Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Some won't like it, but, this is a great album...., 17 Jan 2008
This album has has Jesus & Mary Chain comarisons left right and centre, but, for me, it's much more than that. The difference being that early JAMC wrote punk-pop songs, then immersed then in screeching feedback.
This album employs a similar tactic, but, the feedback is soft focus, recalling My Bloody Valentine, or even Slowdive as much as the JAMC.
The production is nearer that of early Magnetic Fields albums such as 'Distant Plastic Trees', but with soft voices over loud-ish music. Despite that, it is a POP! (with big letters - POP as in great catchy songs written from the heart, as opposed to X Factor) album. The more poppy it gets, the better it gets!!! 'Too Drunk To Dream' is Merritt at his best, pondering his own broken heart, along with one he lost, or can't have, and concluding that the only way to get rid of the pain is to get completely wasted. We've all been there. The typical Merritt themes are the same as ever - after over a dcade, would anyone expect otherwise...
'California Girls' sounds saccarine sweet, but, is a dig at a certin type of girl...
I could go through this album song by song...but, instead, I'll say that this is a brilliant album....if you're already familiar with The Magnetic Fields, this is essential. If not, get '69 Love Songs' first, then get this album...
|
|
|
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Positive Feedback, 24 Jan 2008
To those of you familiar with the Handicapping system in horseracing, it is as if the music industry's powers-that-be have issued Messrs Merritt et al with an ultimatum regarding Distortion. Upon hearing this remarkable aural tapestry they would appear to have ensured that the Fields would drench every song with feedback in order to take away some of the listener's glee & create a level playing field for those less talented (mostly everyone else). Upon first listen I suspected that they had suceeded, until the melodies burst through the cracks like Edelweiss and led me to, unwittingly, turn a deaf ear.
|
|
|
3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fuzzy Logic, 17 Jan 2008
The Magnetic Fields' 2004 album, i, may have been pretty good, but no one seemed to care because it wasn't 69 Love Songs. Such is the weight of expectation and excitement created by that three-disc pop masterpiece that Stephin Merritt may as well have packed up and gone home right there in 2001. Instead, he has stubbornly hung around, crafted some bizarre, unlikely music, and now: this.
Distortion sells itself, apparently, on the basis of being inspired by The Jesus and Mary Chain's Psychocandy. What the albums have in common is that the songs may be inherently poppy but are seen through a haze of instrumental distortion. Given, however, that co-vocalist Claudia Gonson has one of the sweetest voices around (here sounding more uncannily like the late lamented Kirsty MacColl than ever) and Merritt himself never exactly growls, the idea is doomed almost from the start. The distortion sounds like exactly like what it is: a gimmick stuck on in an effort to work up some listener enthusiasm for another album sent shivering into the world under the shadow of former glories. The thin, demo-quality production that is one of the Fields' persistent characteristics has never sounded so faded and inappropriate.
Dump the central conceit of the album, however, and at least you're left with some good songs. Especially noteworthy are "Til The Bitter End", which marries an electropop feel to a gorgeous, serpentining melody and "I'll Dream Alone", which has a little of the grandeur of the Walker Brothers. "Courtesans" - a yearning, undeveloped ballad that closes the album - comes close to profiting from the application of fuzz, but by this point the experiment is so bankrupt that it is too late to make a difference. When Merritt is capable of such striking melodies it is just frustrating to hear them wasted.
This isn't a grit-your-teeth, fans-only album like Merritt's solo Showtunes was, but it's nevertheless a worrying sign of decline. It's difficult not to feel that the baton of avant pop master has now conclusively passed from Merritt to Sufjan Stevens. New listeners skip back in the catalogue for more persuasive demonstrations of Merritt's songwriting: The Charm of the Highway Strip is pretty good if you feel that 69 love songs is too many.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
~ The Magnetic Fields
by L.D. Beghtol
~ The Magnetic Fields
~ British Sea Power
~ The Magnetic Fields
