• POP

AIMEE MANN

@#%&*! Smilers

SuperEgo Records

***

Aimee Mann will forever reside in '80s lore for singing the hit Voices Carry for her band 'Til Tuesday. But her true career-defining moment would come more than a decade later when she parlayed a friendship with Magnolia director Paul Thomas Anderson into contributing eight haunting songs to the film's soundtrack, including the Oscar- and Grammy-nominated Save Me. (Anderson was so enamored of Mann's songs that he actually used her lyrics to inspire the film's characters and situations.)

On @#%&*! Smilers, Mann's sixth solo album, she trades stark, pristine songs for a more bluesy approach, while retaining her aching, nasal twang.

Mann also retains her trademark wry, biting view of the world -- she's been wounded by life's curve balls and is a master at turning heartache into art. The pleasant country lilt of Looking For Nothing recalls Bonnie Raitt, if she were filled with remorse: ''I got high on the Ferris wheel/Didn't like the way it made me feel.'' The acoustic guitar, brushes and strings of Phoenix create an entrancing lull, but with lines like, ''You love me like a dollar bill/You roll me up and trade me in,'' it's far from a lullaby. Same with It's Over,in which pretty melody masks searing observations: ''You sit there in the darkness/And you make plans but they're hopeless/And you blame God when you're lonely.'' 31 Today,another smooth, Raitt-like blues number, taps into familiar angst from a star's perspective: ``I thought my life would be better by now/But it's not and I don't know where to turn.''

But the songs aren't all gloom and doom. The Great Beyond, with Fiona Apple-esque sultry blues, is dripping with empowerment: ``Go, honey, go/If I were you I would leave this neighborhood/Away from people who never treat you like you should.''

Despite its oddly angry title, @#%&*! Smilers will leave most smiling, albeit wistfully.

Pod Picks: Phoenix, It's Over, 31 Today, Columbus Avenue.

-- MICHAEL HAMERSLY

mhamersly@MiamiHerald.com

JEWEL

Perfectly Clear

Valory Music Co.

* ½

It's not often that an artist devotes half a page of her liner notes to explain why she's suited to sing a particular style of music. In Jewel's case, the pop singer's name-dropping of Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard, Bob Dylan and Linda Ronstadt and her assertion that she's been talking about doing a country album ''since my second cover of Rolling Stone back in the '90s'' comes off as defensive and ridiculous.

If it's in the music, you don't need to rattle off your record collection. Show, don't tell. For her first country album, a lyrically sophomoric effort not unlike her pop releases, Jewel lacks authority.

Musically, the first half of Perfectly Clear's airy, light country-pop tunes like I Do and Love Is a Garden would make for acceptable filler on a mid-'70s Olivia Newton-John LP. These middle-of-the-road melodies, dusted with fiddles, banjo and steel guitar, are somewhat engaging, with easily digestible hooks. If only Olivia could sing these. Jewel's thin, sexless voice robs her music of passion and expression. As such, even an authentic countrypolitan track like Anyone But You is rendered inert. By the second tedious half of Perfectly Clear, listeners have no other feeling but one of growing annoyance.

Pod Pick:I Do.

-- HOWARD COHEN

hcohen@MiamiHerald.com

CYNDI LAUPER

Bring Ya to the Brink

Epic

***

Like Madonna, Cyndi Lauper's confessions on a dance floor venture beyond the usual frivolity to speak of social issues. Both '80s divas are also now courting their most vocal fan base by releasing full-fledged dance albums.

Bring Ya to the Brink is Lauper's first pure dance release. She displays more lyrical depth than Madonna, and if she just misses the euphoric high of Miss M's Confessions on a Dance Floor she comes pretty close on infectious and melodic thumpers like Same Ol' Story, Raging Storm and Into the Nightlife.

Freed from the restrictions of mainstream radio, Lauper expresses herself as she sees fit. This has its most colorful example in the repeated expletive she laces into the chorus hook of Same Ol' Story.

Pod Picks:Same Ol' Story, Raging Storm, Into the Nightlife.

-- HOWARD COHEN

GANDOLFI: THE GARDEN OF COSMIC SPECULATION

Robert Spano, conductor

Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

Telarc

*** ½

A year ago, Robert Spano and the New World Symphony presented the world premiere of Michael Gandolfi's Garden of Cosmic Speculation in its expanded form. The conductor has now recorded the entire work with his Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, allowing all to discover this delightful music.

Gandolfi's Garden of Cosmic Speculation is inspired by the extraordinary 30-acre Scottish garden designed by Charles Jencks. Cast in three sections and more than a dozen separate movements, Gandolfi's musical depiction takes its titles from the unique rounded landscapes and sculpted structures of Jencks' garden. The composer has stated that his music is intended as a large-scale suite to be sampled, with conductors selecting and combining individual movements.

Like Jencks' garden, Gandolfi's score combines far-flung cosmic influences, from quantum physics to super-string theory, and an array of musical references, making for a melodic, brilliantly scored, and quirkily intelligent work. Highlights include the opening Zeroroom, which serves as a beckoning portal of minimalist rhythms; the glowing serenity of The Snail and the Politics of Going Slow;the whirling, fandango rhythms of The Willowtwist; and the history of musical quotes crammed into six minutes of The Universal Cascade. The central neo-Baroque suite, The Garden of the Senses, doesn't cohere with the movements around it, but the final sections are terrific, with the pensive introspection of The Quark Walk, and a wild ride of a finale in The Nonsense.

Apart from the rather corny indigenous Scottish birdcalls that open each of the three sections, this premiere recording of Michael Gandolfi's Garden of Cosmic Speculation is delightful, put across with gleaming technical sheen and tremendous vitality by Spano and the Atlanta musicians.

-- LAWRENCE A.

JOHNSON

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