- Reaching milestone birthdays some will throw a party, some will do full “new life” things like go to the gym, hair style change, even dump long term partners and family to be the person they “always knew they should be”. Stephin Merritt aka Magnetic Fields is decidedly of the “different strokes” variety when it came time to commemorate his 50th solar return, in 2015. Known for exploring themes on a grand scale, such as the 1999 triple disc 69 Love Songs, Merritt marks turning 50 with 50 Song Memoir, which he started recording on his 50th birthday on February 9th, 2015 and it gets its release into the world this month.

The premise is fairly straightforward – one song for each year, starting in 1966 the year of his first birthday and finishing with 2015. As per previous releases, Merritt is the sculptor, arranger and ring master of everything that went in to 50 Song Memoir. Working with regular collaborators Claudia Gonson, Shirley Simms, Christopher Ewen and Daniel Handler, Merritt still manages to play over 100 different instruments himself, while contributing lead vocals, and several layers of harmonies on each one of the 50 songs.

While listening to the immense breadth of music on offer, the thing that strikes the listener is the ability of Merritt to craft tunes that hook into the ear immediately, and within one run of a chorus, you are easily drawn into humming, clapping along or even openly singing with him. Merritt takes everything modern music has offered and serves it up in a way that the plethora of jukebox musicals in the market place can only dream of, trying to recreate that essential zeitgeist. Fascinating song titles read like chapter headings of a long lost but recently found diary; 68 A Cat Called Dionysius, 79 Rock’n’roll Will Ruin Your Life, 86 How I Failed Ethics, 95 A Serious Mistake, 03 The Ex and I, 15 Somebody’s Fetish.

Merritt’s dour baritone is still gloriously unsteady, occasionally tending to the morose, leaving you wondering how he ever got over the various breakups with boyfriends (now enshrined in their own song and piece of Merritt’s life, a little like a prehistoric insect fixed in amber) or the challenges of passing an ethics course or living without an income. The clever thing that Merritt does, though, is rather like Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe of Pet Shop Boys or France’s supreme pop-dance diva Mylène Farmer: put the more challenging lyrics against a jaunty dance or up-tempo beat that in its way suggests a more hopeful outcome than perhaps the artist may be thinking is actually possible.

50 Song Memoir isn’t a compelling “read” such as a hotly anticipated “tell all” autobiography, but, it doesn’t need to be. Merritt is poetic and poignant with his lyrics, “We expected nuclear war/ What should we take precautions for?” (in 93 Me and Fred and Dave and Ted); or drolly witty “Everything is someone’s perversion / One finger in or total submersion” (in 15 Somebody’s Fetish). It’s a long journey though the 50 tunes and varying styles, the instrumentation and method and that unmissable voice of Merritt’s. If you are going on a long journey, put a copy of 50 Song Memoir in your kit. You won’t be bored.

- Blair Martin.