We got the Magnetic Fields back!

The Magnetic Fields' 1999 triple disc album "69 Love Songs" is nothing short of a monolith. It's a treasure trove of mixtape fodder, a survey course in American music and contains some of the smartest sentiments on being sentimental ever put on a disc. It's not even an album you can debate much. I challenge anyone to hate the whole thing, to find nothing lovable among its bounty. But try positing a "best song" on the album and you're likely to be mobbed, not only by your friends, but by your own past testimonials. Some days, "Grand Canyon"'s echoing drum beat is going to resonate in your chest cavity, other days "Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side" is going to make the perfect driving song. But if someone has whispered "Love is Like a Bottle of Gin" across a pillow in the wee hours, you're never going to dislodge it from a place of primacy in their heart.

But if you happen to be Stephin Merritt (which you are unfortunately not), how in the hell do you follow it up? The Fields had been largely a synth-driven band before "69LS", recognizable in equal parts for their pop hooks, lush synths and Merritt's brilliantly flat baritone. With "69LS", he didn't just show off a few new tricks, he sawed the lady in half while wearing a straitjacket and found your card imbedded in her heart. Nearly abandoning synths altogether, Merritt ranged from Holland-Dozier-Holland hooks to Gilbert and Sullivan indulgences and perfectly delivered arch-country ("Papa Was A Rodeo" being a more accurate rendition of the genre than any of the attempts on "Charm of the Highway Strip"). When Merritt returned to the Fields a few years ago with "i", it seemed clear that the synth had been thrown in the trunk and Merritt had become enamored of all the new toys he'd played with on "69LS". The Magnetic Fields now included a banjo, and there was nothing you could do about it, except to put on "Get Lost" and pine.

With “Distortion”, out this week on Nonesuch, the Magnetic Fields have found their way back to the synth sound through a circuitous route. Merritt has claimed he wanted this album to outdo the Jesus and Mary Chain at their own game (it doesn’t. No one can out-JAMC JAMC. Go back and listen to the tragically out of print “Psychocandy” or “Stoned and Dethroned” if you don’t believe me). Pop songs drenched in feedback, almost to the point of drowning their brilliant hooks. While the vocals on “Distortion” are never as buried in the mix as they are on early JAMC albums, they are moved far enough back that listeners can appreciate the cleverness of Merritt’s lyrics without being overwhelmed by them. Before even pressing play, this is apparent in the title. While “i” advertised an album unified by the first letter in the song titles, putting the stress immediately on the lyrics, which veered from too clever to too maudlin while hitting some brilliant moments in between, “Distortion”’s title fronts the sound and production, although distortion is equally a theme within the lyrics. “Distortion” opens with the nearly lyric-less “Three-Way”, announcing the album as more of a team effort than “i” which kicked off with Merritt crooning “I Die” over a barely-there string arrangement cribbed directly from “69LS”’s Gilbert and Sullivan numbers.

From there, the vocals are taken by Claudia Gonson, singer for Merritt's Future Bible Heroes featured on several "69LS" tracks and sadly absent from “i” (thank you CW for the correction. She and Merritt take turns on lead throughout the album, including the duet, “Please Stop Dancing”. Merritt’s cleverness and sense of play are allowed back into his pop songs rather than being encased in light opera arrangements, with funny but compelling songs like “Zombie Boy” and “The Nun’s Litany”, which manages to avoid coming off like a period piece. Listening to “Distortion” is like running into an old friend who’s made it big and discovering they still tell the same jokes, order the same drinks and try to impress you with that same silly card trick they did back in the old days.

(at some point I'm going to start putting pictures and music on here, I promise. But while Gimme Coffee downstairs is being gutted, internet access upstairs is no longer working, so we're sort of on austerity budget.)