Bachelor No. 2 or, the last remains of the dodo - Aimee Mann (1999)

Bachelor No. 2, or the last remains of the dodo is often considered Aimee Mann's masterpiece, and there's no doubt that it's got nothing but great songs on it. 

Interestingly, the album barely got done at all: most of it was recorded in the late 90s when her record label Imägo, went bankrupt and was bought up by Interscope who basically told her that they weren't going to release it. A legal struggle ensued and Aimee finally bought back the rights to the recordings for a figure "in the low six figures." She then released an early version of the Bachelor No. 2 via her website...finally fortune struck when Paul Thomas Anderson featured her songs heavily in his movie Magnolia, whose script was, in fact, inspired by several earlier Aimee Mann songs.  

The money from the soundtrack allowed Mann to buy back the songs and set up her own private record label, SuperEgo Records,  whiich has been releasing her music ever since. In a way this was kind of a new model, though it's since become very common. A song or two on this album were also featured on Magnolia and its soundtrack, which was credited to Aimee Mann, as it was de facto, an Aimee Mann album (albeit with three songs that weren't hers.)

 Aimee Mann is one of the greatest living songwriters in the anglosphere and maybe the world, beautifully blending a certain impeccable melodicism with some of the best, well-thought out lyrics written by anybody ever. In a way, this is her "mature" record, her earlier records having a slight sense of rockin' fun and hope that this record, which has more somber and bitter tones largely -- but not completely  eschews.

You feel the development of the Aimee Mann character here: I once joked that 'Til Tuesday albums should be subtitled "songs of lonesome fuckbuddies", (which is meant as a descriptive thing, not a criticism as they are great); here those lonesome characters are all grown up and all too aware of the game they've put themselves in and you get the idea that they've just had about enough of this shit and the almost instantaneous disappointment with their caddish suitors.

Having gone so many years between albums, some of these songs evidently date back as far as the mid-90s and the I'm with Stupid era -- and possibly even earlier.

The album is rightly hailed as brilliant, although it's brand of Bacharach-inspired adult pop goes on a little too long and given it's mono-chromatic tone can be a problem. I also think the sound is way too brickwalled and undynamic. 

Ultimately I'd rate this about as high as I rate I'm With Stupid, but not as high as "Whatever."


But I'll still give it a 4.5/5.

Here's a pretty representative song from the album, man I love her voice. This song gives me major chills especially when the bitter, world-weary middle eight -- which returns for the coda -- kicks in. Powerful.


https://open.spotify.com/album/2oAh7vprZx8iSqoyNxQASX?si=dZUQtp9fTh2gXyUyHt6aVA

Note: 

There are several versions of the album (Not even counting the initial "preliminary website release".) There's the original American album, and the European version which adds "Save Me" from Magnolia, and another song that was later re-recorded and eleased as a B-side from a single on her next album and resquences the track-list.

And then there's a (vinyl and digital only) release in 2020 which combined the songs from this and Magnolia: they do sound like one era and that's probably the best reelease, though, annoyingly it's not out on CD.

I have the MFSL version of the American album (which is a tiny bit less brickwalled than the normal version) and I also the European release: the MFSL version is the best sounding, though it's still compressed as hell, probably at the mixing rather than the mastering stage. I heard a vinyl rip of the 2020 double vinyl and that to me would almost be definitive (and save people from having to get Magnolia too. 


oming Up:

All This Useless Beauty - Elvis Costello & The Attractions

Alpha Mike Foxtrot -- Wilco

American Idiot - Green Day

Amnesiac Radiohead

Another Life - Another Life

B

The B-52s

Bachelor No. 2 (Or, The Last Remains of the Dodo) - Aimee Mann

The Ballad of Easy Rider - The Byrds

Bambu - Dennis Wilson

Band on the Run

Bangles EP

The Basement Tapes - Bob Dylan & The Band

BARB

The BBC Sessions -- Belle & Sebastian

The Beatles [The White Album] 

Beatles For Sale 

Beauty and Sadness -- TheSmithereens

Beauty and the Beat -- The Go-Go's

Become What YOu Are - The Juliana Hatfield 3

Before & After - Tim Finn

Beggar's Banquet. The Rolling Stones

Begin Here - The Zombies

Being There - Wilco

The Bends -- Radiohead

Berlin - Lou Reed

The Best of Badfinger

The Best of Dark Horse - 1976-1989 - George Harrison

The Best of Sam Cooke

Best Shots - Pat Benatar

Betchadupa

Between The Buttons - Rolling Stones

Big Canoe - Tim Finn

the Big Express - XTC

Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi - Camera Obscura

Billy Idol

A Bit of Previous - Belle & Sebastian

The Black Album - Prince

Black Gold - Nina Simone

Black List - Alex Chilton

Black Market Clash - The Clash 

Black Sea - XTC

Black Snake Diamond Role -- Robyn Hitchcock

Black Spring - Lush

Black-Eyed Man - Cowboy Junkies

Blind Man's Zoo - 10000 Maniacs 

Blonde on Blonde - Bob Dylan

Blondie

Blood And Chocolate - Elvis Costello & The Attractions

Blood on the Tracks - Bob Dylan

Blue Kentucky Girl -- Emmylou Harris

Boats Against the Current -- Eric Carmen

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan In Concert: Brandeis University 1963

Book - They Might Be Giants

Bookends -- Simon and Garfunkel

Booker T & The M.G.'s

The Bootleg Series 1-3 Bob Dylan

Born in the USA - Bruce Springsteen

Born toDie - Lana Del Rey

Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen

Bossanova - The Pixies

The Both

Boy - U2

The Boy with the Arab Strap - Belle & Sebastian

Boys Don't Cry - TheCure

Brian Wilson

Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE

Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin

Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road

Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon & Garfunkel

Bringing It All Back Home - Bob Dylan

Brutal Youth - Elvis Costello

Bryter Layter - Nick Drake

Buena Vista Social Club

Buffalo Springfield

Buffalo Springfield Again

Buoys - Panda Bear

Byrdmaniax - The Byrds


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Become What You are - The Juliana Hatfield Three (1993)

Image
  Despite the fact that  Become What You Are   reminds me of a rather dreary time in my life -- the year and a half or so when I came back to Springfield Missouri after college to live -- I think this is one of my favorite albums of 1993 -- and 1993 was a really good year for my taste in music.  Juliana Hatfield has a way of telling stories and fleshing out ver complex characters and defining complex emotions in amazingly simple terms, with a few lyrics as possible -- she's sort of, like, the Hemmingway of singer/songwriters. And that's a compliment. But to be clear, this music is not one woman alone with an acoustic guitar; this is a real rock band and Juliana Hatfield herself is quite a formidable hard rock guitarist. This is kind of in the grunge era; I wouldn't call it grunge, but it's from  the brief period of time when singer songwriters could rock in this way that was somewhere between The Stooges, Kiss, and Big Star. See also some of Aimee Mann's cu...
Read more

Arrival - ABBA (1976)

Image
  Arrival was Abba's fourth album, which was long labored over, to good results: it was a huge seller, even going gold in the stubbornly resistant American market, thanks to the giganto-hit "Dancing Queen", still in it's one of the most perfectly written pop songs of all time. The immortal image of the 17 year old girl awash in the first innocent glow of her full physical and sexual power dancing alone under the blue lights strikes tears in my eyes every single time I hear it. I'ts so perfect. .. Like their previous self-titled album  Arrival  runs through a lot of styles and moods, but the the album overall comes off as even more adult and overtly sexual: while the first two songs celebrate innocent girlhood: (girlish fantasies of kissing teacher, the innocent abandon of the 70s teen disco,) the themes seem to progress from innocence to materialistic and sexual cynicism. But the album never breaks a sweat doing this: it all still goes down like ice-cream. The de...
Read more

Beggar's Banquet - Rolling Stones (1968)

Image
Beggar's Banquet was The Rolling Stones' first post-psychedelic album, in which they went back to their roots as a blues rock band, a place which they have decided never to leave again, perhaps due to the disastrous reception of Their Satanic Majesties Request. A pity, in my opinion, but this is not the place to go into it. It's also probably the last great gasp of original guitarist/multi-instrumentalist colorist Brian Jones, although he would play on a few songs on the next album, he was rapidly descending in a tragic downward spiral.  Personally I prefer the rissks the 1965-1967 era Stones took to the Blues Rock phase (though with the addition of Mick Taylor they definitely recorded a pair of their finest albums) and I find the relentless roots rock of  Beggar's Banquet to be a tad bit disappointing. Like, where are the harpsichords, horns, dulcimers and sitars of yesteryear?  Having said that, there are definitely no bad songs here: no ten minute long jams or lame M...
Read more