Blank generation

"I can't say who it is, because otherwise I'd be promoting my own record with the names of people who never consented to it." Briton-turned-Parisian Nic "Momus," Currie--whose most recent disc, Ping Pong, is cheesy, sleazy, and brilliantly wack--it is noted, recently mentioned that he'd recorded a song for the project. "He may well have...most of the new songs the Magnetic Fields have been playing lately are from the new 6ths album. 'As You Turn to Go'--that's the one someone much like Momus may have sung." He pauses for a moment, looking quizzical. "It looked like Momus." Rumors also abound of Marc Almond look-alikes, Bob Mould impersonators..."My life is just riddled with these people," he deadpans.

Beyond the 6ths and the Magnetic Fields, Merritt has a few other bands to keep him busy. There are the aforementioned Future Bible Heroes, for which he's trying to finish up an EP before he leaves on tour. Then there are the Gothic Archies, a more than slightly ridiculous "goth-bubblegum" project that released an EP called The New Despair last year, all of whose jokes were based on exactly how nihilistic lyrics can possibly get; they will soon release a new single, "Satan, Your Way Is a Hard One." And then there's...this:

"I have a noise band. Well, it's not a band. It doesn't have any members. Including me. It's my broken reverb unit. It's called Stephin Merritt's Broken Reverb Unit. I've made about 20 minutes of recordings of that. Oddly, no one seems interested in releasing it. But I guess I'm asking the wrong people. I think it's beautiful."

As you might guess, Merritt has some idees fortes about what good songwriting consists of. (When he's not working on his musical projects, he writes sharp-witted music criticism for Time Out New York: His review of last year's Eric Matthews album ended, legendarily, "It eventually makes you want to throw the CD out the window, as I have just done.") As you might also guess, they are not easy to predict; he has, in the past, cited the "formal purity" of Abba, J.S. Bach, and Alvin Lucier as his primary paradigms. Apparently, he's lately thrown classic-rock radio into the mix.

"I really like the song by Journey, 'Don't Stop Believin','" he declares, picking at a scone. (He actually pronounces it, fastidiously, believing.) "'Don't Stop Believin'' has a wonderful chorus. It's the first chorus, it's the only chorus, and it fades out during the first chorus. So naturally, it has a fantastic verse, which is most of the song. The title is taken from the chorus, making sure you know that that's the chorus. Don't try this at home. That's a really hard way of writing a song, and I respect it a great deal. I don't think I respect any of the other songs I've heard by them. But I have allowed them to live because of this wonderful, spectacular feat."

"I'm trying to write a song called 'The Best of My Love' that's a combination of the Eagles song and that other '70s soul song. They have almost the same chorus, so I'm trying to split the difference. They both go, 'Whoa-whoa, you got the best of my love.' They didn't sue each other; they won't sue me. 'Whoa-whoa, you got the best of my love' seems to be public domain."

He also keeps tabs on what's on the radio, and he has a special fondness for big dumb novelty songs.

"I thought Aqua's 'Barbie Girl' was transcendent," he says. "The singer really inhabited the character of the 10-inch plastic doll. And her enthusiasm for becoming a character, which is what you have to do in a popular song in the first place, transcended her language barrier and...certain musical shortcomings. It was a great art-object, I think."

Bubblegum, art-objects...When he speaks, Merritt's ideas can come off as carefully considered alienation from pleasure (the way it's generally experienced), especially given his spectacularly dry delivery. This attitude becomes more interesting when he puts it into his own music, observing and re-creating fun from a distance, but as Merritt talks about popular songs, there's a grain of contempt in his tone, as well as a bit of envy; it takes some digging to get to the real affection for pop that lies beneath the archness.

"I don't know why Whitney Houston doesn't do one of my songs," he announces. "A lot of them are blank enough for her to play around with and have bland enough lyrics for the meaning to be in the singing rather than the lyrics, which is what she seems to demand from a song. I do that sort of thing pretty well, and I'm actually surprised that I haven't been taken up by that group of people. I like ripping the details out of popular songs and reducing them to just the skeleton, and seeing how much they still mean. And they still mean a great deal, I think." (Before forming his own new "band" Legendary Crystal Chandelier, former Funland frontman Peter Schmidt recorded a stripped-down version of Merritt's "All the Umbrellas in London" for KDGE-FM's "The Adventure Club.")