The Magnetic Fields: Classic or Dud?

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)