Even when lives are apparently serene and problem free there's often that nagging doubt that things can never be quite as good as they seem.
Aimee Mann has built a career on looking at the dichotomy between the self we present to the world and the one that exists in private.
I get the impression that if you invited her to your home, you'd soon find her looking for what you've swept under the carpet and searching for skeletons in the closet.
These characteristics are partly what made her songs the perfect soundtrack to Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson's sublime film in which the main characters were forced to face up to painful truths in their past and stop living in a state of denial.
It is also why she distrusts charmers. Several songs on this album explore the question as to whether such people are harmless entertainers or manipulators and fakes. On the title track she states the case that : "when you're a charmer, the world applauds, they don't know that secretly charmers feel like they're frauds".
On other tracks, she gently chastises herself for being duped by others, whether this is by being a "gullible stooge" (Disappeared) or for displaying a misplaced, and exaggerated loyalty (Labrador).
In the latter song there's a playful reference to the lyrics to the popular music hall song Daisy Bell ("give me your answer do"), an example of the lightness of touch that always saves her vignettes from being merely spiteful or despairing.
On 'Living a Lie', which features a duet with James Mercer of The Shins, she observes that "for every open arm there's a cold shoulder" in common with her belief that for every silver lining there's a cloud. This pessimistic outlook can also be heard on Gamma Ray where "one thing leads to another and none of it's good".
This is Aimee Mann's first studio album for four years. Musically, she says that the eleven songs were influenced by 70/80s pop although essentially there's no radical departure from the smooth, sometimes bland, arrangements of her previous seven records.
NPR (National Public Radio) in the USA recently referred to her songs as reflecting a "jaundiced resignation" which is misleading in that it makes her sound bitter and cheerless. You only have to watch the humorous videos for the songs Charmer and Labrador to see that she's relaxed enough to make fun of her public persona and 'ironic' would be a more accurate description than 'jaundiced'.
While her songs are obviously the result of, often bitter, personal experience, there's also the cool perspective of a detached observer. It's this sense of distance that gives a mood of calmness even when the subject matter is relatively dark.
You get the feeling that her sardonic view of the world is encapsulated in a line from the song Soon Enough: "what's more fun that other people's hell".
