Magnetic Fields - i
(Nonesuch)
When a group's hiatus reaches five years, it usually means they aren't coming back. In the case of the Magnetic Fields, however, songwriter Stephin Merritt has kept reasonably busy with numerous side projects since the release of his epic and much lauded 69 Love Songs, so it was never a question of whether the group would return but rather in what form and in what amount of time. When you write 69 Love Songs, it's hard to turn around a year later and write 14 more, and indeed since 69 Love Songs, Merrit has been focusing more on soundtracks (Pieces of April and Eban and Charley) and collaborations (Future Bible Heroes and The Sixths), as well as penning an opera. In that regard, perhaps we are lucky that, after this five year hiatus, Merritt has finally been able to step right back into writing pop songs with the Magnetic Fields' new album i.
The new album is loosely tied together by the title's single letter i. All the songs begin with i, although there's an "Irma" and an "Infinitely Late At Night" as the i is not always the pronoun. It's a fitting title for an album of pop songs, as one has to be somewhat self-obsessed to write a love song. It's always "I'm leaving on a jet plane" and never "Sorry to leave you here." Perhaps Merritt's own self-obsession has grown in the past five years (perhaps struggling to put together this album), as he even sings lead on the entire album, only letting Claudia Gonson add occasional backup vocals. To contrast that, the album is built entirely from hand-played instruments (i.e., no programming), requiring Merritt to work with his backing band more if he wants the songs to sound fully fleshed-out, giving much of the album a warm, textured full band sound without departing from Merritt's typical fascination with toy instruments and odd guitars.
In previous albums, Merritt always seemed hesitant to write too many songs from his own perspective, trying to be more universal instead of being pigeonholed as a writer of gay love songs. With this album and its celebration of a songwriter's self-obsession, that concern seems long gone. In "I Thought You Were My Boyfriend," he sings "I thought I was just the guy for you and it would never end/I thought we were s'posed to be like glue/I thought you were my boyfriend." A little more subtle than, say, "It's Raining Men," it's a shift in focus that largely will go by unnoticed. While no programming was used, Merritt still manages to create an overdriven, danceable new wave song, and it's the first track that jumps out at you when listening to the album with its steady beat and extravagant piano trinklings. It's such a successful pop song, Merritt is right to note partway through that it is "my saddest song," and despite how easy it is to sing along, little of Merrit's wit and humor affects the tone—it is a rather bleak tale of rejection.
Also marvelous is "I Don't Believe You," an old B-side that gets new life here, and unlike "I Thought You Were My Boyfriend," this song is absolutely droll. Merritt sings "You tell me I'm not not cute/Its truth or falsity is moot/Cause honesty's not your strong suit/And I don't believe you," giving us a big dose of the incredibly clever wordplay we look to him for. Perhaps an even more humorous example of Merritt casting himself as romantically downtrodden is "I Don't Really Love You Anymore." Here Merritt tries to save face in front of his object of affection by saying he doesn't love him anymore, when the best reasoning he can come up with is "there'll be some day when your eyes do not enthrall me," an amazingly whimsical look at a self-destructive crush.
Not all of these new songs are so pessimistic, however. In fact, the album's standout track feels completely genuine and romantic—so much so that I played it at my wedding last month. From the opening chorus of "Why would I stop loving you a hundred years from now?/It's only time" to the final verse of "And in your hands I will be free," the song seems perfect both in its hypersentimental tone and its eloquent illustration of love and commitment. This sentimentality is mirrored beautifully in the orchestration. Strings are used tactfully, of course (as they are in much of the album), but the real spark to this song is how wonderfully the pure guitar feedback mixes with the fast-paced toy xylophone melody. While Merritt isn't exactly known for his guitar wizardry, for him to pull off this gorgeous bed of tone and unique combination of sounds so successfully says a lot to his skill as composer and musician alongside his unquestioned songwriting.
While nothing here matches The Charm of the Highway Strip as far as imagery, there are a couple truly clever songs. Merritt again casts himself as an outsider unworthy of love in "I Looked All Over Town." On the first few listens, this main theme of the song is all that's evident, but on further inspection, it becomes obvious that the main character in the song is in fact a clown. Merritt ingeniously uses all the aspects of clowndom (the bushy hair, the painted face, balloons) to color how he is an outsider and to dramatically shape the manner in which the clown makes his escape from all those who have rejected him. Also creative and clever is "I Wish I Had an Evil Twin" which manages to take Merritt's self-loathing at his lack of luck in love to whole new levels. The tale of the song is obvious from the title, but Merritt's gift of lyricism is in top form here.
While i has several amazing songs, it is also marred by filler. Worse yet this filler seems to be the byproduct of a pop songwriter bored with writing pop songs. Album leadoff "I Die" is a tepid waltz led by toy instruments that manages to rhyme "eye" with "cry" and "die." "I'm Tongue-Tied" sounds like campfire entertainment at an all-inclusive island resort with its Hawaiian guitar, steel drums, and uninspired self-loathing lyrics. "I Was Born" is no better, using a two chord guitar part to back a pedestrian toy piano melody with somberly delivered vocals about getting older. Perhaps worst of all is "Is This What They Used to Call Love" which is essentially a one-handed piano scale with moody vocals that tries to sound like a scene from a film noir piano bar, using trite lyrics about not having chicken pox because "I've never met a chicken."
While 69 Love Songs is Merritt's most acclaimed album, it was by far his least consistent under the Magnetic Fields moniker. Of course, that's all forgivable; if you buy a set with 50 great songs, you don't mind that there are 20 mediocre ones to weed through as well. However, perhaps because Merritt was so worn out by those 69 pop songs, this lack of consistency continues, both in his side projects and this new album. i is even less consistent than 69 Love Songs, but then again, it is an album with 14 songs, and 7 or 8 of them are the greatest pop songs I've heard this year. Perhaps we can forgive Merritt those other 5 or 6 songs here just as we did the 20 in 69 Love Songs.
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