Have you seen this man? Stephen Merritt, I mean. He was last seen in an East Village dive bar, martini in one hand, rhyming dictionary in the other. Can't really blame him for keeping a low profile, though; after dropping an epic achievement like 69 Love Songs on the unsuspecting public, you'd take a break, too. While the Magnetic Fields have been recently plucked out of the draft by superlabel-in-the-making Nonesuch, Merritt's yet to release a follow-up under his highest-profile name, choosing instead to focus on scoring films, farewell live performances of 69, and writing a musical with stock accordionist and children's author Daniel Handler.
Oh yeah, and also releasing another collaboration with Christopher Ewan under the sacrilicious nom de plume of Future Bible Heroes. Like the Heroes' last full-length, 1997's Memories of Love, Eternal Youth has Ewan electronically arranging songs co-written with Merritt, with vocals added by Magnetic Fields drummer/occasional singer Claudia Gonson. And also like its predecessor, Eternal Youth feels like more of a lackluster stopgap than equal-footing sidecar for Merritt's songcraft, a frustrating teaser from the Merritt portfolio of aliases.
Part of the problem seems to lie with Ewan's arrangements, electro-pop that no doubt endears him to the equally 80s-fixated Merritt. While Merritt's electronic backings often sound like dancefloor anthems for the club inside his head, Ewan's slicker touch has the tendency to present the songs like actual club anthems, losing a lot of the intimacy of the Magnetic Fields' productions. Fair enough, but perhaps not the wisest of approaches given Merritt's flair for clever wordiness, Tin Pan Alley-style melodicism, and Gonson's voice.
Gonson's occasional microphone duties on 69 Love Songs were a treat, as Merritt's songs tend to sound good delivered by the opposite gender. But as the sole vocalist on Eternal Youth (Merritt's Cash-ian baritone sits this one out), the pleasure of her slightly disinterested, sorta flat tone wears before long. Irony being dead and all (or so I'm told), the detached vocal is an endangered species, and Gonson's throws a warm blanket over the romantics of "No River", dampens space oddity "Doris Day the Earth Stood Still", and creates the wrong kind of bedroom voice on the smooth-operating "A Thousand Lovers in a Day".
Merritt, meanwhile, remembers to bring his usual lyrical tricks ("I'd rather be a queen when the rooks take wing than be losing your affection," for instance), but seems to use a lot of his C-list melodies. For a Next Wave of Song-certified man known for penning instant-timeless melodies, it's disappointing to sit through stiffs like "Find an Open Window" or "Kiss Me Only With Your Eyes" that don't even come close to taking a spot on one's in-head playlist. "I'm a Vampire" is pristine danceable camp and "From a Dying Star" is a catchy/haunting continuation of the extraterrestrial theme, but on most of these tracks, Merritt sounds too much like he's phoning it in; "The World is a Disco Ball" could be a Magnetic Fields sendup on some forthcoming collection of indie rock interpretations by Weird Al (for which working titles would certainly include No Al-Ternative, My Bloody Alentine and Al's Tomorrow Parties).
So the spotlight's on Ewan, who fills Eternal Youth with serviceably average synthetic-pop dioramas. The album is weighed down with sub-minute interlude filler, some of which (i.e. the almost-Timbaland-style skittery-strings of "Viennese Lift") are more interesting than the full-length backdrops, but which still kill what turtle-ish momentum the song cycle manages to establish. From the evidence presented on Eternal Youth, Ewan sounds mostly like the bad influence kid-next-door to Merritt, pushing him back from the slightly more organic sound of recent fare towards his (weaker) bleached-out keyboard symphony/guest vocalist early days. Maybe he's just taking some practice laps before turning on the Magnetic Field generator again, but regardless, non-completists are better off waiting for the real deal.
