The Forgotten Arm

About the Artist

Produced by singer-songwriter Joe Henry, The Forgotten Arm is a departure for Mann in several ways. “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 Crows 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 Manns 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. On all my other records, each song has a totally different approach, completely different guitar sounds, lots of little interesting moments that happen, with tons of little overdubs. This time I was like, Nope. One guy playing one thing for the whole record. It takes a lot of nerve to just turn shit off. We only had four or five instrument playing: piano, bass, guitar, thats it. Its 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 thats 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 goinghes a real 70s jam band kind of guyso 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 albums title. “My friend who boxes has this move he was showing me and his name for it is The Forgotten Arm. Its like when you have someone on the ropes and youre hitting with your left hand and you have youre 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 its about the fact that the knock out punch is always the one you never see coming.”

The one aspect of Manns new release that is carried over from her last album, Lost in Space, is her continuing fascination with, and exploration of the contours and despair of addiction. “In the 70s,” she says, “Everybody thought drugs were just good times. People didnt really know about drug addiction, or that such a thing existed. When I grew up in the 70s I thought you had to take drugs. It was almost like I didnt think you had a choice. And so when I was thinking about these characters and this time and this place and thinking about the idea of someone who, even if he starts to realize he has a problem with drugs, other people dont. It just wasnt in their vocabulary, this idea that you couldnt handle it. The whole verb to party, makes it sound like its all fun.” In general, though, Mann employs the idea of drug addiction in her lyrics as “a helpful stand in” which allows her to “describe all the lesser or more complicated or more subtle or more obscure states of mind that Ive been in before. Everybody kind of understands, Oh yeah you take drugs and it does something to your brain and then you cant stop. Its easier to describe that shame, that horrible feeling of not being able to control your own life.”

In the end, The Forgotten Arm is, like so much of Aimee Manns 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.”