This album gave me a headache. It could be the barrage of midterms this week, but it could also be this collision of abrasive yet twee that characterizes much of The Magnetic Fields\u2019 latest release. Known for their experimentalism \u2013 Love At the Bottom of the Sea <\/i>ends their trilogy of albums shunning synthesizers in favor of \u201creal\u201d instruments \u2013 The Magnetic Fields takes it one step too far here, subverting the basic pop song structure into something that almost mocks the idea of popular music without being listenable either.<\/p>\n
Opener \u201cYour Girlfriend\u2019s Face\u201d is a pep sing-along, though the assault of synthesizers slightly distracts from the relative catchiness of this cut. It reminds me of early Islands with its tongue-in-cheek violence, Stephen Merritt channeling an innocence and clarity to his voice as he promises to \u201cmess up your girlfriend first.\u201d It\u2019s a graphic, gritty tale all set to some unlikely backbeats, which trill and flourish in the background. It\u2019s a strong enough opener, and leads in well to the rollicking weirdness of \u201cAndrew In Drag.\u201d Merritt\u2019s vocals morph entirely, deepening and taking on an austere tone as the chorus swoons around him. Merritt is not a traditionally gifted singer, but he does well at this sort of deadpan delivery.<\/p>\n
The Magnetic Fields has always been gifted with wordplay, and this album is chock full of puns. \u201cGod Wants Us To Wait\u201d has a strangely hymnal tone, crossed with a thudding disco groove. It manages to be shimmering and stark all at the same time, and it\u2019s one of the strongest moments on this weird hodgepodge of an album.<\/p>\n
None of the songs here clocks in at over three minutes, and that brevity both rescues some of this material from falling into a lull, but it also prevents listeners from getting too connected. Then again, the slightly atonal instrumentation, the constant tempo shifting, and Merritt\u2019s jaded vocals often purposefully block out the listener. Moreover, with pun after pun \u2013 \u201cI\u2019d Go Anywhere With Hugh,\u201d \u201cInfatuation (With Your Gyration,\u201d and \u201cMy Husband\u2019s Pied-A-Terre,\u201d it\u2019s hard to take this album seriously when it seems like the band barely is.<\/p>\n
Even at two minutes long, some of these songs are just too long. There\u2019s a theatricality in cuts like \u201cThe Horrible Party\u201d and \u201cGoin\u2019 Back To The Country,\u201d but The Magnetic Fields doesn\u2019t quite deliver on making these moments soar. Without a theatrical narrative linking these songs in place, there\u2019s little to anchor anything down, and that\u2019s part of what makes Love At The Bottom of the Sea <\/i>so elusive. You see its potential to be witty, to be catchy, to even be a cool exercise in song craft, but then they miss the mark.<\/p>\n
Though Merritt tries to coax life out of these songs, they just never quite hit home, and it makes Love At the Bottom of the Sea <\/i>a chore to listen to. An album should never feel like it\u2019s overstayed its welcome at barely a half hour, but that\u2019s the only claim to fame this disc has. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":30892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8808],"rating":[5619],"class_list":["post-42570","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-magnetic-fields","rating-rating-c"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42570"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}