Album: Stephin Merritt,

Eban & Charley, Sketchbook

Stephin Merritt's last major outing was the Magnetic Fields' triple CD 69 Love Songs, which contained more great material than most songwriters come up with in a lifetime. This less ambitious (though no less delightful) soundtrack to James Bolton's gay love story allows Merritt to indulge his more abstruse leanings, resulting in what is, in effect, a manifesto for the sensitive. He once claimed to enjoy bubblegum pop and experimental music and nothing in between, which may seem facetious until one hears how beautifully the lush, languid pop tunes blend here with the abstract musique concrète constructions. The former utilise Merritt's gift for romantic melancholy and eye for the tragic attraction of unrequited love. Sung in his sombre baritone, "Some Summer Day" and "Maria Maria Maria" convey the sweet pain of a heart walking happily to desolation, while "Poppyland", with lines such as: "In the tame grey here we all disappear, but the walls have eyes in Poppyland/ All your favourite things painted on the wings of the butterflies of Poppyland," could be a hymn to either heroin or death. His way with a telling phrase is skilfully employed on the deceptively innocent "This Little Ukulele", which contains the wonderful line, "Well, an orchestra can tell you pretty stories, but this little ukulele tells the truth." More abstract exercises are undertaken with grace and elegance, with clockwork automata, rain-sticks, thunder-sheets and music boxes combined in quiet cacophonies: recollections in tranquillity, rather than attacks. Recommended.