Magnetic Fields: 69 Love Songs : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

It's a many-splendored thing; it can plain stink. And that's just the beginning. The Magnetic Fields have found sixty-nine ways in which to deconstruct that most elusive of emotions: love. Over three sprawling discs, leadman Stephin Merritt delivers primal accounts of lust ("Underwear"), unabashed romance ("The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side") and the inevitable heartbreak ("I Don't Want to Get Over You"). Merritt is a drama queen, to be sure: His grandiose, bare-assed lyrics can be catty, crude and sometimes full of sappy goo, but they usually contain a little universal truth. Merritt's compositions have a tossed-off, barely produced quality and are held together by sturdily constructed melodies that hark back to Eighties synth poppers like Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark. And just when his morose, Morrissey-esque croon begins to send you into a funk of your own, a song like the oddly optimistic "Sweet-Lovin' Man," sung by Claudia Gonson, comes along to restore hope. This Love may be strange, but isn't it always? (RS 823)

ERIK HIMMELSBACH