Whatever

Mann made her first solo album after the end of 'Til Tuesday and a three-year standoff with Epic, which would not release her from her contract. She recorded it with Jon Brion, who had played with the last touring version of 'Til Tuesday. Mann found working with him exciting and felt her songwriting improved. She said she was listening to the Kinks, the Zombies and Squeeze, and to anything with a Mellotron and a 12-string electric guitar. The sessions were spread across studios including Q Division, Sunset Sound and Bearsville, where it was mixed, with Bob Clearmountain mixing and Bob Ludwig mastering.

The route to release was messy. Giant, one of Irving Azoff's labels, wanted to sign her but asked for a more established producer, so Mann and Brion recorded songs with Tony Berg, and only one of them, I Could Hurt You Now, made the album. Azoff then pulled out. Mann and Brion finished the record themselves, paid for by her manager at the time, and it landed on the small independent Imago.

The instrumentation is crowded and unusual. Brion plays piano, Mellotron, Chamberlin, Optigan, vibraphone and kazoo among much else, and Roger McGuinn adds 12-string guitar and vocals to Fifty Years After the Fair. Jim Keltner plays drums on three songs, and strings arranged by Jimmie Haskell appear on Mr. Harris. Three videos were made, for I Should've Known, Stupid Thing and Say Anything.

It earned positive reviews. The Los Angeles Times said Mann mixed words like a master, quoting the Fourth of July lines about a waste of gunpowder and sky. The Independent's Andy Gill said the weird Sixties tape keyboards gave the album a distinct flavor, slurred and woozy, and that the tension between her direct lyrics and the complexity of the music gave it its charge. Robert Christgau picked Mr. Harris as a choice cut. Sales fell short of expectations, with 170,000 copies sold in the United States by 2001. Pitchfork placed it at number 143 on its list of the best albums of the 1990s, and it appears in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.