On The Magnetic Fields' most comprehensive release, 69 Love Songs, Stephin Merritt took full advantage of the number of songs recorded for the album, proficiently using drum machines, distortion, a whole closet of instruments, and guest vocalists to make every song catchy and unique. This goes without mentioning the lyrical content of these songs, which oftentimes left indelible marks on the listener's mind with as little as three words; "alas and alack" from "Reno Dakota", for example. On the releases previous to and including 69 Love Songs, Merritt relied heavily on a lo-fi shellac that he applied to nearly every track; but on his first release as The Magnetic Fields in five years, i, it seems as if he finally saved up enough money for a quality recording machine and lost interest in crafting songs which vary too much from each other.

First off, i appears to be an egocentric approach to songwriting, each song featuring Stephin's voice and how Stephin can't find what Stephin wants. Not that Stephin isn't allowed to write about Stephin, but I'm sure you understand what Stephin means on this album; The Magnetic Fields is finally just about Stephin. Each song begins with the letter "i", but what would you expect from the cheeky bastard that came up with the album 69 Love Songs? If I were to postulate as to how this album came to be, it would pan out something like how Phil Elvrum isolated himself in the Great White North to write songs for his most recent album, Live in Japan. Maybe Stephin rented out his local coffee house for a month and didn't allow anyone to visit him; he just sat back and drank his latte, smoked American Spirits and wrote some exhaustingly beautiful but non-innovative 2-4 minute ballads. Maybe it's just the fact that everything he has done in the past has gotten progressively better with each new release, but I was sure the new album would be a masterpiece, especially because he took 5 years to conjure it up.

It's hard to talk about the songs independently; they all seem to rudely run into each other, every song profusely apologizing for intruding on the comfort zone of the last one. The songs on i simply don't have the innate ability to strike a chord with the listener, knocking them over with 85% sadness and introspection as on previous releases. Rather than standing out from the current crop of indie darlings as in the past, Stephin Merritt has fallen back into the crowd (or he stumbled upon the exact sound that happens to be popular in the indie scene right now). One song does, however, resemble a glittering diamond in Stephin Merritt's sandy beach, "I Thought You Were My Boyfriend". Starting off with a catchy piano melody, it melds into a synth fest that the Postal Service could only dream of. With Stephin's crooning vocals layered over the multiple instruments, this song could fit perfectly between "I Think I Need a New Heart" and "The Book of Love" on disc one of 69 Love Songs and really that's all anyone is hoping for, a lost track from 69 Love Songs.

Don't let my grilling of the new Magnetic Fields album get you riled up; I appreciate it enough, but when talking about such an innovative songwriter as Stephin, one has to expect a whole crap-load more than the five years' worth of songwriting that is presented in i.

-Kerry Nordstrom