“Mental Illness (2017) is Aimee Mann’s quintessential statement, tempering the discord of life with elegant chamber folk,” (Pitchfork). ” … Mann doing an album called Mental Illness is a concept so fitting it took her a lifetime to find it. Having already delivered a new wave smash, scored an Academy Award nomination, recorded eight stylistically diverse solo records as well a fiesty collaboration with punk’s Ted Leo, Mann is rightfully pissed that she’s nevertheless pigeonholed as a dreary fabricator of slow, sad-sack songs. So she’s answered her critics with her slowest, sad-sack-iest album yet, one populated by ordinary people struggling against operatic levels of existential pain at odds with their humdrum lives.
Mann has long been an expert of articulating this tension. Originally written about her attraction to a woman on the down low, her 1985 ‘Til Tuesday single ‘Voices Carry’ found its defining shape when record company meddling forced Mann to recast it as a heterosexual melodrama that became a feminist anthem about overcoming male dominance. Yet no one would’ve predicted then that Mann would rank among the few new wave survivors who’d achieve both consistent sales and artistic credibility well into the 21st century … A rocker at heart if not always in practice, Mann has sometimes been muted but never mellow; her new wave training and constitutional angst haven’t allowed it. To prepare for her latest, she studied the gentle craftsmanship of Bread, Dan Fogelberg, and other unhip smoothies that punk tossed on the anti-establishment bonfire with Yes and ELP. Mental Illness is accordingly made of skeletal strings, coolly regulated commentary, and minimal drums. Juxtaposing elegant chamber folk against the discord of lives out of balance, it’s musically more delicate than even her soft rock models.”
After a start in Bb major overall, “Knock It Off” features a soft-spoken breezy bridge between 1:46 – 2:02, shifting us into Db major. Returning to Bb major for the balance of the tune, Mann decisively closes with a simple plagal cadence.
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