Audio CD review:
Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs, Pt. 1

Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs, Pt. 1

Band: Magnetic Fields Title: 69 Love Songs, Pt. 1 Rating: Release Date: 07 September, 1999 Media: Audio CD Tracks: 1: Absolutely Cuckoo 2: I Don't Believe In The Sun 3: All My Little Words 4: A Chicken WIth Its Head Cut Off 5: Reno Dakota 6: I Don't Want To Get Over You 7: Come Back From San Francisco 8: The Luckiest Guy On The Lower East Side 9: Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits 10: The Cactus Where Your Heart Should Be 11: I Think I Need A New Heart 12: The Book Of Love 13: Fido, Your Leash Is Too Long 14: How Fucking Romantic 15: The One You Really Love 16: Punk Love 17: Parades Go By 18: Boa Constrictor 19: A Pretty Girl Is Like... 20: My Sentimental Melody 21: Nothing Matters When We're Dancing 22: Sweet-Lovin' Man 23: The Things We Did

Editoral Review From the layered feedback of "Don't Fall in Love with Me," followed by the plinky strum of his uke through to a Merrittian 23rd psalm, "The Things We Did," this volume, more than the others, hearkens back to the gloriously distorted acoustic agitation visited on The Charm of the Highway Strip. From Stephin Merrit's Gay and Loud publishing comes the first volume of the Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs, a misleadingly quiet epic of a thing. Ever the sad sack, Merritt's characters "don't believe in the sun" and drolly proclaim themselves "ugly" and the stars so "fucking romantic. " Dishing up clichés like ice cream cones at a Baskin-Robbins, Merritt's lyrics take on self-involved weightiness in the context of his over-the-top conventions. Marrying electronic elements with banjo, cello, mandolin, piano, accordian, and percussion, these little numbers--sung by a revolving cast of Merritt and cohorts--riff on everything from punk rock to madrigals to Jim Reeves and Johnny Cash-style balladry, coming across as preposterously vaudevillian and Brechtian, rather than vacuous. --Paige La Grone .. You can see a complete list of all Magnetic Fields discography, or go back to the Magnetic Fields tabs