Magnetic Fields - i

Genre rock Publisher Nonesuch

Everyone figured Stephin Merritt had more than 69 love songs in him, and we were willing to give him five years to come up with more. But for Merritt, albums don't begin with songs but rather with concept, and the one here is pretty skimpy: fourteen tracks all beginning with the titular letter. Some have suggested that this signals a new willingness to write from first person experience, but the only discernible move toward personal expression is in the music itself, which gets closer to realizing the life ambition he threatened last time around: a career in the Broadway theater.

These ambitions ruin this record's second half, which culminates with the make-or-break "It's Only Time," in which he weds a gorgeous melody that makes time stop to a banal lyric that makes my attention wane. But the first half is our hero up to his old tricks: dismissing compliments from a love interest, searching all over town for him when he disappears, then obsessively declaring "I Thought You Were My Boyfriend" when he finally turns up with God knows who, God knows where. A mini tour de force.