The Magnetic Fields: Classic or Dud?

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)