Day and Neil Young releasing their own concept albums in the past year or so, do we sniff a trend?
“It’s a direct reaction to the marketplace becoming more and more and more about one song,” she said. “The single is more singlelike than ever and more disposable than ever. There are certain artists who are really getting sick of that.”
Mann, who releases discs on her own label, said she also has the freedom to try different things without executives second-guessing her.
Her biggest success came with the songs she wrote and performed for the movie “Magnolia,” which also gave her experience with a new kind of songwriting. Instead of writing songs specifically for a movie scene, she began writing to a movie playing in her head.
Mann wrote two songs while thinking about a loosely constructed story of a boxer who fights at the Virginia State Fair in the early 1970s. He meets a local girl eager to escape her hometown, and they fall in love.
Finding she liked the process, Mann kept going, and rewrote other songs she had been working on to fit the story.
“It’s not like a real plot-laden story,” she said. “They run off together, and he has a drug problem that goes out of control. They split up, then it’s just what happens in their heads. But it was sort of nice to think about the same people from song to song.”
Though hardly autobiographical (Mann is happily married to fellow musician Michael Penn, not a drug-addicted boxer) she did grow up in Virginia and spent a lot of time at the state fair.
Her meticulously constructed pop songs work even out of context with the story, since it’s the sort of emotional terrain she’s used to navigating. “She Really Wants You” can resonate with anyone overwhelmed by a love they thought they didn’t deserve; “I Can’t Help You Anymore” with any person disgusted by a doomed relationship.
Working with producer Joe Henry, Mann has made her most up-tempo rock record ever.
“I wanted it to sound like a band you’d hear playing at the Virginia State Fair,” she said, an image that comes to life when you hear a drummer pounding on a cowbell.
The musical approach is a relief to fans who thought successful songs like “Wise Up” sent her in a dour direction, favoring morose material.
“People say that, and I go along with it,” she said. “If that’s how it comes across to you, that’s how it comes across. That’s not my experience of it. For me as a songwriter, I have a whole picture. I often hear things in a lyric that I personally think are kind of funny – they’re ironic, wry or sarcastic – but I don’t necessarily think people are going to know that I mean it in that way.”
One of her models for “The Forgotten Arm,” a friend who boxes and is a recovering drug addict, introduced her to the boxing world. He set her up with a lesson and helped her find a trainer.
Mann said her hobby can help her professional life.
“One of the biggest skills you need to learn is to relax in the ring,” she said. “You can get so exhausted because you’re so tense. But it’s hard not to be tense when somebody is trying to punch you in the face.
“I find I can apply that discipline when I’m onstage, just learning how to relax.”
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THE DETROIT COBRAS Take in the delicious ‘n’ dirty garage of The Detroit Cobras during their two-night stand tonight and Saturday at the Lion’s Lair. It’s always a sweaty time with these Motor City cats, but their recent shows have been less wild (read: dramatic) than their shows in 2002 and before.
THE MARS VOLTA If arty noise rock is your thing, you already have your tickets for this gig Tuesday at the Fillmore. But if you’re on the fence, think about it this way: Better to see The Mars Volta now and in the Fillmore than later this year on the System of a Down tour, which will likely hit a venue five times the size of the Fillmore.
STEREO TOTAL This European band rocks out without rules. It plays Tuesday at the Larimer Lounge.
– Ricardo Baca
