AIMEE MANN
The Forgotten Arm Superego Records/V2
*****

It's quite likely that Aimee Mann obtained her forensic approach to the minutiae of inter personal relationships from her psychiatrist father. As a loving father, he should be proud of his daughter - she's one of the best adult rock songwriters of the past ten years. As a concerned father he should be worried - from where and whom has his darling little Aimee picked up such destructive emotional baggage? And how exactly is she able to distil the fallout into such brilliant, brittle rock music?

The Forgotten Arm is Mann's fifth solo album, and constitutes her best work to date by a long shot. Her debut, Whatever, and her fourth album, Lost in Space, were classic collections of finely wrought, reflective and provocative pop/rock. But The Forgotten Arm sails silently through the air and knocks these two records out without so much as a blink.

Fashioned as the musical equivalent of a novella, the record is set in the early 1970s, and tells the story of Vietnam veteran, pugilist and drug addict John and his lover Caroline. Their journey from the US South to an unnamed party/casino town is a trip outlined in rock songs of regret, resignation and resolve. They love, they get stoned, they aim to forget why they fell for each other in the first place. They almost succeed. Most of all, they try to stop taking drugs, but can't because culturally and socially it's condoned if not embraced. The end.

Played out in music that entwines early, good Elton John and Rod Stewart with alt.country and the countrified rock of Sheryl Crow (with threads of classic guitar pop thrown in for good measure), The Forgotten Arm is as much emotive travelogue as dialogue. Its heart beats loudly; it is, in most ways, a swift, intense sucker punch to the senses. www.aimeemann.com

Tony Clayton-Lea