Review:

on 2011-06-15 CharlesMartel Said:

"If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long."  George W. Bush, West Point Military Academy, 1 June 2002.

"I don't get it",  CharlesMartel, Musicemissions, 15 January 2011

The link between those two rather disparate quotes is simple. I know I am going to get the accusation in the second quote levelled at me, so I'll level it at myself as a sort of pre-emptive action in line with the so-called Bush Doctrine summarised by the first.

I don't get it.

Stephen Merritt has to be applauded, not so much for proposing and attempting such a project but for actually undertaking and completing it. There are few other bands or artists who have attempted a magnum opus like this and managed to finish it. Fewer still have not managed to bore the listener into a sort of valium-like submission in the process. Yes, it is a monumental piece of work. Originally, so the urban legend goes, he wanted to do 100 love songs. Then he wanted to list them in alphabetical order with at least one per letter of the alphabet  starting with "Absolutely Cuckoo" and ending with "Zebra" is a remnant of that idea  and ended up doing 69 songs: 23 per CD: three hours of music. I can think of some excellent bands who never put out that much music in their entire career.

The album is ambitious yes, but in all honesty it is going to take a huge effort of will to listen to all 69 at one sitting more than once. I managed it. Once! I settled down with my iPod docking sound system, a few beers and listened to every song. OK, I also stared reading Don Quixote but I never once fell asleep or switched on the TV. At the end, I was drained.

At the end I had also come to a conclusion  the one I began this review with. I don't get it. I have tried breaking it into chunks and listening to it. I have tried picking out individual tracks, identifying favourites, skipping tracks I dont care for much. And I still just do not get it.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it, well in places anyway. Merritt obviously knew that if he was going to hold anyone's attention for that long, he couldn't just do three hours of the same stuff. There are five lead vocalists; a range of musical instruments that would get Mike Oldfield drooling; a toolkit of percussion which seems to consist of everything you can think of which you can smack, rattle or ping; a set of electronic instruments and drum machines; all combining to produce a variety of musical styles which range from the almost rock of "No One Will Ever Love You" through Southern White Gospel on "Kiss Me Like You Mean It" to mock Scottish folk ballads with "Wi Nae Wee Bairn Yell Me Beget" and the occasional electronic gadget which is closer to past outputs by the Magnetic Fields such as "If You Don't Cry". It is certainly diverse, so don't worry, you won't get bored.

No, what I don't get is how? Why? What for?

How could Merritt and come up with so many light and airy little tunes, so many sweet, occasionally humorous, occasionally thoughtful, occasionally stupid lyrics? At times it seems as if every little ditty that sprung into his mind formed the basis for a song. There was no filtering, no rejection of the inferior, just plain old, "shit I got 69 songs to write so that one will have to make do". And so it finds a place on the album.

Then there is why did he do it? Was he trying to prove a point, or was he setting out to make a musical statement? Clearly this was no casually assembled compendium of songs, this was a pre-planned concept. And yet, Merritt departed from the Magnetic Fields' previous style of layered electronic pop which usually identified the band's sound for something which, with the odd exception, is almost entirely acoustic with very few overdubs or other sorts of technological knob-twiddling.

And finally, what the hell is it for? "69 Love Songs" is not a compendium of songs for all occasions. This is as much about the theme of love songs as it is about love itself - probably more so in fact. Had he gone through with either of his original 100 songs or A to Z concept, this could have been attributed to simply an exercise of supreme self-indulgence. But it is not.

At the end, it is a collection of love songs (in the broadest sense of the word) conceived and written by a gay man and played by him and his friends. If you accept it as that, and don't look for any hidden meaning or cryptic revelation, then this can be appreciated. "69 Love Songs" is simply too big to consider it as anything else.
Rating: 6/10