Pitchfork

In Aimee Mann's melancholy world, someone's always a junkie or thisclose to writing a suicide note. Fortunately, such rampant malaise is made palatable by her tasteful, elegant pop; it's despondent, but not on the level of her doomed characters.

You'll have the opportunity to get intimate with the inhabitants of Mann's songs starting tonight, when she kicks off a three-week acoustic journey in Boulder, Colorodo. The tour, in support of her 2005 album The Forgotten Arm, will be a more stripped-down affair than previous outings performing the same material. It will include a performance on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" on February 9.

In a recent interview with Billboard.com, Mann said that she does not expect to put out a new album before 2007. "I'm not a fast writer and I usually have a couple of things stockpiled by this time so, yeah, (I'm) wondering a little bit how long it's going to take me to come up with material for another record. But also, you just can't worry about that."

Despondency is a craft worth perfecting, folks, so clutch a bottle at the following times and places:

01-27 Boulder, CO - Boulder Theatre
01-29 Lawrence, KS - Liberty Hall
01-31 St. Louis, MO - The Pageant
02-01 Chicago, IL - Park West *
02-02 Buffalo, NY - The Center for the Arts, SUNY Buffalo *
02-03 Cleveland, OH - The Odeon *
02-04 Ann Arbor, MI - Michigan Theater *
02-06 Toronto, Ontario - The Mod Club *
02-07 Montreal, Quebec - Club Soda *
02-08 South Burlington, VT - Higher Ground *
02-09 New York, NY - Town Hall *
02-11 Easton, MD - Avalon Theatre *
02-12 Asheville, NC - The Orange Peel *
02-14 Atlanta, GA - The Variety Playhouse *
02-16 Orlando, FL - Hard Rock Live *
02-17 West Palm Beach, FL - Harriet Theatre *
02-18 Tampa, FL - Tampa Theatre *

* with Chuck Prophet