Aimee Mann to release The Forgotten Arm

By editor: Jermy Leeuwis on March 16, 2005.

Aimee Mann songs have a literary quality to them—sharp, spare short stories set to music—so it was probably inevitable that she would one day make a concept album, the musical equivalent of a novella.

Details Artist: Aimee Mann Title: The Forgotten Arm Release date: 05/3/05 Record label: Superego Records Single: Official website: Aimee Mann Buy at: Amazon Send to a Friend

The Forgotten Arm (SuperEgo), her fifth solo release, is exactly that: a dozen songs that tell, rather loosely, the story of John and Caroline as they meet, fall in love and road trip across America.


The sound of the record also became part of the concept. “I pictured it taking place in the early ‘70s,” says Mann, “during my own experience at the state fair at that time—you know, that kind of white trashy redneck factor which I have a real weakness for. So I wanted the sound of the music to also reflect that time period because I have this really vivid memory of the songs they played at the fair.


Produced by singer-songwriter Joe Henry, The Forgotten Arm is a departure for Mann in several ways, not least of which that it was recorded over just five days last summer.


“Joe makes records really fast and he makes them in a very natural way,” says Mann. “He sort of cast the members of the band well”—including Sheryl Crow’s guitarist Jeff Trott; Julian Coryell on additional guitars; Jebin Bruni on keyboards; bass player Paul Bryan; and Victor Indrizzo and Jay Bellarose on drums—“and then we just made the record fast and simple.”


It is also Mann’s most straightforward rock record to date. “I liked the idea of sounding more like a live band,” she says, “so there is a similar guitar sound form song to song. We only had four or five instrument playing: piano, bass, guitar, that’s it. It’s just great playing.”


Mann has also taken to writing songs on the piano for the first time and that, too, has affected her sound. “I wanted to try to write songs on the piano to get a different flavor,” she says, “and that’s really part of the vibe, too. Piano is kind of key for me on this record. “Jebin gets a real kind of honky tonk thing going—he’s a real 70s jam band kind of guy—so he was the perfect player for this record.”


Piano is not the only new skill Mann has picked up since her last recording. About a year ago she took up boxing, hence the album’s title. “My friend who boxes has this move he was showing me and his name for it is The Forgotten Arm. It’s like when you have someone on the ropes and you’re hitting with your left hand and you have you’re other hand between the two of you and your opponent forgets about the right arm, so you can bring it in for an uppercut. To me it’s about the fact that the knock out punch is always the one you never see coming.”


In the end, The Forgotten Arm is, like so much of Aimee Mann’s music, really about the inexorable pull of co-dependency in human relationships. “The King of the Jailhouse / and the Queen of the Road,” Aimee Mann sings on one song, “think sharing the burden will lighten the load / so they pack up their troubles in an old Cadillac / that's her in the mirror, asleep in the back.”

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