By ROB DUGUAY

Aimee Mann has been a talented and influential figure in the new wave and alternative rock realms since the early 1980s.

She got her start in the Boston music scene with The Young Snakes, but she really made her mark as the lead vocalist and bassist for ‘Til Tuesday with hits like “Love in a Vacuum”, “Voices Carry” and “What About Love” still getting radio play.

Ever since the band’s breakup in 1990, Mann has gone on to have a prolific solo career. Now, she’s celebrating the release of her third album “Lost In Space” with a run of shows. One of the stops is at The Park Theatre in Cranston on June 5. Folk-rock geek culture enthusiast Jonathan Coulton is going to be kicking the night off at 7:30pm.

Mann and I talked ahead of her show. We covered her reflections on the making of “Lost In Space”, a new single she put out with her husband, thoughts on performing in Rhode Island and ‘Til Tuesday recently reuniting for a one-off show.

Rob Duguay: This upcoming show at The Park Theatre is part of your “22 1/2 Anniversary Tour” for “Lost In Space”, which initially came out in 2002. I know there’s a remastered reissue of the album, but was there any specific reasoning for having the anniversary be 22 1/2 years?

Aimee Mann: Yeah, there was COVID, and it was harder to get stuff pressed up. Obviously, we had intended it to be our 20th anniversary, but I also don’t care that much about exactly when it comes out. It doesn’t have to come out right on the dot of the 20th year, so I thought it was kind of funny to just say whatever the actual timing was and that’s kind of where it comes down.

RD: The original edition of the album came with a mini-comic that was done by the Canadian cartoonist Seth, who also did the cover art for ‘Lost In Space”. How did this initial collaboration come to be and do you view it as a precursor to how bands and musicians often add extra gifts like comics, pieces of art or other objects with their music releases these days?

AM: Album art has always been important to me ever since I was a kid listening to music during the ‘70s. That was a big part of the experience. I recall as a kid buying records because I liked their cover. I didn’t realize how random it sometimes is, that the cover reflected the artistic sensibilities of the music and musicians inside. For me, those things always went together, so in every cover I just really wanted to have its own thing and connect with the music in some way. I’ve been a big fan of Seth and I thought there was something kind of melancholy about his approach to cartooning. It’s a simple style, but there’s something about it that’s very evocative, and I thought it would be a nice match for that record.

RD: It reminds me a little bit of Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night” piece. You recently released a rendition of the folk traditional tune “Hallelujah! I’m a Bum” with your husband Michael Penn, who is the brother of actors Sean and Chris Penn. How did this come about and what was the experience like recording a song that’s over 100 years old?

AM: That is all Michael’s doing, and it was for a project for the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund. He had recorded the song 10 years ago and I just sang on it, so that was totally his. I think he had also done a version of “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?”, so it was very much a depression-era music project for him.

RD: Very cool, I listened to it the other day and I thought it was really good. It’s well known that you have a lot of history in Boston through being part of the bands The Young Snakes and ‘Til Tuesday during the ‘80s, but what are your thoughts on coming down to perform in Rhode Island?

AM: When I was in ‘Til Tuesday, we played Providence all the time. We played The Living Room a bunch and I’ve always had this memory of driving through Providence and our guitar player used to say “That’s the world’s fourth-largest unsupported dome” when he saw the State House. I always thought that it was a fun random fact, so that was always my memory of Providence, it’s home of the fourth-largest unsupported dome.

RD: There’s a lot of interesting facts about Providence, and Rhode Island. Speaking of Til Tuesday, you just performed your first show in over 30 years with that band at the Cruel World Festival in Pasadena, California on May 17, so are there plans for any more shows with them later this year or will your main focus be on continuing your solo career and making a new album?

AM: I think it’s probably going to be the only show. What I discovered in practicing for the show, especially the early Til Tuesday songs, is that I really sing in a totally different way, so it’s actually been difficult to try and figure out how to sing those songs. It’s a totally different style. It’s almost like doing karaoke and you can see how my voice changes through the three records. To play a full show would be a lot more difficult to figure out how to do because so much of it is unfamiliar to me right now.