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I have never done heroin in my life. But my first reaction after listening to Aimee Mann's latest, Lost in Space, was a desire to check myself into rehab out of sheer sympathy pains.
With critics fawning over her like an alt-pop Homecoming Queen, an Oscar bid for her contributions to Magnolia, and a thriving relationship both personal and professional with Michael Penn, you'd think Aimee might be a little happier, maybe even chipper, on her new release. And you'd be right to forgive her for it.
But you won't get the chance. At least not this year. Lost in Space, magnificent though it is, is a resolute buzzkill, Mann obsessively pursuing her unique ability to find equal fault in her attachments and her detachments. She creates a character so unyielding in her cynicism that she dishes it both ways: if you show her affection, you're needy; if you don't, you're aloof.
You'd be rightly pissed at anyone you met in real life like this. But that's because such a person would never sing so sweetly, or deliver such splendid melodies so effortlessly. Aimee, for all her waxed cynicism and distrust, is the most charming sleepwalker working today, as best evidenced by effectively street-poetic lines like "moth and flame got a sweetheart deal" ("The Moth"). The lead single is the smart "Humpty Dumpty" (overworked metaphor though that is in the rock canon), but what'll really bring you back to this disc are chilling observationals like "High on Sunday 51," "It's Not" and "Pavlov's Bell" that relentlessly use heroin as a metaphor for codependent relationships.
At least, I hope that's the correct reading. I'd hate to think that instead she uses codependent relationships as a metaphor for heroin, though given her gaunt stature, it's hard not to wonder. And hard not to get roped into the feeling. By the time she sings, in the final stanza to the closing track "It's Not," "baby, kiss me like a drug, like a respirator," one cannot help but feel a little beaten, a little Nick Nolte-ish -- but it's somehow all right.
So what's on this disc besides pretty melodies and a lot of drugs? Well, there's Mann's voice, plaintive and crisp as ever, having decided it's easier to write in her lower register than to bother with belting high notes. There's an unexpected degree of slide guitar that evokes George Harrison's All Things Must Pass-era work if you want it to. There's some broad orchestration on "Invisible Ink" -- in sharp contrast to the minimalist production surrounding it -- that gets an A for effort but comes off as a tad excessive. What there isn't is the eccentric input of past collaborator/producer/arranger/multi-instrumentalist Jon Brion, whose quirky touches could have rescued this disc from a mild case of sameness.
Minor knocks, though. Being lost in space has rarely sounded so good. And now that I think about it -- maybe Aimee's only lost because there are no dragons to chase in space.
Joseph McCombs | September 29, 2002
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