He may have been knocking around for over twenty years as the driving force of The Magnetic Fields, but as I’ve never got around to investigating them or any of his side projects solo work, all of Stephin Merritt’s recordings are obscure to me.
As such, I’m perhaps not entirely qualified to comment on how representative this collection is of his output. As the title suggests, ‘Obscurities’ collects a miscellany of odds and ends of solo material and recordings made not only with The Magnetic Fields but also some of his myriad other projects, namely Buffalo Rome, The 6ths and The Gothic Archies (geddit?). I’d rarely recommend such a release as an introduction to any artist.
Being a compilation, and one from a range of sources and of variable recording quality, it doesn’t hang together as an album as such. What it does achieve, though, is in providing an impressive demonstration of Merritt’s songwriting range. The first two tracks alone couldn’t be much more different, the busy lo-fi electro pop of The Magnetic Fields’ ‘Rats in the Garbage of the Western World’ (originally released as the B-side to 1995’s ‘All the Umbrellas in London’) sits in dramatic contrast with the previously unreleased ‘Forever and a Day’ which features Stephin’s vocals accompanied by only a scratchy ukulele. Yet both are equally good.
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Both sides of the single ‘I Don’t Believe You’ are present, with flipside ‘When I’m Not looking, You’re Not There’ being arguably the stronger of the two tracks. ‘Plant White Roses’, recorded as Buffalo Rome, steps away from the psychedelia-tinged electro to provide a charming sliver of jangly acoustic pop, while Merritt adopts a Nick Cave-esque gothic croon on the ‘69 Love Songs’ outtake ‘The Sun and the Sea and the Sky’. This in turn is a world away from ‘Yet Another Girl’ which only appeared on the vinyl edition of The 6ths’ album ‘Wasp’s Nest’, which is sweet surf pop swamped in feedback. Then there’s ‘Scream’ which sounds more like The Human League than anything else...
You’ve probably got the idea by now. ‘Obscurities’ is a patchwork quilt of an album that’s stylistically all over the shop. Even so, it’s an enjoyable dip into Merrit’s pre-millennium career that displays his immense versatility as a songwriter. It’s also extremely enjoyable, and isn’t that all you can ask of any album?
Stephin Merritt Online
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