(100) Days of Soundtrack: #16 – Aimee Mann – Lost in Space
It’s a little embarrassing that I know far more music from Michael Penn than from Aimee Mann. Mann has had a respectable music career since the 80s and spent the 90s cementing a reputation for her songcraft. Michael Penn is the brother of Sean. Not that Michael doesn’t write himself a lovely downer when the mood strikes, but Aimee is the musical icon between the two. It’s not so surprising the two are married when one hears their respective albums… without a doubt they’ve influenced each other over time, and their catalogs are full of songs that can easily fit either singer, both in mood and range. Still, for all the acclaim Aimee has had, I’ve never listened to an album of hers back to front. It was such an easy choice to change this when Lost In Space was recommended for this project.
The interesting thing about hearing a full Aimee Mann album is that it moves a bit from the quiet, depressive cynicism of classics like “Save Me”. “Pavlov’s Bell” properly rocks, and it is rightfully a highlight of the set. Songs like “Humpty Dumpty” and “Invisible Ink” provide more of a classic Mann, the former starting the album in a way that, as a Penn fan, cannot help but remind me of Michael’s “Walter Reed,” the intro track to his next album. It sets a vibe of personal doom, stating that there’s nothing that would “be enough to bring me up to zero.” This is what Aimee does best, playing the darkly intelligent card with her content, and singing with a sweet, tired, yet cutting tongue. If one were expecting too much more than that, Mann wouldn’t deliver, but there’s not much more that one needs from her, especially since few can do it as well as she can.
The interesting thing about this specific album, though, is that it is tied together by more than just Aimee’s signature delivery. Throughout the set, the space theme is subtly carried through slides and pops and wavering notes and airy sustained chords and fizzling bends and any other tool that sounds like an old tv broadcast, anything which sounds a bit like old tubes and static and possibly aliens landing. It’s never obtrusive, but it’s a nice thread in light of the album title. It’s rare for a title to speak to an album as a whole without the whole affair feeling tortured or forced, so having those elements pop up makes Lost in Space feel special. The effect is perhaps best presented in “Real Bad News”, which sounds like a transmission from an old transistor radio as the saucers land. It puts the despair that sometimes comes out in Mann’s work into a different context, a realistic nostalgia mixed with realistic fears, compounded with the unknown of the galaxy. It’s not necessarily an everyday album for that reason, but it’s the sort of melancholy that feels comfortable cozying up in.
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