Merritt's Push and Pull
"Distortion," the title of the Magnetic Fields' eighth album, is one of the most deadpan statements of fact ever to grace the cover of an album. When he began recording it, the band's formalist leader, Stephin Merritt, set out to make an album in the vein of the Jesus and Mary Chain's 1985 gem "Psychocandy," a record that made succeeding generations of listeners fans of both the Velvet Underground and Phil Spector. Not only has Mr. Merritt deliriously succeeded, he has crafted a fuzzy wallop of pure power pop without sacrificing any of the sandpaper-dry observations and conceptual frameworks that have marked the Magnetic Fields' output since Mr. Merritt's 1999 three-LP magnum opus, "69 Love Songs." Indeed, "Distortion," which is out today on Nonesuch Records, may be the most instantly pleasurable batch of songs in the band's career.
Most beguiling of all, though, the album feels intimately like the Magnetic Fields without sounding much like the band's previous output at all. Mr. Merritt is too gifted a songwriter to be pinned down by any genre, but his pop gifts fall somewhere between mid-century Broadway and 1950s and '60s pop. He has an agile knack for catchy hooks and plush melodies, and — as he proved with "69 Love Songs" — also possesses an innate gift to put his indubitable thumbprint on past styles with cheeky aplomb.
What makes Magnetic Fields songs so singular, though, is Mr. Merritt's literary tone and lyrical content. The band's music is routinely labeled "synth" or "chamber" pop, out of a lack of a better tag; that's not wholly inaccurate, but it only captures the band's surface. On "Distortion," the outfit is rounded out by the cellist Sam Davol, pianist Claudia Gonson, accordionist Daniel Handler, and guitarist John Woo, a group of musicians nimble and responsive enough to craft the pop arrangements out of which Mr. Merritt's thorny songwriting rosebushes grow — without forfeiting the mordant heart, bittersweet romanticism, and dour humor that are his nurturing lyrical topsoil.
Mr. Merritt's double-bladed wit, which roils with sexual tension, is in evidence throughout "Distortion," from the opening song — a jaunty rocker whose only lyric is the title: "Three Way" — to the bubble-gum ribaldry of "The Nun's Litany," a sing-song processional that includes the titular woman desiring to be a Playboy bunny, a topless waitress, an artist's model, a go-go dancer, a brothel worker, a dominatrix, a porno starlet, and a tattooed lady. That it's sung by Sheryl Simms, whose angelic voice graced a few of the "69 Love Songs," only braids another cheeky rope into the song's multilayered naughtiness.
Throughout "Distortion," Mr. Merritt sets his Noel Coward-caliber vigor to fuzz-tone guitar-rock, backed by Mr. Spector's room-filling Wall of Sound. It's one of the most bankable moods in pop, and something as basic as a simple drum fill: Hit a belly-rumbling tom drum three times, about a heartbeat apart, and end with a hi-hat shake. It's the basic pulse in an incredible amount of indelible pop, from the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" and the Carpenters' "Only Yesterday," on through the Jesus and Mary Chain's "Just Like Honey" and the Pipettes' "Sex" — and now the Magnetic Fields' "Till the Bitter End." The inviting beat swims through a forest of fuzz, out of which two guitars carve a sinuous melody. Ms. Simms's dulcet voice chimes in at a French Quarter-funeral pace to promise, "Darling, I will love you till the bitter end / and all the bitter moments till then." A depression spiral is rarely this dizzying and sweet.
And that's the congenial alchemy of "Distortion" — euphoric music about feeling bad. "And now that you're free of me at last / your time is your own go have a blast," Mr. Merritt sings in his cocktails-and-cigarettes baritone on "I'll Dream Alone," a pert and perky pop ditty about being rejected. Even better is "Too Drunk to Dream," an ecstatic, upbeat rocker that celebrates substance oblivion as a coping mechanism and features Mr. Merritt almost giggling, "So why do I get plastered? / And why am I so lonely? / It's you, you heartless bastard / you're my one and only."
Mr. Merritt has pulled this kind of poker-faced rocking off before. "When My Boy Walks Down the Street," from "69 Love Songs," is pretty much the blueprint for the whole of "Distortion," but that song is all about love's intoxicating highs. The new album revels in everything that's left when the hangover sets in. As such, "California Girls" is the quintessential Merritt song here. Not only does it lift its title from the Beach Boys staple and then proceed to thematically murder it, it does so without surrendering the jubilant pop rapture. A guitar lays down the simple melody against a throbbing, anthem-like percussive wave, over which Ms. Simms sings lines such as "They breathe coke and they have affairs with each passing rock star / They come on like squares, then get off like squirrels / I hate California girls," as if it were saccharine, meaningless joy.
"California Girls" is one of Mr. Merritt's greatest examples of abject disgust delivered in a toothsome smile in a prolific songwriting output littered with them. While "Distortion" is a musical departure for the band, the caliber of craft makes "Distortion" one of the strongest single albums in the Magnetic Fields' 17-year career.
The Magnetic Fields will play Town Hall February 21–24.
