Magnetic Fields

A dry love serenade for the postmodern age.

By Ling Ma
Published: May 14th, 2004 | 10:54am

Singer-songwriter Stephin Merrit has the voice of someone who would be romantically careless with you and make you like it.

It’s a broad, handsome voice with an easy, post-coital languor acquired after too many morning-afters in the same bedroom. It’s a voice poised to execute the ideal breakup album. And it could be as simple as that if not for the detached irony that pervades through much of i, the latest offering from a band whose last album, 69 Love Songs, indexed the ups and downs of romance. With a band that includes multi-tasking instrumentalists Sam Davol, John Woo, and Claudia Gonson, i’s irony is made all the more apparent with musical throwbacks to earlier eras and over-earnest, tongue-in-cheek lyrics.

Like its title suggests, i shifts in subject matter from its predecessor to the "I" left in the aftermath of love, rather than the "us" in love. On "I’m Tongue-Tied," Meritt drolly croons, "I don’t die, I say hi, how clever / I turn blue, I love you forever." It’s a sentimentality that harkens to the ’40s, juxtaposed with a coy wryness.

As it should be pointed out more often, there’s a fine line between irony and sarcasm. In this case, that fine line is redundancy. What initially comes off as postmodern irony may be construed as regressive ’90s sarcasm as the album progresses. Yet i ultimately avoids becoming tiredly clever and gimmicky with its lush moments of deep-throated ardor. In this case, irony is not the means and ends to itself; rather, in the aftermath of love, irony is an act of bravado, and bravado is absolutely necessary.