The Magnetic Fields: Classic or Dud?

Sean, you and I must have a CD microwave party someday. Though actually I do own three albums and have a favorite track, namely his cover of Gary Numan's "I Die You Die," which is sublime. I resist the 69 bandwagon to this day, though, as what I've heard from it moved me not at all.

Also, I have very fond memories of working on a large, physical project with a couple of other people who also knew 69LS inside and out, and singing the songs in order, from memory, with my friends. (Well, we got about halfway into disc 2 before we finished.)

I mean, it's mannered as fuck, and if you can't deal with that then don't bother, but the high points are SUBLIME. (This applies even more to the 6ths--"Waltzing Me All The Way Home" gives me shivers.)

Good: SM's voice. He also has a knack for a pretty 80s melody. (Of course, real 80s pop records can be found for $1 second-hand.)

Dubious: Total lack of ability on any instrument. Things were better when it was all-electronic but I'm not even convinced anymore that the electronic pop production is that much more impressive than 'NSync's.

The stripped-down instrumentation on 69LS (which should maybe have been called 69 Hate Songs) serves to put more focus on the lyrics, and here comes the crux of my problem, which I find hard to articulate. He gets compared to Morrissey but, at least with the Smiths, Morrissey wrote about specific situations, with social context and emotional nuance, resonant because they challenged romantic ideals with human detail. Self-pity was usually undercut by the illumination of the narrator's self-delusions (as in "I Know It's Over," "Reel Around the Fountain"). With some exceptions, Stephin Merritt's lyrics lack these qualities and I don't find them saying much to me. For the most part, they seems to be a string of variants on "You left me and now everything is horrible" - not that this is intrinsically useless but one could easily hear the same thing on the radio for no cost at all. The humour sometimes comes off as just as facile as the pathos. On the level of craft, he relies heavily on cliches, which are sometimes twisted cleverly and sometimes just left to sit there.

There is, as has been widely noted, quite a bit of filler on 69 LS. I'm not saying it's a total dud but I'm not sure his entire oeuvre amounts to as much as Pulp's much more affordable Different Class. I feel like I've been had.

his lyrics do leave me cold. There seems to me such a friggin' huge emotional distance between his subject matter in the listener. His words are so thick with commentary on the popular song there is no room for left for feeling. But he does write some great melodies and I get something out of that.

But that's just my opinion. My extremely, extremely strong opinion.

Morrissey comparison?? red herring - no comparison, really.

Merritt all about negativity (break-up, bitterness, etc) - ? - I can't see that this is borne out by the actual material.

Lack of playing ability: I have to disagree, at least in that the guitar player and cellist are really talented. cf. for instance the gtr playing on 'Boa Constrictor'. (But I accept that you don't in general like the lo-fi sound of the LP.)

Finally - what is an 80s melody? How is it different from a 20s, 60s, 70s, 90s etc melody?

You're right that he doesn't marry rich slices of evocative, scene-setting lyrics with lines about love in the way Morrissey used to. But no way are his songs always bloodless and unaffecting. Off 69 Love Songs try 'Meaningless', 'Yeah! Oh Yeah!', 'Absolutely Cuckoo', 'No One Will Ever Love You', 'Washington D.C.' (where what a cynic might see as sniggering pastiche instead comes across to me as a wonderful reaffirmation of belief in the simple truth of love - "It's just that's where my baby lives, that's all.."), 'All My Little Words' etc etc. And that's not to denegrate the ones where he is just playing around with the form either (with 'Love is Like Jazz" exceptions, of course...)

Since the mid-eighties at latest, there's been this omnipresent fallacy in the rock/pop world that "emotion" can only be conveyed spontaneously -- that "emotion" equates to lyrics that sound like stream-of-consciousness scribblings, and is inherently absent from anything that anyone sat down and thought about and wrote. You can trace this back to the whole Appolonian / Dionysian dialectic in art, or you can just take this pithy quote from the guy who runs Double Agent: "It's the difference between the Smiths -- the articulate expression of emotion -- and Pearl Jam or Soundgarden -- the emotional expression of inarticulateness." It's a hideous fallacy -- see any emo record for evidence of this assertion - - and it's already proven untenable, in that if it were true, the Smiths would be the most emotionless rock band of the past two decades.

This, in essence, seems to be Merritt's entire intellectual agenda w/r/t the pop song -- (and I'd point out to Mark that 69 Love Songs is far more aggressive about this agenda than most of his other work, toward which I can't really understand the "distant" charge being levelled). What makes Merritt valuable, in my eyes, is that he's one of very few people today who view the text of the pop song as something that can be whole and coherent for purposes other than humor or distance. He writes as a songwriter -- rather than trying, like so many singers, to pretend that some screen has been dropped and he's right there with you, rambling in your ear, he accepts the fact that he is writing texts for your consumption and entertainment, emotionally and intellectually, and this opens up a whole realm of address and possibility that's completely absent from the aspiring-poet's-diary school of lyricists. (His whole career is worth it for one line: "You won't be happy with me, but give me one more chance; you won't be happy anyway." Who else could do that?) I'd argue that this same sort of approach extends to the music he makes, as well, but this post is probably growing long enough as it is. Suffice it to say that I feel like there's a whole complex underlying his aims, specific fallacies that he's valuable for refuting, and chief among them is this idea that it's more authentic or more emotional to watch people do than it is to watch them think -- a concept that's largely alien to me, because my primary joy in art and words comes from the fact that they alone can serve as a conduit of people's thoughts.

That said, Holiday is, like, the greatest thing ever, except maybe the Dean Wareham song on the first 6ths album.

For me, the emotion level doesn't enter into it in my dislike of the Fields. I think that Merrit's lyrics are obnoxious and overreaching - I personally don't think his overvaunted wit is much of anything. I find the sound to be unforgivable. And Merrit's vocals are enough to make me shoot someone (and his choices in fellow vocalists are only a step above him). It all really boils down to the sound of it, for me - it sounds like a perfect sonic description of everything I hate about music. I can't describe it any more than that.

But yes, I agree that the concentration on that above all else is a mistake. I'm a Merritt agnostic, though, and I find that, far too often, the songs feel like an intellectual exercise. I find myself jerked out of any engagament with them by a recognition of the technique, which is so foregrounded in 69LS that I, like Mark, can appreciate the thing without ever getting anywhere near to loving it.

I'm generally reluctant to talk about literature, but maybe a parallel's with Georges Perec, whose literary career largely concerned rules and constraints. His 'Life A User's Manual' is may favourite novel ever: it succeeds in engaging me in both form and content where his 'A Void' fails to overcome its constraint (outrageously, omitting the letter e completely) amd ends up an interesting lexical exercise.

"Strange Powers", on the other hand, has strange powers over me.

As for Mark's comments, I'd offer the following sort of over- theoretical explanation of what is actually a fairly obvious concept. In aesthetics, I think, there are many instances in which going very far in one direction actually brings you around to its opposite -- my best examples of which are those sprightly, bouncy Cure songs that somehow seem like the logical end-point of gloom and frustration, toeing the inevitable line between "manic" and "depressed." With regard to my comments above, I'd say that Merritt, lyrically, manages to do exactly that w/r/t "emotional connection" and "spontaneity," . . . actually, I have to do something now, so I can't finish this thought. Suffice it to say that a line like "come back from San Francisco / and kiss me, I've quit smoking / I miss doing the wild thing with you" is pretty hard to call stilted or distant or emotionless or something-you-can't-relate to -- this is about as plain and everyday an emotional admission as you could possibly want from a song.

I regard Merritt almost as Morrissey once used to regard himself - in terms of finality, endings, and tying things up. The MFs mean a great deal to me, partly because of my investment in "the pop song", which (investment) has only been clarified and intensified (not dissipated) by (eventually) hearing them.

From my POV, 69LS is a Very Major Event In Pop History. Holiday, on the other hand, I think is close to his weakest work ever.

=

>>> I appreciated that particular articulation more than, in the past, I've appreciated a lot of articulations of why people *like* the [MFs'] music.

I can't give a technical explanation right now but Gershwin's "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise" sounds like a 20s melody to me, "White Rabbit" like a 60s melody, "Bizarre Love Triangle" like an 80s melody. When the Bangles covered "Hazy Shade of Winter," it still sounded like a 60s melody. When Frente did an acoustic version of "BLT" in the 90s it still sounded like an 80s melody. Has to do, I think, with the lengths of the phrases and the intervals chosen.

Lo-fi isn't a problem for me. I don't think 69LS is more lo-fi than my favourite Sonic Youth albums. It's definitely more hi-fi than anything I've done! The guitar line on "Boa Constrictor," which is probably as good as the playing gets on the set, strikes me as competent not exceptional. I definitely think there's more musical substance to the MF when they go electronic. "Ability" was probably a poor choice of terms on my part - "accomplishment" maybe.

I'm assuming that the recent posts defending SM's lyrics are in response to Mark's criticisms and not to mine because my problem wasn't with Merritt trying to be witty and ironic and crafty and distanced. I was in fact looking for witty, well-crafted pop songwriting. I think I just generally find that too often they offer romantic tropes, stock situations, and non-reflexive (is that a real term?) self-pity. Or something like that. I like that the Smiths could create characters with whom you could empathize but also realize their (and your) failings and errors - I like my self-pity with a level of self-consciousness.

I hate the Cure's lyrics for their romantic melodrama.

(Rock ballads that I like I think I usually like despite the lyrics.) "Come back from San Fransisco/And kiss me I've quit smoking" was one of the best moments on the set I thought -- it was too bad it had to be followed by "I miss doing the wild thing with you."

.. "My Heart's Runnin' Round Like a Chicken With Its Head Cut Off" - that's the tune I can't shake.

They're great live - but 69LS didn't do much for me. Not that I thought it was drivel - I just never got into it like Holiday or Get Lost.

Sonically I enjoy them as well. Summer Lies and Busby Berkly Dreams are beautiful songs, even without words.

i rather like the Magnetic Fields now. I still only own that one album. I may have listened to the whole album, every song back to back, once. I don't care whther it's sincere or clever. It has some catchy little tunes for me, and i like the fact that it's a jumbled mess, like a big box full of broken toys.

i rather like the Eggers comparison, even though i don't want to get into the cleverness for its own sake mode, as i may have managed to avoid thinking of the Magnetic Fields critically altogether, and been healthier for it in this specific case.

It might be me, but from what I can tell from a lot of lines being quoted here in Merritt's defense, *they're* pretty melodramatic as well. In which case, what is more important, the song or how it is sung? ;-)

But is that enough reason to care? I realize I'm having (self-amused) fun by bringing up these points, but still, I seem to have moved from a point last year where I believed people really did care about the MFs to now, where I'm actually not so sure about that anymore. I don't doubt anyone's sincerity here, I should note, but there's something odd about this debate that seems to be focusing less about Merritt and his work and more about how to read him. And surely the answer to that question is -- however the hell you want to.

But what I was about to post was this:

Actually, the more I think about it, part of the thrill of his material is that it essentially dares you to reject his texts, dares you to assume he's kidding -- much of the enjoyment I take from his lyrics lies in the fact that his authorial stance allows him to lay out lines of such straightforward clarity that they seem almost taboo if interpreted as "sincerity." (The taboo, of course, being the long-running post-Elvis "Thou shalt not employ formal rhetorical devices in popular music.") I'm not levelling this charge at anyone here, but I feel as if I've met quite a few people -- Mag Fields fans and haters alike -- whose opinions on Merritt are solely based on their inability to take certain tropes seriously: they either find him wonderfully funny/clever or insufferably funny/clever because it's not occurred to them that his more surprising metaphors may not be intended as humor. But I'm going to resign from this thread and take that thought home to work on it some more, because I feel like there's something to it -- some sort of rebellion-through-structure thing -- that is key to my appreciation of a whole lot of different bits of music.

As a specific response to the standard lyrical criticisms, I'd submit 69 Love Songs' "Meaningless," one of the finest fuck-you songs I've heard in years. But then again, this thread is tending toward a "Lyrical Aspects of 69 Love Songs" classic or dud rather than an actual Mag Fields classic or dud, so . . . let's talk about old stuff.

*adopts Bugs Bunny voice* Ain't I a STINKER? (As opposed to a Sinker, natch.)

some sort of rebellion-through-structure thing

"Hey hey, you think it's a puncture/Turning rebellion into structure."

*pause*

Er, anyway. A rebellion through structure? *considers* ...I'm leery of such approaches, or rather the way of phrasing that, seems to be the eternal problem of exchanging one ideology for another and back again.

Among some folks I know, that is precisely the answer. ;-) But that's your point as well, natch. I guess anything could be rebellion, but that implies there's something to rebel *against* -- and with me and my r.s. nature, I'd argue that's chasing at shadows. I wouldn't so much see it as rebelling against something as reacting to it -- the idea of rebelling being a self-contained construct.

Musician to self: "Lo! I respond to the tyranny of presumed unfettered emotion!"

Outside viewpoint: "A tyranny existed?"

Maybe i'll post something longer tomorrow. i'm lost for words, all you dud-sayers.

We're evil that way. Death to consensus! ;-)

It might be me, but from what I can tell from a lot of lines being quoted here in Merritt's defense, *they're* pretty melodramatic as well.

Well, yeah, that was sort of my point. That once you get past the concept and the cleverness it's the same old same old.

So your article rebelling against the 'indie consensus' on Merritt was what, exactly? ;)

P.S. Mark, the third disc is almost certainly the weakest.

P.P.S. I can't recommend Merritt's Future Bible Heroes side-project highly enough; I actually like their album Memories Of Love as much as 69 Love Songs and more than any of the other MF albums.

I was briefly elated to see all the attention that 69 got, but it soon became apparent that the gushing press was just pissing people off. This is why i rarely read music press any more. listen to the bloody music. mp3 and internet wins.

I couldn't get past disc 1 of 69 for ages because it was so wonderful. then weeks later i tried the second disc -- also wonderful. third disc turned out to be a bit wobbly. (seems to be the conventional view too, huh?)

I'm still looking forward to the first time i hear "Take Ecstasy With Me" in a club. stomping! (despite sounding a bit like a raved-up z-cars theme tune)

Well I prefer it to the second one... Come on, it has 'Meaningless' (which tears me up ever time, or does it put me into a state of 'no one touch me' catatonia? I forget which), 'Yeah! Oh Yeah!' (melodrama par excellence - the best duet of its kind since the Specials' 'I Can't Stand It') and 'Queen of the Savages' (ridiculous, possibly offensive lyric, but I can't help loving it. I think it's all about the TUNE, shock horror!). Yeah, it's bollocks that lyrics are Merritt's only gift. Magnetic Fields melodies reverb around my head all the time.

Disc 3 is the worst, yes. Bringing up a few good tracks (they're all good, in their ways) doesn't affect that judgment.

>>> Merritt taking utterly seriously what others would assume to be a joke. On 69 Love Songs the magic within the songs is not lyrical, but rather the mediation between the song as an intensely formal structure and equally intense, heartfelt performances of those songs.

I *kind* of agree with all this... but the trouble is the rhetoric of inversion: the MFs are *either* ironic *or* heartfelt. In fact, I think, they are sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both or undecidable, sometimes You, The Listener, Decide - ie;. we don't need an all-embracing description of the tone of *every* MFs moment, cos they're not all the same.

>>> Songs like "Book Of Love" or "Papa Was A Rodeo" would be completely naff in the hands of anyone else, but Merritt and his helpers invest them with such feeling that they transcend their own sense of craft. It's the transcendance that makes it such an emotionally affecting album - it often feels like the Fields are *covering* the songs as opposed to merely performing them, reimagining them as something grander than what they were on the page and layering them with new, almost unbearably personal resonances (the rostered vocalist policy doesn't hurt in this regard).

Sure, this covers idea is great, very suggestive. But there are still two different kind of 'sincerity' at work in your argument: 1) = 'emotionally sincere about the lyrics, etc'; 2) 'sincere craftsmanship - taking "The Song" very seriously - being serious (but also funny) about an investigation of pop history'. They're both fine, and both present at different times, but interestingly different (and I hadn't quite identified 2) until you brought it up).

I'm looking for a concluding thought (for me, not for everyone else, of course) on this, trying to sum it up... I think it's that 69LS suggests that there are many ways to one's heart - through the head, through the feet; through musical texture, through lyrical subtlety; through complexity and wryness, but also through simplicity amidst that ('I love it when you give me things'). And those many ways are (possibly) only multiplied by the many things that many listeners can do with the songs. The record is so big that it doesn't need to be about intellect *or* emotion - it can be about both at different times, and about their interrelations and occasional identity.

*chuckle* Something I probably wouldn't write now. Individual statements that say or imply musical truth is nonexistent seem much more to my taste at present...

Upon reflection, what I find most interesting of all was that most of the press seemed to salute him for his influences rather than his results. I mean, it's great that he obviously likes a lot of different music, that's completely up my street, but there's no automatic corollary saying that therefore his music must by virtue of that succeed. This wasn't a universal approach by writers, of course, but I saw it more than once, and struck me as a strange sort of wish- fulfillment.

I always liked "Meaningless" as one of the best songs on the set but it never struck me as more than cruelly funny.

Re old stuff: Get Lost is the only SM I don't feel a little embarrassed about now. Even at my most 69LS-infatuated I always preferred it. I still don't ever play it though. Nice tunes and arrangements. The first two songs are especially good. The lyrics are simpler and don't dominate the music. I never really liked Charm of the Highway Strip that much other than "Born On a Train."

It might just be that the MF are dealing in statements I don't really need to hear at the moment, as Sterling feels. In retrospect, it seems a little strange that I would have made that big a deal over what is essentially a retro-80s project.

Oh, you should hear Stevie T sing it. People still weep at the memory.

Good thread, this.

It wasn't just the press - I noticed a lot of my friends and acquaintances doing it (and by "a lot" I mean the 5 people I know who like Stephin Merrit). It was like, "Oh, you should like it, he takes influences from this this and this!" And I'm like, yes, well, Limp Bizkit take influences from this this and this that are all good but I think that Limp Bizkit are shit, why is this different? They never had much of an answer besides "But he's so clever!" which isn't an answer at all.

1. Merritt

2. Dudley Klute

3. Shirley Simms

5. Claudia Gonson

4. LD Beghtol

Favorite of alltime would be Susan Amway.

i forgot this song was at the end of disc 2 today, and it made me feel more messed up than i thought that i was.

I still very much enjoy the album but noticed that many of the ones that seemed more enjoyable today were novelty songs, and wondered if this is a less chemically tolerant, fragile Ween for a moment, despite all of the writing about craftsmanship and history.

$70 Can. on sale seems like he was screwed, though. Considering when I'm in Ottawa and I shop at Organised Sound (a store Sundar should be familiar with, as they sell his tape), Merge CDs are $19.99 each, he should've been able to walk off with them for individually for $60 (and usually bundled packs are slightly cheaper than individual releases in general).

It's the fact that most of MF's witticisms are self-puncturing that makes them so insightful, so persuasive, so raw and personal; as someone who tends to overanalyse myself to extremes, I can sympathise with Merritt's refusal to divorce his intellect from his emotion - is "World Music" a meta-joke or plain heartbreaking? It's both, and all the better for being so.

I know what you mean, Otis - anyone who's ever been in the same room as me when I've played Magnetic Fields has used it as an excuse to complain about my music tastes ("You've got so many cds - how none of them are any good?").

Wheeler, maybe if you stopped listening to the MFs, you wouldn't be a moron anymore. Did you ever think about that?

When I bought the set at Record Runner 2 years ago, Organised Sound didn't stock it yet (usually go there before RR) and I don't think anyone else in Ottawa did either. I think it was still an import at the time. Don't know if it still is now.

I'm guessing that $32 * exchange rate + shipping + taxes (?) would still come out to at least $50.

Am I acquainted with you offline Vic?

Wheeler, believe me, the improvements have been vast and numerous. I mean, in the past six months, you've gone from your Potion Lounge performance to the way you behave now, which is lots better - I mean, you are the King of Hampshire College. AND your taste in music has improved, you now carry around those great mix CDs we listened to on the way to Orient Point, whereas just a few months ago it was that godawful Turbonegro CD all the time. If you stay off the Mags long enough, you might become like the next Derek Jeter or something - all your life problems, solved.

Though not listening to the Mags has added a disturbing tendency to ditch me and Ramon to hang with Stephanie, who is moving into an artist wherehouse full of weird diaper wearing freaks and mannequins.

But this has nothing to do with Stephin Merrit!

That said, I was a much happier person back when I was a more frequent Mag Fields listener (although you probably would have said I was a "sadder" person in your opinion -- but then again, you'd probably still do that now). Come to think of it, I can't think of a single Mag Fields song that I've ever interpreted as "sad."

I don't mean sad like necessarily actually miserable or sad...It's hard to define, maybe "wanker" is a better term. I fully acknowledge the possibility that this is merely because the people I know are wankers and nothing to do with the Magnetic Fields.

I.e., they're sort of like really huge They Might Be Giants fans -- people who could never make any serious emotional connection to music, and therefore only like music that's deliberately self- conscious and jokey and awkward about the fact that it even is music.

I saw the first of their 69-song Chicago shows, and there were a number of people like this in the audience, who seemed to expect that the show would be, like, comedic or something. They somehow thought Mag Fields were joke-rock.

Best exemplified by someone I know's reaction to a sort of house-y track on the new TMBG album, which involved a lot of amazed giggling: "Whoah, check it out, they're doing a dance track!" To which I wanted to reply something like: "You know, there are thousands of whole albums that are entirely house music, but you won't dream of listening to any of those." It's this weird "I only listen to music as parody" kind of phenomenon, but I don't think it should reflect too poorly on the bands involved, and only covers a limited portion of their fanbases.

The whole comic / pastiche etc thing, this convinces me, is *one aspect* of the MFs, which is really mainly a 69LS issue. (TCotHS = staggeringly significant LP, as Steady Mike has been insisting for ages before I went near the thing.)

Tallulah Gosh?

If you're asking, "Ernest, aren't you a little bit obsessive?", the answer is yes.

rufus, who i like but not nearly as much, has an entirely separate problem. it's not mawkishness. it's that he isn't a very good lyricist.

he's done some great stuff since then, but he's never been the same, having entirely given up on his homemade synth-pop attack by the time of 69 love songs. he's going for something entirely different now. but he was a pop song machine back then, and wasps' nests weren't throwaways but rather the mark of a guy who had too many good songs to contain within his own records. a lot of those 6th songs were staples of the mag fields' live shows in those days, too.

But the true answer, I think, is: whichever is playing. For they are both so irresistible!

I really like the melody of the second half of the verse of 'Young & Insane': 'the record store / is execrable'. Maybe I mean I like the lyric too. I don't really know the whole lyric. I like also the way that at the end of the chorus he flatly repeats 'Young & Insane', just to make things clear.

It is queer how those two songs are so far ahead of the rest of that ep, which is droning rather than delightful; unless I am forgetting something.

It is a great phrase, and it always seemed to me to promise a song of great depth. I don't think the song itself is that song - it's just a piece of tremendous freshness.

But what does the chorus mean, then? That love's real home is in Paris ... that it is Spring now ... and so it is leaving Merritt (in NYC? you could hardly sing the song in Paris) and flying home ... leaving him antipathetic to the addressee?

It is a great phrase, and it always seemed to me to promise a song of great depth. I don't think the song itself is that song - it's just a piece of tremendous freshness.

"tremendous freshness" - excellent!

You're out of luck there.

I'd have told Sundar some good Stephin stories when I was in Toronto if I'd known he liked them!

If Ned hears Kiki & Herb cover TMF, the scales may fall from his ears.

I am collecting essays and articles on the work of Stephin Merritt for a book and am still accepting proposals. Just wanted to stop by and make that announcement.

email susancallow at hotmail dot com if you are interesting in submitting!

New album with an intriguing title coming in January: http://houseoftomorrow.com/archives/000057.php

Anyone know anything more about this than they say here?

stephan merritt djing at the george and dragon in hackney tonight. kinda wanna go but too fuggin far for a monday.

word is merge is releasing vinyl editions of 'the charm of the highway strip' and 'get lost', possibly others.

Bellefox, you're in 2006, now.

I love that song, though.

Or, like strongly.

Do Merge generally do a good job of vinyl remastering? I'd quite like highway strip.

"Young and Insane" is one of my favorite MFs songs! Though maybe you have to have lived in a town with nothing but a brown school and dead shopping mall (or two!) to appreciate it.

MF has a lot of details like that. Most writerly music is my favorite music.

July European tour just announced: http://houseoftomorrow.com/archives/000066.php

Tickets for the London shows on sale here as of a couple of minutes ago: http://artistticket.com/themagneticfields

i've spent way too much on tickets recently and i'm still not too sure about Distortion. But I can't not go to this. Anyone know what cadogan hall is like as a venue?

No, but you're right: il faut y aller.

I probably feel much the same about those two songs as I did, in 2006.

The vinyl reissue seems to me either a Merritt retro whim, or a way to make a small chunk of easy cash.

i think it's the home of the royal philharmonic, it looks swanky as hell, i just got front stall tickets from here

http://www.artistticket.com/

distortion is a real sustained grower, i wildly prefer it to i, there are a couple of ropey moments in the middle though

House of Tomorrow says those are limited / reserved etc - and tickets will go on sale for THE GENERAL PUBLIC tomorrow.

please could you explain how you got those tickets; are you not a member of the general public?

Or, what is the distinction between these 'reserved' tickets and others? Isn't any ticket reserved once you have bought it?

I would genuinely like to know, about this, because I would like to buy.

i have blue blood

are there no tickets available now? thursday seemed to be sold out, i got em for wednesday

the mailout suggests they're just good seats

presumably reserved for people on the house of tomorrow list and local dignatries like me

sold out already? within 2 hours of going on sale? what is this - Bruce Springsteen? Morrissey in CA?

naw, i think it's just a few rows at the front, you should keep an eye on the site, maybe they'll release some more as the day goes on? otherwise you could chance your arm with general public tomorrow

I see. ... all seats are going to be same price, aren't they: best part of £30?

amazing what Merritt can get away with these days.

i paid 51 quid for two with booking fee, i've had a look at the seating plan and the hall looks lovely, i can't imagine theres a bad seat

both nights now appear sold out, for this limited edition pre-order shenanigan.

m'kay, so neither of the only two enlightened souls I know who would be prepared to pay £25 to go to this can make it. do i buy two anyway and hope I find someone nearer the time who's prepared to take one, or just the one and go all on my lonesome?

The "limited" in the Friday release just seemed to mean they were only selling tickets in the stalls, rather than they were not available to the public. Slightly douchey demand-creation through artificial scarcity. Meh.

Anyway, stalls are sold out the first night, but the other night and the gallery on the first night are still available. I got two right in the middle of the front row (!)

I don't think I've ever sat in the front row at a gig before. I don't think I'm going to like it.

I get the impression Wed is all sold out now, and Thu seems to be a bare handful of places left. He really has become a fastselling exclusive draw. Maybe this venue is actually not that big and that helps to give this impression?

It is odd to remember what scuffed and modest indie-pop type venues / events Merritt used to play. I said 'remember' but don't really know (never saw him before Queen Elizabeth Hall 7.2000), but I get that impression from live recordings, other people's anecdotes, etc.

I was under the impression that he doesn't like playing live due to some aural medical condition. Probably explained in this thread somewhere.

As Cadogan Hall's website informs me the capacity is 900, which is big but not huge considering the catchment area is the pretty much the whole of London. Still a bit surprised that he's sold out so quickly though.

word is merge is releasing vinyl editions of 'the charm of the highway strip' and 'get lost', possibly others.

-- omar little, Thursday, 10 April 2008 04:45 (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

Confirmed: http://houseoftomorrow.com/archives/000068.php

From what I heard of Magnetic Fields, I figure them to be a band of lots of misses and a few strong hits.. like Guided By Voices.

From what I heard of Magnetic Fields, I figure them to be a band of lots of misses and a few strong hits.. like Guided By Voices.

Not a bad comparison, but I find Magnetic Fields to be much more consistent than GBV. Pollard's release-it-all approach results in patchy albums but you're right that the strong hits are there for both bands. It seems people have a strong reaction, positive or negative, to Magnetic Fields. Personally I think _69 Loves Songs_ is just about perfect whereas a good friend of mine can't stand it. *shrug*

Tickets for the London shows seem to be available again from http://www.livenation.co.uk/event/getEvent/eventId/324552

did stephen merrit ever record a version of 100,000 fireflies (I might have asked this on here already) with him singing? because I swear to god I heard one on the radio once. might have been a radio session or something.

if he has i've never heard of it.. though i gather there were MF demos circulating pre-distant plastic trees, so maybe there's something out there..

there are live versions, certainly, which exist as mp3s.

The 6ths song, "Just Like A Movie Star," has a line that is about the most twee thing I've ever heard in a pop song.

"Quit your job, dear
Then you can stay here at home beside me
You be James Dean, I'll be Sal Mineo
You can hide me"

Oh dear.

New record, Realism, out January 26.

http://stereogum.com/archives/album_art/the_magnetic_fields_return_with_realism_100221.html

http://cdn.pitchfork.com/media/strange_powers.jpg

This film is terrific!

I thought it was probably about 94% as good as it could reasonably be.

they have sucked for 11 years now, we should celebrate.

I'll see it sometime soon

wanna see this movie

they have sucked for 11 years now, we should celebrate.

― by another name (amateurist), Saturday, October 16, 2010 2:47 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

otm

I = very, very, very underrated album

Other Music, NYC:

Stephin Merritt & Magnetic Fields Exhibition Opening Reception
October 28 @ 5-7PM

they have sucked for 11 years now, we should celebrate.

Can't tell whether you're rating "69 Love Songs" as first sucky record or last non-sucky record, but either way, Distortion is really good so I disagree.

I wonder if amateurist means relatively suck, or suck compared to the huge mountain of musical suck that ILM is engulfed in.

further OM info:

Coinciding with the New York City premiere of "Strange Powers" is "All Our Friends are in New York," an exhibition of the band's history, featuring memorabilia and photographs by filmmaker Gail O'Hara, writer Emma Straub, and the band's own John Woo, among others. Other Music will host the exhibition as well as an opening reception -- with Stephin Merritt assuming DJ duties -- on Thursday, October 28 from 5 to 7:00PM at 15 East 4th Street.

http://www.strangepowersfilm.com/

I though the film conveyed about as much of the essence of his persona/art as was likely possible in 85 minutes. I have no idea what nonfans will think, but at least they'll come away knowing Claudia is the engine of their career.

(also, I thing I'm hungover because I've never seen a documentary featuring that many ppl I've drunk with)

Photos of Stephin and Claudia in mid '80s look like they're from a Warhol adaptation of Twilight!

i saw this @ outfest in los angeles a few months. really good, the q&a was hilariously awkward and semi-hostile.

awkward and semi-hostile.

like SM himself?

details! SM, CG, Sam and John did Q&A last week here, but I didn't go.

well SM brought some musical instrument he'd just purchased onstage with him and the moderator asked, "are you going to play a little something for us? what do you say, would you guys like to hear stephin play a song??" and everyone applauded and those who didn't kinda slowly slunk down in their chairs as SM gave the mod a death stare and then the questioning moved on.

another one i remember was some guy tried to give stephin merrit gay bar recommendations (because he'd been having trouble finding a good one in l.a.) and another somehow turned a question into a verbal link to a website. neither really went over very well.

btw while the Good Morning Atlanta clip was funny, I didn't find it as mortifying as everyone has always claimed.

http://www.engrish.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/11/do-as-bunnies-do.jpg

anyone seen these videos from '96? Stephen is on top form. "I can't hear your heckling while I'm talking, so if you wish to heckle please wait until I have finished... talking"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63SttwOM-XU

haven't. but I went to a lot of their shows then.

I saw them probably within a week of this performance, and this was my favorite song from the show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkz0UruvXSc

I sure hope at some point he does something like Randy Newman did recently with simple piano-and-voice recordings. He sounds amazing live doing "A Thousand Lovers in a Day," and the Future Bible Heroes version doesn't come too near it.

http://www.metro.co.uk/showbiz/interviews/1019-molly-ringwald

15th anniversary of 69 love songs coming up in a little over a month. posting about it now because i am going to forget.

i've found that the magnetic fields are a tough sell for people around my age. their sensibility is too gen x maybe? or maybe they just aren't cool? whatever it is, i can't get people to the point where they grasp the point of the band, which is to rescue the old cliches about love from their own lameness by refusing to hide from it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W97YAYPFGw

do you think that is still a reasonable description of their project?

No. Idk. Their post-love songs output has never excited me outside of a few songs here and there.

man, "i" is one of my favorite albums ever. ilm seems to hate all the music i love

weird if the kids don't get 69 anymore. back when i was young everyone was at least impressed by the bigness of it.

"I" is great.

ppl who are Definitely Younger Than Me (early to mid 20s) seem to get it. but younger than that, i don't know. slick over twee, competency over complicated sentiment.

i think the stuff after 69ls (well, after 'i') is a deliberate and definite and listener-hostile refutation of their earlier project, but not a well-executed or a consistent or a coherent one, so i can see why, as an ongoing project, they're a hard sell

maybe it was wrong to think so at the time, but the air of deliberate shittiness maybe kind of made up for an ivy-league-grads-play-with-ukeleles feel whose capture by a more central part of the white edumacated music consumer taste-market has kind of made the sound more dubious in the meantime

weird to listen to 'come back from san francisco' now and assume it is addressed to some kind of startup douche

... i don't think it's 'that' san fran.

no, it's not, but shit changes right out from under your nice little song sometimes

Still don't really dig much post Get Lost/Wasps Nest. Like his synth pop formalism better than his broader formalism.

Wasps Nest is one of my favorite albums but I've never really bothered with much else. I have the Wayward/Distant compilation that I bought after the 6ths but it didn't fall for it like Wasps Nest. Never heard 69 Love Songs. Maybe I should try. Would by a 30 7" box set ;)

we just need pomplamoose to cover a mag fields song and the circle will be complete

hahaha nm of course that exists already

lol

On the subject of 'I', whilst I probably prefer '69', 'I' contains my two favourite MF tracks (I Don't Really Love You Anymore, I Thought You Were My Boyfriend).

Weird to think of "69LS" vs "post-69LS" as the division line here where to me it's clearly "pre-69LS" vs "69LS and after."

Yeah, that's what I said. Or synth-pop vs. Claudia singing a bunch and playing piano.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/fashion/a-night-out-with-stephin-merritt-the-singer-for-magnetic-fields.html?ref=music

Unlike so many performers these days, he doesn’t use Twitter or Instagram. His mom beat him to Facebook. “I can’t deal with the amount of work that would involve,” Mr. Merritt, 49, said. “I’m amazed that everyone else is willing to put in a part-time job worth of work in order to manage their social media accounts. I’m too busy playing Scrabble and Words With Friends.”

That habit has inspired a new book, “101 Two-Letter Words,” a collaboration with Roz Chast on a series of short poems and illustrations celebrating some of the shortest and strangest entries in the Scrabble dictionary.

Sample poem: “Ne is born, if you’re a man;/if you’re a woman, nee./It’s just like what a horse says,/but it’s spelt a different way.”

i've found that the magnetic fields are a tough sell for people around my age. their sensibility is too gen x maybe? or maybe they just aren't cool? whatever it is, i can't get people to the point where they grasp the point of the band, which is to rescue the old cliches about love from their own lameness by refusing to hide from it.

Weird. The Magnetic Fields were very popular on my small liberal arts college campus (2008-2012). Mostly 69 Love Songs.

yeah a lot of people (myself included) loved that album but had little or no time for anything else he did before or since. it's like it's so sprawling and total, why would you need anything else by him.

because one of his other songs is this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvSY4NYkySM

slick over twee, competency over complicated sentiment.

wait, thomp, is this describing the magnetic fields or the tastes of young listeners? because the magnetic fields is totally a twee band exploring complicated sentiments.

Poems I would most like to read from Merritt's book (I assume they're in there): "Qi," "Za," "Xu," "Ut" (any word that allows me to dump a "u" deserves its own poem), "Ba," "Bo," and "Bi." Cs and Vs, get your own book.

from that NY Times piece--

Okay:
He also wears nothing but shades of brown because he thinks that black makes him look like a SoHo tourist and that it’s good when his clothes match his brown eyes.

too bad:

hyperacusis in his left ear, which makes him especially sensitive to loud noise.

hyperacusis has been a thing w/ him for years. Didn't know he'd relocated to Hudson, NY tho.

(from LA/NYC)

he used to live a few blocks away from where i'm at (in those weird old apts from 'mulholland drive' iirc.)

sounds ideal

I always wanted to meet him and then impress him by how cool/knowledgeable i am... so unlike those other fans who he unfairly seems to despise

i wd talk w/him about German films back in the day (silents to Fassbinder), but then Dick's Bar closed.

little or no time for anything else he did before or since. it's like it's so sprawling and total, why would you need anything else by him.

weird logic imho

When I saw them live I was uncomfortable with the way he talked to Claudia, who seemed like a kind person

oh that's (mostly) an act, they've polished it over the years

she is a tot sweetheart, truly

my wife is close friends with one of HIS close friends and all four of us had lunch together once. he's a good dude imo, he just likes to be a bit zingy.

that docufilm actually captured the Claud-Stephin dynamic pretty incisively i thought.

yeah it did.... i thought it was kind of sad. don't want to project too much but it seemed like she was in love with him.

imposing that fiction of star-crossed lovers, separated by sexual orientation, onto the story of the magnetic fields seemed fitting though. i read it as a possibly intentional thing

i see a mothering thing, somewhat

a friend who knows her calls her "the person without whom the band would never have gotten out of that basement in Cambridge"

little or no time for anything else he did before or since

I can't fathom not having Holiday in my life. It's essential.

best thing i read on facebook today about magnetic fields:

"I think their music is Barenaked Ladies for people with vanity Masters degrees."

lol

I'm fan enough to say that poster is probably OTM (and also, LOL).

Na. Although, as with xpost Randy Newman, I like the originals, love some of the covers---if this don't show, it's Kelly Hogan (with Mike Ireland) and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts (incl. some Mekons etc.) doing "Papa Was A Rodeo"---always good for blindfold tests:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KeO-LalG7k

I can't make a comparison to Barenaked Ladies work. I only know "One Week" and "If I Had a Million Dollars", two incredibly corny, and not in a good way, songs.

Yeah I mean just because their tweeness is easy to clown it doesn't exactly make them Pomplamoose or something. There is artistic merit.

I can't make a comparison to Barenaked Ladies work. I only know "One Week" and "If I Had a Million Dollars", two incredibly corny, and not in a good way, songs.

you need to listen to more bnl, friend

perhaps you have been in Canada too long

i think it's more of a quirky/nerdy thing. barenaked ladies could totally make this a new anthem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDmw8bZWFhk

likewise, magnetic fields could make this into a suitable dirge:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ggJS0p-QQc

best thing i read on facebook today about magnetic fields:

"I think their music is Barenaked Ladies for people with vanity Masters degrees."

oh my fucking god yes

i've always hated merritt and like a few bnl singles lol

"what a good boy" is a pretty good song about gender roles and dysphoria from 1992

oh I can just hear it

http://www.stereogum.com/1911805/hear-five-songs-from-the-magnetic-fields-5-disc-album-50-song-memoir/tour-dates/?utm_source=share-tw&utm_medium=button

anyone see the Brooklyn shows?

A number of things have always put me off this obviously great music-- my own (justified) projection of ego-centricity on to Merritt, the obsessiveness of his tru fans, a couple of lousy shows, etc. But nothing put me off more than the fact that, late 90s and early 00s, his albums were full-price and yet felt and sounded cheap... there was this feeling of parsimony to the transaction of buying-and-consuming his music, like I was being grifted.

But these days I've been streaming it on Tidal and I kind of can't believe the breadth and scope of it all, all the subtle details that went into every track. And the feeling of being scammed has dissipated... it feels positively generous, for some reason. I can't think of many other artists whose work I can say I enjoy more in the streaming context than this band

That's really interesting. I've never considered the value proposition of music that way. Though there was a time when I tried to love albums more based on how much I paid (import albums costing $20 got my plays than used bin items).

For some artists, the original context of creation and release has added immensely to my appreciation and enjoyment, whereas with other removing that context is better. Magnetic Fields land in the latter for you.

Oh, for sure. I paid $30 for a bootleg Neu! CD when I was 19 and it felt like it was worth it. And I always enjoyed Magnetic Fields, there's just something about the thesis of it, compositionally and lyrically, that didn't mesh well with "paying $18-$20 for a 33 minute CD" (as I did for The Charm Of The Highway Strip). Or the inglorious expense of the 3CD 69 Love Songs boxset... which, iirc, at the time seemed like the music object that "only my more wealthy friends could afford". (Maybe this feeling was, at the time, coloured by the fact that I was buying up classic-after-classic Bowie albums at $10 a pop).

There was a discussion upthread about the thesis of this band (and Merritt's other projects) and it does seem to imply less of a "you are listening to an essential album when you listen to a Magnetic Fields album" experience and more of a sly-wink takes-the-entire-oeuvre-to-understand-it subversion of what albums are, what songs are, what lyrics are, when instrumentation is, and what emotions themselves are and how we describe them. OK I'm getting pretty babbly just gonna stop typing and hit it

lol

stephin merritt cruised a guy off of jeopardy. what a legend pic.twitter.com/gmnpyhtbV7

— chat noir 🙀 (@zrok_) November 14, 2018

also xpost but i find the more "spacious" acoustic production of much of 69 love songs to sound much "cheaper" or just tackier in its way than the stovepot wall of sound he got with a bunch of synths on the earlier stuff.

I settled on these five albums.

No Holiday? Sixths?

No Holiday, and The 6ths work in isolation

Jim and William Reid never recorded a lo-fi record that didn’t peter out after the record’s lone “Just Like Honey” or “Happy When It Rains.”

umm, trying to disentangle this..

I listened once again to 69, around 5 years since the last time, over two days. Because it can be done.

I made a start on 50, I think it needs to be taken five songs at a time. I'm going "mmm/mmm/Yeah/mmm/Yeah" or some variant.

I swallowed it in smaller chunks.

"i" might be my fave 21st-century one

1. Holiday
2. 69 Love Songs
3. Get Lost
4. The Charm of the Highway Strip
5. The Wayward Bus
6. Distortion

Gave 50 a number of tries, but it doesn't work for me at all. Even the songs I liked I liked hearing exactly once.

But then I'm weird, because I also think that, much like The Magnetic Fields, the Reid Bros have made 5 records that are better than Distortion.

I prefer their comp, a glory.

That’s a good list. However, the wayward bus maybe should be higher due to 100,000 fireflies, merritt’s best song.

I really like i, and think The 6ths records are kind of overrated (but "Movies In My Head" is top 5 SM songs for me)

I totally agree.

“You don’t hold a candle to the movies in my head” is brutal

i has my favourite ever couple of couplets too:

So you quote love unquote me
Well, stranger things have come to be
But let's agree to disagree
Cause I don't believe you
I don't believe you

You tell me I'm not not cute
Its truth or falsity is moot
Cause honesty's not your strong suit
And I don't believe you
I don't believe you

i is so underrated, love that album to pieces (the weak tracks on it are especially weak, though, which may be why it never makes these types of lists)

we made the Shaggs sound like Yes

I don't really know Magnetic Field too much, but saw this pre-MF band Buffalo Rome show from 1988 pop up and it sounds pretty great, especially the song around 5:10 ("Yellow Bird"?) Maybe some of these became Magnetic Field songs?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRdqpW-uE64&t=1943s

gah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRdqpW-uE64

!!!!!!!!! Thanks for sharing!! Wow. Yes - that song you mentioned became "Take Ecstasy with Me" recorded by The Magnetic Fields. There are some Zinnias songs in the set: "Leeches", "Kings" (later recorded by MF), "Otters" (part of "Otters" was used in the MF track "Jeremy"). Apparently they sing/play "Plant White Roses" backwards, according to the YT comment?! "Railroad Boy" and "Josephine" were later recorded by MF, too. Also played is "The Tiny Goat" later recorded by the Gothic Archies (who I am seeing tomorrow in NYC). Also, that's Susan Anway on lead vocals, right?!?! On the far left is Johny Blood, who plays tuba in MF. So I think Stephin was 23 and Claudia was 20 in that video (and she was attending Harvard at the time, I think). And then at the end, the announcer says that Jad Fair is coming up next!

yes thanks! I perked up at the proto-"Take Ecstasy" too

Wow.

https://pitchfork.com/news/the-magnetic-fields-announce-new-album-quickies-share-video-for-new-song-watch/

The Magnetic Fields have announced a new collection called Quickies. It features 28 new short songs by Stephin Merritt that are all under three minutes long. Quickies will be released across five vinyl EPs on May 15 via Nonesuch. It’ll also be available digitally and on a single CD. Watch the new video for “The Day the Politicians Died” below.

The band has also announced a series of intimate residency performances at City Winery venues across the country. Find those dates below.

Stephin Merritt is joined on Quickies by his bandmates Sam Davol, Claudia Gonson, Shirley Simms, and John Woo. Chris Ewen, Daniel Handler, and Pinky Weitzman also appear on the collection. Merritt discussed the album’s concept in a statement:

I’ve been reading a lot of very short fiction, and I enjoyed writing 101 Two-Letter Words, the poetry book about the shortest words you can use in Scrabble. And I’ve been listening to a lot of French baroque harpsichord music. Harpsichord doesn’t lend itself to languor. So I’ve been thinking about one instrument at a time, playing for about a minute or so and then stopping, and I’ve been thinking of narratives that are only a few lines long.

Also, I had been using a lot of small notebooks, so when I reach the bottom of the page, I’ve only gone a short way. Now that I’m working on a different album, I’m enforcing a large notebook rule so that I don’t do Quickies twice in a row.

Merritt’s previous Magnetic Fields album was 2017’s 50 Song Memoir. Listen to Pitchfork’s 2017 In Sight Out podcast with Stephin Merritt.

Quickies:

01 Castles of America
02 The Biggest Tits in History
03 The Day the Politicians Died
04 Castle Down a Dirt Road
05 Bathroom Quickie
06 My Stupid Boyfriend
07 Love Gone Wrong
08 Favorite Bar
09 Kill a Man a Week
10 Kraftwerk in a Blackout
11 When She Plays the Toy Piano
12 Death Pact (Let’s Make A)
13 I’ve Got a Date with Jesus
14 Come, Life, Shaker Life!
15 (I Want to Join A) Biker Gang
16 Rock ‘n’ Roll Guy
17 You’ve Got a Friend in Beelzebub
18 Let’s Get Drunk Again (And Get Divorced)
19 The Best Cup of Coffee in Tennessee
20 When the Brat Upstairs Got a Drum Kit
21 The Price You Pay
22 The Boy in the Corner
23 Song of the Ant
24 I Wish I Had Fangs and a Tail
25 Evil Rhythm
26 She Says Hello
27 The Little Robot Girl
28 I Wish I Were a Prostitute Again

How has Stephin Merritt not released an album titled "High Concept" yet?

That list of song titles would be just as believable in a Sparks thread.

Even at 1:49, the new song feels too long.

Some promising titles in there, but "The Day the Politicians Died" definitely doesn't live up to its.

He probably could have just released a track list and skipped the music part.

Fido, your songs are too short.

Some very provocative titles here, though

Fido, your songs are too short.

worked for Bob Pollard

I want to join a biker gang
I want to be in a gang bang
I like my empty life but dang
I want to join a biker gang

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0eYO2cg9jA

LD Beghtol has passed:

Rest In Peace, LD Beghtol. I’m sorry we never finished our collaboration. pic.twitter.com/6zLbkAi6ZK

— 50PoundNote (Jeb) (@50_pound_note) December 8, 2020

Oh no :(

Is there any other info (or context/confirmation) beyond this single tweet? I can't find anything.

I know Jeb and trust him as the source -- LD was apparently found in his apartment but there's no other details. Apparently he did catch COVID in summer, hopefully this wasn't something related to that.

(That further info from Jeb directly.)

Thanks... how sad

I will forever cherish "All My Little Words." Just too sad.

Ah crap. One of my favorite gigs of all-time was the two-day complete "69 Love Songs". It was such an incredibly joyful experience, Claudia was radiating happiness and fun.

Any of LD's other vocal work recommended?

You could check out Flare if you like 'twee chamber pop' of any description
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPLBPOIP1xI

His 33⅓ on 69 is good.

listened to "all my little words" for the first time in forever when i saw this news. i think there's still no one i would trust more to do a perfect 2 and a half minutes.

really sad about this, it's hard to process. his voice & presence on those songs (thinking of "My Sentimental Melody" too) meant so much, more than I ever consciously realized.

"All My Little Words" is so simple but so perfect. RIP

I've at last fully listened to the CD of QUICKIES (2020).

An observation: every one of the 28 songs is a comedy song. We expect irony and drollery from Merritt. But amid the jokes I might also have expected a 30-second flash of plaintive pathos, or 48 seconds of surprisingly raw emotion set to a toy piano. He doesn't deliver that here. It's all black comedy.

I still rather like the way that he uses old-school syntactical precision, in a way unlike anyone else in pop - so that the words in a pop song have the grammar of, say, an article in a 1950s literary journal (if not something much older like Hazlitt or Hawthorne). Indeed I sense that this is something that's developed over Merritt's career - you really don't hear it so much in the 1990s work; it's really only noticeable more recently.

That's kind of how I described this album to a friend a few weeks ago. Every song is a little joke, but none of them are particularly funny. And maaaaybe you get a little of that old Merritt pathos in "She Says Hello," but that's the only thing close to a keeper here for me.

Every song is a little joke, but none of them are particularly funny.

I feel like his stuff always had this quality tbh

I mean I think he's brilliant but there's always been this sense that they think their jokes are a lot funnier than they actually are, that's not a recent development.

I think it's a gradual mutation that's gotten them to this point, where the songs are all joke, no ache. They were most of the way there with Love at the Bottom of the Sea, and then Bob Hurwitz from Nonesuch pitched Merritt the 50 Song Memoir concept, which helped stall the transformation (I always imagine this was Hurwitz's intention), but now here we are with Quickies.

"It's Only Time" came up on my Spotify a recently, and I played it over and over. It feels, like almost every MF song does, like a genre exercise, ironic and detached, but damn if it doesn't succeed magnificently as a straight ahead love song

I totally get that, it's such a beautiful song

I didn't know that 50 SONG MEMOIR was someone else's idea. I don't agree that it 'stalled Merritt's transformation' by being more sincere (if that's what's suggested). I'm afraid I think it's practically his worst LP, especially taken pound for pound, proportionately, or whatever - I mean it's about 20% good.

I think TMF *stage banter* has always been much less funny than they think - and people laugh along with it and think it's delightful that they're saying these actually quite dull things. That's been the case for decades. But I don't think that's true of the songs.

LOVE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, yes, it's true that that had unfunny jokes - 'I'd go anywhere with Hugh', 'I'm going back to the country' - that don't compare with anything on 69LS. (Though the LP is still not all bad.)

Again I think the odd thing is just that Merritt hasn't kept a bit of the 'ache' element along with the comedy - as we all know how well he can do it. I should play 'She Says Hello' again.

Not suggesting 50SM is more sincere, necessarily, just that it's not primarily comedy songs. I thought it was probably his worst LP after the first time I listened to it, but it's really grown on me since then. It's almost hard to think of it as a Magnetic Fields album, though -- I like it as a musical about a weird music geek written by a weird music geek and performed in the style of the Magnetic Fields. Another way you could look at it is that even if it's only 20% good, that's still 10 good songs, which isn't bad for a latter-day Merritt record. :)

And yeah, Love at the Bottom of the Sea wasn't all bad! Also helped that it sounded really good to my ears, especially coming off of the "no synths" trilogy.

Another way you could look at it is that even if it's only 20% good, that's still 10 good songs, which isn't bad for a latter-day Merritt record. :)

That's a good statement.

And it's notable that so many of us (?) seem to have the same feeling of a decline in quality.

Having said this: does it even contain 10 good songs? That would be a list worth making.

Some of the titles are not even summoning tunes for me now. And this after playing it a lot in the past.

These songs, I think are at least OK:

Rock'n'Roll Will Ruin Your Life
Foxx and I
How I Failed Ethics
Ethan Frome
Dreaming in Tetris
Lovers' Lies
Fathers in the Clouds
Ghosts of the Marathon Dancers
Have You Seen It in the Snow?
The Ex and I
Never Again
Quotes
You Can Never Go Back to New York
I Wish I Had Pictures

That's 14! And there might even be one or two more ... but still I don't think I'm setting a very high bar here.

Many of those would make my list of favorites (with Foxx and I at the very top). I'd have to include Hustle 76 (I was in Magnetic Fields cover band when 50SM came out and this is the only song from the album we worked on for possible inclusion in our set, but ultimately we dropped it), Life Ain't All Bad, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea too. I hear that last one as a bit of tribute to Scott Miller, who'd recently passed -- Merritt's said he tried to write a lot of fake Scott Miller songs in his pre-Magnetic Fields days, and it seems like he took the San Francisco setting of this song as a cue to give that another shot.

I always thought Sweet-Lovin' Man was a Donnette-Thayer-sings-Scott-Miller pastiche.

Magnetic Fields cover band!

I'd go and see that!

My iTunes today randomly played 'they're killing children over there'. I thought: this is actually good, in various ways, and the melody stayed with me for hours.

I think I'm going to delve back properly into this LP, maybe playing it all at random for days. I'll try to form a better view on the songs that CAPTCHAS mentions, which I don't now remember at all.

Cool! Yeah, I think driving around listening to it on random like I used to do with 69LS helped me appreciate it more.

I always thought Sweet-Lovin' Man was a Donnette-Thayer-sings-Scott-Miller pastiche.

That hadn't occurred to me but now that you mention it I can definitely hear a connection between it and "Wyoming."

I have always been able to appreciate 69LS consecutively, on CD. I don't even really associate it with random play.

Whereas - 50SM seems basically lower quality or less enjoyable overall, and maybe would benefit from elements of random surprise.

Today I just played the first few songs. I was surprised how good the opener 'wonder where I'm from' is. 'Killing children' as noted, has something, and btw the intro strikes me as a joke on 'Seven Nation Army'. The highlight I think must be 'Judy Garland' - the closest thing to a major song here? With the great line 'Let's try: None of the above'.

Then again ...

"'67 Come Back as a Cockroach", "'68 A Cat Called Dionysus" and worst of all, "'72 Eye Contact" - it's hard to justify even playing these tracks.

Reports that Susan Amway has passed away - heartbreaking.

Shocked and saddened to hear of the passing of Susan Anway, vocalist with the Magnetic Fields, among others. My heart always breaks hearing this song; now for new reasons.https://t.co/YHIWPd2Xh8

— Daniel Handler (@DanielHandler) September 8, 2021

Oh man, the version of “Take Ecstasy with Me” with her on vocals blew me away as a teenager, might still be my favorite track they ever did. That’s so sad.

This is horrible. 100,000 Fireflies is my favorite song.

Oh no...
A quick web search turns this up: https://www.echovita.com/us/obituaries/fl/north-fort-myers/mary-susan-anway-13296211
She was 70. I remember some interview with Stephin where he did mention that Susan was a bit older than the rest of them (I didn't realize it was that much.)
If there was ever a life-changing song for me, "100,000 Fireflies" was it, in 1993 via the "...One Last Kiss" compilation.
Years later I was at a Pauline Oliveros workshop, and she told everyone there to think of your very favorite song that you know by heart and everyone would each sing their own favorite simultaneously, one syllable at a time, using one long breath for each syllable; at that moment, I decided that "Smoke Signals" was my favorite song. Now, "Dancing in My Eyes" gets me every time, especially Susan's delivery of the rising melody of the line "We will dance in the autumn with the leaves in our hair."
I remember another interview with Stephin where he said he liked the way that Susan could sound happy, sad, or blank. Then Stephin mentioned that he could only sound sad. Then he mentioned that he wanted to be able to sound blank.
Ok, going to listen to those first two albums now...

She also sang in the group V; (that's a "V" followed by a semicolon).
"1926" is absolutely stunning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPE2CLBvjiI
"Your god hates me / He can't feel my flesh / He leaves me panting like a dog at the edge of your bed"

Oh wow. Some days Distant Plastic Trees is my favourite thing ever but I never really learned anything about the vocalist before today. So sad. It's obviously time to play my old twofer CD. Much of it makes me misty-eyed at the best of times...

Sad, second major Magnetic Fields contributor in two years ... RIP.

The first two LPs, with her, are indeed special and magnificent - among the greatest pop achievements of their era, or, I'm inclined to say, any era.

She did something, on those records, that no-one else has ever done, and perhaps no-one else ever could do.

Yup, there really is something about them that feels magical, and a lot of it is down to her vocals.

She also sang in the group V; (that's a "V" followed by a semicolon).
"1926" is absolutely stunning:

OK this is blowing my mind. I'm well acquainted with Thalia Zedek's version of "1926," but had no idea it was a cover, let alone a cover of song originally sung by Susan Anway. Thanks for sharing this!

If anyone hasn't heard the original "Crowd of Drifters" with Anway on vocals, which was, I believe, the first officially released Magnetic Fields song (on a compilation from 1990 that was apparently reissued last year: https://emergencyhearts.bandcamp.com/album/doctor-deaths-vol-iv-the-marvels-of-insect-life), it is a thing of beauty:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLu5Taq12qM

on a compilation from 1990 that was apparently reissued last year: https://emergencyhearts.bandcamp.com/album/doctor-deaths-vol-iv-the-marvels-of-insect-life),

I really love this particular segment of 90s indie linguistic style where on a comp like this it's impossible to tell which is the band name and which is the song title unless you're already familiar with the band

Thanks for the 1926 link, Ernest.

I know quite a lot of TMF obscurities - but I still don't think I had heard Anway sing 'crowd of drifters'.

There's something about the very early years of this band that's to me deeply intriguing - and deeply rooted in a US indie scene that they would later, perhaps, try to disavow or at least leave behind.

There's something about the very early years of this band that's to me deeply intriguing - and deeply rooted in a US indie scene that they would later, perhaps, try to disavow or at least leave behind.

― the pinefox, Friday, September 10, 2021 9:57 AM

Quite regional scenes as well - I'd also not heard V; before, or taken followed other Boston indie breadrcrumbs to the original "Babies Falling":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-e4fEfWi7A

Still embarrassed at butchering Susan's surname above. Does anyone know why her version of "Plant White Roses" was left off all the Distant Plastic Trees reissues over the years?

Fondly remember the time she replied to a RYM thread that was asking for any information about where she had disappeared after 1992
Apparently she had become a blacksmith
I've never been able to say which of the first two albums I prefer but they're also my favorites

An original 'Babies Falling'! Incredible!

Yes, this kind of thing shows so much about where the extraordinary Merritt vision came from; how it was actually more rooted than it seems.

In theory perhaps 50 SONG MEMOIR is about that, but its songs are too often not interesting enough to convey it.

tour dates announced

are they any good live? now that i'm in a city where bands i'm interested in regularly tour

Funnily enough, given we're all busy celebrating how the Big Thief album is exactly this - The Charm Of The Highway Strip is an object lesson in how to take simple chords and alchemise astonishing songs out of them through imaginative textures, arrangements and melodic lines. So great. Can't believe I'm only discovering it now

And his limitations as a player if anything serve a purpose - there's a moment 2:11 into I Have The Moon where he hits the major rather than the expected minor for a fraction of a second and it's amazing, like a literal parapraxis in the song

wtf Holiday is amazing too?

holiday is my favourite

I like how the "Babies Falling" cover is *extremely* faithful to the original (upthread) in terms of the vocal melody while duplicating pretty much nothing from the Wild Stares' broader arrangement.

retroactively adding 'in my secret place' to my sub-2-min-songs ballot

I've just checked Imago's reference.

I have to admit, there is something here - it sounds like an error. Unsure if it's really an error or somehow part of the design.

Is this a keyboard part? If so then it is probably Merritt, I guess.

Unsure whether this music is comparable to the band BIG THIEF that people are talking about.

there's one big thief track ("wake me up to drive") that sounds a bit like the magnetic fields but that's it

'how to take simple chords and alchemise astonishing songs out of them through imaginative textures, arrangements and melodic lines' was the operative part of the comparison

ANYWAY. the big one folks

having never given them a solitary shot for 35 years, I'm approaching this discography chronologically and yet, really, all at once, which lends (or rather, removes) a certain measure of perspective

here are my findings so far - from someone who's not versed in TMF as a phenomenon or a narrative:

- the first two albums are really good
- the third and fourth albums are EXCELLENT - The Charm especially - for reasons aforementioned
- here's where it gets interesting. Get Lost is fine, good even, but something has gone slightly awry - the songs are longer, less concise, more content to wallow, more maudlin. the arrangements are less wild. it feels like some measure of inspiration and creative fury has gone. many of the songs are still lovely but there really is an element of something missing, wheels spinning
- I think Merritt KNEW this, because 69LS, which I am 18/69 through at time of writing, feels like a conscious effort to crowbar inspiration back into the project through deliberate eclecticism and scope. however, what I'm finding is that this doesn't make the individual songs particularly great or memorable. individually they're MUCH simpler and less musically arresting than the individual tracks of the first 4 albums. if this had been released as 3 albums they'd all be considered minor TMF imo. which might be harsh as I haven't heard the last two of the three albums (okay, discs) yet, but it sure feels like it's going to be more of the same hollowish pseudo-eclecticism

obviously, it was a comeback after 4 years and it was 69 goddamned tracks long, so I understand the hype, but listening to all these albums has a) made me a TMF fan (at least until he lost his zest and flair for wonky, gauzy anti-arrangements) and b) taught me if I didn't know already to never remotely trust accepted narratives about Great American Indie Bands

69 love songs is indeed quantity over quality, there's a fair amount of top tier material on it but also a ton of goofy filler to the point where i never really want to come back to even a single disc of it

yeah something like 'Grand Canyon' recaptures a lot of the magic, but there aren't enough songs that do

That impression of Get Lost definitely matches what I felt about it at the time. It'd be interesting to situate the first Sixths album within the trajectory you describe. It shares some things (variety of styles, multiple voices, concept) with 69LS but has more in common with the earlier albums' songs/sounds, and is at least as good

whoa, definite post-a-controversial opinion time up in here (re: 69LS)

challop morelike

(yeah it's totally fine, of course, I'm just surprised)

I think most people who came to TMF in the 90s prefer the Distant Plastic Trees -- Get Lost run to 69LS, I sure do, not that 69 isn't a great record -- I go back to "100,000 Fireflies" and "Take Ecstasy with Me" and "Plant White Roses" and "Born on a Train" and "You Love To Fail" (and for that matter "Dream Hat") and etc. way more than anything from the later stuff.

same tbh. not that there aren't good things after 69LS (e.g. I like Distortion quite a bit) but it does seem like a dividing line for me where I love everything before it and that's where I find I'm cherry picking songs and not rating the albums as a whole that much.

Interesting - pretty sure most the Mag Fields fans I have known regard 69LS and its material as the group's zenith (to the point that bootlegs of the related live shows are traded, etc.)

I love Get Lost but I see the point about the shift. The first two albums in particular are such a self-contained, gauzy bubble, there's no way something like "Living In an Abandoned Firehouse with You" would fit on the later albums. As time goes on his writing sharpens, for ex "The Desperate Things You Made Me Do" is a stunning, brutal song, but you lose the entrancing nature of things like "Lovers From the Moon."

I think I'd first heard a few songs from 69LS that I liked and then became obsessed with the Susan Amway version of "Take Ecstasy With Me," I never really listen to 69LS as an album, or even a third of an album.

Yeah, his lyrics seem to be much showier and more self-consciously literary on 69LS, often at the music's expense

I think most people who came to TMF in the 90s prefer the Distant Plastic Trees -- Get Lost run to 69LS, I sure do, not that 69 isn't a great record -- I go back to "100,000 Fireflies" and "Take Ecstasy with Me" and "Plant White Roses" and "Born on a Train" and "You Love To Fail" (and for that matter "Dream Hat") and etc. way more than anything from the later stuff.

This is me. "69 Love Songs" was honestly where I more or less got off the boat. And the Sixths might be the one I listen to the most.

Interesting - pretty sure most the Mag Fields fans I have known regard 69LS and its material as the group's zenith (to the point that bootlegs of the related live shows are traded, etc.)

― punching the clock on a tambo (morrisp), Sunday, 20 February 2022 17:52 (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this feels to me to be a product of that album's relatively colossal profile - hype generating hype - and I wouldn't be surprised if for a lot of them it was their introduction to the band and therefore set an expectation for what they are and what they do best

in the same way that approaching them chronologically (but also all at once) might lead one to conclude that the best stuff happens earlier

will def detour to Sixths after this

Nah, they were into them already (tho 69LS may be said to have taken their fandom to new heights - being the achievement that it is). It's cool, everyone's different.

Was it mentioned on that 'every artist has a New Jersey' thread I wonder lol

and to be absolutely clear my primary agenda is far less to attempt a downward reevaluation of 69LS than it is to obtain the inverse for Charm and Holiday, which I honestly wouldn't have even heard of but for a recent IRL suggestion that I try their early discography

Yeah, I'm curious what you'll make of that first 6ths album (Wasps' Nests), which came out between Holiday and Get Lost. As was mentioned upthread, it might have more in common with what came after it than what came before, but I also think it's one of Merritt's best sounding albums, second only to Charm.

And if you haven't listened to the House of Tomorrow EP yet, I always think of that as being of a piece with Holiday.

Ty!

Am finding 69LS disc 2 to be an improvement over disc 1, funnily enough

Wait you didn’t even listen to the whole thing yet(?)

It's really long okay

Combining it with reading Hollinghurst works pretty well tbh, maybe I'm liking it a bit more as a soundtrack to fiction

Yeah, I see I didn't read yr original post closely enough... the volume of material is central to the "point," there's a reason it wasn't 23 Love Songs.

I'm Sorry I Love You is pretty rad, if only more of the album had done insane stuff like this! Wind-tunnel industrial-Celtic!

Don’t forget Future Bible Heroes (especially “A Thousand Lovers in a Day”).

ty!

done with 69LS, going back to Holiday before moving on. really my absolute #1 takeaway from all this is that 'The Trouble I've Been Looking For' is the single greatest song ever, and everyone who's never used wonky detuned keyboard riffs in pop is an idiot and a wuss

the volume of material is central to the "point,"

yeah there's clear reasons why it's considered his opus but i also wish even a single disc of it was as great to listen to front-to-back as what came before

OTM.

He toured here for 69LS and I remember talking to people, while waiting, echoing "the old stuff ia better" type sentiments even in 2000 or whatever. It's not easily dismissed as revisionist challops, etc.

there's also a little lost with the shift in focus to more acoustic arrangements compared to the very distinct take on synthpop that was dominant before

still a lot to love about it & there's more than enough high-points of course

xp Where is "here"? Just curious

'how to take simple chords and alchemise astonishing songs out of them through imaginative textures, arrangements and melodic lines' was the operative part of the comparison

― imago, Sunday, February 20, 2022

I still don't think this makes the comparison convincing. The terms here are too general for a genuine likeness to be created.

You could probably take the above and apply it to, say, Michael Jackson.

From a very very limited acquaintance with the Big Thief band, they seem totally different from TMF.

I disagree with Imago: I came to the conclusion about 20 years ago that 69 Love Songs was, indeed, the best TMF LP, indeed Merritt LP, and I maintain that.

The first two LPs are, in their way, stunning - distinctive, perverse, beautiful - I think that's well recognised.

HOLIDAY I have always found overrated.

TCOTHS is stunning again - so as far as that goes, I agree with Imago on it.

GET LOST: here Imago is on to something. There *is*, I think, a shift to GET LOST, as the production gets richer and the songs longer. I would say about half that LP is great (smoke & mirrors, love is lighter than air, etc) and half of it is sub-par.

69LS I think was doing something rather different - obviously 'high concept', 'quantity altering quality', etc etc - and I don't believe at all that 69LS was a reaction to something that had gone wrong with GET LOST. Nothing that Merritt ever said in the 1990s gave any evidence for this as part of the intention, and I have never ever heard it, intuitively, when listening either.

Post-69LS is a different issue where the problem clearly becomes "How to follow that?". But he has, in fact, continued to make tons of music that's greater than most people could make.

It's also true, as I think some people have pointed out here, that the number of side projects / other bands complicates any serious chronological account of what Merritt was doing or thought he was doing.

I tried directly to raise the "what next?" issue here, I think 21 years ago:

Little Man, What Now?

That's all fair, pinefox. I realise that my reaction was in part a reaction to the total shift away from the sonic bath of the earlier albums that I'd become so intoxicated by. It is clear that his ambitions were very different for 69LS, and that something more literary and self-consciously 'eclectic' was being undertaken. To my ears, it is a very interesting failure interspersed with moments of success, but I think one's response to it probably depends on how much you regard its ambitions as being met by the music.

(and how much you are able to disregard an album as a single unified listening experience rather than a document that can be edited by the listener)

As for Holiday, well, I guess the manic bubblegum synthestra vibe is something of an acquired taste, which I happen to already have in great quantities, lol

The idea that 69LS is a failure - feels to me like saying that pop music is a failure.

HOLIDAY: it's not really about the sound, I just don't think most of the songs are as good.

As for "literary": offhand I'd say that the first LP is the most literary.

One example:

You're in your own little world: an expensive birdcage;
Like a plastic baby in a Faberge egg
I saw you today at the Cafe Blase
And thought of the nights when we had fire fights
Nameless seaside ghost town...
That's where I go when I see the moon
Living in an abandoned firehouse with you
You're in your own little head in a field of sunflowers
And there's blood in your mouth and there's rats all over town
(C): Take me out to the beach and I'll tell you my secret name
Take me under the sea and we'll derail the trains
Let's run away into the caves I still love you I still love you baby
You're in your own little box with ribbons in your hair
And there's dust in your mouth and worms in the air
Hideous city of unknown words...
That's where I live when I go to sleep
In an abandoned firehouse with you.

All day snow covered us
Night-time: it was always night
The people on the street were made of meat
Black girl, trucks ran us down
Blue boy...
The people on the sidewalk were traced in chalk
Whale embryos filled your enormous room
Screech-owl kachinas built your spiritual room
We were kings, kings!
We were kings, kings!

That seems to me vastly more literary than anything on 69 Love Songs.

Pop music is not generally consumed over the course of three hours ;)

Holiday and Wasp's Nest are my two favorite Merritt albums. I like 69LS but I don't really enjoy the non-songs like "Punk Rock Love", even in concept and that makes it drag a bit. Disk 2 stands up with his all time works though, despite it all.

Holiday's sound MAKES the songs good imo; if they were performed on an acoustic guitar with no adornment they'd lose a lot, sure, but the whole point for me is how the mesh of sound evokes something far beyond the basic chords

Oh another Disc 2 supremacist! High five lol

Pop music is not generally consumed over the course of three hours ;)

I don't understand this comment.

Well, I am calling 69LS a (very interesting and frequently successful) failure as an album experience. I don't think it impugns pop music to learn that three hours of it by one artist - even one who is clearly blessed with genius - is a fluctuating and not entirely satisfying experience. I don't think ANYONE could have pulled off 69LS, to be clear. Not even Big Thief!

"not entirely satisfying" doesn't sound like "failure", to me.

Talking to someone else today, coincidentally, who likes 69LS about as much as I do, I typed:

CD1 > CD2 >>>>>>> CD3.

The first 2 discs are both staggeringly great, but I think that CD1 wins through feeling even more like a "greatest hits" or "the new standards of our generation" -- a disc in which you can have, let's say: I don't believe in the sun, all my little words, a chicken with its head cut off, the luckiest guy, come back from SF, etc etc, all blazing at you one after another within the first 10 songs -- remains to my mind an achievement that I have not heard surpassed since.

The effect of that is not so different from (or at least one can make the analogy with), let's say: a little help from my friends, fixing a hole, lucy in the sky with diamonds, she's leaving home, all on one side of vinyl.

CD2 I would see more in terms of being continually surprisingly good ie: you can't believe how one great song follows another but almost of them have been underrated and, by most people, almost forgotten, until they come on. A bit less hit-parade and more LP-track in flavour.

I mean, I think of Scott Miller at his most extravagant and eclectic, and he never got an album beyond 74 minutes. 69LS is more than twice that length! Lolita Nation, Plants & Birds & Rocks & Things and Interbabe Concern shunted together would compare maybe, but it'd also probably detract from the impact (and distinct energy) of each to try and view them all as a single undertaking (although the quality of the music would at least be consistently high - because they were originally conceived of individually)

Much of 69LS Disc 1 feels sonically slight to me, and I think this is once again a matter of personal preference.

I've never heard of any of those things or titles.

I admit that I am deeply out of touch (ie: ignorant), hence for me to say "nothing has been better than 69LS since 1999" would be factually rather meaningless (though if I did now hear another 500 LPs from that period it probably wouldn't change my mind, indeed would actually leave me thinking that statement was true).

Scott Miller is a direct contemporary of Merritt's. He stands as a comparably brilliant highly literary and idiosyncratic (though rooted in classicism) American songwriter. I strongly recommend those albums (by Game Theory and The Loud Family, his vehicles)

I say 'is'; tragically, I mean 'was'.

And I'll add that 69LS was Miller's favourite album by TMF, and he didn't put any of their other albums on his year-end lists, so he's with you rather than me here

(it was indeed his favourite album of 1999)

I'd have to reread poster Imago's posts more closely to be sure of this, but it looks to me that, among other things (eg: 'sonic slightness', which might be a more credible and / or novel complaint to my mind), they are rehearsing a view that was debated long ago, maybe on this thread, maybe elsewhere (even Facebook?), by several of us, which is basically:

"60 love songs is too long - if it were cut down by about 75% then it would have a higher ratio of great songs and I'd like it more".

This seems in one way rational. But I don't agree with it because, as various people (including me, but certainly also including one-time poster Stevie T) tried to say in the past: There is a different effect from creating a larger work in which the smaller parts interrelate -- and thus get "added value" from their participation in the whole.

The concept of a "concept" is relevant here though I don't think the particular concept (Love) is so important.

If we take the view "if it were cut down by about 75% then it would have a higher ratio of great songs and I'd like it more" literally then we might logically cut it down to one song - the one we like best - and it will have a 100% success rate and finally be judged a ... "success".

We could also take another large work of interconnected parts like ULYSSES and say: at 700pp this is too long, it would be better at 350pp, or 70pp, with just the best sentences, or just the essence of the story.

Some people like Roddy Doyle have even virtually said this!

But this would not be a good approach to ULYSSES, and most people who like the book would say that the different parts of the book support each other, provide contrast, build up intricate cross-reference, etc, and you need all of them in order to make all of them work.

Though the medium is different I think my view of this particular 69LS question would be roughly the same.

As I say, this has all been rehearsed in the past, probably rather better than in this post.

>>> "60 love songs is too long"

Unusually bad typo which undermines the meaning of the whole sentence or post

I do wonder what the optimal arbitrary number of love songs is. I suppose it depends upon your ambitions. About 40 would have probably been an easier sell, albeit less of a unique undertaking. Susanne Sundfor only needed ten! (And that should have been eight, really; sorry to everyone who likes Trust Me or Insects but imagine that album ending on Slowly, c'mon)

A sad statement: Anyone who thinks "TMF went downhill with 69LS" ... really needs to hear ... 50 SONG MEMOIR.

It has long been my impression that while 69LS is feted by casual and johnny-come-lately listeners like myself, hardcore fans usually think it pales in comparison with earlier work.

Merritt addresses the “why 69?” question in the liner note interview, which I feel is somewhat essential to the experience of the album (although I’m sure it can be enjoyed without it)

xp again, I’m curious who these hardcore fans are, as the hardcore fans I’ve known are not like this! Is a it maybe a geographical or “timeframe” thing?

I have read that interview more times than I have read most things, and nonetheless I cannot remember what Merritt says about the number.

I share poster Morrisp's feelings here. What I wondered about Alba's post was really whether Alba is 'casual' as he says. I always thought he was more of a 'fan'. This seems relevant to Alba's statement.

If the statement is "people who have listened heavily to TMF since 1989 prefer the first two LPs to 69LS", then I'm not that surprised. But that feels "self-selecting" or a loading of the dice. Like saying "People who were massively into music in the mid-60s often still think mid-60s pop is the best".

If the statement is something like "people who love TMF, know all the records and have listened to and thought about all of them a lot [whether they've been listening since 1989 or 2019] think 69LS pales in comparison with earlier work" -- then I think this would be false.

I think a large proportion of that latter category of people probably like 69LS most, and in any case most of them will think 69LS is better than every TMF LP after it (which is c. 22 years' worth!).

I haven't heard the earlier Magnetic Fields records, but part of the reason 69 Love Songs is able to work is because of the relative thinness/conceptual nature of many of the songs. If every song was dense, it wouldn't be parsable.
I'll never listen to every song again, but it is important that they exist; not just my favourite 29 Love Songs.

I always thought "Sweet-Lovin' Man" was a Donnette-Thayer-sings-Scott-Miller pastiche.

― Halfway there but for you, Wednesday, August 18, 2021 2:36 PM (six months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Among other connections, the Loud Family opened for Magnetic Fields in 2000. In the Scott Miller biography, Claudia Gonson describes an uncomfortable dinner where he delivered a monologue, a self-lacerating "review" of his work.

v much need to read that

part of the reason 69 Love Songs is able to work is because of the relative thinness/conceptual nature of many of the songs. If every song was dense, it wouldn't be parsable.
I'll never listen to every song again, but it is important that they exist

this seems eminently fair

again, I’m curious who these hardcore fans are, as the hardcore fans I’ve known are not like this! Is a it maybe a geographical or “timeframe” thing?

I think the main thing is just that it's a small sample I'm talking about - the odd person whose "Puh, Get Lost is a much better album than 69 Love Songs" has lodged firmly in my head. It's not like I'm surrounded by Magnetic Fields fans in my life. Maybe some of it was on here. But in my head they became representative of proper fans, ie people who got into them before I did in 1999 or 2000.

Alba -- again, I feel that that is rather "self-selecting" somehow -- ie: someone who has been a fan of a thing for a long time is always quite likely to say "it was better earlier". It would probably be hard, *in general*, to find people who did the opposite.

But do TMF fans that we know actually say that? I suppose some do or did, some don't. Steady Mike, for instance, I don't see saying what you've described.

I think that what was said c. 2000 is a bit of a red herring re: NOW, anyway. 69LS is now much much closer in time to "early Merritt" (c. 3 years to GET LOST!) than it is to us now (23 years!). I think it would be a bit odd for someone NOW to say "I only like the EARLY work of 1993, not the later work when he sold out and jumped the shark, in ... in ... 1999".

This thread revival made me think something earlier, which I will try to summarise briskly as:

Do early Magnetic Fields records (even going up to 69LS) sound good?

It can be readily agreed that the first 2-3 LPs are "cheap and tinny", consciously so, making a virtue of this, a "lo-fi bubblegum aesthetic" or something. (Or can it? Maybe this is all wrong.)

Do those LPs, if you play them on a reasonably good hifi, sound cheap and tinny and therefore *bad* in any way? Or does that sound sound *good*? Or do they not even sound cheap at all?

Also, poster Imago said that 69LS was sonically thin. I find this a bit interesting as I feel: maybe there is something to it. Maybe the production even here was a bit home-made and minimal. Does the production of 69LS hold up now?

I genuinely don't know. I always used to think that these records sounded GOOD, but I was naive, and when I first heard them I was playing on very average (at best) equipment.

By contrast -- I DON'T think that the LPs i, or REALISM sound cheap. My sense is that on those records Merritt recorded as lush-ly as he wished to (perhaps on REALISM more than ever, even if the songs aren't the best?).

Then on eg: LOVE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA we're back with "all synths" but again I would guess that any "cheapness" is deliberate - as the peculiar kinds of distortion on DISTORTION are, or the "cigar-box uke" and "wine-box cello" on QUICKIES.

But again, tbh, QUICKIES doesn't sound thin to me.

So I don't think any of this is an issue AFTER say 2000. Indeed I wonder a bit if HYACINTHS & THISTLES is a hinge work.

As I recall, the piano on 'he didn't' on HYACINTHS & THISTLES is played by someone quite expert, and the whole thing sounds rich and full, and I wonder if that track alone could be identified as a new spirit for Merritt -- 'I'm going to use this money I've just been paid to make things sound richer, rather than just capitalise on their cheapness'.

Indeed isn't the transition from WASPS' NESTS to HYACINTHS & THISTLES the single simplest demonstration of change in "production values" for Merritt?

As I recall there are things like 'heaven in a black leather jacket' on the first that sound cheap, vs things like 'night falls like a grand piano' on the latter.

But maybe I'm getting mixed up and W'sN actually sounds fine and it's just the singers who were cheap (several of them incredibly obscure for a 'guest stars' LP), as against Odetta, Gary Numan, Clare Grogan et al.

a digression:

What Is The Worst Line Stephin Merritt Has Written?

I really don't see this as a question of the records sounding "good", in an audiophile sense.

'Holidays' shows a much greater investment in texture than 69 LS, an interest in developing a unique and immersive soundworld on record whereas 69 LS is presented more as an audio 'songbook'.

Holidays might be a "budget" immersive soundworld. Does it really matter? Hm, maybe. It refers a lot to "real" instruments and the synthesized instrumentation doesn't always transcend the feeling of a kind of shorthand, in that sense. But when it does, oh boy... I wouldn't say either record is fully realized, or that seems to me to be missing the point. Part of what Holidays is, is a demonstration of what a DIY record can be, how it doesn't just sound like everything else.

fwiw, 'The Charm of the Highway Strip' was the soundtrack of my best friend's car in high school, at the time there was a lot of hype around 69 LS and I just assumed that's what it was. Later that same year, i got the CD of Holidays ahead of a family vacation because the store didn't have 69 LS. When I finally borrowed 69 LS from the library in like 2007 I was really surprised that it wasn't 'Highway'. idk which album is my favorite.

the charm of the highway strip might currently be my fave. at one point i was a get loster, and holiday used to be my fave too. of 69 love songs was my favorite at a few points. they have several really great albums.

^yes

as far as timeline goes, 69 love songs was my introduction to them, via a couple songs on a mixtape (luckiest guy on the lower east side and how fucking romantic). i didn't get to their earlier work until a few years later and i think they're consistently good and each one has at least a couple all-timers on it. and they're a bit easier to digest in a single CD instead of 3.

but shoot, i'm just going through 69LS now (continuing my day long magnetic fields fest) and it's so good as well. maybe some day i'll go in the direction, back in the forward direction of time, toward today, and give their later albums a shot. i bought i [2004] when it came out and enjoyed it for a while, but i kind of lost the plot with distortion and realism

I really don't see this as a question of the records sounding "good", in an audiophile sense.

'Holiday' shows a much greater investment in texture than 69 LS, an interest in developing a unique and immersive soundworld on record whereas 69 LS is presented more as an audio 'songbook'.

Holiday might be a "budget" immersive soundworld. Does it really matter? Part of what Holiday is, is a demonstration of what a DIY record can be, how it doesn't just sound like everything else.

― The 25 Best Songs Ever Ranked In Order (Deflatormouse), Monday, 21 February 2022 22:26 (forty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

good post that explains my great liking for Holiday - it isn't 'well recorded' or expensive-sounding (69LS feels MUCH more expensive) but it is a bedroom synth-layering masterpiece

if anything, The Charm... has an even more astonishing sound-world, with a sort of bizarro alt-country thrown in amongst the twinkling, meshing anti-pop

both albums (and the first two) are not 'well recorded' but the sonic detail is RICH and the textures are weird (and, I find, delightful)

As I recall there are things like 'heaven in a black leather jacket' on the first that sound cheap

Fwiw, "Heaven" was released as a single well before the album. Like, two years before? So maybe that accounts for the lower-fi sound, though imo I like that particular sound.

All day snow covered us
Night-time: it was always night
The people on the street were made of meat
Black girl, trucks ran us down
Blue boy...
The people on the sidewalk were traced in chalk
Whale embryos filled your enormous room
Screech-owl kachinas built your spiritual room
We were kings, kings!
We were kings, kings!

That seems to me vastly more literary than anything on 69 Love Songs.

Also one of the greatest things they ever wrote. It probably couldn't have worked for long, they couldn't have made five albums of songs like that, but Distant Plastic Trees is such an incredible portrait of a MOMENT where it made sense for them to do this.

Honestly, I'm a much bigger fan of Magnetic Fields live than the albums, entirely related to the way they're recorded. There are some KCRW sessions that are the ones I return to most.

Even a phone-mic version like this works more for me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkz0UruvXSc

"The Magnetic Fields lose something on record but as a live band they kill" is inner-circle Slatepitch, kudos

"Holiday", singular. Got it. Thanks for correcting.

...and that might be kind of significant, actually: a reference to Charles Ives?

b/c these records (Holiday, Highway Strip) exist at an intersection between "auteur" and "homemade" mindsets. The way he refers to "real" instruments underscores this, I think. It's not like these are generic Casio preset records, he does astonishing things with reverb for example. But it makes a statement that if Charles Ives was alive and working today, wouldn't he do everything in a bedroom studio?

Yes. Interestingly, the first two albums, sound-wise, reminded me of nothing so much as the spectacular, icy psychedelia bedroom lo-fi world-building of Matt Johnson's debut Burning Blue Soul...

Yes, I like seeing TMF live but the idea that they're better live than on record is very counter-intuitive or ... unusual.

There are so many things about the diverse sounds of the records that they don't reproduce live. And I think I would add that the lack of percussion often makes the rhythms, live, sound poorer than they should.

Imago:

good post that explains my great liking for Holiday - it isn't 'well recorded' or expensive-sounding (69LS feels MUCH more expensive) but it is a bedroom synth-layering masterpiece

if anything, The Charm... has an even more astonishing sound-world, with a sort of bizarro alt-country thrown in amongst the twinkling, meshing anti-pop

both albums (and the first two) are not 'well recorded' but the sonic detail is RICH and the textures are weird (and, I find, delightful)

Yes, this is all basically accurate. My point was: if you now play the records on a half-decent stereo, do they sound thin / strained / tinny?

I don't really know because I haven't played the earlier work for a long time (and you might want a better stereo than mine to test them).

Fwiw, "Heaven" was released as a single well before the album. Like, two years before? So maybe that accounts for the lower-fi sound, though imo I like that particular sound.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, February 21, 2022

That's a good fact, Josh -- I had absolutely no idea about it.

That seems to me possibly the weakest track on that LP.

I have an idea that the first single or two by TMF contain different versions of songs, eg: I am not sure that the 'long Vermont roads' on a very early 45 is the same as on TCOTHS. There is also the Merritt obscurities CD which I must listen to (think it contains thinks like 'plant white roses' that were not on most editions of the LPs).

Onto 'i'. Replacing almost all the synths with that prissy little string section is an unconscionable aesthetic choice, regardless of the songwriting (which is middling, if subdued)

congrats you've turned into Neil Hannon!!

Where before when he used a harpsichord it contributed imaginatively to an unusual and captivating sound-world, here on In An Operetta I want to take a fucking sledgehammer to the thing

I now understand a) why the fans felt let down by his post-69LS (which is a masterpiece next to this no matter how you otherwise regard it) material and b) why his new stuff passes completely under the radar. If it's even worse than this!

I'm sure I've mentioned it on this or some other MF thread, but I feel like he lost something when everything became so overtly high concept. Like he needed a frame for inspiration, or perhaps as a lazy crutch. Certainly Merritt's (earned) reputation as a contemptuous curmudgeon has done him no favors. That used to be part of his appeal live, but then it just got kind of old, and a little tedious. When they toured through here last I had a friend (who is peripherally in their circle) who texted that I really should check them out these days, because they'd turned a corner and were more "on" then they had been in a few years.

BTW, sonic comparison to Burning Blue Soul is kind of otm. Like rickety kitchen sink bedroom production.

going through youtube, the live performances in the last few years do seem to have gone up a notch. they've brought back some of the synths & electric guitar & drum machines that they'd steadily avoided live for years due to merritt's hearing problems, so they must have found a way to make that work at last.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT1iKcd7PGA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHldXhiowDY

On the 50 Song Memoir tour he was in a kind of soundproof booth (fairly inconspicuous as part of the set), which allowed the band to approximate the album's instrumentation around him, and it was thrilling for me to finally see them perform live with synths, even if it was just songs from, you know, 50 Song Memoir. Merritt wasn't even part of the Future Bible Heroes tour a few years earlier.

Lmao, that's the up a notch stuff? Christ

Distortion is an effort to bring a different sort of sonic density back. It fails as it's already been done better, despite the odd nice moment

they've been entirely acoustic live for ages, bringing back the drum machine makes a big difference!

When did they ever have a drum machine? All the times I saw them relatively early Claudia was playing drums. A la this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzmQg15Mf58

Yeah Claudia was always the drummer! Is she not now?

I think it was around "Get Lost" when they dropped the drums, she switched to piano and they went full chamber-pop.

I'm not going to try and psychoanalyse Realism, but the extent of its regression to campfire twee - the sheer truculence of its withdrawal from anything resembling depth or complexity - is almost charming

Neurodivergent songwriters are often expected to cleave to expected paths of progress, development, complication and so forth, and when they don't, people often turn on them, as I've kind of been doing, but I'm gonna hand it to Merritt here, he's doing whatever the fuck he wants and trashing the brand, well fine y'know, fine

well i mean from the studio versions, they very rarely had live drums on record in the first place in the 90s

oh my god

I wasn't ready for how well my Realism comments paved the way for Love At The Bottom Of The Sea

he is unchained. unburdened. free

this is GLORIOUS omg

yep, on second listen I think I can firmly establish my great TMF trilogy: Charm, Holiday, Sea

I do not expect to be liked, nor understood, but there it is

Neurodivergent songwriters

????

He has said that he may be on the autism spectrum.[29][30]

have slightly calmed down re: LATBOTS - it isn't as good as the prime stuff, but I still find it a strikingly effective expression of creative freedom and full of little sonic delights

Oh I didn't know that about Merritt

good post that explains my great liking for Holiday - it isn't 'well recorded' or expensive-sounding (69LS feels MUCH more expensive) but it is a bedroom synth-layering masterpiece
if anything, The Charm... has an even more astonishing sound-world, with a sort of bizarro alt-country thrown in amongst the twinkling, meshing anti-pop
OTM, those are def my two favorite MF records for similar reasons, followed closely by Distortion, which is I think a perfect execution of its concept (Stephin Merritt songs + the sonic palette of Psychocandy)

He has said that he may be on the autism spectrum.[29][30]

Lots of people say this - about themselves and others.

It may be wise to be cautious and circumspect in applying these terms to people when full diagnoses are not available.

idk, cinical diagnostic criteria for most spectrum disorders were not available until very recently, so lots of adults who showed obvious spectrum traits as children went undiagnosed. if there are adults who believe they fit the profile & it helps explain challenges they have faced or continue to face & self-identify as being on the spectrum, but have little incentive to seek a formal diagnosis, then there's no need to be overly circumspect in applying these terms imo.

Finding 50 Song Memoir to be grand fun

Yeah, I kind of love it now. Particularly the stretch from Hustle 76 to Dreaming in Tetris, which is almost 100% solid, but there some winners on either side of that too.

"'69: Judy Garland" is great; I play it for my Gay Life & Culture class when I cover Stonewall.

Had a blast seeing them in Amsterdam yesterday. Claudia isn't there for this tour and that did feel like a gap on stage but the instrumentation was excellent nevertheless. They played 30 songs in one and a half hour (obviously including several short songs from Quickies, but most of their songs aren't long anyway), I was pleasantly surprised with some excellent picks from Holiday: Desert Island, The Flowers She Sent & The Flowers She Said She Sent; Take Ecstasy With Me - so good!

Someone posted their first show from 1990 recently (as well as another from 1990 on their channel)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn8OrCNapZQ

Wow, thanks!! Other early live TMF videos from that same uploader:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvRRPNhkKo4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0hcyZ0ep0w

And there's even a little TMF after this Swirlies show (the link brings you right to the TMF stuff):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-N73NEMlAc

So in addition to Stephin, Claudia and Sam, I think that's Johny Blood on tuba (only in the "first show" video), Nell Beram on guitar, and Phylene Amuso on bass.

Ah that last video (Swirlies) should've started at 38:58 - so just go to that time for the TMF content.

!!!

EXCITING NEWS! In celebration of the 25th anniversary of 69 Love Songs, we'll be doing a limited run of shows next year in which we will perform all 69 songs in order over 2-night residencies in March-April 2024.

Sign up for the presale now: https://t.co/IDdshJvOVQ pic.twitter.com/yFBO1n99v0

— The Magnetic Fields (@TheMagFields) June 22, 2023

Sadly no LD Beghtol, who died in 2020. Did they ever say what happened, Covid or something else?

Never saw cause of death spelled out

https://www.chickfactor.com/rip-ld-beghtol-splendid-butterfly/