Magnetic Fields

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This is supposed to be the Magnetic Fields rock and roll album, genuine rock and roll, all filth and fury, with guitars instead of synths, and noise instead of delicate negations of erotic and romantic political etiquette. The title indicates both lyrical and musical intention, because it distorts his own work, distorts the usual gay/straight sex, and distorts audience expectations, in addition to using electronically distorted instruments, including feedback laden guitars, pianos modified electronically, and other mechanical or studio tricks to make instruments traditionally used for beauty match the ugliness of the lyrics.

Looking through that list, he distorts his own narrative. His previous work has been hopeful, joyous, and besotted with love. Even the anger of songs like Reno Dakota or the melancholy of songs like I Don't believe in the Sun had a self conscious irony and gentleness, a wit that made the earnestness of emotions so well constructed, that the listener got a feeling, that through heart break, language would keep Merritt safe, well fed and with a warm place to shit. This album, though as verbally sophisticated as anything he has done, is mean.

Genuinely mean, cruel to the point of abuse—there is little that has that optimism. The second song on the album is actually meta-contextual about its distortion of optimism. Called California Girls, it is a refusal of the sunny cali-pop, from the Beach Boys to Hannah Montana, and beginning with dismissals of their sexual profligacy ("they breathe coke and they have affairs/with each passing rock star/they come on like squares/then come off like squirrels/I hate California Girls") and ends with the narrator killing them with a battle ax, "as the pavement whirls". No where else in the Merritt universe, is something so violent, so amusingly, satirically violent, exist. Throughout there are lines like "Get your crass little ass/out and don't make me cut you" (In Xavier Says) or "sober, life is a prison/shitfaced it is a blessing" (In Too Drunk To Dream) or "No blood ever drips when I widen your holes" (In Zombie Boy, a necrophilic fantasy rarely seen outside the darker corners of Goth fantasy.). The last song on the album, Courtesans, is an ode in favor of being a whore, because whores never feel, something he always seemed to be the chief indie proponent of.

The distortions continue, in the idea of normative sex—Merritt believes in love, sometimes monogamous, sometimes polyamourus, but his songs are about what happens when people realize they like each other, Andy Warhol said his art was about liking things, Stephin Merritt's art is about liking people. The distortion on this album, is that getting together seems to happen out of desperation, or exhaustion, or mutually assured destruction or co-dependence, rather then any real affection. The cryptic Xavier Says, seems to be about a crone and her beard, Mr. Mistletoe is the ultimate kill yourself on Christmas Anthem, Drive On Driver has an opening verse of total abandonment ("drive on driver, there's no one home/we've waited hours/She Didn't Come/It's such a pretty little ring/but it doesn't mean anything"), Too Drunk To Dream is 3 minutes in favour of functional alcoholism as an aid to memory loss, Till The Bitter End, is about being unable to leave a relationship despite it's total dysfunction, etc etc…Of the 13 songs on this album, only one couple who are actually living seem to be fond of each other, and that is because of age and ill health, they know nothing else will happen. He also distorts the music, it starts with surf guitars, if surf guitars were played under water, Old Fools begins with something close to industrial grinding, and there are other noise guitar tropes. Zombie Boy has them screaming, I'll Dream Alone has a sold 20 seconds of feedback, and the Bitter End adds another 10 besides that. The guitars almost bury everything on Drive On Driver, with the vocals of Shirley Simms being buried under not only rickety guitars but also a modified piano. The mix only sort of calms down, when she sings, clearly "take me to the airport/I need to be extremely far away."

That burying of the vocal work is perversely found throughout the album, a distortion of what Merritt is the most famous for, clear and lush production created in aid of clever word craft. This time, the word craft and the vocals are in opposition, and even when the words are audible, they are distorted, for example, there is a weird resonating, electronically manipulated quality to Merritt's voice in Too Drunk To Dream, which functions as a parody of his vocal style. That he includes no electronics, and no synths, adds to his efforts in doing something new here.

There are things that are very much the same. By discussions of weird sex, anger, and distorted guitar, I do not want people to assume that he has become GG Allin or Ministry (though that would be kind of awesome). The work that we come to Merritt for, verbal acuity, a Sondheim with, a sense of the theatrical, an instinct towards human manners in the bedroom, and a commitment to artifice are all very much here. The best example of this, is found on two places, first on the second verse of Till The Bitter End, which has a punch drunk relationship to language, the interior, actual, and near rhymes, the way the words fit together, has an exquisite, rococo power—it is as good or better then anything in The Follies or Company, and yes, that includes Not Getting Married. The verse in question:

Through time and tomb
And Tim and Tom
Through Pro and Con
And quid pro quos and qualm
Through tidal wave
And asteroid and bomb
Darling, I will love you
Till the bitter end…
And all the bitter moments till then.

Christ, it even has the last joke, the knife twist, that is so difficult to do, because lesser song writers (and Merritt is one of the, if not the, best song writer living today) would want to maintain there hand's too early, they want to be rewarded for their cleverness, whether they are clever or not.

The other great example of the best of Merritt is the Nun's Litany, about a sister, who wants to abandon all of her instincts towards holiness, to commit an encyclopedia of debauchery. It includes a whole chunk of action, from playing spin the bottle, "to being "a cobra dancer, with little Willy between my thighs", from being a dominatrix, to a porno starlet. It belongs in the same place as Decameron, or Rochester's Signor Dildo, or Byron's Don Juan, or Cole Porter's Everything Goes, or Auden's The Platonic Blow or The diaries of Joe Orton or Kander and Ebb's Cabaret but as a three minute pop song, because it is so in favour of the diversity of pleasure in it's lushness and the decadence of breaking apart all kinds of norms, is what Distortion should have been, and it really works better as an act of musical hall burlesque, it doesn't really belong on this album. There is an online radio program called Fair Game, which has a download of him playing the song only accompanied by a ukulele. Seek it out, because the song works much better then on this version.

The problem with the Nun's Litany is the central problem of the album. I am glad that Merritt is experimenting, that he is working outside the usual synth-pop oeuvre, and that he has grown to include a wide variety of emotions, and characters. It must be difficult to keep recording, after 69 Love Songs, which was so expansive. So I feel like a bit of an asshole, to call this a failed experiment, with one song that would be brilliant in another kind of recording, and half dozen exceptional lines. The lines are so good though, and the Nun's Litany is such a masterpiece, that I need to recommend it, with the disappointment.

Anthony Easton