The Magnetic Fields: I'm Sorry I Love You
[purchase]
The driving force behind the Magnetic Fields, Stephen Merritt is well known in certain circles for his apt ability to evoke the complex emotions of the hipster set. Case in point: his delightfully imperfect three-volume 69 Love Songs project, which - like poet Pablo Neruda's 100 Love Sonnets - provides an intensely personal collective litany of the many ways that love manifests in our hearts and our lives.
The jangly, fuzzed-out eastern-toned surf-rock of I'm Sorry I Love You makes for an interesting apology/sorrow song, framing love as a temporary rose, fraught with its own passing, and the sorrow and pain that inevitably follows. The paired male-and-female vocals lend a rich layer of nuance to the universality of the message, too. Listen to the end, though, and the truth is revealed: roses bloom and die, but in this case, at least, the hopelessness and bitterness present in our narrator's lyric springs from the cavalier attitude of the gardner, not the rose inherent.
