If there must be a shoegazer revival - and if My Bloody Valentine and the Jesus & Mary Chain have reunited, well then, there really must be - it may as well begin with The Magnetic Fields, the loose affiliation of indie-pop musicians centered around singer-songwriter-quirky-pop-genius Stephen Merritt, best known for his very literally-titled 1999 triple-disc magnum opus 69 Love Songs. The "band" (group? collective? project team?) starts off the year 2008, not with a bang, but a vaguely existential, vaguely romantic, vaguely nostalgic blur on their latest record Distortion, which finds Merritt & Associates performing catchy and often riotously funny little love ditties - owing as much to vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley as they do to Phil Spector and the Top 40 trash of all eras - against a dense industrial haze of amplifier feedback generated not just by their guitars, but also such unusual suspects as piano and accordion (courtesy of yes, that Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, with whom Merritt has recently been collaborating on musical theatre projects). The album's liner notes echo a reassurance familiar to 70s record collectors from their Queen and Boston albums: "No synths."

The concept represents a dramatic (and in some quarters, perhaps, unwelcome) aesthetic shift from the pristine and perilously precious chamber pop of previous Magnetic Fields records. But for all its noise, Merritt's voice as both singer (a mopey anglophilic croon) and songwriter (an incisive social observer in a class with Ray Davies, Morrissey, and Jarvis Cocker) comes through with almost rude clarity even as he pays his sincerely soft-focused sonic homage to Psychocandy, the Jesus & Mary Chain's classic mid-80s shoegazer manifesto. Distortion opens with a fantastic instrumental called "Three-Way", a rollicking update on the classic guitar instrumental of the late 50s - complete with hilarious "Tequila"-style shouted punctuations: "Three-way!" - given a Wall of Noise make-over. It may be the record's catchiest track, and it sets a magnificent stage for the dozen three-minute gems (the band acheives an impressive uniformity in their song lengths here) that follow. Nevertheless, this kind of thing may be completely at odds with the expectations of Merritt's fans. When the song was released as an iTunes single a couple weeks ago, the user review section lit up with invective bemoaning the song's lack of lyrical depth - proving conclusively that Britney hasn't cornered the market on small-minded morons.

For the rest of the record, Merritt splits lead vocal duties almost 50/50 (and in a strictly first-you-then-me-then-you fashion) with Shirley Simms, giving her the lion's share of the really good numbers - like the album's other lead single "California Girls", a deliciously power-poppy tune (eat your heart out Adam Schlesinger!) that veils its murderous intentions with Simms's adorable, innocently evil delivery. Simms provides an ideal foil to Merritt's Eeyore baritone. Her voice is clean and unaffected and on many of the tunes her timbre (perhaps due to the songs' noisy settings) has an appealing gender-ambiguity to it, falling somewhere between the late great Kirsty Maccoll and still very much with us Kevin Cronin, especially on the improbably Speedwagonesque "Drive On, Driver", which may very well be the closest Merritt has ever (or will ever) come to producing an arena rock anthem. The best, though, is "A Nun's Litany" in which Simms (as the titular nun) sings of all of her alternative ambitions in life, which include but are not limited to becoming a porn starlet, working as a topless waitress, and being a dominatrix ("which isn't like me, but I can dream").

In this sort of setting, Merritt fares better as a singer on the more upbeat numbers. Opening with a nursery rhyme chant weighing the considerable pros of drunkenness against the considerable cons of sobriety, "Too Drunk To Dream" is a slouchy, grunged-out folk song that Merritt delivers with an appropriately self-effacing looseness, while on "I Dream Alone", he deftly navigates through a maze of meandering time changes to finally emerge triumphant on a positively Manilow-ian chorus. "Zombie Boy" is exactly the ultra-catchy b-movie theme song such a title would suggest. But amidst all the record's drowsy atmospherics, Merritt's naturally sleepy voice drags like an anchor in the sand on ballads like "Old Fools ". On "Mr. Mistletoe", Merritt evokes the ghost of Perry Como crooning golden-moldy-style from beyond the grave, channeling himself into the big bad 21st Century via Thurston Moore's amplifier. In other words: ugh. But these are the exceptions to the album's rule, which mandates a vibe of good, sloppy, and, yes, just a little bit smutty, fun. A welcome break from winter's doldrums which nevertheless sounds a little like, y'know, winter doldrums. What's not to really like a lot, but in a just good friends sort of way?

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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:

"Distortion" by The Magnetic Fields
Nonesuch Records
Released 1/25/2008

Produced by Stephen Merritt
39 min.

SONGS: Three-Way - California Girls - Old Fools - Xavier Says - Mr. Mistletoe - Please Stop Dancing - Drive On, Driver - Too Drunk To Dream - Till the Bitter End - I'll Dream Alone - The Nun's Litany - Zombie Boy - Courtesans



Recommended: Yes