A MINOR TRIUMPH MUSICIAN AIMEE MANN LEFT THE BIG LABELS BEHIND AND DECLARED HER OWN ARTISTIC INDEPENDENCE.

Byline: Rob Lowman Entertainment Editor

It probably won't be much of a surprise to hear that singer-songwriter Aimee Mann's reading habits run toward books about psychology. The songs on her latest CD, ``Lost in Space,'' delve into drug and alcohol addiction as well as personality disorders.

``Say you were split, you were split in fragments, and none of the pieces would talk to you,'' Mann sings on ``Humpty Dumpty,'' part of the 11-part song cycle on ``Lost in Space.'' Mann performs Thursday at UCLA's Royce Hall with another singer-songwriter, Rufus Wainwright.

``Lost'' is the second release on Mann's own independent SuperEgo label. Since it came out last August the CD has hit No. 1 on the indie charts and No. 35 on Billboard. And after her celebrated disputes with the major labels she was tied to in the '90s, being independent suits Mann just fine.

``I can make my own decisions. I make a lot more money. And it's sort of a lower profile; so it's the best of all possible worlds,'' she says.

What Mann is referring to is the enormous amount of publicity and promotion an artist must do for a major label to sell an album. ``You're likely to be more recognizable and have a subsequent loss of privacy that's far out of proportion to how much money you actually make,'' the Virginia native says. ``I think it's tough on people, and it certainly wasn't something that I found appealing.''

But setting up a record label wasn't all that difficult once she found her way off the major label she was on - just ``a matter of crossing T's and dotting I's.''

The change coincided with Mann's work on the soundtrack to Paul Thomas Anderson's film ``Magnolia,'' for which she received an Oscar nomination in 2000 in the best song category for the dreamily melancholy ``Save Me.'' (She also received a Golden Globe and three Grammy nominations.)

Though millions of people finally got to see her perform during the Oscar ceremony, critics and fans have been singing her praises since her career began in the '80s as the lead singer of the Boston band 'Til Tuesday. Thor Christensen of the Dallas Morning News calls Mann ``one of rock's deepest songwriters'' while Robert L. Doerschuk in the All Music Guide's review of her latest CD notes that ``Mann remains spectacularly underrated among contemporary songwriters; no one surpasses her as a master of poetic regret, and few albums examine the peculiar beauty of depression with the skill she brings to 'Lost in Space.' ''

``I think there is an audience that can like a more-evolved kind of songwriting rather than jingle-type top-40 stuff, but record companies don't have faith in that kind of audience or don't believe that it exists,'' she says.

Mann's sound could hardly be described as jingly. Her smooth singing, lovely melodies and touches of ambient production on ``Lost in Space'' contrast sharply with her edgy lyrics.

Mann says growing up she was a big Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen fan, but it was the punk and new wave stuff in the '80s that ``gave me the courage to try what I might not have tried before.''

Among the other songwriters she admires are Elvis Costello, Elliot Smith, Burt Bacharach, Jimmy Webb and ``Michael Penn, obviously.''

Singer-songwriter Penn, obviously, because she's ``happily married'' to him. The couple, who live in L.A, have toured together as well as performed a song - the Beatles' ``Two of Us'' - for the ``I Am Sam'' soundtrack. And like other husbands and wives, they will use each other as sounding boards.

``I think for both of us if there is something that we have a question about - whether we think a song is finished - we'll play it for the other person and get kind of a professional opinion,'' Mann says.

Speaking of songwriting, Thursday's concert begins ``one last go around for 'Lost in Space' '' before she gets serious about writing new songs. She says she's written about seven tunes and expects to write about 15 altogether before paring them down for a CD.

Mann's other reading interests probably have something to do with what see writes. ``I read a lot of older classics from 1915, 1920, 1925 - stuff in that era, like Edith Wharton and F. Scott Fitzgerald. I think it helps in keeping one's language skills up just reading words of people who really knew how to write,'' she says. ``I think it's easy to fall into a simplistic vernacular.''

Perhaps the past is more appealing to her because she's living in L.A., which Mann admits has its ``good points'' but ``where it's hard getting anything done without spending your entire day driving around trying to do it.''

She adds, ``There's not a lot in modern life that I find that really is my kind of thing. Like, it's too ... I really don't know how to explain it. I can't relate to it.''

Rob Lowman, [phone]

robert.lowman(at)dailynews.com

AIMEE MANN & RUFUS WAINWRIGHT

Where: Royce Hall at UCLA.

When: 8 p.m. Thursday.

Tickets: $25 to $35. Call [phone].

Also: The concert is part of the 2003 Verizon Music Festival, which includes Common at the Wadsworth Theatre at 8 p.m. Friday, Charlie Zaa and Pablo Montero at the Wiltern at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and a free performance by Smokey Robinson at Central Park in Old Pasadena at noon Sunday. For information, call [phone] or go to www.verizon.com/musicfestival.

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``I think there is an audience that can like a more-evolved kind of songwriting rather than jingle-type top-40 stuff, but record companies don't have faith in that kind of audience or don't believe that it exists,'' says Aimee Mann.