I don’t know why it hasn’t occurred to me before this but I really should be posting my reviews from Shuffleboil here, right? I mean, if there are those of you that read this blog (all 6 of you…put me in your blogrolls, dammit!) that don’t shuffle over to the boil, then you don’t know what I am writing over there, hence you don’t know what music to avoid or buy. And I don’t know how to put mp3s on my blog (anyone want to explain that one?).
So, I’m gonna post it here as well as link it and maybe, just maybe you will consider adding shuffleboil to your daily readings. Shuffleboil! It’s good for you. It’s like Internet spinach!
http://shuffleboil.com/2008/01/31/review-the-magnetic-fields-distortion/
The Magnetic Fields – Distortion
“Distortion,” the new album from The Magnetic Fields, might be the most beautiful album you don’t want to hear. In a time when bands title their albums with nuance and ambiguity or proud eponymity, “Distortion” is so named because, well, it’s wall to wall distortion.
Opening with the surf sound of the almost instrumental “Three Way,” “Distortion” starts out determinedly hopeful. The wall-of-sound meets an industrial complex serves as a nice lead in, perhaps leading us in to a thematic concept album. It’s easy to get caught up in the hookiness of “California Girls,” a ‘60s girl pop ditty run through the distorted hate machine of 80’s no-wave wonders Swans. But by the third track I began to think that maybe, just maybe, Stephin Merritt was trying to take the unlistenable noise of Lou Reed’s “Metal Machine Music” and meld it to a Morrissey sound with a pop construction. This is Joy Division without the sunny pessimism. Experimental for the sake of experiment.
The trouble is, there are some really good songs in here. Some, like “I’ll Dream Alone,” could be so moving and heartbreaking if they weren’t mired in Merritt’s obsession with production so joyless, murky, and funereal.
There is a lot of great experimentation being done in rock right now. John Cale’s “Black Acetate” from 2005 comes to mind, as does Nick Cave’s “Grinderman” project from last year. Where those albums are trying to blur the lines between listenability and experiment they still keep one toe in convention and that allows the listener to gain something new on each play. “Distortion” is so in love with its overriding concept of noise that it actively repels the listener, leaving only the tried and true believers to embrace the bludgeoning. It’s too bad. There are some really great songs in there. Somewhere.
