(Thank you Karen for the photo)

Enmore Theatre, 4 September 2009

I hate the Enmore as a venue.  I’ve probably said that before, but I’ll say it again.  It’s uncomfortable and even though it’s a vast room, it always feels overcrowded.  But then again I guess most venues are like that...so maybe it’s just me.

We’re the first ones to arrive and, amusingly, a queue forms behind us.  Maybe that says something about the type of crowd Mann draws - I thought it’d be mostly people in their early to mid 30s but mid to late 40s seems about the average.

Ben Lee is supporting her, as he had done in the US.  He ambles onstage, looking for all the world like a nerdy school kid with his untucked shirt and rumpled hair.  He plugs in an iPod and has a sheet of new song lyrics beside him.  He’s affable and rogueishly charming, teasing latecomers and laughing at himself.  He plays a bunch of stuff from a new album he’s released for free online with his band Noise Addict, called It was never about the audience.  Although his lyrics are wry and amusing for the most part, I find his music boring and repetitive.  I enjoy the show because of how he performs, but when I listen to the music later at home, find there is very little to keep me hooked.

But he knows that no one is really there to see him (ah, the sad life of a support act) and he graciously gets offstage.  It’s not long at all before Aimee Mann herself lopes on, looking at once totally normal and otherwordly.  She starts off by greeting us and thanking us and sounding as excited to be playing her second ever Australian show as we are to hear it. 

It’s just her and two guys moving between keys, recorders, drums and guitars, and together they make a big, rich sound that perfectly shows off her low, languid, caramel voice.  She pulls out all manner of songs from across her large back catalogue.  The standouts for me are a plaintive 31 Today that seems to hit every nerve in me, and a solo of Save Me that I could have listened to forever.

About halfway through the show, a man calls from the audience.  “Excuse me Aimee!”

“Yes?”

“My eight year old son would love it if you could play Phoenix or Borrowing Time.  Would that be possible?”

“That’s possible,” she replies, immediately pulling off the capo and preparing for the request.  “Highly probable, in fact.” She plays the song and then laughs at the end, “I love the way you blame it on your eight year old son, like, ‘oh I don’t care what you play, play anything...’”

After that, requests are shouted out from all over the theatre any time she pauses between songs.  She is gracious and accommodating, and even though she says she is starting to tire, her voice doesn’t falter.

I, however, am not well and her warm, seductive tones make me want to sleep.  As soon as she finishes, I say goodbye to the Beilharzes and the Uns and push my way through the crowd, desperate to get away somewhere cooler, somewhere still.  But I sing with Aimee all the way home.