There have reviews already written about Aimee Mann’s most recent album, The Forgotten Arm. So I’ve decided to not review it as an album straight-through but more as a collection of songs. I’ve decided to listen to the songs randomly on my CD player and just let the music play. This might be odd, but I’ve been listening to Aimee Mann for a long time, and I think that this might be interesting.
“I Can't Get My Head Around It” is classic Aimee Mann. It reminds me most of her 1993 album, Whatever. Like Whatever, The Forgotten Arm is filled with many fast tempo songs. It is Aimee Mann’s best when she weaves her stories and words through rhythms and beats: “And I’ll pour the drinks / Like a true believer / Whose God never blinks.”
Aimee Mann has learned to use the instruments to compliment her voice. On “She Really Wants You”, the drums never drown out her voice, nor does her voice ever drown out the instruments. Every instrument can be heard along with every note she sings.
What Aimee Mann does best is sprinkle the right number of ballads into her albums. “That's How I Knew This Story Would Break My Heart” is very heartfelt with its uncomplicated piano and mixture of soothing, yet scolding vocals: “And though the exit is crude / It saves me coming unglued.”
The word “baby” comes often throughout The Forgotten Arm. I don’t remember the word’s use in her past albums, but here it is used many times. From the various songs, it seems that she’s speaking to a loved one.
Darn.
Maybe this experiment didn’t work. Listening to the album in random order loses much of the context of the songs. As songs, they all work and are very much enjoyable and especially delightful. But with a storyteller like Mann, these albums must be listened to as a whole. I guess you’d have to imagine listening to a Dylan album, or The Wall by Pink Floyd in random order, and maybe you don’t have art, but just incoherence.
Article comments
1 - Tom Johnson
The songs work fine by themselves, but for the sake of a review you really owe it to the readers to listen in order - it's a concept album, after all, and listening out of order you pretty much lose the concept. The songs, however, continue in the same high-quality vein that Mann's last three albums (Lost in Space, Bachelor No. 2 as well as the Magnolia soundtrack.) The concept is why "baby" keeps coming up - it's one character's pet name for the other. Luckily for us, the concept is fairly loosely defined, so the songs aren't relegated solely to pushing forward the story. I'd rather a collection of great songs than a story - stories get old after a while, but great songs never do.
2 - Tan Hoang
Yeah, I thought that it would be fun to do... I knew I would like the songs, but I guess I completely missed the entire story. Maybe I'll do it with artists whom I know have no intention of planning the albums, and who instead just make singles and put them together as an album.
3 - Temple Stark
TH, This post has been digitally replicated over at Advance.net, a place affiliated with about 10 newspapers around the country.
One such site is here.
Also please let your contact know, if you had one, that this article, is published at one more place. That helps to show they get two?, three? for the "price" of one.
Thank you.
Temple Stark