So once upon a time there was this girl in London. And she broke my heart on my first birthday away from home and I walked home 10km in the cold January rain because I had no money. And normally that would have been the end of that. But a few months later she got back in touch with me and we met up again and then she got scared and broke my heart again. Wash, rinse, repeat for a few years.
It was a relationship with more endings than beginnings.
There was the teary phone call from a pay phone at Heathrow to my mobile in Canberra where pound coins being slammed into the slot to keep the call alive made a constant drumbeat. And even if I had found the right words to say it would have ended a few weeks later if history is any guide.
There was the time I got home from a big weekend around Valentines Day to be told by a slightly annoyed flatmate that some english girl had called three times for me.
When I called back someone called “Josh” answered the phone and a piece of me died forever.
In the years that followed I dated a string of women I hated figuring it would save time.
But one good thing out of that relationship was being introduced to a pile of music that only gets passed around between cool people, almost never getting airplay. The Levellers, New Model Army, Belle and Sebastian.
And, on one transcontinental mixed tape there was The Magnetic Fields, Get Lost.
On that crackly cassette I first heard the words to The Desperate Things You Made Me Do. On the next call I asked how she could understand her impact on me as expressed in the lyrics in the song:
“I’d like to beat you black and blue/
For all the agony you have put me through”
She was shocked and horrified.
It wasn’t all one way traffic. Somewhere around Oberon she announced that her cool friends thought the band Bush were arse. A few miles later I slipped on the 16 Stone album and she loved it enough to ask who it was. A long silence followed that revelation.
I also introduced her to NIN. Her parting gift to me was The Fragile double album. That and years of poisonous relationships.
Since then Steven Merritt (the Magnetic Fields’ core) shook the world with his 69 Love Songs album.
The band became moderately well known for beautiful melodies covering doleful lyrics. A particular twist of the band is Merritt’s homosexuality laid across catchy love songs. Sometimes they cover this with Shirley Simms vocals but even then the gender specific language can be jarring to the hetero audience.
This latest album is called “Distortion” and delivers it in spades. A homage to the Jesus and Mary Chain it never descends into that band’s completely unlistenable excess. More pertinent comparisons are The Pixies and Sonic Youth.
At its best the clanging guitars are more reminiscent of Tubular Bells than anything else and while the album demands you turn up the volume it also rewards careful listening.
The spite-ridden “California Girls” is worth the price of admission alone and gets done twice with both male and female vocals.
But for mine the standout is the ultimate pub-anthem “Too drunk to dream” with up-tempo lyrics such as:
“i gotta get too drunk to dream
because dreaming only makes me blue
i gotta get too drunk to dream
because i only dream of you
i gotta get too pissed to miss you
or i’ll never get to sleep
i gotta drink wine apt to pine for you
and god knows that ain’t cheap
If you like your music loud, dark, but with a melody, then this is not an album you want to leave out of your collection.
Four and a Half stars