ShareThis"@#%&! Smilers," Aimee Mann (SuperEgo)Aimee Mann wants to break your heart.By all means, let her.After expanding her artistry with 2005's under-appreciated concept album "The Forgotten Arm" and 2006's Christmas-themed release "One More Drifter in the Snow," the gifted singer-songwriter returns to her traditional form with "@#%&! Smilers."But tradition for Mann is not trite, and her new release is a compilation of moody moments, not simplistic love songs."Smilers" is populated by a sad-sack group of characters, self-deprecating, depressed, delusional and sometimes weirdly optimistic. Mann tells their tales with a full artillery of instrumentation -- minus electric guitar, which is replaced by distorted keyboards -- creating a rewarding, broad scope of sound.As usual, her vocal delivery is forlorn and generally understated, an earthy anchor to the musical goings-on and a devastating vehicle for pained lyrics such as, "You love me like a dollar bill/You roll me up and trade me in" on "Phoenix" and "I thought my life would be different somehow/I thought my life would be better by now" on "31 Today."The stories of addicts, has-beens and the hopeless rarely have been shaded with such gorgeous hooks and gracious arrangements (which often take a whimsical bent and include everything from acoustic guitar and ginger percussion to horns and string sections). And once Mann has finished making her audience ache with the 13 tracks of "@#%&! Smilers," many listeners will hit "replay' so they can hurt all over again.Rating (five possible); 4-1/2"RARE CHILD," Danielia Cotton (Adrenaline Records/ADA)Artists have to make a mark to register, but sometimes they go overboard.The one-page press release for Danielia Cotton's immodestly titled "Rare Child" uses the word "raw" three times, and opening track "Make U Move" begins with her howling, "I'm a little black girl, gonna rock your world, so come move with me!" And although there's oddly no rhythmic persuasion to the arrangement, the song is jacked by her feral vocals swamped in electricity. Yet by the time she's bellowing through the maelstrom of the subsequent "Testify," listeners might wonder how a scaled-down Cotton would sound.Fortunately, the singer/guitarist answers that by letting loose of her Janis-Joplin-clone aspirations and settling onto the piano/acoustic guitar foundation of the heartbreaking "Didn't U," where her soulful delivery is all the more powerful.Turns out Cotton is more natural as a Category 3 storm than as a Category 5, where she pushes so hard it's distracting.She achieves her most effective intensity again on a manifesto of determined self-reliance, "Bang My Drum," as well as an edgy-but-not-explosive search for like-minded folks, "Righteous People," and the dark closer "Bound," where the jaded-feeling singer asks, "Am I bound to you?"This is the Cotton who seems genuine, the one who will stir simpatico emotions in her audience.By contrast, the "look what I can do!" bluster of cuts like those opening tracks (and others) seems contrived and impresses only superficially.Perhaps Cotton will have leveled out by her next project.Rating: 3"BEYOND" William Joseph (143/Reprise)Super-producer David Foster has a knack for being introduced to burgeoning male classical-ish performers such as Josh Groban and Michael Buble and fostering their careers into surprisingly broad success. William Joseph is another member of the music mogul's stable of sophisticated stallions, and Foster gives him an extra push by executive-producing Joseph's new "Beyond."The challenge here is that Joseph, who has the requisite good looks for the role, is a pianist and composer, and unlike projects by singers Groban and Buble, there are no vocals on "Beyond."Tough sell.Backed by a 72-piece orchestra, Joseph achieves a cinematic sound ... as in, "Beyond" could be a film score.There are a few attention-grabbing cuts, including his bombastic rework of Led Zeppelin's already bombastic "Kashmir" and his supple spin on Andrea and Ennio Morricone's "Cinema Paradiso," plus a few original Joseph compositions such as the flamenco-flavored "Apasionada," the passionate "Asturias" and the sweetly sweeping title track.However, many other cuts sound like generic, albeit solid, excerpts from a film score -- from the spy-thriller-feeling opener, "Standing the Storm," to the tender closer, "A Mother's Heart." It's hard to imagine many listeners developing a deep attachment to these tracks, but if anyone can make a mainstream success of a non-singing pianist, Foster can do it. And Joseph nimbly plays his part.Rating: 3(E-mail Chuck Campbell of The Knoxville News-Sentinel in Tennessee at Campbell(at)knews.com.)
Mann refines the art of being down
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