Ted Leo I've heard two songs from that I can think of ("Me and Mia" and "Bomb Repeat Bomb") and both are good but Aimee Mann is simply one of the very biggest objects in my musical firmament, and that inevitably shapes how I hear this collab between the two; also, the fact that I have basically a pavlovian response to Mann's voice anywhere it shows up.
So what that means is that, to me, The Both pretty much sounds like a somewhat more crisply rocky Aimee Mann record with some dude doing a fair bit of the singing and the addition of plenty of brightly crunching electric guitars (Bachelor No 2), which turns out to be no bad thing. Upbeat back-and-forth power-pop cuts like "Milwaukee" and "Volunteers of America" grab the attention, broody mid-tempo numbers like "No Sir" are welcome in their familiarity, and in "Hummingbird" there's the quiet, prettily sad tune without which no Mann record is complete - plus there are jauntier moments like "Pay For It" and "Bedtime Stories" which presumably reflect the Leo influence and carry it off well too.
So what that means is that, to me, The Both pretty much sounds like a somewhat more crisply rocky Aimee Mann record with some dude doing a fair bit of the singing and the addition of plenty of brightly crunching electric guitars (Bachelor No 2), which turns out to be no bad thing. Upbeat back-and-forth power-pop cuts like "Milwaukee" and "Volunteers of America" grab the attention, broody mid-tempo numbers like "No Sir" are welcome in their familiarity, and in "Hummingbird" there's the quiet, prettily sad tune without which no Mann record is complete - plus there are jauntier moments like "Pay For It" and "Bedtime Stories" which presumably reflect the Leo influence and carry it off well too.
