If You Need One ‘Til Tuesday C.D., It Might As Well Be Coming Up Close.

The Good: Duration, Lyrics, Some catchy tunes
The Bad: Vocally and instrumentally repetitive
The Basics: A very average compilation by a very average 1980s pop band, Coming Up Close: A Retrospective is still satisfying to those who like ‘Til Tuesday or Aimee Mann.


As part of my monthlong exploration of Aimee Mann, I found myself driving along listening to Coming Up Close: A Retrospective from Mann’s first big band, ‘Til Tuesday. The 1980s pop band was best known for the song “Voices Carry” and while I’ve heard two of their three albums, the song “Voices Carry” has largely been the most distinct and interesting song by them I’ve heard. However, repetition does a lot for me and the more I listened to Coming Up Close: A Retrospective, the more I actually came to enjoy both the album and some of the other tracks.

At the same time, though, I found myself feeling like I was not missing anything. In other words, the songs on Coming Up Close are truly the best the band ‘Til Tuesday ever did and if you only have to have one album by the group this is easily it.

With sixteen songs occupying over an hour of music on a single compact disc, Coming Up Close is very much the work of the band ‘Til Tuesday, mostly from the creative bent of Aimee Mann. Mann wrote eight of the songs and co-wrote the other eight with members of the band or outside writers (depending on the track). Mann provides the lead vocals on every track as well as playing the bass and (occasionally) acoustic guitar. She is accompanied on drums, guitars and keyboards by Michael Hausman, Robert Holmes, and Joey Pesce, who made up the band. The band even produced a couple of the songs on the album, most notably the new song “Do It Again.” In other words, this is the musical vision of the band as it was in the 1980s.

The sound of ‘Til Tuesday is “New Wave,” which seems to be best defined as the keyboard and guitar driven pop music that came out around the same time as punk and offered a mainstream alternative to that musical movement. The songs have a generally articulate quality to them, but are limited by the instrumental accompaniment in some ways. The keyboard driven ballads begin to blend together in the middle (I’ll find myself humming the tune to “David Denies,” but singing “Coming Up Close” to it!). The songs have a number of dramatic swells and falls, are not entirely danceable, but have a flavor to them that helped define '80's pop music. Sadly, this also makes the songs sound tragically dated in many ways.

What is distinct about ‘Til Tuesday on this retrospective are the vocals of Aimee Mann. Mann has a soprano voice which is beautiful and has more range than most singers of the time. So, unlike songs by – for example – The Bangles, Mann goes lower on several songs as well as to the upper limits of her range. The result is that the songs do not sound bubblegum pop on every track and she is able to connote a greater emotional range than many of her contemporaries. Still, on some of the tracks – like the beginning to “Coming Up Close” – Mann is produced under the instrumental accompaniment, so she can barely be understood.

‘Til Tuesday is largely driven by the lyrics of Aimee Mann and Mann tends to like songs about emotional conflict. She is an able songwriter, though and on many of her songs, she writes musical storysongs in an almost Folk tradition. So, for example, her song “David Denies” has a protagonist with a conflict and an emotional journey which she presents: “He cannot work he cannot think / Beyond the guilt he has for leaving her alone / I'm going down I cannot breathe / He doesn't think to leave me anything at all / David denies that he'll ever change his mind.” And the song works because the vocals are presented so they may be clearly heard over the sweeps and swells of the guitars and keyboards.

Mann’s lyrics also tend to illustrate how good she is as a poet. Aimee Mann has an excellent sense of imagery in many of her songs which makes them distinct from other pop music, especially of the time. When Mann sings “There was a time not long ago / I dreamt that the world was flat / And all the colours bled away / And that was that / And in time, I could only believe in one thing / The sky was just phosphourus stars hung on strings / And you swore that they'd always be mine / When you can pull them down anytime” (“The Other End (Of The Telescope)”) she paints a pretty incredible picture in the mind’s eye of the listener and that works beautifully for making her points.

But, not all of the songs are winners. Take, for example, the lyrics to “J For Jules.” On that song, Mann wrote a far less inspired “I was saying my prayers / He was combing his hair / In a country that began with a / 'J' for Jules” (“J For Jules”). Mann is able to do better on many of the other songs, so why she doesn’t on this one is somewhat baffling.

All in all, Coming Up Close: A Retrospective is a good retrospective of a fairly average band from the 1980s. Anyone who likes light pop-rock will find something to like here.

The best song is “Voices Carry,” the low point is “J For Jules.”

For other works by ‘Til Tuesday and/or Aimee Mann, please check out my reviews of:
Voices Carry
Welcome Home
I'm With Stupid
Magnolia Soundtrack

6/10

For other music reviews, please visit my index page for an organized listing of albums and singles by clicking here!

© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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VERY Unremarkable ‘80s Pop: ‘Til Tuesday's Welcome Home.

The Good: Some lyrics, Some vocals
The Bad: Instrumental accompaniment is boring, Repetitive lyrics, Short
The Basics: A dismally blasé album, Welcome Home fares poorly over multiple listens.


I suspect there comes a time in virtually every band's progress when the band has to decide if it is truly a band or a solo act with very regular back-up artists. Despite the fact that Joey Pesce wrote one of the songs on Welcome Home, it appears by this point in the progress of ‘Til Tuesday, the band was essentially Aimee Mann with very regular backing instrumentalists. Unfortunately, Welcome Home is average-at-best and now sounds completely dated. Unlike other ‘Til Tuesday albums I have heard, Welcome Home suffers because it does not even have the hook other albums have (in other words, no hit single).

Welcome Home sounds like what it is, remarkably middle-of-the-road mid-1980s pop music. As such, it is loaded with synthesizer accompaniment, overproduced backing vocals and a poor replayability that comes from many of the songs sounding very similar.

With only ten tracks occupying 40:31, Welcome Home is largely the work of Aimee Mann and ‘Til Tuesday. Mann wrote all but one of the songs and she was involved in co-writing all of them. Aimee Mann provides the lead vocals on each and every track and she plays bass on most tracks as well. The other three members of the band, Robert Holmes, Joey Pesce, and Michael Hausman co-wrote a couple of the tracks and they provide musical accompaniment on the piano, synthesizer, guitars and percussion. The album was produced by Rhett Davis.

Sadly, Welcome Home is lacking in anything remotely catchy. Songs like “David Denies” and “Lover’s Day” might ingrain themselves in the mind of the listener solely because the lyrics are repeated so frequently in the songs. After several listens to this album, I cannot pick out a single tune. The reason for this is that most of the instrumental accompaniment is a very bland, almost ballad-like synthesizer accompaniment which is utterly indistinct. The album is hardly exciting and most of the songs have a slow, sad feel to them despite having the synthesizer as the primary instrumentation.

Vocally, Aimee Mann illustrates range on Welcome Home. She manages to go into her lower ranges on songs like “Sleeping And Waking” and she illustrates her flawless soprano voice on “What About Love.” But she garbles some of the lyrics on “Coming Up Close” and the inability to clearly understand all that she is singing is frustrating to the listener, especially when it seems the lines are not as inspired as some of her other works.

Lyrically, Welcome Home is a mix of sad little storysongs and the entire album has a melancholy feel to it. Mann seems especially wistful when she sings “Is it that a change of scene is all she needs / Maybe it's something she works out alone / And if I don't hold her up / Will she just fall down” (“Will She Just Fall Down?”)? It is almost as if she were singing about leaving the band and going her own way. Either way, the song about codependency seems an odd choice for a pop number and it does not quite fit the tune that accompanies it.

Many of the songs are about endings and a feeling of futility in relationships, but ‘Til Tuesday is not saying anything extraordinarily new. With lines like “It's what he wants I'm almost sure / And I can hardly stand him saying it's not so / And so I'll wait and so I'll hope / Somehow I can convince him not to let me go / David denies that he'll ever change his mind / (but he always changes) / David denies - but he's left his love behind / (left his love behind)” (“David Denies”) the band seems to want to muse on love, but there's no catch. We don't empathize with the musical protagonist because we don't care about her. Sometimes people do change and the song does not explore that well.

Finally, some of the songs are just plagued by repetition. I could live well without hearing “There's no such thing as lover’s day” (“Lover’s Day”) ever again. The idea isn't bad, but it’s a one-line idea and ‘Til Tuesday subjects the listener to that same line over and over. It’s not worth it.

Sadly, that is where I fall on Welcome Home. The album just isn't worth it. It is not new, it is not fresh and it sounds like what it is: something old and very mediocre.

For other works by ‘Til Tuesday and/or Aimee Mann, please check out my reviews of:
Voices Carry
I'm With Stupid
Magnolia Soundtrack

4/10

For other album and single reviews, please visit my index page for an organized list by clicking here!

© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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W.L.’s May Artist Of The Month Was Aimee Mann And Started With The Underwhelming Voices Carry!

The Good: Melodic, Good lyrics
The Bad: Short, Largely indistinct, Very uncatchy tunes, Some campy lyrics.
The Basics: A disappointing debut, Voices Carry sounds very much like archetypal mid-1980s pop.


While I wrote for the review site I worked for, I made a lot of fanfare of my Artist Of The Month declarations. Back in May, I had Aimee Mann as my focused artist (I’ll be restarting the Artist Of The Month immersion early next year, if all goes as planned!). Aimee Mann’s works I have a passing familiarity with and a deep love of from the Magnolia Soundtrack (click here for that review!) and I’m With Stupid (reviewed here!) which I quickly came to like. So, the first thing I learned about Aimee Mann as part of my weeks of exploration was that she got her commercial debut with a little band called ‘Til Tuesday. The debut of ‘Til Tuesday was Voices Carry.

Sadly, Voices Carry is very much a quintessential 1980s sound with guitars and synthesizers backed with drums and a lot of backing vocals. Sadly, listening to it now, I don’t feel like I am hearing the album with the weight of all that came after: it seems like it was derivative even at the time. The best possible way I can describe Voices Carry is that it sounds like the Bangles took over early 80s Fleetwood Mac. That is all.

With only eleven songs occupying 41:52, Voices Carry is very much the work of ‘Til Tuesday. All of the songs were written by Aimee Mann with all of the musical accompaniment written by the band ‘Til Tuesday. While the group did not produce any of the tracks, the fact that they play their own instruments lends one to believe that they ended up with much of the sound they wanted at the time.

Sadly, much of that sound is obvious mid-1980s pop. It’s not even rock. The songs are synth and guitar driven and I was actually surprised to discover that Aimee Mann played the bass on the album because the bass is so buried by the other instruments and even accompanying vocals. Almost all of the songs are obvious pop ballads and each and every track lacks a sense of weight or importance to it.

This is, in part, due to the vocals of Aimee Mann and her accompanying vocalists. Mann’s vocals are universally soprano and they are high with a perfect pitch. However, they also sound bubbly on each and every track, which is inappropriate given many of her lyrics. The songs lack a sense of weight because the instrumental accompaniment from Robert Holmes, Joey Pesce and Michael Hausman are drown out by equally perky vocals by Aimee Mann. It doesn’t matter what one is singing when it is presented in an upbeat manner.

And it seems like the band does have something to say. Aimee Mann is a wonderful poet. When she wrote “If I'm calling you out of the blue / It's because it's never ending / And if I'm dragging out picture of you / It's because I'm only pretending / And if I'm looking over my shoulder / It's just because I hope you'll be there” (“Looking Over My Shoulder”) she manages to write about the fine line between love and obsession which is seldom explored in pop music. And despite some simplistic lines, the song works.

What the album Voices Carry is most known for, though, is the single “Voices Carry.” That song had a memorable and somewhat haunting bridge and refrain with the lines “I try so hard not to get upset / Because I know all the trouble I'll get / Oh, he tells me tears are something to hide / And something to fear / And I try so hard to keep it inside / So no one can hear / Hush hush keep it down now voices carry” (“Voices Carry”). The insecurities in relationships come out, even when one interprets the song as something other than being about infidelity. Mann illustrates she is an able poet on that track.

Sadly, it is in the minority for this particular album. Voices Carry is plagued by pop songs that are incredibly high on pointless repetition, like “Love In A Vacuum,” which has the title repeated so frequently it loses all meaning. And songs like “Maybe Monday” have obvious rhymes like “I have promises to keep / Tell me again / I might stop crying in my sleep . . .” which sound nonsensical even in context.

Thus, my first outing for the month with Aimee Mann falls flat. The album feels dated and unoriginal. For an artist (which I know Mann is) it is easy to see why she went her own way. I cannot wait to hear the results.

The best track is “Voices Carry,” the low point is “Are You Serious?”

For other, similar, artists or works, please check out my reviews of:
Siren – Heather Nova
Tuesday Night Music Club – Sheryl Crow
Mortal City – Dar Williams

4/10

For other music reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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