Aimee Mann
Lost in Space

Some albums take time to understand and appreciate. In fact, I've found that a number of my favorites started out being simply interesting and that it took several listens, sometimes years, before I discovered that this was an album that I just couldn't imagine not having around, while other albums that I initially loved began to be cloying with familiarity. Aimee Mann's Lost in Space is of that former type--there were only two songs that initially caught my ear, "Pavlov's Bell" and "It's Not"--but after repeated plays, I began to appreciate almost all of the others.

When you first listen to this album, many of the songs sound very similar. Except for "Pavlov's Bell," the "beats per second" are pretty much the same for each song, and the instrumentation and intensity are also roughly equal. Mann's voice, a deep nasal soprano, also has a droning sameness to it. That sounds entirely negative, and yet it's not at all in practice--Mann manages to make her voice work by matching it to lyrics that benefit from the deadpan seriousness of her timbre and tone, achieving a sound that is sincere in its despair for the people she describes.

Lyrically, I'm not sure what this album is about exactly, but I know that it's not happy. None of the songs here are celebratory or exultant, nor do any of them necessarily tell a story. Perhaps it's a theme album, in that most of the songs seem to describe feelings and characters who are alienated from society and others. There's also a fair amount of drug references, between the call in "High on Sunday 51" for the singer to "Let me be your heroin," the idea that "all the perfect drugs/and superheros/wouldn't be enough/to bring me up to zero" in "Humpty Dumpty," and the line in "This is How It Goes" that reads "It's all about drugs." Although I haven't heard anything about Mann having a drug problem, it's quite possible that someone near her has and she's simply capturing that problem from the spectator position.

The music concentrates mainly on acoustic guitar, electric bass and drums, but Mann occasionally pulls out the sound effects and does a Wilco, from the beginning far-out space sounds that begin "Pavlov's Bell" to the same electronica that highlights sections of the title song and "Real Bad News." On some songs there are actually electric guitar solos, something I thought had gone the way of the dodo since its classic rock heyday.

While all the songs are well-made, some stand out for parts that simply are perfection. The choruses of "Humpty Dumpty" and "Pavlov's Bell" are like that, with hook that are nigh impossible to resist and that you can't help but hum after you hear them. In "The Moth," it's the clever lyrical conceit of using the attraction of a moth for a flame as a metaphor for, well, probably another drug reference. My favorite passage there is "The moth don't care if the flame is real/cause flame and moth got a sweetheart deal," that works because of the flipping of the two words from one line to the other. "Guys Like Me" is almost as clever in its lyrics, describing false alternatives in each verse which are then punctured by the end where those guys just don't get their due.

I warn you, when you first listen to this CD, you're going to think it's dull and lifeless, because you mistake the coolness of both the production and Mann's tone for a lack of energy. But there's passion here, passion that doesn't express itself in the kind of angered expression of Mann's most famous song, 'Til Tuesday's "Voices Carry." The driving force of this music is resentment, frustration, and despair. As this is one of Mann's second album since she rescued herself from the big label (this CD was produced by her manager and released on a label that she and he control, free and clear of the majors), it's likely that some of the impetus behind some of this restrained expression is her reflection on that situation. While it is somewhat surprising that the album is restrained and not fueled by that frustration is indicative that this is the kind of music that Mann favors, and wasn't what the majors wanted, as nothing here is as radio-friendly as anything in her previous catalog. That doesn't make the songs worth less--just different.

Personally, if this is the kind of music that Mann can make by selling only 60,000 copies of her CD instead of the 600,000+ that the majors demand, I'm more than happy to be one of the 60,000 to support her, and I look forward to her next.