Aimee Mann - The Forgotten Arm

Genre rock Publisher SuperEgo Records External Links Official Website

Round five: learning to relax in the ring is the one of the most difficult aspects of mastering the sport of boxing, or so professes the sparring aficionado Aimee Mann. She may have trouble mellowing out inside the ropes, but her fifth solo release, The Forgotten Arm, is a too-sedate demonstration of her ability to relax with a song on her lips, a piano beneath her fingers, or a guitar in her grasp. Her first concept album follows the meeting, travels, and ultimate downfall of a drug-addicted boxer from the 1970's and a smitten young lady who catches his eye during a match at the Virginia State Fair. The vocals slide with hypnotic liquidity from tone to tone, and the sparse representation of instruments (simply guitar, bass, drums, and some honky-tonk piano here and there) provide a previously unseen element of solid rock for Mann.

The lyrics are as thought provoking and poetic as one has come to expect from this veteran balladeer: "Going Through the Motions" sadly predicts "We'll have a big parade for every day that you stay clean...but when the trumpets fade, you'll go under like a submarine," while simplicity comes off profoundly in the last cut, "Beautiful;" "Sometimes it hurts me to feel such tenderness."

I must raise the glove of the first cut, "Dear John," a three-chord, energetic, keep-it-simple beefcake that comes at you swinging, laying out the character introductions and revving the engine of that Cadillac as we embark on our cross-country journey with John and Caroline. They must have hit slow traffic on Route 65, however, as the scenery just gets duller from there.

Song for song the work contains much interest, yet somehow the album taken as a whole suffers as a repetitive, indistinct mass steeped in black eye-rolling melancholy. Familiar turf for Ms. Mann, but in this instance, thankfully, there is a framework to embrace as opposed to the uncontrolled seepage of 2002's Lost in Space and the majority of Bachelor No. 2. The stupefying ease with which she knocks out her own complicated musical arrangements damn near takes a dive to the mundane overall effect of The Forgotten Arm. Stock up on ammonia capsules.