Stephin Merritt – Obscurities
The peril of listening to Stephin Merritt is that his music is so damn uneven. Both in quality and in style, Merritt has always been hard to pin down, and though the latter is one of the things that has made him so charming, the former has frustrated many fans into either equivocation or into completely ignoring the bad bits.
This peril carries over into reviewing Stephin Merritt. For my part, I have always considered myself a fan of Merritt, but with reservations. Likewise, I can call Obscurities a good album, but with reservations.
The album is a collection of the usual misfit songs (B-sides, demos, alternate versions), but since Merritt has basically made a career of making hard-to-place music, this does not affect the album’s quality too much. It sounds, for the most part, like Merritt simply doing what he has always done, which is to make music that confounds expectations and mixes genres.
Though the album’s eclecticism is not a distraction, it is not a point in its favor either. The album’s first songs bounce from the opening track’s (“Forever and a Day”) ukulele-backed romantic sincerity to the electronic upbeat cynicism of “Rats in the Garbage of the Western World”, to a playful alternate version of the already playful “I Don’t Believe You”, to the lonesome and longing acoustic guitar and vocal combo of “Plant White Roses”. This section of the album is the album’s best stretch, and the rest unfortunately does not live up to the promise that it poses.
Another standout track, perhaps the best on the album, is “The Sun the Sea and the Sky”, a beautifully despondent song that ranks among Merritt’s best. The song sounds full in spite of its sparseness, with Merritt’s voice scraping the bottom and top of its range. Why it was never included on an album until now is incomprehensible to me.
The rest of the album, while at times displaying Merritt’s talent at crafting songs that are simultaneously catchy and thought-provoking, just does not live up to anything on the first half. Still, the good outweighs the bad.
My big problem with this album is a bit harder to articulate. It is a matter of place. Despite all of the album’s range, it does not seem to capture the full span of Merritt’s abilities. He can go higher and lower, sadder and more ecstatic, weirder and catchier, than he any of the songs on this album. To those well-versed in Merritt’s music already, most of the tracks are merely good and do nothing to stand out in his vast catalog. But the album does not serve as the best introduction to his music either. It is a little too rough, a little too quiet, a little too everything it seems, to really showcase what Merritt is capable of.
This peril carries over into reviewing Stephin Merritt. For my part, I have always considered myself a fan of Merritt, but with reservations. Likewise, I can call Obscurities a good album, but with reservations.
The album is a collection of the usual misfit songs (B-sides, demos, alternate versions), but since Merritt has basically made a career of making hard-to-place music, this does not affect the album’s quality too much. It sounds, for the most part, like Merritt simply doing what he has always done, which is to make music that confounds expectations and mixes genres.
Though the album’s eclecticism is not a distraction, it is not a point in its favor either. The album’s first songs bounce from the opening track’s (“Forever and a Day”) ukulele-backed romantic sincerity to the electronic upbeat cynicism of “Rats in the Garbage of the Western World”, to a playful alternate version of the already playful “I Don’t Believe You”, to the lonesome and longing acoustic guitar and vocal combo of “Plant White Roses”. This section of the album is the album’s best stretch, and the rest unfortunately does not live up to the promise that it poses.
Another standout track, perhaps the best on the album, is “The Sun the Sea and the Sky”, a beautifully despondent song that ranks among Merritt’s best. The song sounds full in spite of its sparseness, with Merritt’s voice scraping the bottom and top of its range. Why it was never included on an album until now is incomprehensible to me.
The rest of the album, while at times displaying Merritt’s talent at crafting songs that are simultaneously catchy and thought-provoking, just does not live up to anything on the first half. Still, the good outweighs the bad.
My big problem with this album is a bit harder to articulate. It is a matter of place. Despite all of the album’s range, it does not seem to capture the full span of Merritt’s abilities. He can go higher and lower, sadder and more ecstatic, weirder and catchier, than he any of the songs on this album. To those well-versed in Merritt’s music already, most of the tracks are merely good and do nothing to stand out in his vast catalog. But the album does not serve as the best introduction to his music either. It is a little too rough, a little too quiet, a little too everything it seems, to really showcase what Merritt is capable of.