Words Are Enough: Stephin Merritt

What can be said about Stephin Merritt that hasn't already been said? Merritt takes clichés and spins them out and back like a yo-yo. Old pearls of wisdom are hacked away to reveal the initial grain of emotional truth that formed them, in effect breaking new ground. He proves that clichés are so for a reason, melting away the snowball to reveal the pebble that started the avalanche.

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He does this to the brink of exhaustion on the three-disc 69 Love Songs, with his band the Magnetic Fields. On these discs, Merritt attacks love from every angle. He does not bite off more than he can chew. Rather, his use of cliché creates a disconcerting universality to what feels like the most individual and intimate of emotions.

Not simply a one-trick pony, Merritt takes on many personas: the lover, the beloved, the adulterer, the ingénue, the cynic. Observed with a too-close focus, his lyrics at times appear corny, almost mad-libbed together. Take "Nothing Matters When We're Dancing," in which the song's title is rhymed with "Be we in Paris or in Lansing." Another textbook example of rhyming exercise is "Acoustic Guitar," in which he rhymes "guitar" with "star," "car," "are," "far," "hard" and, finally, "GWAR." This just enhances Merritt's charm. He doesn't take himself too seriously. He's not unlike Bukowski at times, pulling you through a little pain toward a punch line.

"Promises of Eternity," is Merritt's manipulation of cliché in a nutshell. He poses the questions every high school drama teacher fears most:

What if the show couldn't go on? What if we all got jobs / and got to bed before dawn? What if Old Joe had to retire? / What if all the stage hands were let go or fired?

He then moves on from the theater cliché, connecting it to his bread and butter in this compilation — love:

That's just like what the world would be/ if you fell out of love with me/ I can't let this happen to you/ don't you let it happen to me/ What would our friends and family say / if they could only see/ If you let this happen to us / don't think you'd be setting me / free. Wasn't it you and I who made promises of eternity?

A run of the mill theater cliché becomes a touching statement about the ephemeral nature of love. Merritt dances around the cliché, "the show must go on," never actually saying the words, relying instead on the public consciousness and knowledge of cliché.

On other occasions, Merritt goes further. He plays with words, creating choruses so emotionally resonant that they all but become cliché. Take "No One Will Ever Love You":

If you don't mind why don't you mind / Where is your sense of indignation / You are too kind / Much too kind / Where is the madness that you promised me / Where is the dream for which I paid dearly / When things go wrong I sing along / It is the nature of the business / But you're not here to make my sad songs more sincere / No one will ever love you honestly / No one will ever love you for your honesty / No one will ever love you honestly

The speaker desires an emotional presence understood to be impossible. The narrator desires the object of her affection's physical presence, while at the same time realizing that presence will only bring sadness. A perfect distillation of emotional dichotomy, a rock and a hard place. Finally, the chorus, "No one will ever love you honestly / for your honesty." Commenting on lyrics like this requires more quoting from Merritt:

If you don't cry it isn't love / If you don't cry then you just don't feel it deep enough.

Merritt boils down love to its essentials. His choruses are like the Cliff Notes on love cut down to haiku, immediately conjuring the desired emotional state with a few words. His lyrics are simple, accessible and universal. They're the best thing since sliced bread. They're the cat's meow, the bee's knees and the elephant's instep, all rolled into one fantastic lyrical freak of nature. Taken with music, listeners will find themselves involved in a whole new kind of love.

— Colin Alexander (colin_alexander at hotmail dot com)