The Magnetic Fields: Classic or Dud?

>>> "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