69 Love Songs

Stephin Merritt writes songs the way other people smoke cigarettes, and smokes cigarettes the way other people draw breath. Even with three more bands (Future Bibles Heroes, the Gothic Archies and The 6ths) to provide for, there were an estimated 50 songs left over after compiling this three-album set.

A self-diagnosed megalomaniac and music obsessive, Merritt’s approach might strike some as clinical, and certainly there aren’t a lot of contemporary songwriters who carry rhyming dictionaries around with them. The sheer breadth of styles of 69 Love Songs – punk, electropop, Irish ballad, gospel, Gilbert and Sullivan, blues, Cole Porter, Fleetwood Mac – is impressive, at least up to the Fleetwood Mac part, but the exercise would be pointless if the songs were no good. Happily, the songs are wonderful. Or at least 80% of them are, which is more than many bands will manage in an entire career.

As on previous Magnetic Fields albums, Merritt prefers to explore love in its unrequited or recently jilted state, but one definite improvement is the relative simplicity of the arrangements. MF songs have sometimes teetered under the weight of excessive instrumentation. But because these songs were written to be performed, there’s very little of that. At times, backing is limited only to acoustic guitar, finger clicks, ukulele or mandolin, which is a very good thing – you don’t want to drown out lyrics as witty and touching as these.

Claudia Gonson, Shirley Simms, Dudley Klute and LD Beghtol each sing six songs, but though the diversity is welcome for its own sake, the best songs belong to Stephin, who manages to sound simultaneously sexy and detached.

69 Love Songs is available as three separate CDs, but buy the box set. There aren’t many bands out there who can juxtapose titles like ‘Let’s Pretend We’re Bunny Rabbits’ and ‘The Cactus Where Your Heart Should Be’, yet still create such a surprisingly warm and cohesive collection.