This came out in 2002 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
“It’s all about drugs / It’s all about shame,” confides Aimee Mann on her new album, and baby, she’s not kidding.
Lost In Space, the fifth solo album from the ridiculously gifted (and criminally overlooked) former Til Tuesday singer, is an exquisitely dark document about addiction, alienation, regret and endless longing. Of course, anyone familiar with Mann’s back story (including record company legal hassles) and back catalog (like the often-downbeat Magnolia soundtrack) knows she can make tragedy sound pretty damn heavenly. And that’s pretty much what she does on these 11 tracks, gently gliding through a landscape of midtempo Beatlesque ballads whose minor-key melodies drip with sadness and flirt with electronic textures while Mann pokes around in the shadows and confesses her sins in a voice that sounds more like Chrissie Hynde with every passing year. “Baby, let me be your heroine,” she begs — or is that “heroin”? Either way, I’m hooked.
