The Magnetic Fields
Album:
i
THE MAGNETIC FIELDSiNonesuchwww.houseoftomorrow.com
In the 1990s, ambition ran wild, and semi-popular music wasn’t immune. Smashing Pumpkins and Wilco both released double albums. The Flaming Lips released Zaireeka, which included four discs that were intended to be played simultaneously. To finish up the decade, the The Magnetic Fields dropped three discs in 1999 that featured 69 love songs, conveniently titling the collection 69 Love Songs.
However, The Magnetic Fields’ singer/songwriter Stephin Merritt has scaled back his reach (and rightly so – just listening to 69 Love Songs is exhausting, so imagine the process of actually creating the thing). His band’s new record, i, was content to spin out a mere 14 tales of romance, which are linked only by their primary use of the vowel, indicated in dainty lowercase by the album name.
As a melodic poet, he is still self-consciously brilliant in the tradition of Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin, and even Gilbert and Sullivan. Merritt believes the ironic road leads to the truth of love as surely as any other route; it’s just the most leisurely and scenic way to go.
Sounding like the British love child of Leonard Cohen and Tiny Tim, Merritt gets his kicks while imagining the possibilities in “I Wish I Had an Evil Twin,” and lamenting reality in the songs “I Thought You Were My Boyfriend” and “Infinitely Late at Night.” After the massively imposing challenge of i’s predecessor, Merritt and the Magnetic Fields show the delicacy and sardonic humor typical of people whose artistic benders gave them memorable artistic hangovers.
Jon M. Gilbertson is Vital Source's Music Editor. He also freelances for just about every pub in the region that writes about the subject.
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