New Magnetic Fields album

Leave me at home all day with a bad cold, my laptop, and an iTunes account, and what happens? I buy music! The Magnetic Fields' new album, i, showed up on iTunes today, so of course I had to buy it! So far, I'm enjoying it. All the reviews said "It's Only Time" is a beautiful song, and it is, but so's "Irma". Then there's the songs with the great titles like "I Wish I Had an Evil Twin." (Don't we all?)

For those who  aren't familiar with the band, it's pretty much the creation of one Stphin Merritt, a deep-voiced man who seems to have absorbed every musical and pop song (well, the good ones) of the last fifty years. A lot of his stuff is quite tongue-in-cheek, and some is just gorgeous.

I just found an interview with Merritt in Frontier Magazine. It's not particularly revealing, but it is amusing... (he describes his childhood with his mom thus: "'We lived out in communes occasionally; she was a Buddhist,'" Merritt recalls. "'We made a lot of dioramas.'")