The second tongue-twistingly titled release from Stephin Merritt's star-cameo ensemble, Hyacinths and Thistles seems more a continuation of his writing on the Magnetic Fields' heralded 69 Love Songs than a follow-up to the first Sixths album Wasps' Nests. Merritt's always clever lyrics continue to open up and show his romanticism in full bloom, while the irony that sometimes infected his work is here subdued. When Sarah Cracknell sings "I've been kissing the bottle, wishing it was you" ("Kissing Things"), the image's cleverness fails to overwhelm its pathos. The sound is more open and less cluttered, tending toward simpler arrangements that often emphasize unusual acoustic instruments like autoharp, ukulele, or the toy piano that brilliantly offsets Melanie's cracked, tragic vocal on "I've Got New York."

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