Aimee Mann - The Forgotten Arm
By: Mark Runyon | Category: Album Archive | 05/18/05 | 01:11 AM
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 Grade: B+ |
Genre: Alternative Pop
Summary: It doesn't have the stellar breakthrough songs that shifted Magnolia into everyone's line of sight, but it really doesn't need them. It offers us a winding story without a single track that can be overlooked.
Here is an interesting mental picture to doodle into your brain. Take the rather waifish, sensitive songwriter, Aimee Mann, strap on a pair of the boxing gloves, then let her loose to beat the crap out of someone. No, this isn't just another metaphor to support her heavyweight concept album The Forgotten Arm, this is Mann's new passion -- boxing. I say all the more power to you sister. Her workout routine that has transformed into her burning obsession is the fuel for the ideas of this new stellar work. Look out Hillary Swank. We've got a new feisty contender stepping through the ropes. |
The Forgotten Arm (obscure boxing lingo for a phantom punch) loosely tells the story of a boxer and his girlfriend who first meet at the Virginia State Fair in the early days of the 1970s. In her eyes, he is the glamorous boxer who has sailed into town ready to cut her free of the trappings of this small town existence.
Mann is very reminiscent of the classic storytellers, sitting atop her stool as her guitar turns the pages. One part the small town America of Springsteen, another part the painful twisting relationships of Bob Dylan and one part the feminine strength of Joni Mitchell. At its heart, this is a love story told with its feet firmly on the ground. We follow this couple through the elation of falling in love and feel the heavy chains of his drug addiction as it starts to seep over their life together. It's an absorbing story that you can't put down. You always want to read just a few more pages before calling it a night.
As with most of her audience, I jumped onboard this train when she penned the soundtrack to the trippy Paul Thompson Anderson work Magnolia. She hit rare moments of perfection in tracks like "Wise Up" and "Save Me," forever sealing my fascination with this complex songbird. Mann has always been a work in progress. Even in those moments that she dabbles in perfection, her broader albums have proved flaky. The so-so tracks on works like Bachelor No.2 and more recently Lost in Space have dragged down these efforts. The Forgotten Arm is a quick glance at Mann at her best. She reaches a consistency within her compositions that we've never seen before. She shines in brilliant hues through tracks like "King of the Jailhouse" and "That's How I Knew This Story Would Break My Heart."
Joe Henry brought has virtuoso skills into The Forgotten Arm, taking up the producer's chair. Mann has been afforded considerable creative freedom that few artists are able to command. She broke free of the label rat race to form SuperEgo Records. She has deftly used the Internet's possibilities to distribute her works. This creative ease shows up throughout. "I Can't Get My Head Around It" is a nice understated track that fights against the current of confusion, longing to believe that he loves her enough to clean himself up, but it's an absent promise she's heard too many times before. Lines like "I'll pour the drinks/like a true believer/whose God never blinks" really bring us into this life that is gritty and uncomfortable. "I Can't Help You Anymore" is the desperation of the last breath of the relationship. The shift of blame that is never clear is captured perfectly in lyrics such as "Was I the bullet or the gun/Or just a target drawn upon/a wall that you decided/wasn't worth defending?" Mann realizes that relationships are always tough and can have many different versions all depending on which car in the roller coaster you are sitting.
As the song "Clean Up for Christmas" jots down the last chapter of our tale, Mann has worked up quite an inspiring sweat in this career topping work. It doesn't have the stellar breakthrough songs that shifted Magnolia into everyone's line of sight, but it really doesn't need them. It offers us a winding story without a single track that can be overlooked. So if this is Mann at her best, then what's missing? That is the most troubling question of them all because it's not something I can easily put my finger on. I'm left feeling that even as Mann stands on this lofty perch, that she hasn't climbed as high or ventured as far as she's meant to go. The nagging feeling eats at you that there are still unexplored realms of her talent that not even Aimee Mann is privy to yet. That is a pretty heady thought seeing as she's just extended to us this unparalleled work while hiding her undiscovered potential within the creases of each song.
Buy Aimee Mann's The Forgotten Arm now and check out Innovative Radio this week for the featured track "King of the Jailhouse."
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