Lyrically, Stephin Merritt sticks to the Brill Building/Tin Pan Alley blend of shy hearts shattering that he has built an empire upon. Musically, Distortion is aptly named; the sonics are all Psychocandy-era Jesus and Mary Chain if someone slipped you a couple Advil and earmuffs before hand. Merritt himself, while claiming the album to be his "most commercial record in a way", admits that "some audience members may be completely and immediately turned off..." In Our Band Could Be Your Life, rock critic Michael Azzerad describes the theatrical wholesomeness of the Olympia scene that sprung up around twee-poppers Beat Happening, with its put-on pie baking parties, sleep overs, and sock hops; Stephin Merritt makes music for today's less-conspicuous domestic fetishists to play while filleting tilapia and sipping Riesling.
It wasn't always this way, of course. The Magnetic Fields are relative latecomers, career-wise, to the Feist-Sufjan Stevens-Decemberists Club for Good Taste: call it guilt by association. The dividing line is, of course, 69 Love Songs, Merritt's often brilliant, thoroughly ambitious 1999 magnum opus. Before that, Magnetic Fields were a decidedly minor concern with a small, dedicated following and a couple of hit or miss albums and one outstanding single ("100,000 Fireflies") to their credit. Afterwards Merritt became the indie Cole Porter: featured on NPR, writing operas based on Chinese folk tales, and recently recording a soundtrack album for Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. His Magnetic Fields' follow up record, 2004's i, continued with the concepts (each song begins with the eponymous letter) and stuck to 69 Love Songs' musical blueprint, best described as electrified showtunes.
Distortion is a clean break with that continuum in many respects. For one, Shirley Simms, who prominently featured on 69 Love Songs but was disappointingly absent on i, returns to take lead vocal duties on several tracks, including album highlights "California Girls" (decidedly not a cover), "The Nun's Litany", and "Courtesans". Her presence draws out the '60s pop leanings of the material (imagine if the Brothers Reid had actually gotten a live girl to sing over their Wall of Squall) and reinforces the universality of Merritt's songwriting while leavening his cynicism.
And about that songwriting:
- Vicious: "I have planned my grand attacks/I will stand behind their backs with my brand-new battle ax/Then they will taste my wrath/They will hear me say as the pavement whirls/'I hate California girls'" ("California Girls")
- Heart-broken: "Drive on, driver/There's no one home/We've waited hours/She didn't come/It's such a pretty little ring but it doesn't mean anything/Drive on" ("Drive On, Driver)
- Sarcastic: "Sober, life is a prison/Shitfaced, it is a blessing/Sober, nobody wants you/Shitfaced, they're all undressing" ("Too Drunk To Dream")
- Cheeky: "I want to be a porno starlet (for that I'll wait till Mama's dead)/ I'll see my name in lights of scarlet and get to spend every day in bed" ("The Nun's Litany")
Sure it may be a gimmick, but it's a hell of a gimmick, creating a fascinating tension between The Magnetic Fields' default style of chamber pop, the lyrical material, and the decidedly punk effect of waves upon waves of feedback. The songs becomes more than conveyances for Merritt's bon mots and witty turns of phrase, forcing the audience to experience the composition as a whole instead of cherry picking the clever bits. Certainly it's a more primal conceptual gesture than the parlor game theatrics of dedicating an album to each of the fifty states or a single letter of the alphabet. Doubtlessly this will offend some parties upon discovering that their dinner party playlists have been corrupted by non-wallpaper; they shouldn't fret, however, as I understand that Colin Meloy's solo joint is slated to drop in April. For those of us who believe that rock is not dead and spend a lot of time searching for the pulse, Distortion will do.
