Sonically complex and lyrically intimate, Lost In Space (SuperEgo), Aimee Mann's fourth solo release, marks yet another advance in a career studded with hit singles and critical accolades. From her work in the 80's with MTV favorite Til Tuesday through her acclaimed solo discs "Whatever" and "I'm With Stupid" in the 90s, Aimee Mann has always been at the forefront of contemporary songwriters. The close of the millennium brought her greatest success, with the simultaneous releases of Bachelor No. 2 and the soundtrack to the film Magnolia, which garnered nominations for an Oscar, a Golden Globe and three Grammys. After a decade in which her music often took a backseat to corporate mergers and contractual obligations, the message was clear: Aimee Mann is here to stay.

With Lost In Space, Mann has created an album of songs that, like a book of stories or a novel, work collectively to become something more than the sum of the individual parts. As Mann herself explains, "There is a line that runs through all these songs, in a way that's different from the previous records. "

"All the perfect drugs and superheroes wouldn't be enough to bring me up to zero," Mann sings on the opening track, though in real life she clearly isn't in need of rescuing. "My music is honest and real," she says, "but it's not a word-for-word depiction of each day of my life. Everything is done to a code that only I know."

Addressing themes of addiction and social misconnections in songs such as "High on Sunday 51" and "Invisible Ink," Mann and producer Michael Lockwood sought to create an aural environment that matched the lyrics. "As we were recording, we started to put sounds in that we referred to as 'space noise,'" Mann explains, "which obviously tied in with the title of the record and the theme of the songs, which is feeling isolated and cut off from other people and yourself, trying to make connections to people and failing."

That the central recurring theme of Lost In Space is addiction may surprise some listeners, but for Mann it is merely the perfect pairing of an apt metaphor and her own bookish obsession with psychology. "I've been doing a lot of reading about addiction in its various forms," she explains, "and how people use lots of different things to alter mood. I read a book that was a first-hand account about being an alcoholic. There was a section in it where this woman was anorexic, and while that was happening her drinking stopped. When the anorexia got better, the drinking got worse. This was fascinating to me. It's always replaced by something. Certain types of relationships are very drug-like, whether it's sex addiction or immersing yourself in another person and imparting to them some kind of magical qualities, like only they can make you feel better."

"I really like the idea of being a professional musician-that I have a job that I'm good at and a good work ethic," Mann has said in the past. The new disc marks her second release on SuperEgo Records, the label she co-founded with manager and former Til Tuesday bandmate Michael Hausmann, and being truly self-employed has allowed her to soar. "There were aspects of liberation that hadn't even occurred to me. I became more creative all-around, in terms of marketing and promoting the record as well as writing and recording." To that end, Mann commissioned graphic-novelist Seth to create a forty-page booklet that will accompany the disc version of Lost In Space. "His work is really perfect for this because it has the same flavor as the songs. Kind of depressing-I mean that in a good way-very contemplative. He doesn't interpret the songs directly, but it all comes together, I think, as a whole. I sort of felt like Seth was my alter ego."

From "Voices Carry" to the Oscar-nominated "Save Me," Mann has always been known for her clever, literate, and dryly witty takes on emotional sabotage and self-destruction. Though happily married to Michael Penn (with whom she has toured extensively in a double-billed "Acoustic Vaudeville"), her fascination continues with "the freaks who could never love anyone." With a songcraft often compared with the Beatles and Badfinger, Mann frequently pairs the bleakest of poetry with soaring, infectious melodies. "It's all about drugs, it's all about shame," she sings in the chorus of "This is How it Goes," and unsuspecting listeners will likely be singing along. Elsewhere, her narrators describe themselves as "gone, but I don't know where" on the title track, or "I'm all about denial, but can't denial let me believe that we can talk about it?" on "Pavlov's Bell."

Adding to the tightly wound collective narrative was the relatively short yet relaxed gestation time; the songs were written and recorded over a year-and-half during breaks from the Acoustic Vaudeville schedule. "It was a good way to work," she says. "We'd get a few songs together, then we'd go out and do some shows, and then we'd return to the studio and work on some more new songs. It made for a nice creative rhythm. There was no need to rush around and worry about not having enough songs for the album by the time we wanted to release something."

"People are tricky," Mann sings on "It's Not," the gorgeous finale to Lost In Space. "You can't afford to show/anything risky/anything they don't know." But Aimee Mann's new collection is both risky and full of the unknown, qualities which music fans are certain to cheer.