Such strange pronunciation of virtually every word, she is going out of her way to not sound American - and it comes off as a bit goofy. Definitely a distraction. This is the slightest song of them all so far. 1/5
Don’t Change Your Mind - 1.5/5 The Way The World Goes - 1.5/5 All of these songs are kind of one note to me. Not very much that I find interesting to me, lyrically or musically.
"Don't Change My Mind" sounded like a 'Til Tuesday song that was trying really really hard not to sound like a pop song. This one sounds like relatively rote post-punk, though: I'm tempted to say, "oh, this one is more Doug Vargas than Aimee Mann", but seeing as how the song seems almost completely built off of the very interesting bass-line I'm not sure. The lyrics are simple but effective and I enjoy the song -- especially the bass -- but it's nothing special. 2.9/5
On a completely side note, I was at the Rathskellar one afternoon in the '80s eating some ribs. Also known as The Rat, it was a grungy type of rock music club located in Kenmore Square, Boston. The front of the establishment was a restaurant, known for their ribs. And I'm happily gorging on them when I look up, and to my immediate right at the table adjacent to me is Aimee Mann and her then huge head of hair. I let her be. She was having lunch and busy having an upbeat conversation with her lunch companion.
I'll be honest here = 0. If I'd heard this kind of stuff when it came out, I probably wouldn't have been interested in the later albums. I remember seeing Martha Wainwright supporting Loudon many years ago and she was ball-feezingly terrible - except when she backed him. Next thing you know, she hjas an album out on which she actually sings - and it was good.
"The Way The World Goes" has interesting lyrics but I'm not overly captivated by the melody of the song, nor Aimee's singing again. Still, it's a very short song and shows promise. 2.4/5
I'm amused hearing these tracks for the first time, particularly as a big post-punk fan. They kind of remind me of starting out as a songwriter, where the first 50 or so songs you write are thinly-disguised rewrites of your influences, and much, much lesser. The Siouxsie-isms in the vocals are endearing.
Today's song is "Not Enough", written by Aimee Mann and Doug Vargas. Lyrics below are approximate. All big men are going together You were the one went back inside your head So I was the one who played with getting ahead Was getting too rough There's not enough, not enough, not enough attention And imagine what you had in mind When you let me waste your precious time Making money is such fun It doesn't mean another one There's not enough, not enough, not enough attention Don't look at me again that useless sight of yours Don't talk to me again That useless heart of yours Don't look at me again That useless song of yours When I havent got nothing So please don't start it back again (?) is not enough Allr eminders of these little things Once I even thought we looked the same Don't tell me how much you feel Now, how can I believe that's real? There's not enough, not enough, not enough attention
Here our protagonist realizes with sadness, bitterness and a little anger that the relationship that she was having is over, having been betrayed and left unattended. More average-ish post-punk. Lyrically, this is OK -- stock stuff for women singer-songwriters to be sure;, but the punk affectations of her singing nag me a little. Chorus is most interesting melody-wise. Overall another enjoyable song, and you see the seeds of something in Aimee. But, despite the others' talent, there's something off about the whole presentation. This is simply not the right band for the big-voiced lead singer. Good but nothing great. 2.7/5
Not Enough is the first song where I can see traces of what Aimee would become, even if just a bit. I can imagine these lyrics put to more evolved Aimee music and it not seem totally out of place. It’s also less herky jerky, pretentious to me, where there’s an actual song musical song there , even if it’s fairly raw. The vocal delivery is still not great, but it doesn’t annoy me at all. This song I would listen to again willingly and not just as a curiosity/early artifact of an artist I love. So I rate it the highest so far, though I don’t want to grade on a curve and still compared to mid to late ‘Til Tuesday and her solo stuff, this isn’t strong and doesn’t meet those bars. But there’s something there that I’m starting to like. 2.8/5
It's been interesting to hear how Aimee is singing on these tracks, or perhaps how she is trying to sound, compared to her solo albums. But this track is one of the better tracks here. 3/5
"Not Enough" has more of the spark that illuminates Aimee's solo work. Her singing is still affected, but it doesn't distract me quite as much as on the last few songs. This is a song that I think might have benefitted from a more full instrumentation (not that this particular band could likely have afforded such back in 1981-2). The kernels are there but the song needs a little more heft to get across, I'd say. 3.1/5
Not Enough might be my favorite instrumentally, but least fave vocal. I’ll stick with 2/5 here as well.
I like Bark Along with the Young Snakesbecause I am a big fan of music of it's ilk: obscure post-punk indie rock from the late seventies and early eighties. Indeed, I'd almost say that this music was a bit old-fashioned for 1982. You can hear glimmers of Aimee Mann's entire career here, both as a melodist, as a lyricist and as a singer. However, if were not for what came next, I would simply categorize this as a rather uninteresting post-punk curio, distinguised a bit by a an interesting and big-voiced singer; some superior musicianship (bass, drums and guitar are all fine), but strange. It feels at times that the band is very much going in a different direction to the song. The restless nervous punk energy is working on the more melodic vocal passages like a wind blowing it sideways and out of shape: A good two or three of these songs could have been covered by early 'Til Tuesday (with different instrumentation) without much change to the vocals and they would not have sounded out of place with the other songs on the debut. And those are generally the most interesting songs, I think. Anyway, I enjoy it overall, mostly as a glimpse of Mann's early work: 2.7/5
2/5 for me. It's charming, so a 1 would be cruel, but it's juvenilia to my ears. I don't have the release, and don't see myself seeking it out for completion's sake.
Bark Along with the Young Snakes has interesting moments but is weak overall. And Aimee's vocals here aren't doing anything to suggest her later potential. 2/5
I agree it's fairly weak overall. Just averaging the score of my individual rating of all the songs on it, it gets a 1.7/5.
Tomorrow I'm going to start holding up songs from Voices Carry. Sometime after the Bark Along with the Young Snakes was released in 1982, the Young Snakes disbanded. Aimee Mann, who preferred "funky dance music" had been dissatisfied with the "deliberately artsy and uncommercial" nature of the Young Snakes and was looking for something else. After meeting English-born guitarist and Boston-area music veteran Robert Holmes at a party, Aimee told him she was interested in putting together a "recording-only project" with some studio time that she had owed to her. After a week or so the three got together for a few rehearsals with Michael Hausmann, drummer for The Dark, another Boston-area post-punk band and their keyboardist. Michael Hausman was Aimee's boyfriend and roommate and had been credited for "additional percussion" on the Bark Along with the Young Snakes. Aimee already had the bare bones of a few songs written and, using Holmes as a sounding board, the trio began fleshing them out in rehearsals. Aimee was very much the leader of the band, and, although she had less experience than Holmes, she was very much in charge of things from the beginning and he used his experience and adapted his style to suit her tastes, which were quite specific. Soon afterwards, Joey Pesce, another Berklee College alumni joined on keyboards. The foursome gelled almost immediately, playing their first gig In March 1983 and within a year had played dozens of gigs up and down the New England coast, opening for Billy Idol and winning the local Rock 'n' Roll Rumble , a sort of "Battle of the Bands" competition that goes on for several weeks. Shortly before the Rock and Roll Rumble was won, they recorded a two-song demo of "Love in a Vaccum" to try to elicit some interest from record companies. Most were not interested, but a few months later, thanks to their local popularity and massive support from WBCN, they were signed on to Epic Records, a subsidiary of Columbia that specialized in edgier, more alternative music. They had developed into a very tight band by the time they recorded their first album with Mike Thorne, a fairly famous English producer who had many post-punk and new wave acts after several years of working as an engineer. The album, entitled Voices Carry was recorded at the now-defunct RPM Studios in New York City. Having rehearsed and played for the better part of two years, the recording went swiftly and easily -- Thorne later remarked that 'Til Tuesday was the easiest album he had ever made. Nevertheless, Thorne did impact on the music, making arrangement suggestions and the like. This would be the only album on which the basic tracks were more or less recorded live in the studio by the band -- on future albums, they'd be constructed with a drum machine;, mainly because this was the only album in which the band entered the studio with the songs all finished. By the time the album was being recorded, Mann and Hausmann's relationship had ended, and she had begun a relationship with singer/songwriter Jules Shear; but Hausman and Mann remained on good terms and indeed, Hausmann later became her manager and manages Aimee's solo career to this day The album was released on April 20th, 1985 to decent reviews and, due to the break-out success of its first single and title track "Voices Carry", was a success, hitting #19 in the US and going gold in both Canada and the United States. The album was released on vinyl, cassette and single. All the songs were credited to Aimee Mann: lyrics; Music: 'Til Tuesday The track list was thus: Love in a Vacuum Looking Over My Shoulder I Could Get Used To This No More Crying Voices Carry Winning the War You Know the Rest Maybe Monday Are You Serious* Don't Watch Me Bleed Sleep *CD-only bonus track There were no outtakes from the album that have been released (Robert Holmes said he didn't think they recorded any) and there were no B-sides or other songs from this project. So for the next eleven days, I'll be going over each of these songs; and on the 12th day, hold up the album as a whole before moving on on the 18th of March to 'Til Tuesday's second album, Welcome Home.
