Stephin Merritt - Obscurities

Stephin Merritt, Obscurities (Domino)

Albums of oddments and rarities aren't expected to be classics and can't fairly be compared with the choicest bits of the back catalogue. The Jesus & Mary Chain's Barbed Wire Kisses seemed as good as the real thing at the time but in general we might as well accept that such albums are the remnant sale that tries to scrape the last few dollars out of the fanbase while it can. And I don't think anybody pretends any otherwise. There's often a reason why a rarity is rare. But being a Merrittophile, I had no choice but to purchase my own copy.

Like its author, it's no better than it should be. Most of the tracks listed as The Magnetic Fields are those 'experimental' studio exercises in which Stephin tries out every noise he can find on his keyboard. The version of I Don't Believe You here is so full of mobile phone ringtones it's like being in the office on a Tuesday morning. Rot in the Sun by The 6ths has a good locomotive percussion track on it; Plant White Roses has Shirley Simms in her accustomed plaintive, country role. Most of the songs are in Stephin's lovelorn doomed romantic mode without breaking out of a creative canter, which make them very good songs compared to 99% of the world's pop songwriters but nothing to put alongsdide his own highspots. There's nothing at all wrong with When You're Young and In Love,

You can teeter on the brink of a precipice

Ov'r an infinitely deep abyss

And somehow not even notice this

When you're young and in love

but you've all but given up on the album by then and, once it's lifted your hopes, he leaves you with one last synthesizer doodle. The thing about experimental music is that one seems to get served up with the result whether the experiment worked or not. You wouldn't do that with a recipe for sponge cake. I suppose it's reassuring to know that even a genius like Stephin Merritt has a weak spot.

And let this CD purchase serve as a warning to any other would-be almost completists of anything. You don't really need everything.