Aimee Mann + Jenny Owen Youngs @ Indigo2

To say the truth, I had not big hopes for Friday's gig. I only went because a friend of mine is a big fan of Aimee Mann's soundtrack for the movie Magnolia, but I had never heard any of her records. For some reason, I thought that it would be just her singing while playing the guitar or the piano; add to that the fact that Indigo2 is not exactly the most exciting venue in London, and that doesn't make it a very promising evening.

The supporting act, Jenny Owen Youngs, was exactly as expected: She certainly has a great voice, but after three songs of her alone with an acoustic guitar I started to get bored, as all her songs pretty much sounded identical. It is worth noting though that on her myspace page there are 9 songs online, and they all have a backing band, so she might be touring with a full line-up some other time, which should be better.

Also, I should mention that her last song, Hot in here (a cover from Nelly) was much better than the rest. And very sexy too...

In any case, she sounds far too upbeat for my liking...

Aimee Mann followed, and I was pleased to see that she was joined by a proper band: a bassist and two keyboardists, and two songs later a drummer as well. Herself was on acoustic guitar, switching to the base for a couple of songs.

Musically, she is very folk-inspired, so it can be a bit dull, and her most powerful songs are the nostalgic balads taken from the Magnolia soundtrack without any doubt; the rest of her material sounds definitely weaker.

She seemed to be enjoying the evening though, as she frequently joked with the public (notably about Posh and Beck going to L.A.) and by the end of the set, she decided that it had been too short and therefore took the audience suggestions for a couple of extra songs, which I found very nice of her.

So, it might not quite be my type of music, but she is a good musician and singer, and performer as well.

Not too bad an evening, then...