Aimee Mann returns with new album 'Queens of The Summer Hotel' on November 5 + lead single "Suicide Is Murder" out now with video

Exciting news that Aimee Mann has announced the release of her next studio album, 'Queens of the Summer Hotel.' Check out the lead single "Suicide Is Murder" and compelling official video for the track. Check out the official media release below...Robert Kinsler

AIMEE MANN RETURNS WITH NEW ALBUM QUEENS OF THE SUMMER HOTEL NOVEMBER 5

WRITTEN FOR STAGE ADAPTATION OF
SUSANNAH KAYSEN’S GIRL, INTERRUPTED

LEAD SINGLE “SUICIDE IS MURDER” DEBUTS TODAY WITH VIDEO

CONFIRMS SELECT TOUR DATES WITH RUFUS WAINWRIGHT

photo credit: Sheryl Nields

“One of the finest
 songwriters of her generation.”

August 6, 2021—Queens of The Summer Hotel, the new album from Aimee Mann, is set for release on November 5 via her own SuperEgo Records. Mann started developing the new music in 2018 when she agreed to write songs for a stage adaptation of Girl, Interrupted, Susannah Kaysen’s memoir about her psychiatric hospitalization in the late 1960s. It was material that Mann understood well, having had her own struggles with mental illness. The resulting music comes together in Queens of The Summer Hotel.

The album consists of a song cycle constructed from music that Mann wrote for the show, sung by Mann and orchestrated with her longtime collaborator Paul Bryan, using strings and woodwinds in a nod to the project’s theatrical origins.

In celebration of the forthcoming record, Mann is debuting the lead single, “Suicide Is Murder,” today alongside an accompanying music video starring James Urbaniak, and directed and produced by Puloma Basu and Rob Hatch-Miller. Listen to/share the track HERE and watch/share the video HERE.

“I started to write this song because I’ve known people who committed suicide and friends who’ve had loved ones die from suicide,” Mann notes. “I think the phrase ‘suicide is murder’ took on a meaning for me as it’s the worst thing to have to deal with in the aftermath. It’s just terrible. Because every person who knows the person who committed suicide will blame themselves in some way for not noticing or stepping in or doing something. They’ll till the end of their days, say, ‘was there something I could have done?’” 

Album artwork

In many ways, Queens of The Summer Hotel is the unintentional part two to Mann’s 2017’s Grammy-winning album Mental Illness—both exploring themes of self-harm, depression and suicide. However, Queens of The Summer Hotelwas written more quickly than any of Mann’s previous records. The assignment to write songs for someone else’s project offered Mann a sense of liberation, freeing her to enter another person’s consciousness and story—and a brand-new set of musical structures—through the lens of Kaysen’s own alienation. Although several different characters narrate the songs, they’re not strictly tied to any narrative. But together, they form a portrait of one woman’s crisis of disassociation as seen through another woman’s eyes. 

“I honestly felt almost possessed when I was writing this record as I’ve never written so fast and intensely,” recalls Mann. “I found the material very interesting and obviously really personal. I had specific ideas about what I thought the character’s backstory could be and incorporated a lot of shared experiences to flesh out specific characters discussed in the memoir.”

In addition, Mann has confirmed a run of select West Coast tour dates with Rufus Wainwright this fall. Kicking off on September 9, the shows include performances at Los Angeles’ Greek Theatre, San Diego’s Humphrey’s and Saratoga’s Mountain Winery. See below for complete tour details.

After several albums with ’Til Tuesday, Mann began her solo career in 1993 with the album Whatever and made a name for herself through her independent success and the founding of her record label, SuperEgo Records. Along the way, Mann forged a powerful new sound driven by her distinctive singing style—stripped-down, folky, acoustic but also forceful and cerebral, exploring psychological themes with dark wit and an eye for the world’s ugliest power plays. 

In 2017, Mann released her acclaimed album Mental Illness, which won Best Folk Album at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards. The New York Times proclaimed, “Mental Illness wallows in its troubles, and it’s an exquisite wallow,” while The Los Angeles Times declared “Every doomed syllable is sacred and every tragic rhyme fits, as though each song were a puzzle to which only Mann knows the solution.”

In addition to her solo albums, she has appeared on many film soundtracks, most notably the score for Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, with “Save Me” landing her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Original Song. Mann has also made numerous cameo appearances in films such as The Big Lebowski and TV shows like “Portlandia” and “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” in which she sang an indelible cover of The Cars’ song “Drive.” Other extracurricular activities include performing for President Obama and the First Lady at the White House and starting a Podcast with Ted Leo called “The Art of Process.”

AIMEE MANN—QUEENS OF THE SUMMER HOTEL

1. You Fall

2. Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath

3. Give Me Fifteen

4. At The Frick Museum

5. Home By Now

6. Checks

7. Little Chameleon

8. You Don't Have The Room

9. Suicide Is Murder

10. You Could Have Been A Roosevelt

11. Burn It Out

12. In Mexico
13. Check (reprise)
14. You're Lost

15. I See You

AIMEE MANN LIVE

September 9––San Diego, CA––Humphrey’s*
September 10––Los Angeles, CA–– The Greek Theatre*
September 11––Saratoga, CA––Mountain Winery*

*w/ Rufus Wainwright 

Sights and Sounds: LOGAN soundtrack, Aimee Mann, The Jesus And Mary Chain

I have plenty of great music-related news to share! I had to lead off with the 'LOGAN' update; I am super excited to see Hugh Jackman's last movie starring as Wolverine.

'LOGAN - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack features original music by Marco Beltrami

Lakeshore Records will release the LOGAN- Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally on March 3 and on audio CD March 31, 2017. The album contains original music by Marco Beltrami (BEN-HUR, THE HURT LOCKER) who previously scored two films for director James Mangold, 3:10 TO YUMA, for which Beltrami earned an Academy Award® nomination, and THE WOLVERINE.

“When I first watched LOGAN I was really impressed with its originality,” Beltrami stated.  “Although it’s a Marvel superhero movie, it is also many other movies as well, all tied up into a delicate balance of brazenness and subtlety. Jim is a master at moving fluently between genres and subverting them to present a new emotional landscape, and it was in trying to define this landscape in musical terms that I found my puzzle.”

In the near future, a weary Logan (Hugh Jackman) cares for an ailing Professor X in a hide out on the Mexican border. But Logan's attempts to hide from the world and his legacy are up-ended when a young mutant arrives, being pursued by dark forces. 

“LOGAN was an extremely demanding but very inspiring film score to work on. Jim distilled the innovation of an indie within the framework of a tentpole,” Beltrami explained.  “He played me scores he liked and which inspired the tone of the film for him—Taxi Driver, Paper Moon (the film itself), The Gauntlet. He liked the directness and rough edges, the unpolished tone, the energy. Somehow I had to capture this while simultaneously creating a modern score. It did not need grandiose thematic music and verbose melodic statements. It was all about vibe.”

Marco Beltrami is an award-winning composer who built his reputation as a genre innovator with non-traditional horror scores for the SCREAM franchise and DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK. Beltrami’s musical palette has since expanded to virtually all film genres. He has received two Oscar nominations for Best Original Score, for THE HURT LOCKER and 3:10 TO YUMA. He has received two Critic’s Choice Award nominations, and he was Emmy nominated for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series for THE PRACTICE. In 2011, he won the Golden Satellite Award for Best Score from The International Press Academy for SOUL SURFER and in 2014 was nominated for a World Soundtrack Award for Film Composer of the Year, for his incredible range of projects including CARRIE (2013), A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD (2013), The Homesman (2014), Snowpiercer (2013), Warm Bodies (2013), The Wolverine (2013) and WORLD WAR Z (2013).  Current projects for Beltrami include scoring the hit Fox television show, LUCIFER, which recently got picked up for its third season.

20^th Century Fox presents LOGAN in theaters on March 3, 2017.  Lakeshore Records will release the LOGAN – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally on March 3 and on audio CD on Friday, March 31, 2017.

Aimee Mann shares 'The Making of Mental Illness' video

Singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Aimee Mann has revealed a behind the scenes look at the making of her new album Mental Illness (due out March 31, 2017 on her own SuperEgo Records). Watch here: https://youtu.be/XSUF_umjo0E. 

Mental Illness shows off Mann’s rich, incisive and wry melancholia in an almost all-acoustic format, with a “finger-picky” style inspired by some of her favorite ‘60s and ‘70s folk-rock records, augmented by haunting strings arranged by her longtime producer, Paul Bryan. Aimee remains a student of human behavior, drawing not just on her own experiences to form the characters in the songs but tales told by friends. 

MENTAL ILLNESS TRACKLIST
1. Goose Snow Cone
2. Stuck In The Past
3. You Never Loved Me
4. Rollercoasters
5. Lies Of Summer
6. Patient Zero
7. Good For Me
8. Knock It Off
9. Philly Sinks
10. Simple Fix
11. Poor Judge

AIMEE MANN LIVE
April 20 /// Washington, DC /// Lincoln Theatre
April 21 /// Philadelphia, PA /// Keswick Theatre
April 22 /// New York, NY /// The Town Hall
April 23 /// Boston, MA /// The Wilbur Theatre
April 25 /// Albany, NY /// The Egg Center For The Performing Arts
April 26 /// Toronto, ON /// Danforth Music Hall 
April 28 /// Ann Arbor, MI /// The Ark
April 29 /// Chicago, IL /// Park West
April 30 /// Milwaukee, WI /// Pabst Theater
May 2 /// Madison, WI /// Barrymore Theatre
May 3 /// Saint Paul, MN /// Fitzgerald Theater
May 5 /// Boulder, CO /// Boulder Theater
May 6 /// Salt Lake City, UT /// The State Room
May 8 /// Missoula, MT /// The Wilma
May 9 /// Seattle, WA /// Neptune
May 10 /// Portland, OR /// Revolution Hall
May 12 /// San Francisco, CA /// The Fillmore 
May 13 /// Los Angeles, CA /// The Theatre at Ace Hotel

The Jesus And Mary Chain announce Spring North American Tour dates

Tickets on-sale this week

LONG-AWAITED NEW ALBUM ‘DAMAGE AND JOY’

TO BE RELEASED MARCH 24^TH ON ADA / WARNER MUSIC

The Jesus And Mary Chain set to return in 2017.
Photo by Steve Gullick

The Jesus and Mary Chain have announced Spring North American tour dates. The upcoming shows are set to follow the band’s highly anticipated new studio album ‘Damage and Joy’ – out March 24^th on ADA / Warner Music – and will see the duo performing new tracks from the LP live for the first time in the US & Canada. The trek begins on May 9^th in St. Paul, MN and is expected to hit Brooklyn, NY and Los Angeles, CA, among others. Tickets are on-sale this week via the band’s website.

Fronted by the Reid brothers Jim and William, The Jesus And Mary Chain first reformed to play the Coachella festival back in 2007. Despite regular touring – most notably a 2015 world tour which revisited their landmark album ‘Psychocandy’ – it took some time before they could agree on a plan to record a much-mooted seventh album.

Work on ‘Damage and Joy’, the band’s first album since ‘Munki’ in 1998, began in September 2015. The album commences with ‘Amputation’, in which waves of distorted guitar and Jim’s insouciant vocal delivery collide to create a hypnotic track which addresses his feelings of “being edited out of the whole music business… I felt like a rock ‘n’ roll amputation.”

Other highlights include a refined and re-energised new version of ‘All Things Must Pass’ which previously featured in the TV show ‘Heroes’ and then on ‘Upside Down: The Best of The Jesus and Mary Chain’; and the raw garage-rock of ‘Facing Up To The Facts’ which offers the revealing lyric: “I hate my brother and he hates me / That’s the way it’s supposed to be”.

The album also features performances from the band’s touring drummer Brian Young as well as former Lush bassist Phil King.

“The interesting thing about this record is what comes out of the speakers,” declares Jim. “To make a good record is an achievement if you’re twenty-two, but to do it in your fifties, the way we are, I think is a minor miracle.”

‘Damage and Joy’ will be released on digital, CD, vinyl and Cassette formats, and pre-orders are currently open. All pre-orders receive an immediate download of ‘Amputation’.

The full album tracklisting -

1.     Amputation

2.     War On Peace

3.     All Things Pass

4.     Always Sad

5.     Songs For A Secret

6.     The Two Of Us

7.     Los Feliz (Blues and Greens)

8.     Mood Rider

9.     Presedici (Et Chapaquiditch)

10.  Get On Home

11.  Facing Up To The Facts

12.  Simian Split

13.  Black And Blues

14.  Can’t Stop The Rock

The Jesus and Mary Chain North American Tour Dates: 

5/9 - St. Paul, MN @ The Palace

5/10 - Chicago, IL @ Riviera

5/12 - Toronto, ON @ Massey Hall

5/14 - Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel

5/19 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern

5/20 - Oakland, CA @ The Fox Theater

5/22 - Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom

5/23 - Seattle, WA @ Showbox SoDo

5/24 - Vancouver, BC @ Vogue Theatre

http://thejesusandmarychain.uk.com/

https://twitter.com/TheMaryChain

https://www.facebook.com/JesusAndMaryChain/

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4rjlerN21ygkIhmUv55irs

Aimee Mann's highly anticipated new album 'Mental Illness' out March 31 + Single “Goose Snow Cone” debut

I was super excited to get this media release today, announcing the new album from Aimee Mann (and her first in five years!)...

AIMEE MANN’S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED NEW ALBUM MENTAL ILLNESS OUT MARCH 31 VIA SUPEREGO

LEAD SINGLE “GOOSE SNOW CONE” DEBUTS

SPRING TOUR DATES CONFIRMED

Aimee Mann’s Mental Illness, her first album in five years, will be released on March 31 via her own SuperEgo Records. The record follows 2012’s Charmer, which Rolling Stone proclaimed “shows off the more pop-oriented side to her usual acoustic tendencies.” With this follow-up, she returns to a more musically soft-spoken but still lyrically barbed approach, as heard in the album’s lead single, “Goose Snow Cone,” which debuts today. Listen/share the track here: aimeemann.com. Mental Illness can be pre-ordered now at hyperurl.co/aimeemann.

Mental Illness shows off Mann’s rich, incisive and wry melancholia in an almost all-acoustic format, with a “finger-picky” style inspired by some of her favorite ‘60s and ‘70s folk-rock records, augmented by haunting strings arranged by her longtime producer, Paul Bryan. Additional players include: Jonathan Coulton on acoustic guitar and backing vocals, Jay Bellerose on drums, Jamie Edwards on piano, John Roderick as a co-writer and Ted Leo (who recently joined her in a joint side project, The Both) as a background singer.

On this eleven-track album, the Oscar-nominated, Grammy-winning singer remains a student of human behavior, drawing not just on her own experiences to form the characters in the songs but tales told by friends. “I assume the brief on me is that people think that I write these really depressing songs,” Mann says. “I don’t know—people may have a different viewpoint—but that’s my own interpretation of the cliché about me. So if they thought that my songs were very down-tempo, very depressing, very sad, and very acoustic, I thought I’d just give myself permission to write the saddest, slowest, most acoustic, if-they’re-all-waltzes-so-be-it record I could…I mean, calling it Mental Illness makes me laugh, because it is true, but it’s so blunt that it’s funny.”

In support of the release, Mann confirms a headlining North American tour this spring, with stops in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia and more. Tickets can be purchased here: aimeemann.com/tour. See below for complete tour details.

After several albums with Til Tuesday, Mann began her solo career in 1993 with the album Whatever and made a name for herself through her independent success and the founding of her record label, SuperEgo Records. In addition to her solo albums, she has appeared on many film soundtracks, most notably the song score for Paul Thomas Anderson’sMagnolia, with “Save Me” landing her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Original Song.

In 2014, Mann joined up with Ted Leo for a more rock-oriented duo project, releasing a self-titled album under the name The Both. Other extracurricular activities since Charmerranged from playing herself on the hit TV series Portlandia to performing for President Obama and the First Lady at the White House. Named one of The Huffington Post’s “13 Funny Musicians You Should Be Following On Twitter,” Mann has gained a diehard social media following for her quick wit and stinging observation.

MENTAL ILLNESS TRACKLIST

1. Goose Snow Cone
2. Stuck In The Past
3. You Never Loved Me
4. Rollercoasters
5. Lies Of Summer
6. Patient Zero
7. Good For Me
8. Knock It Off
9. Philly Sinks
10. Simple Fix
11. Poor Judge

AIMEE MANN LIVE
April 20—Washington, DC—Lincoln Theatre

April 21—Philadelphia, PA—Keswick Theatre

April 22—New York, NY—The Town Hall

April 24—Boston, MA—The Wilbur Theatre

April 25—Albany, NY—The Egg Center For The Performing Arts

April 26—Toronto, ON—Danforth Music Hall 

April 28—Ann Arbor, MI—The Ark

April 29—Chicago, IL—Park West

April 30—Milwaukee, WI—Pabst Theatre

May 2—Madison, WI—Barrymore Theatre

May 3—Minneapolis, MN—Fitzgerald Theatre

May 5—Boulder, CO—Boulder Theatre

May 6—Salt Lake City, UT—The State Room

May 8—Missoula, MT—The Wilma

May 9—Seattle, WA—Neptune

May 10—Portland, OR—Revolution Hall

May 12—San Francisco, CA—Fillmore Theatre

May 13—Los Angeles, CA—The Theatre at Ace Hotel