Old Record Review: LOST IN SPACE by Aimee Mann (2002)
Aimee Mann has a new album, Mental Illness, but I still haven’t gotten over one of her older ones. After the music world’s reimagining of Aimee Mann following the Magnolia soundtrack and the non-mutually exclusive Bachelor No. 2, Aimee Mann created an album that I found no less striking than Bachelor or any of hers for that matter.
Two-thousand, two rolls around and she releases that second album, Lost In Space. It’s a striking album, beautiful, consistent, quietly epic, beatlesesque (carpenteresque!) but not ever to distraction. And slightly more mature, richer, more timeless, even than the aforementioned turn of the millennium collections.
What strikes me is Aimee’s ability for her hook to tell a story and to change meaning for each verse where she firmly places it. She lands each one like an Olympic gymnast under pressure. Everything about music during this entry in her discography is controlled. No wasted words, no lack of self awareness in her song craft.
And how about her arrangements? I think guitarist Michael Lockwood who worked with Michael Penn, Fiona Apple and several others had a lot to do with the texture in this album, but what do I know? Listen close to the aerie feel that gives an occasional Tom Petty type jangle but in other areas, the guitars quietly but intensely enter and exit songs like ghosts.
If I start to sound defensive, I’ve been thinking about Mann’s body of work for years and I am suspicious that some other than the dedicated fans are holding back from giving her the full praise she deserves. Let me know who you are who has not had moods fit for this music. Her natural voice is internal, but that is for your own good. She has total control over her instrument. You would never dare say that about George Harrison, Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan. For some that question is as loaded as Nick Cage in that movie where he crashes on the glass pool furniture.
Why would critics of this album have faded on Aimee? My negligible critique –the only thing I can think of and as slight as it might be - would be to take the first two songs of the album and move them to another place. Humpty Dumpty’s line “All the kings horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put baby together again,” is a high point to be sure but it needs to come toward the end. The chorus of song two is lovely. But those two songs might play into the hands of those who might also imitate Dylan at Christmas for sport. Nobody consulted with me and nobody will. My point is that if you are unsure about this album start with the third song and keep going, then come back to the first two later. Near perfection, if perfection were the goal. Bliss, is probably more like it.
Song three Lost in Space can hold your gaze with a verse such as this.
“A bubble drifting, into a place. / Where planets shift and / the moon’s erased… / Its features lift into the glare. / But I’m the stuff of happy endings
Though mostly bluff / belief suspending / But close enough / for just pretending to care.”
One of my favorite songs is “This is how it goes.” A great verse-hook that calls out the title, with an incredible vocal, swells into a transition that sounds like chorus. But I think the hook is a verse soliloquy about hangers on and drug addiction. The trick here is that the hook is in the verse and that’s hard to pull off. Kind of poetic.
“Guys Like Me” starts each verse with its name sake line as well to equal effect. The genius of “Guys Like Me” that a female narrator sings it without, it seems, venomous malice for simple men. While she doesn’t pitch it down the middle like that, she complicates any war of sexes by bridging the gap I think, which, if true, is super endearing, and makes me want to put a mirror before myself (instead of the usual brooding).
“Pavlov’s Bell,”a song that is probably not only about fear of air travel but perhaps co-dependency and survivor guilt starts with a call to Mario followed by the line urging “that we can’t talk about it” followed by a chorus about __ that really rocks.
“Real Bad News” is a modern waltz with Procol Harum whiter shade organ and light psychedelic guitars that kick up the dust. If you were to hear some of Aimee Mann’s songs with no vocals, you might enter a transe. They are incredibly thought out. The bridge has a (da, da, da) vocal that evokes a theremin.
“Invisible Ink,” starts out of the gate as poignant and freshly delivered as a Cat Stevens lyric. This song is a little miracle—a song about people misinterpreting the meanings of her song - and just the format of the song, so sweet, makes me wonder if some of these great pieces are sort of buried in the early 00s when people are already busy logging in on Facebook, listening to bad rap and watching 24 hour news and porn. It’s a goddamn song about whether she should fret that nobody understands her song, and a song about whether her lover is also not understanding what she means, what he means to her.
“… nobody wants to hear this tale/the plot is chiched, the jokes are stale/And baby we’ve all heard it all before/ Oh, I could get specific but / Nobody needs a catalog / With details of love I can’t sell anymore.”
“Today’s The Day,” with eerie chime-like synth and even a little Radiohead special noise, the rocking refrain “Isn’t it enough?” the songwriter contemplates the end of a relationship and whether it’s time for a second person narrator “you” to cut and run.
“The Moth” continues with a song about aggressive (male?) behavior patterns. “The Moth Don’t care when he sees the flame” and “Nothing fuels a good flirtation like need and anger and desperation. The moth don’t care if the flame is real.” The arrangement starts like a Freedy Johnson song and evolves into its own compelling musical universe.
The album ends with a quiet little song called “It’s Not” which reminds me of Mann’s older song “You do”. When Aimee Mann ends with quiet punctuation like this song, she’s most effective. There’s a lot I don’t know about Aimee Mann. I’ve never seen her live and I don’t follow every album drop in real time. I always know it’s going to take some time for me to catch up so I take time to contemplate, in this case 18 years of time.
She’s a one of a kind top-tier songwriter of an era we may never see again. Each song is internal, personally crafted, carefully arranged but she never grandstands to the audience. To the contrary, there’s a lot the observant fan can only hear after several listens and even more years. Songs like these are like future lost treasure.
(For more on Aimee Mann go to www.aimeemann.com where you can support the artist’s new work, Mental Illness https://www.musicglue.com/aimee-mann/store .)
