[music] STEPHIN MERRITT - Showtunes (Nonesuch/Warner)

I am very curious to find out whether people who like musicals, broadly
construed, like the singing on this record. Me, I can't stand it-- the
careful enunciation and character voices mask out any potential feeling,
not that the lyrics (mostly prim/witty) suggest they were meant to have
the emotional weight of a Magnetic Fields song anyway.

It seems like a medium that wants all words to be intelligible to me the
first time I hear a song results in music I would rather listen to zero
times.

I should admit the possibility that this just isn't meant for me. But
that claim's implications about Stephin Merritt might be more damning
than anything I would write about not, as it happens, enjoying this.
[Out March 14.]