Metal machine magic

Distortion
The Magnetic Fields
(Nonesuch, 2008)

The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs is my third favorite album of all time. Judging from how often it comes up in conversation without any provocation, it's apparently about that high on the lists of about two-fifths of everybody I have ever met in my life. It seems to be the only album of which the cliché "That album changed my life!" may be exactly appropriate in a collective sense. I mean, really, it's kind of remarkable and scary how quickly this album made people do long-form, sustained artistic things in homage. (I'm the bald one.)

It also solidified Stephin Merritt as the most conceptual songwriter in indie rock history. Excepting his work as Future Bible Heroes, everything Merritt's done since and including The Charm of the Highway Strip has maintained some sort of constant, artistic backdrop, almost like it was on a dare. Sometimes that can feel like a cop-out, I suppose, in a time when such pretensions are easier to ferret out, when we expect our artists to maintain spontaneity, and a mistrust of larger themes or devices is implied. But I think the approach is just a tool, a groundwork where Merritt really can do anything he wants.

The last proper Mag Fields album (there's been plenty more from Merritt, who wears his side projects like some generals wear medals) was called i, lowercase, and its shortcomings sprung from its strictly intellectual concept. Every song title started with the letter "i," and I believe each song appeared in alphabetic running order. While you couldn't fault the effort of his composing, the introduction of a logical argument for a backdrop took a little away from the songs. Whether it's the case or not, it felt like Merritt was on deadline for some of i. The purely academic approach made it feel arranged, whereas everything else he's done never obscured his service of song.

Distortion goes back to a musical conceit, unless you want to argue that it's a mechanical one, in which case you'd be partly right. It's the most conceptualized use of feedback and squall since Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, and at first – at first – it threatens to capsize Merritt's strengths in a thicket of screams and ragged filters, and the echo of one hundred glazed-tile bathrooms. The drums on Distortion are so dependent on reverb, it sounds like the snare drum was struck sometime last week and is just now making it to the speaker.

Yes, it sounds just like Psychocandy, as many others have already noted. But the contrast reminds me, a little bit, of Marshall Crenshaw's Field Day album. After making a very tight, song-oriented debut album that was dry in comparison, Crenshaw overfed the guitars and echo on Field Day with the help of Steve Lillywhite. The logic was that huge echo would sell the songs better at the time (1983), when groups like Big Country and U2 were practically giving the echo chamber its own dressing room. The knock on Field Day was that it obscured Crenshaw's songwriting. And at first it did. But I kept coming back to it periodically, and the songs sank in; Crenshaw's talents eventually overtook the acoustics and all was forgiven.

Same thing almost happens with Distortion, but it doesn't because such care is taken with the presence of distortion as a supporting actor. Every song blends the distortion differently. Sometimes it just blankets the listener so much they're bound to walk funny later. Other times, it weaves itself in to the middle of the mix, vibrating and flexing. It sometimes gets to the listener before the song does, but more often the distortion on Distortion is a post-modern Greek chorus.

And Merritt is having fun again. Sometimes the distortion is just flat-out funny, like in the ballad "Mr. Mistletoe," where the gentleness of the beautiful piano ballad Merritt is singing is shot over with a lumbering, steel-grinding mass of shrieking guitars. (I think they're guitars.) It's disorienting and calls attention to itself… but I just came back for thirds to find out what's behind it. I'm guessing there's a theme in that somewhere.

Distortion is also the Magnetic Fields' heaviest guitar album. Granted, it sounds like the guitar is being played by someone wearing an oven mitt. It's as clunky and ham-fisted as you can get. But it does exactly what is intended of it. It forces both comfort and agonizing into the listener, fighting to get through to hear about songs by people who are fighting to get through something themselves.

Then it becomes obvious: The distortion provides the external, amorphous cloud under which the characters on the songs muse about their reduced souls. Merritt's characters are either exhausted or resigned. Even in the instrumental opener, "Three-Way," which sounds like a contemplative surf instrumental, and where Mag Fields chant the track title the same way the Champs exclaimed "Tequila!" It's hilarious: A rather complicated sexual activity being honored in rock music's simplest form with unrestrained juvenile enthusiasm. They could be chanting "Tilt-A-Whirl!" or "New Coke Zero!"

The distortion either amplifies the complaints ("California Girls," as in "I hate..."), or worms its way into reflective moments ("Old Fools," "I'll Dream Alone"). And that's where you understand the point of it. Merritt, as dependent on lyrical cleverness as much as anybody, is trying to imbue rock's most chaotic sound with a lyrical sensibility. The feedback overwhelms the songs, but once you buy into their dwelling, it stops sounding indulgent and starts sounding collaborative. It loses its externality, which any device in a Merritt vehicle must do if it's going to work.

"A Nun's Litany" is about all the things a nun can't do, like being a Playboy bunny and a porn starlet (she'd "get to spend every day in bed"). It's very nice to hear Shirley Simms on a Mag Fields joint again (she was almost absent on i), and especially on "Drive On Driver," she's opened up her upper range to get through clearly over the distortion. She's trying to escape ("Take me to the airport/I need to be extremely far away"). Her escape route, like everything else on Distortion, is complicated by the existence of giant machines with uneven teeth. But they're only on the side of the road.

A lot of Mag Fields fans are going to describe Distortion in the simplest of terms: It harkens back to the band's earliest work, with the echoes providing distance and a partition of sound. (It's too thin and shrill to call it a "wall".) True that, but it also reflects the depth Merritt's taken on with his compositions. With 69 Love Songs being so immediate, and i being transparent almost to the point of immaterialism, I guess it's not a surprise that Merritt would make things a little tougher to discern on Distortion, just to keep the listener's game on.

Unlike their past work, Distortion isn't immediate and doesn't sink in on first listen. But I was enchanted enough to come back for a third time. Which must count for something. Especially since at this writing it's been out less than 24 hours.