filed under Music
#8. Stephin and Shirley Invite Us To Their Three-Way
2:56PM ON
12/09/2008
BY
Matthew Lawrence
(Between now and Friday I’m counting down the list of my 20 favorite albums of 2008. Obviously I didn’t hear every album that came out–although I did hear quite a lot of them–and obviously personal taste factors into this quite a bit, so I can tell you now that if you’re looking for gospel or metal recommendations this isn’t the list for you. But let’s not squabble, let’s just appreciate all the nice music that folks are making. I’ll be posting about two albums a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, from now until Friday. Although yes, now I’m behind. Damn it anyway.)
8.
The Magnetic Fields
Distortion
Nonesuch Records
“You smell like a sewer, but you don’t make a sound,” Stephin Merritt sings to his Zombie Boy on one of the more romantic tracks on Distortion, the first Magnetic Fields album in four years. “No blood ever drips when I widen your holes,” he continues, sounding as droll and lovelorn as ever.
Another highlight of the album is The Nun’s Litany, sung by country-ish vocalist Shirley Simms: “I want to be a dominatrix, which isn’t like me but I can dream. Learn S and M and all those gay tricks, and men would pay me to make them scream.”
My favorite track, though, is Drive On Driver, a song about a rich guy who can’t keep the girl he loves. “Take me to the airport,” he says (or she says, since Simms is singing.) “I need to be extremely far away.”
It’s good to see Merritt being funny again, after the comparatively dour i album. And Distortion is conceptually tighter, too. Every number is almost exactly three-minutes long, starting with one called Three-way! (Get it?) And each song is drenched in layer upon layer of Jesus and Mary Chain-style feedback, from gloomy Mr Mistletoe to the loopy Too Drunk To Dream. Courtesans, the ballad-y closer, is one of the prettiest-sounding songs they’ve ever done.
While this very wintry album isn’t perfect (I could have done without the messy California Girls), it’s stood up to eleven months of repeated listening, something that hasn’t happened with any other Merritt project since the epic 69 Love Songs came out at the end of the last millennium.
Listen! The Magnetic Fields, The Nun’s Litany
December 9th, 2008 at 3:00PM
Jimmy Says:
Since you’re behind, can you post a third today?
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