The Forgotten Arm

1	Dear John 3:07
2	King of the Jailhouse 5:19
3	Goodbye Caroline 3:53
4	Going Through the Motions 2:57
5	I Can't Get My Head Around It 3:37
6	She Really Wants You 3:26
7	Video 3:35
8	Little Bombs 3:49
9	That's How I Knew This Story Would Break My Heart 4:19
10	I Can't Help You Anymore 4:52
11	I Was Thinking I Could Clean Up for Christmas 4:23
12	Beautiful 3:48

Barnes & Noble

Depression rarely sounds as sweet as it does in the hands of Aimee Mann; her skill in that arena puts her in the company of Nick Drake and Elliott Smith. The onetime Til Tuesday frontwoman has shaped a career writing about folks encumbered by loneliness and addiction, and her fifth album -- a song cycle chronicling the star-crossed relationship between a drug-addicted boxer/Vietnam vet and the girl he romances at the state fair -- is no different. Mann set the story in 1972 and says that she spent time listening to Traffic, the Band, and early Rod Stewart and Elton John to get in the mood. That vibe informs the keyboard-driven tunes on The Forgotten Arm, recorded with the same touring band behind her for 2004's Live at St. Ann's Warehouse and boasting a more muscular sound than her last studio disc, Lost in Space. As always, swooning melodies and minor keys define Mann's songs, which bristle with surface tension, thanks to the contrast between her butter-smooth delivery and barbed lines such as "Kicking is hard, but the bottom is harder" ("I Can't Get My Head Around It"). The billowy "Goodbye Caroline" is vintage Mann, an aching breakup tune given added depth by the roiling keyboards and searing electric guitars. Mann maintains a consistent tone throughout with songs wearing cheerful titles like "I Was Thinking I Could Clean Up for Christmas" ("Because I can't live loaded and I can't live sober, and I've been that way since October"), but wallowing in the muck seems to work for her. While it might have been nice to find a winsome love song to engage us in the album's thematic romance -- she comes closest on "Beautiful," which pines, "Why does it hurt me to feel so much tenderness?" -- perhaps Mann knows where her strengths lie. And The Forgotten Arm flaunts them like tattoos. Lydia Vanderloo

All Music Guide

The prospect of an Aimee Mann concept album concerning an addicted boxer returning from the Vietnam War isn't necessarily enticing, but after the meandering, adrift Lost in Space, a change of pace of any kind is welcome for the acclaimed, gifted, and increasingly predictable singer/songwriter. Mann must have sensed this too, since she not only committed herself to a narrative song cycle, but she cut the record live with a new band under the guidance of producer Joe Henry. The results aren't quite as different as you might expect -- her music is very much in the vein of Bachelor No. 2, right down to the vague carnivalesque overtones associated with Jon Brion -- but the project helped focus Mann both as a writer and a record-maker. The songs on The Forgotten Arm are sharper, stronger, more memorable than those on Lost in Space and the performances are robust and lively. As the record progresses, the songs take on a certain samey quality -- a flaw that's not uncommon to Mann's albums -- but as individual cuts, the songs are quite strong. That is a bit of an oddity for a concept album, but the concept seems like a MacGuffin anyway, a way for her to write some stark songs about addiction and to force discipline upon herself. She had a similar situation with the songs from Magnolia that spilled onto Bachelor No. 2 -- when she had to fit her tunes to the requirements of Paul Thomas Anderson's film, it made for better music. While the music here isn't as good as that on Bachelor, the strict structure does help give The Forgotten Arm direction, helping shape it into one of her more consistent albums. Stephen Thomas Erlewine