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.

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".