big box o' love

I'm not a long-time Magnetic Fields fan, as a lot of other people seem to be. In fact, I'd never even heard of them until a couple months ago, when I heard two of my friends cryptically discussing them, and was intrigued. After that, I kept hearing more and more about the Magnetic Fields and their new 3 CD box set, until my will was sufficiently beaten down that I had to get my hands on it. And for that I am glad, because I was won over almost instantly by this impressive collection of songs.

Pronouns are a problem with the Magnetic Fields... it's not really a them, it's a him -- Stephen Merritt, the songwriter and mastermind behind all the tunes. Merritt does, however, bring in other instrumentalists and vocalists as he wishes, which gives this set a nice array of singers. There's Claudia Gonson's plain sweetness, Shirley Simms' Southern twang, LD Beghtol's Broadway flair and Dudley Klute's breathy sincerity... not to mention the basso profundo of Merritt himself, whose vocal style is often compared to Johnny Cash's. Dudley is my personal favorite, as he's able to infuse honesty into a song that would sound more ironic and cynical if sung by Merritt or Beghtol. "The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side," for instance, tells the story of an ugly man infatuated with a girl who only hangs with him because he's got a car. A depressing situation, to be sure, but with his vocal Dudley manages to capture the hapless happiness of the character. Dudley often seems to play Merritt's younger, less experienced alter ego. (In "Long-Forgotten Fairytale," a New Order song better than most New Order songs, he's the "princess.")

But more than the vocals, it's the songs themselves that make this collection worthwhile. Merritt seems to favor sloppy arrangements of his tunes, so that the listener's attention remains focused on the songs themselves and the interplay between music and lyric... and what's almost immediately noticeable is that Merritt's songwriting craft is highly refined. The music and the words usually coexist and coordinate beautifully. The tunes are mercilessly catchy, and Merritt can certainly turn a clever lyric... on "Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits," he alliterates "rapidly becoming rabid," among other wordplays. His rhymes are almost never cliched -- who'd think of rhyming "petunia" with "junior"? He makes it work. But Merritt is perhaps even better when he dispenses with the cunning wordplay and irony and lays everything bare, as he does on "You're My Only Home," over a backing of pure synth tones: "I will stay if you let me stay / and I'll go if you let me go / but I won't go far away / because you're my only home." The low note on "home" is low even for Merritt. As a barely audible murmur, it has a truly heartbreaking quality.

It's also true that there are a few throwaways in this set. (Witness the lyrics to "Punk Love": "Punk love / Punk rock love / Punk love" etc.) But the occasional misstep is inevitable on a project of this scope and size. Merritt has achieved something here that even the best songwriters rarely achieve -- an astonishing quantity and variety of great love songs, whether they be depressing, funny, happy, ridiculous, inane, desperate or heartfelt. So I guess I can't help being a Magnetic Fields fan now.