The Magnetic Fields
Distortion
(Nonesuch)
The Magnetic Fields, led by New York singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt, have built a cult following over the years thanks to Merritt's signature of perky melodies married to lyrics laced with bitterness and comic irony. Yet with the band's latest album Distortion, Merritt seems to be drowning in a hangover of negative sentiment, the music softly bleached in designer distortion to hammer the point home.
I Hate California Girls evokes the Beach Boys in style but obviously not in sentiment, while Merritt's slightly creepy drone enables him to genuinely sound like a man who fathers of Californian girls ought to keep away from their daughters.
On Mr Mistletoe the misery takes on a comic tone, with the festive plant stripped of its romance and admonished as 'you useless weed' by Merritt, who by this point sounds like Ringo Starr singing Yellow Submarine under the influence of ketamine (horse tranquilisers).
