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Stephin Merritt, best known in his work as/with Magnetic Fields, here collaborates with former boyfriend Christopher Ewen and long-time associate Claudia Gonson. Merritt remains one of the most musical synth programmers around. He avoids two common traps, neither making his synths sound entirely synthetic nor like cheap imitations of acoustic instruments. Instead, though nearly every sound on this disc comes from synthesizers, those sounds seem remarkably warm and organic. (A masterful use of acoustic space is helpful here.) The songs themselves evoke a range of genres - pop from the Beach Boys to Tin Pan Alley, Burt Bacharach - even the melancholy synth-pop of Orchestral Manæuvres in the Dark's 1983 hit "Souvenir" on the album's opening track, "Lonely Days." Future Bible Heroes create a romantic, sometimes cinematic setting for their songs' melancholy, often archly clever lyrics. Titles like "She-Devils of the Deep" (a faux B-movie bossa nova) and "Death Opened a Boutique," along with the fact that Merritt's publishing company is called Gay and Loud, give an impression of the lyrics' wit, but fail to convey their incisiveness or meticulous craftsmanship. Alternating vocals between Merritt's trademark dolorous baritone and Gonson's airy alto provides effective variety and contrast. The actual singing, as is typical of Merritt's projects, avoids overt emotionality, which allows the songs' expressive impact to speak through the actual music and lyrics themselves - a subtler, less pandering approach than the emotion-hemorrhaging soul divas and angst-bellowing grunge vowel-twisters cluttering up your radio. And the packaging is marvelous: the front cover's "Jumble"-style puzzle is only a prelude to the assortment of sometimes straightforward, sometimes Rube Goldbergian word puzzles into which the songs' lyrics have been twisted. Readers of Games magazine will probably find the puzzles alone worth the price of admission. Those of who us who always cheat and look up the answers to crossword puzzles will be satisfied enough with Future Bible Heroes' rich and clever music. |
