As the singer and chief lyricist for ‘Til Tuesday, Aimee Mann had a big mid-1980s hit in “Voices Carry”. In the decade or so afterwards, however, she came to embody the archetypal critically hailed, commercially marginal singer-songwriter. After Geffen Records rejected her third solo album, Bachelor No. 2, Mann decided she’d had enough of trying to guess where her moody, often fatalistic songs fit into a major-label marketing plan. She founded her own imprint, SuperEgo, in 1999, and released Bachelor No. 2 herself. She hasn’t looked back since.

That same year, filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson used several of her songs prominently in his film Magnolia, including “Save Me”, for which Mann earned an Oscar nomination. Since then, she’s released two more albums of original material, plus an unlikely Christmas album. At the end of 2006 and again in 2007, she hit the road with a Christmas show, featuring appearances by other musicians and comedians such as Fred Armisen and Paul Thompkins, modeled loosely after the “acoustic vaudeville” shows she’s been doing with musicians like Jon Brion, Fiona Apple and Michael Penn (to whom Mann has been married since 1997) at Largo, a nightclub near her Los Angeles home, for years.

This Saturday, she’ll return to the Birchmere to preview songs from Smilers, her new album due out in March.

DCist rang up Aimee in New York City earlier this week for a wide-ranging chat about the new record, the sweet science of fisticuffs, her burgeoning interest in Broadway and comics, and whether she’s really as much of a sourpuss as some folks seem to think.

So you’re playing the Birchmere on Saturday. This is a preview show for Smilers, your new record?

Sort of. I think what we’re gonna do is half new songs and half requests. It’s gonna be a bit of a free-for-all. I have just the trio, and it’s kind of fun to take requests when we have the trio, because the trio is lighter on its feet than when we have a full band. Fewer people have to remember stuff.

Who are the other two musicians who’ll be with you?

Paul Bryan and Jamie Edwards. Both of them played on the record, and Paul Bryan produced it.

Do you have a preferred method of taking requests? Should we just call them out?

We usually have people write them on slips of paper, and we’ll pass a hat or something.

Your last full album of original material was The Forgotten Arm in 2005. That one was something different for you: a narrative song-cycle about a boxer who falls in love right before he gets shipped off to fight in Vietnam. Does the new record, Smilers, have a storyline?

No. With Smilers, the “concept” is really just to have each song be as different as it wants to be, and not worry about any kind of through-line. The through-line is really just the vibe of the instrumentation and the production and the musicians. We recorded it pretty much live. We did some rehearsing to figure out what we wanted to do with arrangements and stuff. But aside from the string sections and horn sections that are on a couple of songs, we did it live in the studio. One or two takes.

Photo by Sheryl Nields; courtesy Michael Hausman Artist Mgmt.

Is there any particular significance to the the title?

I got to the title this really weird, long way ‘round. The first thing that made me think of it was, I’d read this article about some study somebody did about the kinds of images people respond to. Most people respond to human faces. But apparently, across cultural lines, everybody responds most positively to a smiling cartoon face. I though that was really funny, so of course I felt like, “Well, I’ve got to have a smiling cartoon face on my record. Clearly!”

But then that got me thinking about this newsgroup that existed a long time ago, when I first got a computer. Me and this friend of mine would go on a newsgroup called alt.bitter, and it was all people who were, like, bitter about stuff.

That’s exactly the sort of web site some people probably imagine Aimee Mann reading.

It wasn’t a website. This was before the Web. It was just a newsgroup, a text-only thing. But people would talk about stuff that made them feel bitter. I just thought that was so funny. And one of the threads was called “fucking smilers.” It was people who were irritated at other people for telling them to smile.

So me and this friend of mine used to always call those people “fucking smilers.” You know those people who come up to you in the hall when you’re at work and go, “Smile! It can’t be that bad!” And you’re like, “How do you know? It could be that bad.”

“Somebody’s got a case of the Mondays.”

Yeah, exactly. So those two things together . . . I just had that phrase in my head, “fucking Smilers.” I thought it was funny. So that’s how it got to be the title.

Also, I sort of relate to it, because if you’re a singer-songwriter like me, who tends toward the melancholy, there’s always this sort of implied “smilers” thing that comes towards you. like, “Come on! Write something more cheerful!” So I just like that term. In my vocabulary it’s become kind of a general term for certain kinds of people.

Well, your lyrics can be pretty dour sometimes, but it’s not as though you don’t have a fun side. Your Christmas shows the last couple of years have been really goofy, with the Hanukkah fairy and all that. And you toured with Patton Oswalt!

Yeah, yeah, exactly!

Do you think there’s an exaggerated perception of you as being overly morose?

I don’t really think it’s really a valid criticism. I think it’s mostly the kind of thing people write if they’re reviewing your record and they don’t really know anything about you: “Oh, she’s really depressing, right?” It doesn’t really bear out reality. But it’s fun to put people in pigeonholes.

Moving on to what everyone really wants to know about, are you still boxing? That's not really something that depressed people do.

Not right this second, because I’m super lazy. I got so busy getting the Christmas shows together that I got completely off-track. Once you stop going to the gym, it is hard to start going again. But once I go back, that’s what I’ll be doing.

You do lend the sport a certain indie singer-songwriter credibility.

Well, there are so many levels and layers to get through before you even consider sparring. And a lot of people don’t even spar. It’s a difficult sport. It’s hard for me to find appropriate sparring partners. I’m not exactly beefy. I’ve sparred with some guys, but you want to spar with somebody who’s a little closer to your weight class and ability. There aren’t many people who are enthusiastic amateurs. Either they’re girls who’re kickboxing to lose weight, or to get in shape, or they really want to do it seriously. It’s hard to find the middle ground of the enthusiastic amateur.

Even though you live in Los Angeles, you seem to have a special relationship with the Birchmere. You play there frequently, usually two nights even on short tours. And this show is a one-off, right?

It’s just a one-off because I’m on the East Coast doing some promo stuff. Playing some acoustic sets on the radio and that kind of thing.

The places that book you, that’s where you go play. I’m fond of the Birchmere because I’ve been there so many times. It’s well-run, it’s very comfortable, they feed you, the audiences are great. You can see my priorities. [Laughs] You get food backstage. That’s a plus when you’re on the road.

No, we always have great shows there, great audiences. And also, it’s kind of a Largo-like experience — that’s the little club I play in L.A. all the time — in that you can play a looser show with new stuff and requests and people are OK with that. It doesn’t have to be a strict show with a definite set list.

But you’re a setlist stickler when you’re not in a venue where you feel at ease?

I just depends on the mood I’m in. You like to have a set that you know works. But if it starts to feel old, or played, or not fun, I’ll change it up. You don’t want to get into a rut.

When you played the Birchmere in the summer of 2006, you did a song called “Medicine Wheel” that you said was new at the time. Did that one make the album?

That’s on the record, yeah. I’ll probably play it again [Saturday].

You had a notice on your web site about the show saying you’d be playing new songs as well as your hits, with “hits” in quotation marks. That’s sort of self-deprecating, but what do you consider to be your strongest work?

I don’t know. The things that I like don’t necessarily have any bearing on what anybody else would like. I like different things for different reasons.

Are there any “deep cuts” you like to play not necessarily because the audience has asked for them, but just because you enjoy performing them?

I think my favorite song, both as a song and as a song-I-like-to-play, is “You Could Make a Killing.”

You’ve introduced the song “Wise Up” a few times as “a song from Magnolia,” a film which of course made prominent use of, and was in part inspired by, your music. But “Wise Up” was on the Jerry Maguire soundtrack three years before Magnolia came out. Were you making a point by associating it with the later film?

Well, I wrote it for Jerry Maguire. [Writer/director Cameron Crowe] really liked the demo, and then he didn’t like the finished version, so he didn’t put it in the movie. Then after the movie came out, he called me and said, “I don’t know what I was thinking! Your version is awesome. I guess I was just kind of attached to the demo.” So he put it on the soundtrack album. So it’s there, and on the DVD, but it wasn’t in the original release of the film.

And then [Magnolia writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson] heard it, and he really liked it. So [the song’s prominent use in Magnolia, a surreal sequence wherein several characters in different locations are seen simultaneously singing the tune aloud] was kind of a sweet shout-out.

Have you seen PTA’s new movie, There Will Be Blood?

I have not. As I mentioned earlier, I’m very lazy. Too lazy to get my ass out to the movie theater. I will. I just haven’t yet.

What was the last album you bought for yourself?

The last record I got was probably the soundtrack to Oklahoma. I’m talking to a guy about turning The Forgotten Arm into a musical. Which is not by any means a new idea, but eventually I’m going to try to start working on that. So I wanted to get some records and just kind of soak up some . . . [trails off]

So you’re interested in pushing the idea of telling a story through music further than just the sort of single-song, short-story approach?

I am. I like learning new things and trying new stuff.

I’ve sort of started working already on this other project: Besides the musical, I met with somebody from HarperCollins who wanted me to write a book, and she suggested I do a graphic novel. I was like, “You understand that you have to know how to draw, right?” [Laughs] I mean, I draw a little bit, but that’s an even crazier learning curve.

I had a graphic novelist named Seth do my artwork for Lost in Space, and through him, I met this artist named Joe Matt, whom I’m also a fan of. And he lives right around the corner from me, so we just starting hanging out and drawing together. I’m a real stickler for songwriting: I can’t help giving you my opinion if we’re talking about it. [Matt] is like that for cartooning. So he’s sort of teaching me to cartoon.

So that’s one of my projects for the next couple of years, a graphic novel. Kind of an autobiographical thing. That’ll probably happen before the musical.

I had wondered if that song “Ghost World” on Bachelor No. 2 was inspired by the Dan Clowes comic of the same title.

Yes. It was heavily influenced by that, because I just thought it was the greatest book.

As an artist you can take inspiration from anywhere, but it struck me that you would just put that right out there like that, naming the song after its catalyst.

Well, [the book] is kind of a great thing to be associated with. It was before the movie came out. [Bachelor No. 2 was released in the spring of 2000, while the film adaptation of Ghost World was released in the fall of 2001.]

Well, you've been very kind to do this.

Anytime. See you at the show!

Aimee Mann performs at the Birchmere Saturday, Feb. 2. 8 p.m. doors; 10 p.m. showtime. Sold out; try craigslist.