The Magnetic Fields: Classic or Dud?

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?