"Is This What They Used to Call Love" and "It's Only Time" are frosty, piano-driven elegies, with melodrama ("Whenever I get near you, dear/My heart starts to sicken") but not spine-tingling impact. "Irma" -- a tale of a chocolate-loving girl whose father crashes his van into her bedroom, spilling candy everywhere -- loses its Shel Silverstein-style whimsy amid plodding banjo, while the playful lope of "I'm Tongue-Tied" resembles an injured horse trying to gallop. In fact, i's best songs ape the chipper New Wave atmosphere of previous MF songs -- such as the biting "I Thought You Were My Boyfriend," where Merritt emotes while sinusoidal rhythms and piano twinkles tremble like OMD and Joy Division having a tussle.