MOG

The Magnetic Fields - Distortion
(Nonesuch, 2008)
3 out of 10

The "3" is for "Three-Way," the opening track on Distortion, the Magnetic Fields' eighth album and by far the worst album to which Stephin Merritt has ever put this project name, or any of his names. "Three-Way" is also the only song on the tracklist that doesn't offend me; it is an instrumental, and has a sort of decent joke-surf-rock idea behind it. To go on at lengths about Distortion would be for me to merely quote lyrics from songs that I find particularly insufferable, or stress how I don't enjoy the milk-sludge timbre of Shirley Simms's voice (who sings lead on half of the tunes, with Merritt's baritone on the rest), especially set to these chunks of "pop song," these tin cans of petrified bubblegum, pre-chewed by Phil Spector and John Cale yet evoking nothing more strongly than Merritt's superior, past glories.

This reviewer loves the Magnetic Fields, whose 69 Love Songs is among my favorite albums. i, from 2004, appeared to be a partial misstep, the first album by the band since their debut that bowled an incomplete spare by contrast to the last decade's series of strikes. One could have hoped (one did hope) that the featured tendency for unmemorable songwriting on parts of i was short-lived. In fact Distortion is laden with songwriting that, when memorable, is only so because it is induces cringes. "California Girls": does it get more clever than the refrain, "I hate California girls"? No, it does not. "Zombie Boy": does it get more clever than the title? No, it does not. "The Nun's Litany": it's a list of not-nunlike things that a nun wants! Do not get me started on "Too Drunk to Dream," the only song in Stephin Merritt's formidable - formidable - catalog of released songs that makes me truly angry to hear. (Well, okay - I also get incensed at "Zombie Boy.")

Why do I, a supporter and even sometimes fanatic of Merritt's work, find so much objectionable about Distortion? Why don't I find 69 Love Songs this condescending, this wrong-headed? It's a thin line, a line of cliche, cleverness, straightforward tunes (with just a tweak now and then) and experimental arrangements - those precious qualities of post-modern pop. Merritt has almost always danced on the correct side of the line; where he might have faltered on 69 Love Songs, for instance, he flourishes with ambition, taste, and just enough cheekiness. With Distortion, he accidentally trips over the line and falls down splayed across the entire other, wrong side.

The record is near-impossible to listen to all the way through; the sound halfway approaches a noise album but tempers the ferocity of one by being based on cabaret songs in the style with which your grandmother might embarrass you. The execution of the concept is as unlikable as it could be, and for me to be focusing on the lyrics as much as I have been is almost itself an indictment of how uninspiring the tunes and walls-of-sound behind them are. He has attempted to sonically crib from what he calls "the last significant event in pop music production," the Jesus & Mary Chain's Psychocandy. The incorrect shortsightedness of his statement, something he has inexplicably been saying for years despite seeming to have a general open-mindedness, has finally caught up to his method; his freshness has therefore temporarily expired. If, as Merritt sings on "Too Drunk to Dream," "sober, it's ever darker," while "shitfaced, the moon is nearer," then I call this Merritt's hangover album.

For the delight of inebriation under the influence of the Magnetic Fields, look at The House of Tomorrow EP or Holiday; these, at least, are albums that go for a similar bubblegum flavor to Distortion's but instead pass my line-crossing test with flying colors.

-Spencer Owen