Aimee Mann's old band - I'd heard and liked "Coming Up Close" (the song) before, but didn't really have a sense for what the rest of their stuff was like. From that starting point, this collection was initially a little disorienting - the selections from the band's first two albums, Voices Carry and Welcome Home, in particular are very 'eighties' in sound, dominated on first listen by that decade's characteristic, dreaded drum machine/synth sound (my thoughts turn unavoidably to "Take My Breath Away" and its ilk). In fact, though, rather incongruously, I prefer the cuts from those two to those from the band's third lp, Everything's Different Now, even though the latter are, unsurprisingly, closer in style to Mann's solo work.
The charm of those earlier songs - of which "On Sunday" is, apart from "Coming Up Close" (which is in an entirely different league), my favourite - lies in their straight-ahead, swooping melodies and dramatic choruses. By contrast, the picks from Everything's Different Now are, if somewhat more sophisticated, rather on the anemic side - for mine, Mann's songwriting wasn't quite strong enough at this point for these more elliptical, delicately-fashioned songs to fully work. With the benefit of hindsight, I think that Whatever and I'm With Stupid saw her striking out in a slightly different (and successful) direction, before really bringing all the various 'Til Tuesday and solo-to-date threads together in Bachelor No 2 (then more or less treading water with the very good but somehow undistinguished Lost In Space) - songs like "How Am I Different", "Red Vines", "Deathly", "Calling It Quits" and so forth are wonderful because they have those sweeping irresistible melodies and the stately Bacharach-esque elegance (plus, by then, the synth was long gone and to the forefront come a clean, biting electric guitar which perfectly set off Mann's voice and songs...).
Anyhow, glad to own this cd, but I think that it has pretty much sated my curiosity as far as 'Til Tuesday goes.
