Over the past decade, the Magnetic Fields have put out a trio of rigorously formalist albums, each of which, with the clinical exactitude of a lab report, handed the listener a tidy intellectual conclusion about pop music. Even the stuff we perceive to be "confessional" songwriting is just a parade of characters and personas (citation: i, an album-length meditation on the first person pronoun), every simple melody sounds a little bit better when buried under an avalanche of Jesus and Mary Chain-grade scuzz (see: the aptly titled Distortion), and music made with "real" instruments like acoustic guitars and ukuleles can easily sound just as artificial as music made on computers and synthesizers (the folksy yet artifice-guilded Realism).
With a frontman iconically haughty enough to be a feasible answer to a New York Times crossword puzzle clue (L.A.-by-way-of-East Village curmudgeon; 14 letters)-- it has been especially easy during this run of albums to dismiss the Magnetic Fields as Ivory Tower pop, wrapped up in the cleverness of their own ideas and out of touch with the world below. But a quick glance around the cultural landscape shows Stephin Merritt's inquires to be pointedly, perennially relevant: There's Dave Grohl at the Grammys, professing the very conceit that Realism poked fun at; here's a whole slew of underground lo-fi bands taking Distortion's dictum as gospel; there's the same voice that yelled "Judas!" at Robert Zimmerman shouting a whole string of unprintables at Lizzy Grant.
At the endless, stuffy cocktail party where everyone's going on about authenticity in music, Merritt's formalist convictions feel, at best, like a refreshingly icy gust of wind coming in through an open door. Or, at least, in theory. Because as interesting as these records might have been to think about or discuss, the fact is that their listenability varied greatly, with the most recent, the overstuffed Realism, pretty much unendurable as a front-to-back experience. Another tidy truth about pop music: You can't have a conversation about a record if you've never met another person who has cared to sit through it twice.
For anyone who found the Magnetic Fields' recent work too tethered to formal shtick-ery-- or who just missed the amiable synth-pop sound of Holiday or Get Lost-- the first few notes of their latest, Love at the Bottom of the Sea, peal like potential chimes of freedom. The record marks the end of their self-imposed "no synth trilogy," and its opening track, the bleakly comic "Your Girlfriend's Face" is the first Magnetic Fields track to feature a synthesizer since 1999's 69 Love Songs. Is this a return to form, or could it even be the beginning of a whole new direction? That seems possible on paper, since Love at the Bottom of the Sea is also the first Magnetic Fields album in a decade and a half that isn't organized around some kind of formal limitation. So is this record an exercise in liberation, an opportunity to explore bigger ideas, take risks, and reinvent the project as Merritt has so many times before? Well-- and isn't this becoming the damnedest phrase when it comes to this band-- in theory.
From the start, Love at the Bottom of the Sea seems to be a more welcoming listen than Realism. Two minutes in, we're greeted with an instant classic "Andrew in Drag", easily one of the band's best tracks since 69 Love Songs. It's sharply funny ("A pity she does not exist/ A shame he's not a fag," Merritt laments, "The only girl I'll ever love is Andrew in drag"), but it doesn't have the punchline-crazed flatness that some of his more self-consciously jokey songs do. Though just two minutes long, "Andrew in Drag" is an efficient, elegantly crafted character study, and once the initial jolt of its punchline wears away, it remains a surprisingly affecting parable about unattainable desire ("Ill never see that girl again/ He did it as a gag/ I'll pine away forevermore for Andrew in drag") that smartly, swiftly ends before it has a chance to become maudlin. And while the droll tableau "God Wants Us to Wait" doesn't quite have much in the way of emotional resonance, it still sets the album off to a strong start thanks to a few vividly goofy turns of phrase ("I guess it's true I should have told you before/ And not have waited 'til we're nude on the floor") and a catchy, Shirley-Simms-voiced melody.
But after these frontloaded highlights, it doesn't take long for Love at the Bottom of the Sea to become a rain-boot-worthy slog through water-logged mid-tempo material: There's a particularly plodding song called "I'd Go Anywhere With Hugh" that feels triple its two-minute runtime; there's the prancing, carousel vibe of "The Horrible Party" which feels like a retread of Realism's weaker material; and then there's "My Husband's Pied-A-Terre", which rhymes the titular line with "derrière." They're all foregone conclusions: Knowing just the titles, you can pretty much imagine exactly what these songs will sound like and, as the lyrics unfold, what the next rhyme (or punchline) will be. That's the frustrating paradox of Love at the Bottom of the Sea: Though it finds the band shaking off the limitations of their formal exercises, it's actually the safest and most predictable thing they've put out in years.
Of course, that Love at the Bottom of the Sea is ornate, pun-crazed, and flagrantly synthetic is not necessarily a strike against it: Merritt's spun these qualities into gold before. Marking the return to longtime home Merge Records and their long-shunned electronic sound, Love has the feel of a band getting resettled and plotting its next move, but it ultimately amounts to something less than the sum of its parts: It has the feel of a collection of B-sides rather than a proper statement. There are enough good songs to put it a cut above Realism (including, late in the game, the sweetly vitriolic "Quick!"), but it's a new kind of disappointment from a Magnetic Fields record: It doesn't even give you much to talk about.
