The Burden of a Singular Vision: The Curse of Stephin Merritt's Magnum Opus; or, Why Method Man Was Better Than Wu Tang

Ok, so the Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side has brought out a new album.  I'm not going to engage in a full blown review here, but I will say that with the limited exposure I've had to it so far, it is a nice little album.  Like i, it has a unified theme based on its title and embraces the three minute standard song structure.  Like every Merritt-approved project, it has snappy, witty, misanthropic, self-loathing lyrics.  

However, the sad truth is that when discussing Stephin, there is 69 Love Songs, and there is everything else.  It is the album which, obviously, has the most songs, has the broadest scope, and widest range of emotional expression.  At least in my musical world, it is a monolithic work.  Everything else which even aspires to anything less than a massive, life-defining project appears ancillary.  That by no means implies that other Merritt works are per se bad, but they will inevitably pale in the comparisons to 69 Love Songs.

How does this relate to the Method Man show I saw last year and the Wu Tang Clan show I saw last week?  Conventional wisdom states that 36 Chambers is the unmatched, monolithic work in the Wu Tang catalog.  Forever, while an ambitious and high-reaching double album, is generally considered as falling short of the high standard set by 36 Chambers, and the other albums, at this point, are comparatively irrelevant.  When any one act or album acquires a symbolic significance, that burden can very rarely be shaken.  

Method Man has a great energy and stage presence.  His show was amazing.  Also, he has the freedom that his group doesn't.  He is affiliated with a highly respected group but doesn't have one awesome, killer album to live under.  The entire group, live, seems a little bored and disinterested.  People still love them because their songs are great, but these forces keeping the group together [possibly] against their will, or at least only due to convenience instead of passion, result in some subpar products.  The ability to start anew without a history is always refreshing.  But I'll still enjoy the shows in the meantime.