Music Arcades: Stephin Merritt/Various: Pieces of April (soundtrack)

More of a Magnetic Fields EP than an album, and certainly not the soundtrack album that it pretends to be. Four of us sat through the film one Saturday evening in February 2004, in one of those multiplexes in Shepherds Bush — and this after two of our group had enjoyed a long session in the Anglesea Arms — to cheer at the music. We were not rewarded with many chances. Basically, the radio in the kitchen of April, the lead character, plays short snatches of Epitaph for My Heart and Luckiest Boy on the Lower East Side (both from 69 Love Songs) in the background of a couple of scenes. Jeremy sang along for the 2-3 seconds we could, to the brief consternation of the three others in the cinema, while Liz yelled, "Look that's the building I live in!… Well, a block or two away." And that's it. Well, maybe Stephin's One April Day plays over the end credits; I can't remember for sure.

The two tracks by The 6ths (from Hyacinths and Thistles)? Nothing to do with the film. The four new Magnetic Fields songs trumpeted on the cover? Nothing to do with the film. At least: nothing to do with the version of the film distributed in the UK. Of course they were trumpeted — as the first new material released under The Magnetic Fields' name since 69LS, they were bound to be. Though it might have been wiser to let them slip out unnoticed, for they're half-decent and the arrangements are half-interesting, no more. Interim EP material, even more slight than Stephin's other soundtrack.