Opinions about this?

anyone listened to the new magnetic fields album? your thoughts on magnetic fields in general?

Liked this album but the only other one I listened to before this was Distortion so I was vaguely disappointed

69 Love Songs and Charm of the Highway Strip are masterpieces. I have been meaning to listen to more.

Distortion is shit.

>Charm of the Highway Strip
I've never gotten what's so good about that, I liked Holiday well enough but Highway Strip just went in one ear and out the other for me

Wouldnt say shit. some songs are good

>magnetic fields
>known for varied instrumentation and sounds
>make an album that's entirely uniform in sound across 13 songs
The shtick gets old by the second song. When you've heard the first song, you've heard them all. This isn't the case for their other albums. Also, Merritt doesn't sing enough on it. Shirley's voice is only okay in small doses.

>pretending that their albums have always been immensely
Are you purposely being an idiot? They didn't have extremely varied instrumentation until 69 Love Songs. They were a normal band prior to that.

i heard that this album wasnt that good but i suppose i should give it a listen since the magnetic fields are one of my favourites. 69 love songs and get lost are great albums

>When you've heard the first song, you've heard them all.

>implying Three-Way sounds like Drive On, Driver sounds like Xavier Says
If you think that, you might legitimately be retarded. All the tracks have in common is immense distortion and that's it. Saying they all sound they same is such an obvious shallow criticism from a person who has most likely listened to the album once before dismissing it outright. At their core, this tracks are obviously varied.

And stop pretending that The Magnetic Fields were always some magical jukebox band whose instrumentation was always so varied because that's a lie

>implying Three-Way sounds like Drive On, Driver sounds like Xavier Says
Those actually sound the same. It's like each song is just a faster or slower version of the last.

> this album wasnt that good
I disagree with whoever told you that. This album is damn good. Its best might not measure up with the best on 69 Love Songs, but I think its worst is better than 69 Love Song's worst, and I think it's more consistent than 69 Love Songs

>Those actually sound the same.
What is wrong with your ears? They don't sound alike AT ALL. Just because all the tracks have immense distortion doesn't mean they all sound the same.

Rethinking myself, I guess the issue I'm having with your "everything sounds the same" is that I'm listening from a writers perspective, and you're listening from a production perspective in terms of the sounds of the instruments. This boggles my mind though because you act like The Magnetic Fields have always been this band where every song has completely different instrumentation which isn't true at all. That started with 69 Love Songs, and even then, some songs still do sound reminiscent to others regarding instrumentation on that album and later albums. In fact, it hasn't really been until the new album where every song has different instrumentation (give or take a few instruments). Distortion really isn't that different from what Stephen did on the first two albums (the ones he didn't sing on).

I felt like a nice palette of sounds was already established from the very beginning on Distant Plastic Trees. Those first two albums in particular were making the most out of that lo-fi/low quality recording and production and Merritt's musical capabilities at the time.

Yes, 69 Love Songs is the first album with a notable change in instrumentation used, and with a recording style preference that was more up front and personal, whereas the older albums had everything buried in layers upon layers of sounds (not to say that this style wasn't used on several 69 love songs). But I don't think it's fair to say that 69 Love Songs was the first time they became known for varied instrumentation.

You can really hear that they had been doing this on all their prior albums. Sad Little Moon and With Whom to Dance, for instance, sound like songs that would fit in very well with 69 Love Songs, but they came out in '94 and '95.

The thing with Distortion is that it feels like, instead of making the most out of their limits (like on the early albums), they have all the musical potential but are instead purposely limiting themselves. You could argue that it's a nice challenge to conform yourself to a certain style and try to make the best of it, but it doesn't personally sit well with me.

the simple explanation really for Distortion and the reason why it's the way it is (which is talked about in the documentary about Stephin Merritt and comes from his mouth)is because he wanted to make a Jesus & Mary Chain album. He told the members to listen to Psychocandy over and over.

In that sense it worked. Merritt and co. made a better Psychocandy than Psychocandy. As a Magnetic Fields album it's still weak though.

Why does the singer make me think of a disenthused Gira?

Is disenthused even a word? Anyway, Merritt is a manic depressive, and he does occasionally sound like Gira, so there you go.

HELLO BEST ALBUM HERE COMING THROUGH

100,000 Fireflies is their best song, but of course, you already know that.

Cheers.