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  reviews
stephin merritt
showtunes • nonesuch • 2006

With the albums that Robert Pollard releases under his own name, you know that they're not going to be too different from his Guided by Voices output. If any readers have the same expectation of this album from The Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt, I must disabuse them of that notion right away. Stephin does not sing or even, as far as I know, play an instrument on any of these recordings, which are, as the title indicates, original cast recordings of songs that Merritt wrote for the stage.

For the past 3 or 4 years, Merritt has been collaborating with Chinese theatre director Chen Shi-Zheng on a series of theatrical adaptations. The first two were adaptations of traditional Chinese operas: The Orphan of Zhao, in 2003, and Peach Blossom Fan in 2004. The third, conceived by Chen, was My Life as a Fairy Tale, based on the life and work of Hans Christian Andersen. This disc presents selections from Merritt's original scores for these productions, including overtures, chorus numbers, solos, duets, and so on. Outside of the pop confines of his bands, Merritt gets the opportunity to stretch his songwriting stylistically, and shows impressive range as a composer. Still, some songs are more characteristically "Merritty" than others. With some rearrangement, songs like "Shall We Sing a Duet?" or "What a F***ing Lovely Day!" or even the silly "Ukulele Me!" could fit in on a Magnetic Fields release, whereas others, like the vicious revenge fantasy "The World Is Not Made of Flowers" or the oddity "Behold the Lowly Centipede," not so much. And while Merritt's lyrics must, of course, serve the narrative, he still works in plenty of his wry humor and clever rhyme schemes.

The "orchestra" for each production was a small ensemble, with a different combination of Chinese and Western instrumentation for each show. It's quite novel and lovely to hear autoharp alongside jinghu, or steel drums with yangqin. Listening for the combinations of instruments provides the key to figuring out which songs are from which play. It's a bit confounding hearing the songs out of sequence and out of the narrative context of each story. The entire scores for each show are available for download from your usual "e-music" retailers, which makes this CD release a bit of a puzzlement. Completists, and those who want an audio souvenir of the performances, will want to go for the downloads. For the merely curious, this sampling provides an intriguing, and enjoyable, but ultimately disjointed glimpse. (mike.03.06)

rating

three stars

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