Live review: Aimee Mann skips the merry and bright in Christmas concert
The singer-songwriter and other musical guests at Largo at the Coronet take a sometimes skeptical, sometimes irreverent, and often funny take on the holidays.
As a piece of dramatic scaffolding, the holiday variety show offers plenty of
room from which to hang well-worn material: Christmas music, bits of children's
theater, jokes about what to get your mother-in-law. The form doesn't typically
include repeated references to Charles Manson, but that didn't stop Aimee Mann
from bringing up the convicted killer several times Monday night at Largo at the
Coronet, where she and a group of all-star pals played the second of three
Christmas concerts scheduled there this week.
"Will you please stop talking about murder?" pleaded comedian Paul F. Tompkins with mock exasperation near the end of the two-hour show.
A longtime fixture (along with her husband, Michael Penn) on the L.A. singer-songwriter scene, Mann takes a skeptical approach to the yuletide repertoire. (The Largo engagement marked the fourth year in a row that she's played Christmas shows, either in Southern California or on the road.) On Monday she described her objections to "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" "on moral grounds" and singled out "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" as her favorite holiday song.
"It's a little spooky and a little creepy," she explained. "That's how I like to think of myself."