Why isn't Stephin Merritt a multi-platinum selling pop god with enough gold discs that he could eat breakfast, lunch and dinner off them for a year without once taking a trip to the sink? Well, one reason is probably his penchant for writing annoying, unfunny lyrics like "Is this what they used to call love? / Well it mustn't be chicken pox / I've never met a chicken". Another is probably the ridiculous faux Scott Walker voice in which he performs many of his songs. The fact that he's not the sexiest six-pack-less, balding, middle-aged Europhile that American pop has ever produced probably didn't help.

Of course, the fact that he's consistently ploughed his own musical furrow, rather than selling out his breathtakingly evident songwriting talent to less deserving artists is one of the things that makes The Magnetic Fields so precious and necessary. Fortunately, the slightly nauseating "too... much... irony... face... melting..." moments that Merritt's ego occasionally lets slip are more than balanced by beautiful pop gems like "I Don't Really Love You Anymore" and "I Don't Believe You". Elsewhere "I Wish I Had An Evil Twin" actually is as clever as it thinks it is, and "I Thought You Were My Boyfriend" is a fascinating glimpse of what Morrissey might have sounded like if, instead of burning down the discos, he'd decided to set them on fire in a less literal way. -Ian Martin, July.16.04

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