I am in love with Aimee Mann. Seriously. Amidst all of the glamourpuss posturing of the majority of pop girlie icons, there exists a select number of truly poignant and magical female songwriters that are churning out tunes that capture the helplessness and confusion of our generation. I would venture to say that among them, Aimee Mann rules as queen.
This is not the sweet interplay between love and anger a la Sarah McLachlan, nor is it the goofy yokul cum pop princess coquetishness of Jewel. This is bare bones grief, confusion and longing, all balled up in Mann's beautifully understated voice, subtle acoustic strumming and plucking, and perfectly buoyed up by fabulously raw production values.
"Lost in Space" is truly a thematic album. Nearly all of the songs deal with feelings of dissapointment, nonconformity, and the struggle to find meaning or lasting happiness. Some may find this as depressing. I see it as sheer poetry, as I often believe the best writing/drama comes from struggle and conflict. Nearly all of the best lines from the songs have been previously quoted, but needless to say, these are some of the best love songs in recent years, and they're not happy. "Lost in Space", "It's Not", "Today's the Day" and especially "High on Sunday 51" and "Pavlov's Bell" are pure pop rock gems, devoid of obnoxious noodling guitar work or ridiculously overt drum fills.
Most importantly, Aimee Mann is intelligent enough to not tell us how smart she is. Where some lyricists seek to pronounce their erudition by shamelessly ripping lines out of the popular literature of the day (Incubus, Sting, Rush), Aimee is content with painting portraits of diverse characters. Rather than merely talk about her many romantic conquests (John Mayer, Ashlee Simpson, pratically every new songwriter), Aimee inhabits the bodies of a number of characters, and we're sure to find ourselves among them. And she tells the stories with a brazen honesty: that life sucks sometimes, but it's okay. To quote a song from the album, "this is how it goes."
My only niggle here is that the album isn't longer. It reaches an emotional peak with "Today's the Day", then finishes with two fantastic, if brief pop tunes. I was hoping for something bigger, such as the tunes from the Magnolia soundtrack, but we can't have everything, can we? In short, a fantastic album, and worth every penny. You can listen to it over and over for hours and feel the same emotions. Go buy it.