(Upcoming Release) Aimee Mann – Bachelor No. 2 : 20th Anniversary Edition for Black Friday RSD – A Deeper Dive

Cover Art for the 20th Anniversary Reissue of Aimee Mann’s Bachelor No. 2

I’m a sucker for earnest songs about heartbreak. Clearly.

When I watched Paul Thomas Anderson’s film Magnolia, I was struck by the songs from Aimee Mann. Like many, I was familiar with her band, the MTV darlings Til Tuesday, but I hadn’t really kept up. Though, there wasn’t much to keep up with. The classic yarn of a band breakup followed by a couple of brilliant solo albums that her label didn’t know what to do with caused her to crash land in 1999 with no label and a record in the can that wouldn’t be released.

As the story goes, Paul Thomas Anderson was moved enough by the demos of this album to craft Magnolia around it and get some more songs from her. He connected to Mann through her husband Michael Penn who scored Anderson’s first two films. She got an Oscar nom for “Save Me” (a song that was written for the film).

I rewatched Magnolia recently. A horrific storm called a “derecho” blew 130+ MPH winds across Iowa, removing over 65% of the tree cover of Cedar Rapids and knocking power out for days and cell service and internet for weeks. Once power was restored, my wife and I still didn’t have internet and cell service was spotty, so we took to digging through our sadly-neglected collection of DVD’s and Blu-Rays for stuff to watch. We hadn’t seen it probably since I bought the DVD when it came out in 2000. The film’s three hours is not an easy watch, and twenty years later the heavy-handedness of the story arc and plot devices seems almost dated. Considering this was Anderson’s carte blanche film following the breakout success of Boogie Nights, it’s apparent he was pulling out all of his directorial tools for this. The soundtrack and score of the film end up being an essential part of the narrative with songs belonging to the characters, the culmination of which is when the film pauses for the characters to sing “Wise Up.”

This part of the film was a real lump-in-the-throat moment for me and how I became a fan of this soundtrack and Bachelor No. 2. I wrote an article back in 2008 proposing a mix people could make of the two CD’s to make a perfect version of the album.

Bachelor No. 2 was released in May 2000 on Mann’s own record label Super-Ego Records. It included “How Am I Different,” “Deathly,” and “You Do” from Magnolia. “Nothing Is Good Enough” appears on the soundtrack as an instrumental. Interestingly, “Wise Up” was originally intended for the film Jerry McGuire. A really great article breaking down the soundtrack by A/VClub by Alex McLevy makes the observation that in a literal sense the song says that the film “is not going to stop” until the characters wise up. Certainly the scene in the film where the characters sing “Wise Up” is a point of inflection.

According to the Wikipedia article on Bachelor No. 2, Mann secured a distribution deal after selling the album from her website and Soundscan data as of 2008 showed that 230,000 copies had been sold.

In 2006, Mobile Fidelity Soundlab corrected sin of this album not existing on vinyl by pressing a limited run of 200g half-speed mastered LP’s based on the original US CD (which means it doesn’t have “Save Me” on it in place of “Driving Sideways” as the UK version did). These days copies of this are running around $200 and I was keeping an eye out to see if any might show up for a deal.

Thankfully, Aimee Mann is reissuing Bachelor No. 2 for its 20th anniversary for Black Friday Record Store Day as a 2 LP expanded version taking the original album and adding the Magnolia songs at the end. (this approach makes sense since it is a reissue of Bachelor No 2 primarily, but I think my mix is more fun) as well as a re-recorded version of “Wise Up.” Looking at Amoeba’s website, it will be priced at a reasonable $34.98. This is being touted as an “RSD First” which means that it will be generally available after RSD, though it’s hard to tell if the 4000 copies they’re showing is the total of all of the pressings or just what is available for RSD.

It will be interesting to hear that new version of “Wise Up.” If I had to guess, it probably removes the drum machine. In the press release she mentions that she “used a lot of drum loops” and nowhere is it more apparent than on “Wise Up.” Though for me, that works great.

The Super Ego Records twitter account posted the packaging:

The packaging is really nice with what appears to be a version of the cover art that looks like someone practicing calligraphy over it. The green vinyl and labels are gorgeous.

Here is the track listing from The Vinyl District (which had it by sides).:

Side A

  1. How Am I Different
  2. Nothing Is Good Enough
  3. Red Vines
  4. Optimist

Side B

  1. Deathly
  2. Ghost World
  3. Calling It Quits
  4. Satellite

Side C

  1. Save Me
  2. Driving Sideways
  3. Just Like Anyone
  4. Susan
  5. It Takes All Kinds

Side D

  1. One
  2. Wise Up Re-record
  3. Momentum
  4. Build That Wall
  5. You Do

The Horse’s Ha Return After A Five Year Hiatus With Sophomore Release – Waterdrawn – Out 8/20/13

HorsesHa_Outerjacket

I’ll admit that the first album from Janet Beveridge Bean and James Elkington as The Horse’s Ha– titled Of The Cathmawr Yards seemed to me a bit too self-contained to support a second.  It seemed like a one-off concept to me — both the band name and the album title came from the same Dylan Thomas short story about the occupants of a cematery rising from their graves. The album carried with it a specific central dark or macabre theme. I wrote a fairly in-depth analysis of the album in my review of it HERE.

So, it was unexpected news when Janet told me over a year ago that they had new songs in the works. I had just started helping her with the band Facebook page and she shared with me a few rough mixes, which were as beautiful as the first album songs.

The new album, titled Waterdrawn continues with the 60’s and 70’s English Folk Revival-influenced music of the first album. The press material mentions the album being influenced by the seminal Shirley Collins and Davy Graham 1964 album Folk Roots, New Routes and indeed the barebones acoustic guitar and lovey soprano vocal arrangement seems to be a clear template for Waterdrawn.

That said, there seems to be a more sinister influence at work, here.

“We kind of like to think of it as horror folk akin to soundtrack stuff from films like the Wiccan-themed (1973 British Horror film) “The Wicker Man” Bean told me. So, the dark themes from Of The Cathmawr Yards continues on Waterdrawn.

Portland, OR indie label Fluff and Gravy will be releasing Waterdrawn on August 20th on CD and Vinyl (bless them!) Until then, you can listen to “The Dying Tree”

Please visit and “Like” the Facebook page for The Horses Ha HERE

Visit the Horses Ha page on the Fluff and Gravy Website HERE.

The Horses Ha will be performing at The Hideout in Chicago for their Record Release show on Thursday, August 22nd.

Overheard on TV: Helvetica Documentary Soundtrack

A friend of mine recommended that I watch the 2007 documentary dedicated to the typeface/font Helvetica titled plainly enough Helvetica. When I saw it show up in the NetFlix streaming recommendations for me, I watched it.

Helvetica the typeface was designed in 1957 by the Swiss type foundry Haas to be a general-use typeface. It was an immediate success and adopted virtually everywhere since, and enjoys constant use to this day. This documentary by Gary Hustwit looks at the typeface and its success and shows how its existence impacted graphic design over the years. Hustwit also produced the amazing Wilco documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, the Robert Moog documentary Moog, and the Death Cab For Cutie tour film Drive Well, Sleep Carefully.

I found myself very engrossed in the film as I have been a type geek ever since my first Macintosh in the 80’s. The movie talks a bit about the reaction to standard typesetting practices in the 90’s during the “grunge” movement, which yielded a couple of my favorite magazines Emigre and Raygun which were the leading edge of that movement which I was a fan of which included the work Vaughan Oliver did with v.23/23 Envelope for 4AD records.

One of the things that hooked me right away was the soundtrack to the movie (of course!). It has a collection of really great Post Rock and related artists on it like El Ten Eleven (an impressive NINE songs!), Sam Prekop and The Chicago Underground Quartet. Here is the song listing from imdb.com:

“Thinking Loudly” –  El Ten Eleven
“Lorge” – El Ten Eleven
“Central Nervous Piston” – El Ten Eleven
“My Only Swerving” – El Ten Eleven
“Fanshawe” – El Ten Eleven

These songs are from El Ten Eleven’s 2005 self-titled release.

“Meow”-  Motohiro Nakashima
“Potala” – Motohiro Nakashima

These songs are from his 2004 release And I Went to Sleep.

“Helvetica 2” –  Kim Hiorthoy
“Helvetica 9” – Kim Hiorthoy

Kim Hiorthoy is, according to his Wikipedia article, a Norwegian electronic musician. He’s been recording since 2000 and has a number of releases out. These two tracks are obviously done specifically for this movie.

“Every Direction is North” –  El Ten Eleven
“Bye Annie, Bye Joe, Bye Michael, Bye Jake” incorrectly titled “Bye 2” – El Ten Eleven
“Hot Cakes” – El Ten Eleven
“3+4” – El Ten Eleven

These songs are from El Ten Eleven’s 2007 release Every Direction is North.

“Seqy Chords 3” –Sam Prekop
“Seqy Solo” –Sam Prekop

These songs by Sam Prekop of The Sea and Cake appear to be written specifically for this release– or at least only appear here. I wonder if these songs are somehow related to the CD that came with his photography book?

“IPT2” –  Battles

This song is from the Battles 2006 release on Warp called EP C/B EP.

“Tunnel Chrome” –  Chicago Underground Quartet

This track is from Rob Mazurek’s Chicago Underground Quartet project’s 2001 self-titled Thrill Jockey release.

“Magic Step” – Sam Prekop

This song is from Prekop’s 2005 release Who’s Your New Professor on Thrill Jockey.

“And Then Patterns” – Four Tet

This song is from the brilliant 2007 Four Tet release Everything Ecstatic

“Pelican Narrows” – Caribou

This track is from his 2005 Merge Records release The Milk of Human Kindness.

“Shine” – The Album Leaf

This track is taken from The Album Leaf’s 2006 release on SubPop Into the Blue Again.

This is a pretty great collection of bands– mostly ones that I really like and admire– and the two artists that I hadn’t heard of (Nakashima and Hiorthoy) I plan to check out. I’m not the first blogger to comment on the soundtrack, and one of them even made an iTunes mix of it. It would be great if they’d release this soundtrack– if only the ones that are specific to this movie from Sam Prekop and Hiorthoy!