Aimee Mann

Aimee Mann

The Forgotten Arm

(SuperEgo Records)

The 'forgotten arm', ring lingo for a punch that surprises a boxer who's watching the other fist, is a neat motif for Aimee Mann's way. She takes love, the standard hook for pop stories, and thwarts it with as much bad luck, poor choice and fear as a song can contain. Just when you think she's just a contrarian writing about the flipside of love, Mann stands her coin on its edge.

These 12 songs are closer to a short-story collection than a plot-driven concept album (the lyrics are written as straight prose, in possibly the finest punctuation yet seen on a rock album). John, a war veteran, meets Caroline at the Virginia State Fair. They fall in and out of love while he battles addiction during a road trip across an America where 'all those haunted, unlucky guys get told who's really wanted'. By the final track, Beautiful, the pair are friends who could slip back into love, if they overcome their baggage. 'Why does it hurt me to feel so much tenderness?' Caroline asks herself while wishing John could know he's beautiful. The ambiguity leaves the listener hoping for a hidden final track in which Mann resolves all. But you won't see fireworks at the end of her roads: 'Life just kind of empties out, less a deluge than a drought, less a giant mushroom cloud than an unexploded shell; inside a cell of the Lennox Hotel'.

Producer Joe Henry gives the narrative a consistent mood. That can make for bland listening when The Forgotten Arm is played from start to finish. Mann rails against building albums around one or two singles. But the playlist age she distrusts has downloaded her a boon: Mann's independent albums get greater exposure through the internet, while fans hoping to avoid the concept in her album could lift any track and find a pristine pop song.