Of all the craft-savvy singer-songwriters toiling away in the interstices of the music world, Aimee Mann certainly numbers among the finest--and the least fortunate. But despite a string of career nightmares, she's managed to bounce back; each reappearance has been cause for rejoicing. Mann's suite of songs on the Magnolia film soundtrack (Reprise) is no exception. Critics have been rooting for her since the '80s, when her group Til Tuesday scored a massive debut hit with "Voices Carry." The band never mounted the charts again, though their material remained infectious and thoughtful. Then Mann signed with the well capitalized but abominably managed Imago label, which proceeded to squander her 1993 solo bow, Whatever. That disc demonstrated astounding melodic and lyrical gifts (the soaring "I Should've Known," the wistful "Fifty Years After the Fair," the wrenchingly gorgeous "Mr. Harris") and a vulnerable singing style capable of seemingly infinite nuance.

Whatever was bulldozed by the grunge-punk juggernaut and Imago's callow incompetence. The label failed to capitalize on her one post-Til Tuesday success, "That's Just What You Are," an irresistibly bittersweet pop ditty that saw some mainstream exposure on the Melrose Place soundtrack.

Mann next set about working (with longtime collaborator, producer and multi-instrumentalist Jon Brion) on the songs that would become 1995's I'm With Stupid. More baroque in subject matter and more ambitious in style, the songs saw the light of day on Geffen Records. But this would-be label savior dropped the ball as well, marketing her as a drippy Triple-A lightweight rather than a pop-rock visionary.

Still, that album remains one of the best power-pop discs of the decade. Its harder-rocking fare notwithstanding, the peaks of Stupid were the ballads. The Mann-Brion co-write "Amateur," with its brooding piano and incandescent vocal, recalls Bacharach/David at their most disarmingly introspective, while Mann's "Ray"--an open letter to an imaginary friend--is devastating and exhilarating in equal measure.

Mann's solo work has always had a cinematic quality, playing as it does with light and shadow, revealing close-ups, sardonic reverse shots and the gigantic intimacy that is the medium's unique charm. So it's fitting indeed that the soundtrack to Magnolia, the latest feature by Boogie Nights director P.T. Anderson(who previously spotlighted Mann's paramour, Michael Penn), is for the most part an Aimee Mann album. Nine tracks are hers, beginning with the cover of "One" she recorded for a Nilsson tribute anthology a few years ago.

Happily, the eight Mann originals show she's still in her prime. Songs this subtle and suffused with complex emotion may never help Top 40 stations and video networks sell video games and zit cream, but within Anderson's inventive filmic world, at least they have a place to call their own. They're almost all ballads; the most impressive wash over the listener like a warm, cathartic wave. "Deathly" warns against the possible impact of "one act of kindness," building to a pining crescendo as Mann intones: "You're on your honor/'Cause I'm a goner/And you haven't even begun/So do me a favor if I should waver/Be my savior and get us the gun."

If Mann has a signature lyric mode, it's reproach. Dylan and Elvis Costello popularized and extended this mode in the pop world, dressing down the deluded in cutting, multi-leveled rhyme; Mann is now as strong delivering such caustic critiques as any songwriter alive. On the splendid "Driving Sideways," with its loping, folky groove and Beatlesque instrumentation, she assays yet another life out of control. On the nakedly sublime "Wise Up," she mines a stunning emotional crisis from the juxtaposition of a gentle, piano-driven melody and a piercing, steadfastly unsentimental lyric: "It's not going to stop/'Til you wise up."

But perhaps the finest moment on Magnolia is Mann's final contribution, "Save Me." Paying tribute to the masochistically romantic cabaret-pop tradition, Brion shadows Mann's vocal with a chromatic accordion riff--but as you might expect from the source, this cri de coeur is thorny, indeed. "Save me/From the ranks of the freaks/Who suspect they could never love anyone," Mann sings, and she may well be making sly reference to the record-label freaks who've never given her the career love she deserves.

Here's hoping she finds it at the movies.