At first, this album seemed all a bit samey, I definitely felt the absence of more (or any) soaring moments - there's no "Pavlov's Bell" or "Today's The Day" to immediate grab one's attention - which added up to a fairly lukewarm initial listening experience. But I expected that it would get better with time, and on about the third or fourth listen, The Forgotten Arm just opened up for me; "Goodbye Caroline" was the first song to really hit home (what is it with songs referencing girls called Caroline?) but I'd felt the sense creeping up on me before, and from there it was all magic.
Have since listened to the album over and over (in the process, incidentally, also remembering how great Bachelor No 2 is) and it continues to grow (most recently while doing the long train ride and walk home today after a day which should have been fun but somehow just wasn't, mainly because I was so incapacitatingly tired, I think - an appropriate mood in which to be listening to Aimee Mann). The 'concept album' conceit works, I reckon - there does seem to be a suitable flow to its narrative from beginning to end, both lyrically and musically, and I doubt that closer "Beautiful", for example, would've had the impact that it does without the story structuring the album as a whole.
At the moment, the high point for me is the stunningly sad double punch of "Little Bombs" and "That's How I Knew This Story Would Break My Heart" (that latter, tremulous yet direct, is something of a cousin to the wonderful "Wise Up"), but "King of the Jailhouse" is brill (working particularly well in the context of the album's conceptual scheme), too, and I also like "She Really Wants You", even though it's probably the most obvious song on the album, rather a lot.
