When reflecting on the title of her latest album Mental Illness, Aimee Mann admits that a friend first suggested it as a joke.

“But once he said it, I also thought it was accurate. The music I thought really fit it,” she said.

“Not all of the songs,” she continued. “But enough of them were specifically drawing on experiences and the emotions that come from varying states of mental illness. I’ve got friends with anxiety and depression; it’s a continuum and can fluctuate. If not myself, the songs are certainly about friends.”

She pauses for a moment, mentally running through the songs, the friends, making sure she is being correct. Then she adjusts the degree of her answer: “Actually, a friend of mine is going through a manic episode right now. It’s really hard to witness, because you can’t tell what’s real to them or what’s getting in.”

Mann's new album is titled Mental Illness. — Sheryl Nields

Since bursting on the scene in 1985 with the MTV upstart band Til Tuesday and their breakout hit Voices Carry, the bass player/vocalist has served as the voice of existential disaffection for generations coming of age or awareness. Best known, perhaps, for her Oscar-nominated work on Magnolia: Music from the Motion Picture, she’s made nine solo albums which have explored and churned the human condition since 1993.

On Wednesday, June 28, Mann will perform on the Vineyard at the Performing Arts Center, along with special guest Jonathan Coulton. Showtime is at 8 p.m.

Never one to hop on the icon train, she’s mostly eschewed celebrity to quietly create her art, sharing a home in Los Angeles with musician Michael Penn and being one of the flagship artists who created a post-folk renaissance at the club, Largo.

Though not seeking to document the realms of mental health today, or create a political treatise in song, Mann recognized her desire to make a record that purposely delved into the sadness and the quiet. Songs like the shimmery California pop Patient Zero and the minor key piano ballad Good for Me, as well as the evocative Goose Snow Cone and the ambling You Never Loved Me, suggest the vast plains of obsession, dysthymia and betrayal.

Her acoustic Stuck in the Past evokes the pain of one who can’t let go. Laughing, she acknowledges its circular nature.

“There’s a very human feel to it, something that very innately gets you [pulled in].”

Mann’s writing is a function of the music as much as the stories she’s trying to tell. With her mahogany alto and rhythms that match the phases of one’s heartbeat, she explains her teeter-totter focus. “I read a lot. I like language. I like people who think about words and choose the perfect word. But what I like about music is that it helps my brain work in a different way.”

When Mann speaks, her voice is bright, light. Though her songs run towards Elliott Smith darkness — “one of my favorites” — she is neither moribund nor dour. Choosing a path of artistic exploration instead of rock stardom, something that seemed inevitable when ‘Til Tuesday hit, she’s been able to create a body of work as affecting and empathetic as John Prine or Leonard Cohen.

She acknowledges a freedom from the marketplace helps her to be honest about what she sees. The current state of the nation makes her marvel.

“You isolate people, get to them to comply by putting them on one side or the other. You never think it’s going to work, and it’s never going to work on you. [But] it works even better on people like that. Brainwashing works, that’s why people use it. It’s why cults use cult mind.”

An observer studying the human condition, Mann is awed by what she sees. “Everywhere you look, there’s one more person clearly unbalanced, clearly narcissistic getting more attention, more power.”

She turns her consideration to President Trump. “I felt like he was crazy, but periodically people will blindly follow the strong man who makes promises that are the things they want to hear.

“America loves the outsider who’s gonna come in and save the day... the understudy who comes in when the star breaks an ankle and saves the show, then becomes a star. It’s this idea people seem to love, yet when confronted by reality, they still won’t let go of the idea.”

Still, beyond preaching, the Virginia-born songstress writes to illuminate what we refuse to see. Intrigued by the mutations of the human personality, she watches how we as culture deal with them.

“Start with our attitude, how we look at mental illness. Americans really feel it’s a matter of personal failing. Because if mental illness is a moral failing, asking for help is more of a failing, so people who are struggling have no recourse.”

Showing not telling, evoking not shrieking, after all these years, the outward gaze of an introspective serves as a powerful spotlight. But even when taking on serious things, it’s the human being stumbling who holds her focus. Plus, Mann knows the audience must have room to look away and absorb what they’ve seen.

“There’s a lot of new stuff,” she says of her show. “Definitely some old stuff, too. There’s a few songs from Magnolia, a couple songs I’ve not played in a long time. I’ve learned not to lean on any one thing too much. It’s better that way.

“So this is stripped down: bass, drums, keyboards, acoustic guitar. Jonathan Coulton joins us for a few songs and sings. But that’s it.”

Sounds so simple. But beyond a few instruments and that dusky voice that’s seduction and slow hours spent simmering in thought, there are the songs. Those songs excavate canyons of doubt, despair, contradiction, making her one of the fullest musical propositions there is.

For tickets and more information about the full summer lineup, visit mvconcertseries.com.