Aimee Mann gets theatrical with the Girl, Interrupted-inspired Queens Of The Summer Hotel
One of America’s best living songwriters pens tracks for a stage adaptation of the acclaimed book, but makes the material her own
Music Reviews Aimee Mann
Sometimes the best inspiration can come from outside yourself. Whether by assignment or impulse, being forced to work within the confines of a format dictated by another can pay dividends for artists looking to shake things up. (Just ask David Lynch and the results of translating his singular vision into hourlong TV episodes.)
Which is what makes Queens Of The Summer Hotel, Aimee Mann’s new album, such an unusual (and unusually rewarding) project. Commissioned to write the music for a stage adaptation of Susannah Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted—the 1993 memoir of Kaysen’s time in a psychiatric facility in the late 1960s—Mann takes to the assignment as though the material were borne of her own imagination. Outside of the unusual song lengths and other considerations of its original theatrical intent, this feels like a classic Mann album, through and through.
To a degree, that shouldn’t be surprising. The musician has recently opened up about her own struggles with mental illness—her last album title, 2017’s Mental Illness, was a playful nod to that jaundiced view of her work—and music about grappling with uncontrollable emotions and pain has always been an integral part of Mann’s arsenal. So taking on the voice and viewpoint of preexisting characters dealing with similar issues slides into her discography with ease.
What is surprising is just how much she’s managed to create a song cycle that stands wholly apart from its stage-play origins, an album as lived-in and distinctive as any she’s made. It doesn’t have the instant-classic pop of some of her earlier material, but as a more somber, measured collection of music (none of the jangly pop-rock of Charmer to be found here), it’s a winner. Even on 30-second throwaway transitional snippets like “6 Checks,” her signature songcraft is recognizable.
Despite the heavy subject matter—and arrangements largely hewing to piano, strings, and acoustic guitar, with the occasional horns and drums—Mann often counterposes lighter melodies and rhythms with the downbeat material. It’s a trick she’s often employed (think “Nothing Is Good Enough” off of Bachelor No. 2), and it works again here, as the bleak lyricism of “Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath” employs a gently loping waltz. Even more effective is “Give Me Fifteen,” a song that details the danger inherent in a misogynistic ’60s medical process, with its doctor breezily announcing, “In the time it takes to walk around the block / I can have you scheduled for electroshock.” The musical accompaniment to this darkness? A bouncy rhythm and hooky melodies, not unlike her cover of “One” from the Magnolia soundtrack.
In some ways, the imposition of shorter song lengths necessitated by the musical format juices her songs, lending a Guided By Voices-like sense of get-in-and-get-out brevity, leaving the listener wanting more. “Home By Now” and “Little Chameleon,” with their simple piano intros and drawn-out strings, both come in well under the two-minute mark, but are all the more impactful for it. And “You Could Have Been A Roosevelt,” a Beatles-esque composition, barely crosses that time threshold, yet is stunning—not just one of the best tracks on the record, but able to hold its own against her finest work.
The overall vibe created by the record, though, is mellow, with swaying rhythms and quiet compositions that take advantage of her talent for softer, low-register delivery. Opener “You Fall” sets the tone well, with her backing vocals and brushed drums establishing a vibe apropos for a smoky lounge, maybe even from the era in question. And the one-two punch of mid-album tracks “You Don’t Have The Room” and “Suicide Is Murder” make for a musical and thematic core to the record, the former a mournful rejoinder blended with elegantly swooning strings and the latter an aching ballad of regret, but both containing her not-quite-staccato piano playing opening up into something grander.
The most stage-indebted of the numbers do come with a slight asterisk, however. “At The Frick Museum,” with its sing-song melody and repetition, feels like it’s meant to be heard in an off-Broadway setting, and “12 In Mexico,” with its 3/4 stroll and declamatory statements about “I’m the crazy one they can point to,” doesn’t quite pop on its own. Between those and the “Check” reprise, some instrumentation comes across a little too much like filler.
But even with a few forgettable numbers, Queens Of The Summer Hotel makes an impact. No knowledge of its origin story in a theatrical production is needed to make these narratives of longing and tragedy sing, just as no electric guitar is required to showcase Mann’s ace knack for songwriting. It may fall on the more mellow and restrained side of her catalogue, but this is a record to be savored—mining beauty (and yes, some humor) from pain is an Aimee Mann specialty, and this record serves as further testament to that fact. It’s been nearly four decades since she founded ’Til Tuesday, but the musician has never sounded more confident.
23 Comments
Like all Mann releases, this goes on the must-listen list.And now, an early seasonal reminder of one of my favorite things she ever made: her weird and celebrity-filled Christmas videos, specifically her song to John Krasinski
…and oh heck, just in case anyone made it through that, here’s one more great Aimee Mann thing:
If we’re doing slightly off track Mann stuff, Cant you tell, a song that paints a picture of Trump as being a pathetic asshole who ran for president in an act of pure ego , never expecting to actually get the job ,and now being totally out of his depth and drowning .It almost makes you feel sorry for him .Almost Also …a breakup song about the common cold I’m Cured.
Here’s Opal and Steg having a fucking ball in real life.
Love that song!
The secret to her longevity: stop touring vampire towns
They should get her to do something for What We Do in the Shadows, and then complain after leaving the stage that she told her agent no more vampire gigs…
Admittedly I got into Aimee Mann through “Mental Illness” so I’m more inclined to join her folk-tinged songs than her earlier music. Hearing that she’ll keep up the trend with “Queens of the Summer Hotel” pleases me.
*enjoy, not join
You gotta respect how she risked her soul playing vampire towns in the early aughts.
And how she wasn’t too proud to scrub floors to make ends meet a decade later.
Just when you think you can’t love her more, she shows up and proves you wrong
Don’t forget her loss of a toe.
Oh dang, I never knew that was her
Geez, I sort of last track of her, especially her recent work, the last album I have any real exposure to (and it’s pretty amazing), is Bachelor No. 2.Thanks for this article and the reminder of what an incredibly talent she is, queuing up a bunch of her music.
Definitely check out Lost in Space and @#%&*! Smilers, both are excellent albums up there with Bacherlor No. 2 and well worth a listen.
I loved her output in the 90’s, and Bachelor No. 2 is still one of my top five albums of all time, but I kinda lost track of her since Lost in Space and The Forgotten Arm (which I got pre-release with the big ass artwork book, which was awesome).She did a holiday show at the Carnegie in Pittsburgh in I think 2002, and it remains one of my favorite concerts of all time. Nothing is better than seeing 3-4 encores and she was just like, Any requests? Dude on the main floor shouts out, “Play ‘Ray’”.Mann literally just deadpanned “No.”I loved her before, but that sealed the deal. The entire audience just lost it and we were laughing for a ridiculous amount of time.I’m gonna have to buy this new album today.
I gave Smilers and Mental Illness a spin but they never really got to me, the last song of hers that really burrowed was “Little Bombs” off The Forgotten Arm and I still think that song belongs in the Smithsonian.This album really has hit for me so far. Yes it is a little sedate, but “Now you’re split in two/And each side still isn’t you” and the final song “I See You” is just so pure and beautiful. “You think there’s no one there to hear your plea/But I can see” could rival “You are not alone/No one is alone” if they actually put it in a staged show. I didn’t like the “i’m with stupid” song, there is more repetition than would work very well in a stage show in some of the songs, but it really is something.Btw I don’t know how common the term was, but Tennessee Williams’ “Clothes for a Summer Hotel” was about Scott Fitzgerald visiting Zelda at her ahem “Summer Hotel”
While, like most Williams’ later plays a bomb, Clothes for a Summer Hotel is one of my faves from that era–and I didn’t even make any connection. So star for you.
thanks! I mean Vieux Carre and Notebooks of Trigorin are underrated also. Unfortunately, unlike Odets’ “The Country Girl” which I saw on bway with Fran McDormand and Morgan Freeman (who didn’t know his lines) and which seemed completely out of time and irrelevant and I had no idea why they did it, nobody is clamoring for these TW plays to get another shot (“Rocket to the Moon” is another Odets they will probably revive sometime soon and definitely should not)I’m afraid I saw it but don’t remember it tooooo super well, it was over 20 years ago…Clothes for a Summer Hotel is also a ghost play, right? Zelda Fitzgerald…and you could stage it with whole flapper jazz sequences, a big band…it could be really cool
Definitely would work—and yeah, I’d call it a ghost play.
My two late(r) era faves from Williams are Small Craft Warnings and, indeed, Vieux Carre which apparently got a tone deaf New York production. It did however get an extremely well received London production that was probably Williams’ last theatrical triumph, of sorts…
Odets in general is a bit of a blind spot for me when it comes to mid century American drama.
There are a lot of blind spots IN Odets also…this is a guy who wrote Waiting for Lefty and then ratted to the HUAC. You probably know Barton Fink is loosely based on Odets…I’ve heard the Coens have a script for Old Fink, a late-sequel after he’s turncoated, very excited to see if they ever make itAwake and Sing! and Golden Boy are both great, but some of the other stuff is dated, like Rocket to the Moon is just about a dentist banging his secretary…back then it was a transgressive study of the male in crisis or something, today it’s just immediately pathetic…but then again Tracy Letts wrote a whole play that went on broadway that was just about a straight line sad ass midlife crisis with no surprises so maybe it depends on the audience if it’s out of date
I actually forgot about the Barton Fink connection, but I did *once* know it (but you reminded me I should give it a re-watch…)
I’ve taken enough theatre history classes, etc, etc, that I know some of the basic Odets works at least on the page (I’ve read Waiting for Lefty and Golden Boy—Hell, I have the cast album for the musical version with Sammy Davis Jr somewhere though I’m not sure that would get me any cool cred among Odet fans). I should check out Awake and Sing at least, just to have a better argument when Odets comes up in conversation (as I’m sure he will… OK, maybe not), and because I really do love that era in American drama in general, but…
I remember Awake and Sing! as being really goodI know the Golden Boy score has a good song or two, but I don’t remember how well it did…that Rocky musical on Bway not too long ago didn’t do great (and it had music by ahrens and flaherty)…
It was a hit, even running after Sammy left, running 550 or so performances which in the 60s still meant a hit for a musical (nowadays, as you know I’m sure, that probably would mean it lost money). I kinda wish I’d seen Rocky for its big coup de theatre, and I love Ahrens/Flaherty at their best, but… Well they tried. I like two songs in it though which I think will become standards in A/F cabarets 😉
Really cool to talk to you about this stuff (as off topic as it’s become)–you know your stuff (and apparently like Nathan Fillion who I saw, as a kid from Edmonton, in a musical!)
Best I can find out, the actual stage musical hasn’t been, well, staged anywhere yet (aside from workshops) unless I’m missing something. I love the album. But I also love musical theatre (even if I’m pretty picky) and I have to wonder, as good as these songs work as a song cycle how they would work on stage.
“No knowledge of its origin story in a theatrical production is needed to
make these narratives of longing and tragedy sing, just as no electric
guitar is required to showcase Mann’s ace knack for songwriting.”
I mean, for a musical, this feels like it could be a problem (unless the songs are handled in an experimental way like played by a band between scenes or something). None of the songs sound like they’re the voice of different characters or like they really would progress anything on stage.
Which doesn’t really matter when playing the CD–which I have played a lot already. So there ya go.