t doesn’t take long for the listener to be drawn into the reassuringly familiar “Humpty Dumpty,” the first single and opening track on Aimee Mann’s Lost In Space. All the pieces are there: the lush balladry, pointed metaphors about complicated love, lazy guitar arpeggios, and—oh, yes—that voice, restrained and cautious, but capable of piercing your heart on a whim by reaching up into that achingly vulnerable falsetto of hers. The former ‘Til Tuesday singer has been refining this mix since 1993’s Whatever with increasing returns artistically, despite miserly industry support, causing Mann to self-release her last and most commercially successful album, Bachelor #2 to a mountain of well-deserved praise.


With the added success of her Oscar-nominated work in P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia, it’s been a good couple of years for Mann, the fruits of which are immediately apparent in “Humpty’s” confident swagger and memorably angular melody. As good as it is, though, as becomes clear on subsequent tracks, Lost In Space also covers terrain Mann has been over several times now.


Of course, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Beginning with her sophomore release (and one of the most overlooked releases of the decade), 1995’s I’m With Stupid, Mann has established herself to be a great, frequently brilliant songwriter and one of pop’s best chroniclers of doomed relationships, building on the verbal swordplay of Hal David and Elvis Costello without ever succumbing to the latter’s showy and overweening cleverness. Though sometimes heavy-handed in her attempts to justify her much-publicized bouts with the music industry, her richly allegorical imagery is something fans have come to expect from her.


And the lyrics on Lost In Space will not let them down. It would seem that marital bliss hasn’t yet purged those old hellhounds on her trail, with lines like, ''Better take the keys/And drive forever/Staying won't put these futures back together/All the perfect drugs and superheroes/Wouldn't be enough to bring me up to zero” and double-entendres like “Let me be your heroin.”


Unfortunately, barring the opener, few of Lost In Space’s melodies do their lyrical conceits justice, and worse, many sound as if we’ve heard them before, albeit in a fresher, looser context. Perhaps it’s a sign of maturation, but there’s a distinct lack of surprise here; what on Bachelor #2 had previously seemed like an expansion of I’m With Stupid’s heartbreaking ballad and highlight, “Amateur,” now reveals itself to have been a more linear progression into adult rock, perhaps interesting but not nearly as compelling. While there are a handful of memorable songs—“This Is How It Goes,” for one, has a touching lyric and sweeping chorus—most simply glide on past without making much of an impression individually, leaving the unfamiliar with what they likely imagine an Aimee Mann record sounds like: all draggy tempos and melancholy, but without any of the highlights.


Ultimately, Lost In Space isn’t terrible, and in places it’s quite good, but given the knockdown success of her last two releases (including her contributions to Magnolia) we should expect more from a talent of her caliber.


Disappointing.