The Magnetic Fields - Love at the Bottom of the Sea

Back on Merge! What's that story? Album on 3/6, tour too.

"Andrew in Drag":

http://soundcloud.com/mergerecords/the-magnetic-fields-andrew-in

Merritt being a zero sum sort of dude, my guess is that he had a limited contract with Nonesuch, and that given the state of things he determined he could make more money on Merge. Which of course has upped its distro/promo capabilities over the past several years.

Track Listing:

1.God Wants Us to Wait
2.Andrew in Drag
3.Your Girlfriend's Face
4.Born for Love
5.I'd Go Anywhere with Hugh
6.Infatuation (with your gyration)
7.Only Boy in Town
8.The Machine in Your Hand
9.Goin' Back to the Country
10.I've Run Away to Join the Fairies
11.The Horrible Party
12.My Husband's Pied a Terre
13.I Don't Link Your Tone
14.Quick!
15.All She Cares About Is Mariachi

In the MF documentary, Claudia said (of course) that Nonesuch was way more hands-on with the making of the records than Merge, and it's likely Stephin was far from thrilled with that.

I skipped the last record and am lukewarm to "Distortion" but the lead single has me excited again!

last one was halfassed but i loved distortion. "andrew in drag" is almost as funnypoignant as "the nun's litany".

i love the song titles

p sure 13 shd be "I Don't Like Your Tone"

Love the new song.

Realism was probably the first time I was really disappointed with a Magnetic Fields album, hoping this one is a lot better.

the moment he walked on stage
my tail began to wag
wag like a little weiner dog
for andrew in drag

Psyched for this.

So obsessed with 'Andrew in Drag.' And not just because my husband Andrew is immortalized in his HS yearbook in drag, though that helped make it accessible. I didn't really get into anything before or after 69 Love Songs - I'm *that* kind of fan - but this energizes me: "Love At The Bottom Of The Sea will feature the blend of acoustic and synthesized instruments that the band was known for in the 90's."

i was so underrated

Gimme a couple songs to start with? I did try, but it didn't catch me.

I was a real mixed bag but I Thought You Were My Boyfrind, I Don't Believe You and It's Only Time are all incredible songs, up there with his best.

Isn't "If There's Such a Thing as Love" on that too? Great song.

also "i don't love you anymore" ("...because i am a gentleman / think of me as just your fan / who remembers every dress you ever wore") and the kinda lol "i wish i had an evil twin" ("running round doing people in").

Yeah, definitely a mixed bag, but about half of it is pretty great. I Thought You Were My Boyfriend is probably the biggest highlight.

So excited for the new album based on Andrew in Drag. Almost sounds like it could've come from Wasps' Nests.

i disliked the last album and despised 'distortion' but don't mind this at all

Alright, I liked those songs! Will have to pick up i.

& thank you! Sometimes I just need a starting point with which to approach an album.

Just listening through I right now, there is just too much filler for a fourteen track album. He could get away with it on 69 Love Songs but songs like I'm Tongue-Tied, In a Operetta and I Was Born are just too throwaway. I think Distortion might not have the same highs (okay Three Way is amazing) but it's much more consistent.

Sometimes I forget just how amazing this band is.

I'm really tempted to see them but they are playing the worst, most annoying venue in Toronto - far away and on the waterfront, but not at a time of the year when it'll be very warm, so in general it will just be miserable. Blegh. Wish I'd caught one of those 'all 69 Love Songs' shows!

songs like I'm Tongue-Tied, In a Operetta and I Was Born are just too throwaway.

I'm a defender of this album but I have to concede this. And I didn't like Distortion at all (or the recent, mostly unlistenable b-side collection) but the highs on i are, as Kitchen says, up there with his best. I really, really love "I Looked All Over Town," and yes, "I Don't Believe You" and "I Don't Really Love You Anymore" are terrific.

will stand by distortion to my grave but i was half-lame and whatever the last one was = straight garbage. i bought that last one and i cant even remember what it was called.

The last one wasn't so much garbage as it was dull, a much worse musical crime. Garbage is easy to dismiss, dull sometimes means it needs more listens but usually it just wastes one's time.

Along with Distortion and the 2004 album i, Realism was also recorded without the use of synthesizers, completing the band's "no-synth trilogy".[

Maybe this is why they've been sort of dull, there hasn't been a synth on a Magnetic Fields song since 1999's 69 Love Songs!

The Christmas song on the last record was great.

Yeah I liked that, but I'm a sucker for Christmas songs.

OK, going to NY show on April 3.... single seats left.

Might make it to see them for the first time ever anywhere (for me) in Brighton on April 24. Tender Trap supporting is a sweet one.

NYC, 3/8:

Upstairs at the Square is a series which pairs musicians and writers for an evening of music and words. Stephin will appear with the brilliant Emma Straub. Many fans of The Magnetic Fields will recognize her smiling face from the merch booth. Stephin will sing some songs, Emma will read from her short story collection, Other People We Married, and they will both be interviewed live on stage by Katherine Lanpher. The event is on Thursday, March 8th, at 7pm at Barnes & Noble Union Square. It is free and open to the public.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/upstairs-at-the-square/index.asp

I bought a Toronto show ticket! Turns out I can skip Ticketmaster service charges by using my phone, so, yay! General Admission, can't imagine what their crowd would be like..

Andrew in Drag video is pretty great:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2012/02/02/146241663/first-watch-the-magnetic-fields-andrew-in-drag

Second NYC date added

haven't heard this yet, but "andrew in drag" is <3<3<3<3<3<3 (a very long row of mice)

Stephin rejects the identity of a "pocket bear"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/feb/08/magnetic-fields-stephin-merritt

I don't rate Realism that high either, but "You Must Be Out Of Your Mind" is top-tier MF. And Distortion is their best record since Get Lost.

Streaming on NPR's website:

http://www.npr.org/2012/02/26/147195131/first-listen-the-magnetic-fields-love-at-the-bottom-of-the-sea/

whoa

Disappointed that "infatuation (with your gyration)" doesn't really live up to the awesomeness of its title.

Interesting listen. The opening phrase of the npr link "Stephin Merritt loves self-explanatorily titled concept albums," sets my teeth on edge.

so go ahead and hire saatchi & saatchi
to advertise the sausage in your pants
but all she cares about is mariachi
and all she ever wants to do is dance

Very disappointing on first listen. I know it's kind of pointless to expect their sound to evolve, but this could've easily been recorded 15 years ago. Also, I did not pay much attention to the lyrics but the melodies are definitely sub par, like the throwaway tracks from "69 love songs".

Also, all those "clever" rhymes are starting to become annoying.

Starting to?

I think you're like a cup of coffee
One day you're hot, then you turn cold and black.
Just like the song you loved; so Gothy,
More striking than a heart attack.

I just made that up. I am a genius.

not on the evidence

Yeah, sorry, that's awful.

most of these songs are pretty funny.

i'm pretty into "Quick!" right now

sad that i won't see the mag fields on this tour, even though i did see them on the Realism tour not so long ago. i've only seen them twice in the 12 years i've been a fan! (partly because the two cities i've lived in are cities they hardly ever visit. yaay canada...), but have tried to see them several times, with various degrees of foiling of plans. kind of weird.

xpost Dude, that was clearly not serious. In fact, it was intentionally particularly awful, never mind that I could never be as witty as Merritt. But I do think his wit hasn't evolved, terribly, and I do find myself annoyed rather than entertained by it more often.

"Andrew In Drag" is the standout track for me, easily. It's almost as if SM was thinking, "Alright, they want something in the old style, I'll give it to them. They'll love it, and then I'LL HATE THEM FOR IT."

OK on first listen, it'll have to settle.

this could've easily been recorded 15 years ago

This is SO not a problem for me.

on first listen this is better than any of the other post-69 albums

I've got a real soft spot for Distortion, but this is at least a huge improvement over Realism. I feel like it's the least overtly melancholy thing they've done, which is maybe good and bad: the last album was a bit too dirge-y, but at the same time there's nothing here I would really describe as achingly beautiful.

Hard to tell how I feel about "Andrew in Drag" in the context of the album after listening to it on its own so many times over the past month. It might be the best track, but I don't think it's that much of a standout or more "old style" than the other songs. "Quick!" is a big highlight for me too.

This is disappointing. I really wanted to love this, but after two listens, nothing's sticking. I think Claudia's vocals are bugging me in a way they never have before - why is she ENUNCIATING everything so much?? Has she always done this and I haven't noticed? I also think the writing on this one is more 'cute' and self-consciously 'clever' MF than profound / heartbreaking / uproarious MF, if that makes sense. A lot of these tunes ("The Machine In Your Hand," "God Wants Us To Wait") sound like stuff Fountains of Wayne left off their b-sides collection. Sigh.

And the oft-cited highlight "Quick!" sounds like They Might Be Giants.

self-consciously 'clever' vs profound / heartbreaking:

SM is a gay man in his late 40s, hence likely to consider the topic of romantic love more of a joke than ever.

Fair enough, but he used to approach such subjects with wit, cynicism and heart. This record is an unlikely bummer.

Hmm just heard/saw "Andrew in Drag". Sorry, but it just sounds like hack work, pretty uninspired, like he wrote some lyrics and made the most boring backing track ever and sang them to it. Clearly he couldn't think of a decent chorus but probably would've been better off leaving it instrumental instead of singing "draaaaaaaaaaag". Cos as it is, it is a drag. Everything about this song is detached, like the music has nothing to do with the lyrics and the verses have nothing to do with the chorus and the only reason to like it is the pandering nature of the material. Ugh.

Haven't listened to the rest, not sure if I really want to. Tho, I did really like "Realism" for a minute, mostly because of the wonderful arrangements.

You better not listen to the rest - "Andrew In Drag" is probably the best song on it by several light years. I agree about the chorus. Whole thing seems limp.

“What I was trying to get away from was the synthesizer as a glorified electric organ, although I like electric organs,” Merritt says. “And now we have synths that don’t imitate keyboards – that don’t even have keyboards. You can’t tell them what note to play, and you wouldn’t want to bother because they’d be ridiculously inefficient at doing that. You tell them how to behave. The area of your thumb pad over the circuit determines the pitch. It’s so uncontrollable that you’d never try to play a scale. You get screechy and staticky noises.”

He mentions one more antique synth module, Buchla’s Source of Uncertainty, which resembles the console of a 1960s sci-fi starship if it were piloted by a telephone switchboard operator. “It allows you to adjust the randomness with the voltage. It’s a lot of fun but you can’t play a single note on it … Traditionally in pop music there’s two kinds of instruments: drums and ‘other.’ The drums do unpitched and not particularly focused sound, and everything else is supposed to have a tone you can identify easily. So on this album we’ve added a category, the unpitched electronic sound; they’re right up there in the foreground, buzzing away, confusing you. It’s analogous to the way we used feedback on Distortion: I’ve taken my Jesus & Mary Chain admiration into a different context.”

http://www.salon.com/2012/03/05/the_return_of_indie_pops_favorite_crank/

really wish this band, which used to be one of my faves, hasn't sucked so badly for the last 13+ years :(

hate ILM, check.

cheque please

i have half-a-feeling that the musicals obey certain standards of 'good music' than most of the post-69 stuff does

more than, that is

it took me until i'd listened a couple times to notice that the chorus to andrew in drag wasn't:

andrew in draaaaaaag
andrew in drag
andrew in draaaaaaag

but:

andrew in draaaaaaag
andrew in drag
andrew in draaaaaaag
yeah.

blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah

andrew in draaaaaaaaaaag

What a great song! /sarcasm

#merrittowned

i think previous merritt stuff is more often to admit a belief that i. we ought to derive emotional substance from popular songs, ii. that we might really learn something about ourselves from them

the post-69 stuff seems like an emptying-out (almost an obsessive one) of these ideas; there's just the idea that iii. we might admire the craft of the popular song

one of the things that emerges when you listen to the pre-69 stuff now is a sort of commitment to camp that seemed less obvious before he'd made records like the last few

that said as a non-gay man under 40 i'm not certain i have much weight to pronounce on this

x-post: yes, all songs with a series of words ... followed by a titular phrase ... in which syllables are stretched ... are pretty bad

ha, the interview morbs linked has carl wilson phrasing a lot of that less awkwardly:

The newer songs are not so much diminished in emotion as higher in specificity, with fewer gaps for the listener to project into psychologically. To go on a limb, it might partly relate to cultural changes (along with the settling effect of age) that make it more comfortable for Merritt to write unambiguously from a gay perspective and with a gay sensibility, rather than the way he once navigated through the indie-rock ghetto with a slippery-pronouned, allusive and elusive queerness that was very 1990s in affect.

If Merritt is currently writing less like some amalgam of Morrissey, Cole Porter and Hank Williams and more like a salon wit such as Noel Coward, there’s an ease there that he has earned.

Merritt was sunk imo by a distracting shift to formalism. Now, like what happened to Elvis Costello, he's reached the age where he's his own mode: I'm going to write a country song! I'm going to write a punk song! I'm going to write a Magnetic Fields song! Chinese opera, no-synths, (high) concept albums - it's all good ... enough.

^^^

who's at the top of the game for 10+ years in music? almost nobody.

me

anyway, what, are we just supposed to respectfully smile and politely not offer our opinions once someone has hit a certain age?

what's this crazy ol' message board for then?

man I can dig ppl not liking newer mag fields as much as older stuff or whatever but when people get up on "used to be great, sucks now" stuff it's just plain old poseurdom - he's still a good lyricist, the stuff's still clever, he still writes a good melody, the vibe's a little less claustrophobic is all

i don't think he's changed, i think we've changed

I just read the Carl Wilson story -- it's quite good.

man I can dig ppl not liking newer mag fields as much as older stuff or whatever but when people get up on "used to be great, sucks now" stuff it's just plain old poseurdom - he's still a good lyricist, the stuff's still clever, he still writes a good melody, the vibe's a little less claustrophobic is all

― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, March 8, 2012 8:07 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i liked the old, claustrophobic vibe! and i liked the old cheapo-sounding synths. i'm not a poseur. YOU'RE a poseur.

I don't understand "claustrophobic." Can you explain?

i haven't heard anything from him in ages that had that magical pixie dust that first drew me in, songs like 'san diego zoo' or '100,000 fireflies,' or anything on 'charm of the highway strip.' i feel like this new stuff is like... his vegas period or something.

owen otm. i was a MF obsessive for most of high school and then kind of fell off after 'i' - don't think it's that he sucks now (from what i've heard of the recent stuff he's switched his sound up here and there but nothing strikes me as outright terrible) as that i'm personally just not that invested in the idea of listening to new MF output

the "no synths" thing put me off too admittedly

'get lost' was the first album of his i heard and before the clever lyrics what drew me to it was how...queasy it sounded

i guess i always thought the lyrics were yes, clever, and usually quite poignant, but i find all the recent stuff so like... 'quippy.' i guess that's what carl dubz is getting at up there, and i respect that point of view, but it doesnt grab me the same way.

i liked the old, claustrophobic vibe! and i liked the old cheapo-sounding synths. i'm not a poseur. YOU'RE a poseur.

<3 s1ocki but you know what I mean! dude is still a great lyricist! dude still writes a good tune! so it's cool if the way he presents his shit doesn't work for somebody but "now he's terrible" is just false - if you loved Highway Strip but honestly think the writing's gone totally down the tubes by the time we get to "Andrew in Drag"...well...I don't think one can really build a coherent case to defend such a claim

it's interesting that the massive difference in affect basically comes from switching from one mode of being arch to another

although it's more like 'switching from one recognisable mode of being arch about the emotional content of the pop song to a series of proliferating modes of being arch about the pop song, the latter becoming over time markedly less interested in eliciting an emotional reaction', which okay never mind that's a pretty big change

i might just still be mad about the real instruments thing tbh

i think it might just be an increase in net arch-ness.

I'm not sure how you gauge a proliferate mode of arch craftsmanship's eliciting of an emotional reaction.

net arch-ness

aka Mr. Fantastic

number of smilies or frownies i type as i listen

number of smilies or frownies i type as i listen

this is insightful imo - I think possibly that our ability to enjoy an artist like Merritt is hit hard by the fact that we're all at our laptops/terminals all the time now, whereas when the work that made his name was new, the likelihood that we were listening to it in a less distracted environment was higher. listening while driving's one thing, but typing/reading while listening to an artist whose work hinges on engagement with the lyrics & some pretty interesting interplay between those lyrics and a) the musical tropes in play and b) the production tropes in play...imo that's bound to cause that kind of music to seem less successful, just because it's banking on an attention span that isn't really part of many people's daily reality any more

That sounds right, aero, but Merritt now is doomed not to woo the unwooed again; his listeners, for better or worse, have followed him since 69LS at least. They're going to listen closely whether they're on laptop speakers or out of a home stereo system.

this is insightful imo - I think possibly that our ability to enjoy an artist like Merritt is hit hard by the fact that we're all at our laptops/terminals all the time now, whereas when the work that made his name was new, the likelihood that we were listening to it in a less distracted environment was higher. listening while driving's one thing, but typing/reading while listening to an artist whose work hinges on engagement with the lyrics & some pretty interesting interplay between those lyrics and a) the musical tropes in play and b) the production tropes in play...imo that's bound to cause that kind of music to seem less successful, just because it's banking on an attention span that isn't really part of many people's daily reality any more

― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, March 8, 2012 8:55 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this could be true.

i remember my first merritt experience: "san diego zoo" on an actual mix TAPE
then i bought the CD of wasps' nests and listened to it a 1000 times on my shitty boombox during an angsty period, loved it, tracked down more
69 love songs: tapes a friend brought when he visited me when i was living in paris. we listened to those tapes in an even shittier boombox in an even shittier 19e arrondisement apartment.

i think i got sort of sick of him after that, after all those love songs. but the truth is no experience of his music, as far as i'm concerned, has been so tactile or intimate. so maybe it is just me.

i really did like those synths tho. dude beat chillwave to the punch by about 15 years.

dude beat chillwave to the punch by about 15 years.

can't be denied. and the world has kind of caught up to him; he's less of an anomaly, less a strange prophet of an alternate musical reality.

making him more of a ...

I dunno, man. I thought his early work was ... inspired? It had some impetus beyond duty, at least. The later stuff, 69 and beyond, has always felt like an exercise to me. Maybe he should do another 6ths record after he finds some more suitable vectors for his songs, which as aero points out, are not "bad," per se. Just ... off.

Come to think of it, coincidental or not, I haven't been a real fan since Claudia became an overt co-conspirator/collaborator.

I really didn't 'get it' til 69LS, and have found the earlier stuff mystifyingly worshipped by... those who do that. (And I went to tons of shows 1995-99.) Also I think his best joke could be that it's ALWAYS been ALL quips, even the "heartbreaking" stuff.

A friend once, I think accurately, described Claudia as "the person without whom TMF would still be playing in a basement in Cambridge."

That's absolutely true about Claudia. She gets him off his ass.

Where we differ, Morbs, is 69 Songs is where he lost me, and whatever it was I liked about the MFs before that - on record, and in clubs, and basements, for that matter, with Claudia playing awkward drums as opposed to awkward piano - sort of lessened. And this was before the massive fame and backlash, too. I remember getting advances of the discs and just not digging it, especially after "Wasps Nest," which is my favorite Merritt. Dunno what happened, but I don't think it was me. I think Merritt just figured out how to do what he wanted to do, and that happened to be not like the first few records.

wasps nests def still my fave.

no big complaints w/ Wasps' Nests, but my reaction was invariably that SM should be singing.

that is where we part ways.

CG is good for the Magnetic Fields but she shouldn't be singing. Frankly, her voice is a total mess (and not in a good way like Merritt's). The thing is, even Merritt at his hasn't aged well. And it's not necessarily his fault. Blame it perhaps on all that third-rate 'precious' indie of the 00s.

*Merritt at his best

not a very populist attitude toward vocals imho

you should write cryptic crossword puzzles

this thread makes me want to lecture people about positivity, which is not where one usually gets with stephin merritt

can understand why people who began to be turned off by the shift in style(s) and tone on 69 love songs might not like the recent albums. can't imagine why people who view 69LS as his single most accomplished work (me, for instance) wouldn't continue to find things worth loving in his subsequent output.

i came in circa '92, w superchunk's cover of "100,000 fireflies" leading me to the "long vermont roads" and house of tomorrow EPs, the wonderful "heaven in a black leather jacket" single by the 6ths, and eventually to the full albums. i dug the emotional directness and rinky-dink intimacy of the early stuff, but arch as they may be, 69LS tracks like "busby berkeley dreams" and (yeah) "papa was a rodeo" really cut me deep. "when my boy walks down the street" ranks up there with "heaven in a black leather jacket" among the most euphorically uplifting things he's ever written. i guess the point i'm making is that his emerging interest in formalist songcraft isn't necessarily/directly tied to the diminishing emotional returns, imo.

am I the only person whose favorite MF album is Get Lost? I like lyrics whose lows seem deeply felt; "All the Desperate Things You Made Me Do" will resonate with me forever, and so will "All the Umbrellas In London."

and "You and Me and the Moon" may be his best moon song

Best MF lp = Highway Strip.

I wonder if anybody's pitched the idea to him of an album of all songs with swearing in them & calling it "MotherFucker" and having the cover art play up the 2x MF there

this seems like the sort of thing that would appeal to him as a project

all the umbrellas in london is one of my fave, mainly for ~sentimental reasons~

and "You and Me and the Moon" may be his best moon song

"Get Lost" may be his "best" album. I listen to it as much as "Holiday" and "Charm," at least.

yeah i can go with get lost being the best. that or 69 love songs. save a secret for the moon, love is lighter than the air and with whom to dance are my faves.

My favourite track on Get Lost is "Smoke and Mirrors". The line "Someone else's rain comes down, but no rain can touch me now" which on the surface expresses the exact opposite of "Umbrellas," conveys a much more tragic sentiment.

I have fond memories of talking w/ a friend about Sal Mineo before a WFMU benefit, then Stephin played solo most of the (as yet unreleased) second 6ths album songs including "Movie Star" and our jaws dropped at the Mineo line.

those two deeply felt songs are the ones that go "if i make it through the night / it'll be alright / it'll make a good song" and "i dedicate this song to you / for the desperate things you made me do", right

i have trouble with the idea that stuff in merritt's ouevre is deeply felt and not constructed to be deeply feelable (lol new criticism)

like i remember being desperately impressed with the line in desperate things that's something like 'time provides the rope / our love will tie the slipknot / and i / will be the chair you kick away'. but the feeling entirely stems from the relation of merritt's baritone deadpanning its way thro something histrionic. -- if someone tried to put that across directly it'd be kind of absurd. this is so absolutely key to the three albums preceding 69 i think -- you need distancing contexts to get away with

the flowers she sent
and the flowers she said she sent
are all equally dead
"you don't care anymore," she said

i think the thing that those records do which is kind of amazing is that they make this weird little maze the listener has to navigate to get to 'real feeling' seem like a straight corridor

(also why the cultural context of '90s indie' is sort of interesting for them, w/r/t vexed relationship to 'earnestness')

yeah but in "desperate" you have a line like "you don't even like anything you like" which seems so unfeigned and direct. you're right about the waving-arms formality of the opening trope for sure don't get me wrong though

I had forgotten that line but have been accused with those very words IRL

(and it wasn't even an ILXor)

the feeling entirely stems from the relation of merritt's baritone deadpanning its way thro something histrionic

We don't spend nearly enough time discussing how shrewdly Merritt deploys his voice.

The instruction to all the guest singers on the 6ths records was "sing more bored."

(itt i write a thesis on the magnetic fields)

'desperate things', though, spins immediately out from that line, which seems to commit the speaker to, you know, meaning something: " / or the people you know / and all your reasons to stay alive / died," with a very deliberate caesura, by which point we're in a whole different world, rhetorically - i think you're right, though - there are lots of line-by-line points where merritt flirts w/ different levels of address, goes for directness

69 is this but on a much bigger structural level - w/ the different singers deployed very clevely, too - so there's constant shifting between i. 'the levels of artifice in this song are incidental to a direct expression on the narrator's part' ii. 'the narrator of this song gestures at & acknowledges the artifice in this song in order to secure some line of access to the affective content' iii. 'the narrator of this song highlights the artifice to signpost how evacuated of affective content this song is'

where the three merritt-sung records before it are almost totally in (ii), and most of his output since under whatever name has spent more and more time in (iii). i think it's interesting that a lot of people (including ha ha me on the 'realism' thread) take this as a betrayal or a throwing-up of hands on merritt's part. i never got to the back half of 'realism', which i note today has two songs ('better things' and 'the dada polka') which seem to immediately address this. -- 'better things' is a great example of merritt being shrewd abt his voice, because it's written so that his voice reaches the end of its tether at exactly the right place.

-

morbs were they quoting the magnetic fields at the time or

That essay needs an addendum that notes that "69 Love Songs" is often annoying.

...like most great art.

thomp: no!

"sing more bored": Bressonian

Yeah, gotta agree w Morbius. Words can be clever and witty removed and still have tremendous emotional impact. The wit and distance, when especially pronounced in the best MF works, comes across to me more as a defense mechanism. In a perverse way it highlights the feelings, that it is trying so hard to avoid or parody. That combined with great songcraft and you can have a song that is on the surface a total parody of love songs really evoke an emotional response that the best love songs do.

~sigh~

I'm probably biased tho, I discovered MF & The 6ths alongside my 1st love, so I may be reading more emotions into those songs than others.

well, the ability of a song to provoke an emotional response is not the same as the song having feelings of its own, right? i'd say that merritt often uses things like irony, wit, absurdity and visible artifice as part of a rather sly emotion-provoking strategy. these distancing devices might seem to put us (as listeners) at a remove from the feelings described in the songs, but they also suggest that the "narrator" is attempting to insulate him/herself from emotional pain, is lying or in denial. in doing so, they throw the poignancy of the emotional situation into high relief.

songs do not have feelings. See SM quote about "sincerity in music vs sincerity in cooking"

I don't really understand the concept of artifice that people always bring up w Magnetic Fields. If it means drawing attention to songwriting conventions and subverting them, that seems more like being charming or cute than anything.

i was talking about the tension, in pop music that attempts to evoke an emotional response by describing an emotional situation, between the feelings aroused in us if the attempt is successful and our awareness of the mechanisms by which the effect is achieved. the latter is our awareness of the songwriter's "artifice": the means by which an emotionally neutral contrivance can be made to simulate and/or provoke human emotion. merritt, i think, deliberately draws a lot of attention to the artifice of his songs.

I wonder how much of that would be obvious to people without interviews.

I have fond memories of talking w/ a friend about Sal Mineo before a WFMU benefit, then Stephin played solo most of the (as yet unreleased) second 6ths album songs including "Movie Star" and our jaws dropped at the Mineo line.

i remember hearing leaked mp3s of these live perfs and thinking they were better than what ended up being the recorded versions on H&T

The question I've always had is how the Pet Shop Boys have been so capable of perfectly conveying that mix of sincerity, irony, intelligence, emotion, ennui and of course wit, and yet Merritt (to these ears) has been so hit or miss, although I would describe him much the same way I would the PSBs. It could possibly be that the PSBs have always seen themselves as a dance band, whereas Merritt would likely never deign claim that, and indeed would probably bristle at the suggestion. Also, part of it may be Merritt's love of formalism (is it a crutch?), behind which he can hide his emotions, or at least disguise them through a filter/puppet vocalist/concept, etc.

Imo, the formalism is a good pomo way to frame it all.

But he's clearly in love with classical emotive pop song structure, and regardless of clever lyrics, his more successful works are telling an emotional story through the music. The tension doesn't need to be through lyric-driven narratives.

the PSB in love with formalism too.

The difference b/w them is aural. The Boys have wanted hits; being a pop act -- people thinking of them as a pop act -- is essential to them, therefore they hire producers to apply the gloss, heft, and beats.

Yeah, the PSBs always start with the idea that their music is meant to be popular, which is what makes them mildly subversive. And what makes Merritt mildly insufferable.

oh he wants hits too he just can't bear the thought of failing in public. this is a disease that affects many people who work the indie side of the street imo

I don't think he wants hits the way the PSBs do. Because the PSBs realize they can get hits whereas Merritt must recognize he cannot. Therefore I can't imagine it plays a prominent role in his songwriting. Because of he wants hits, I have a few good ideas that would probably help him along toward that goal.

strongly disagree that merritt's work is "hit or miss" in conveying his trademark "mix of sincerity, irony, intelligence, emotion, ennui and of course wit" relative to PSB's, who i've never loved anywhere near so much. the main difference i hear between the two has to do with their orientation to mainstream pop and dance music; i.e., it's more a matter of musical aesthetics than success in conveying that particular POV.

The main difference I hear is that I like nearly everything by the PSBs, even the stuff I don't like that much, and only like about 50% of Merritt's output. Ergo, hit or miss, afaic. So I think we're just talking preference at this point.

yeah, ok

I wonder how much of that would be obvious to people without interviews.

― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Saturday, March 10, 2012 11:59 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, considering that i've never read an interview w the guy...

but cmon youve read *about* them

or "I don't belieeeee-eve you..."

o sure, cultural osmosis, and i'm a fan: one hears things. but i think that the use of deliberate artifice in merritt's songwriting is p obvious, especially as reflected in his characters' use of irony and artifice to distance themselves from pain.

Re: Merritt vs Pet Shop Boys, Merritt has always been a more ambitious and imo better lyricist than Tennant (though both are great). But their goals are different, I think. In Tennant's lyrics, that mix of sincerity, irony, emotion, etc. never stand out too much. You need not only to pay attention but also interpret them along what's going on with the music. Merritt is much more direct.

...he likes to show off.

i remember hearing leaked mp3s of these live perfs and thinking they were better than what ended up being the recorded versions on H&T

YSI

anyone seen the tour? going tonight

I flaked on it because I am an antisocial and lazy loser. Gave my ticket to friend of a friend though and they had a lot of fun! So.. Karma: 1; Lex's Social Life: 0.

Have a ticket to see them in May; first time I'll have been in a country that they're touring. Trying to talk down my expectations - still, crossing fingers for some Charm.../The Wayward Bus material.

pretty good for a large-scale show, but I have to admit the two best-executed songs mighta been "Fear of Trains" and "Boa Constrictor" (Shirley lead voc on both).

i was there last night too! i had to leave early b/c my friend got sick -- do you happen to remember what their last few songs were?

heh, tough to put in order... a Gothic Archies thing for Lemony Snicket... "Time Enough for Rocking" was near the end too. "It's Only Time"?

"Quick!" came fairly late too.

thanks!

'quick' sounds vaguely familiar, and i definitely didn't hear 'it's only time'

Gorgeous sonics in an old church, though the band seemed slightly subdued from it being the last show on the tour. The Shirley-led "Fear of Trains" was probably the best version of that song I've heard (though still my least favourite Charm... track by far); great cello work from Sam on a Claudia-led "Swinging London" and "Smile! No One Cares How You Feel".