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Rating: Stephin Merritt returns with his greatest creation, the Magnetic Fields, to narrate, in two and a half hours of Indie Pop, Indie Electronic and Alternative Rock, how to become who you are, and how to be who you become: a freak, a new waver, an antihero, practically a talented, perhaps genius, certainly "unclassifiable," songwriter.
After the masterpieces "The Charm of the Highway Strip" from 1994 and the monumental triple "69 Love Songs," dated 1999, here’s the newly printed "50 Song Memoir," a further themed work, a minimalist autobiography of naïve pop songs, concise, mostly around 2'30", where each track symbolically tackles, one by one, the first 50 years of the Boston chansonnier's life.
This narrative intent, with the evident prevalence of electronic tracks over acoustic ones, increasingly combines with the methodical quest for synthetic sounds derived from the same acoustic, real instruments, which aggregate into melodic weaves of retro-futuristic synthesizers and suitably vintage drum machine patterns. Merritt, who handles almost all of the rich and varied instrumentation, over 100 units, ranges from the Ukulele to the Farfisa organ, from the acoustic guitar and the Stratocaster to the Dulcimer, from the celesta to the charango and the abacus, going through Synths and Drum machines of all types and eras. The sophisticated and artificial instrumentation never overloads the single track, but is articulated in a few instruments that change in turn within the tracks, forming small chamber ensembles, recorded with lo-fi attitude, in a homemade quality, with deliberately sparse, essential production, rejecting excessive treatments or amplifications. The arrangements are equally sober, anti-Wilsonian, reluctant to any grandiloquence and redundancy; they are evocative, yet dry, serving the melody in its naturalness. This aesthetic key has charming, enchanting, proportionate outcomes, without capturing immediate attention. It sends shivers and grows enormously with listening, precisely inducing immersion into the poetry of that style, both frugal and scholarly. Folk no longer Folk, synthetically, seemingly so.
Merritt's crooning, akin to a magnificent pseudo-Sinatra of the outcasts and faint-hearted, unfolds masterfully in the troubadour's song; a minstrel often sardonic, even pensive, occasionally weighing nostalgia. His baritone voice blends the timbres of Johnny Cash, Ian Curtis, and Andy McCluskey (OMD).
The songwriting, as a distinguished chansonnier, is at the forefront throughout "50 Memoir": the craft he flaunts with amused and conscious subtlety, between spirit and intelligence, shows the ability to portray the human comedy with balance, between gravity and lightness, joining dream, utopia, and disillusionment. Here's served an intimate and accessible song cycle, less universal than "69," not innovative compared to his artistic and creative peaks, "Highway Strip" and "69 Love Songs," which are regenerated in new pieces of high-quality craftsmanship, with acumen and expressive strength in the flexibility of composition.
Merritt, author of all fifty tracks, divided into five "decades-albums," who memorized Schubert and Abba, retraces his passions for Ultravox of John Foxx (see "My Sex" and "Hiroshima Mon Amour"), for the Human League of Travelogue, for Kraftwerk, for Brian Eno from Before and After Science, for Cole Porter, for the quirky esotericism of The Creatures, for Spector and Bacharach, for Japan, Devo (from the Hardcore Demos), John Fahey, for Young Marble Giants, for Dylan’s Nashville, for the Beatles' duke Andy Partridge, for Broadway, for steampunk and Bubblegum music. Existentially, zappa-esque, "Music is the best."
The One Man Band of the Magnetic, assisted by a handful of loyal musicians, with his bittersweet melodies wrapped in techno symphonies, an acoustic and electronic music, that sounds modern simultaneously with nearly obsolete instrumentation, forges his own personal and outmoded songwriting style in Indie Pop -Synth Rock, and in the definitive eulogy of the epic of antiheroes.
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This is the layout of this incomparable concept, reflective, rarely melancholic, never mournful, cultured and eccentric, detached but not too much, the anamnesis of the protagonist's fifty years, among affections, regrets, conflicts, and "old fears." It is the search for reflection and perspective on what has been and what could have been, in the mute awareness that what was has become such not by chance, but by free choice. "Thus it was, because I wanted it thus."
Says a Sanskrit proverb: one must keep at a distance but not too much from four things: the guru, the fire, the wine, and the women. Merritt has found the balance at least for the first two of the four terms: he no longer needs teachers and his music does not burn ephemeral.
WARNING! The review of the tracks is optional.
NOTE, only for introverts and the integrity. PRICE: patience.
These are notes:
CD 1:
"’66 Wonder Where I'm From" folkie opening with the ukulele, "’67 Come Back as a Cockroach" with a beautiful cadenced melody, sober then with a band burst of drums, cymbals, trappings, trumpets, and bells, "’69 Judy Garland" a sort of ballad à la Billy Bragg, "’70 They're Killing Children Over There" where the four-year-old Stephin misunderstands Grace Slick of the Jeffersons, confusing Vietnam with the backstage of the concert hall where "they're killing kids over there." "’71 I Think I’ll Make Another World" lyrical and vibrant melody where choirs appear, more exploited in this work than in the past, and the beautiful counterpoint by Gonson, the piece is inspired by the Zombies of "Oddisey and Oracle" and the visions of the most unlikely Hawaiians, The Creatures, "’73 It Could Have Been Paradise" is a paradoxically New Romantic raga.
CD 2:
"’76 Hustle 76" is a plunging disco beat, "’77 Life Ain't All Bad" is church-like with the Hammond B3, "’78 The Blizzard of '78" features the dulcimer played with Fahey flair, "’79 Rock'n'Roll Will Ruin Your Life," on the other hand, a beautiful maternal curse, with a piercing beat, Ray Davies-like writing, with a killer refrain. "’81 How to Play the Synthesizer " another great catchy tune, of rock made with the synthetic bass lines of Roland TB-303, between the Ultravox of "Ultravox!" and Human League towards "Dare," foundations of the Acid House of the anterior future. In contrast, the keyboards of "’82 Happy Beeping" echo and feature a nice pastoral choir on a slender drum machine backbone. "’83 Foxx and I" is a declaration of love for the Ultravox, austere and literary, and of intent for the electropop aesthetics and philosophical epicureanism. "’84 Danceteria!" decrees that "Culture is not for the faint-hearted," having been the place where the newly adult Stephin saw Nick Cave and Lydia Lunch and Blixa Bargeld of the Einstürzende perform.
CD 3:
It opens with the confidential and intimate downbeat of "’86 How I Failed Ethics," which could have fit perfectly on "69" and the childlike "’91 The Day I Finally" moonstruck, in a Daniel Johnston style. It continues with the sunny reggae of "’94 Haven't Got a Penny" between Scritti Politti, the Clash of Sandinista! and, according to Merritt himself, the "ultra-clean" Ace of Base, while "’95 A Serious Mistake" harks back to the early Psychedelic Furs, with a prominent, epic, chorus, and light synthetic sounds.
CD 4:
Raises the level even more, with "’99 Fathers in the Clouds," a beautiful romance, exquisitely pop, bucolic and decadent, where Eno seems to slow Blondie down, in a superb and bitter reflection on parenthood; "’01 Have You Seen It in the Snow?" wonderful poetry in the guise of "Swordfishtrombones," with a Tom Waits who learned to sing, transposed to the era of synthetic reproducibility, first tinting the sweetness of folk with twilight, then contrasting it with the drum machine and synth forays. "’02 Be True to Your Bar" is pianistic, solemn, semi-serious, the funny text "Without your bar, you'd have no place to go" seeks to engage a sing-along like Slade’s "Cum On Feel The Noize." "’04 Cold-Blooded Man" features a cheerful oxymoronic text "You need a cold-blooded man to keep you warm."
CD 5, finally, perhaps:
There’s "’07 In the Snow White Cottages" and its paradigm is Eno of "By This River," the sound and literary outfit meets Elliott Smith.
"’10 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" is muscular, spirited like the experimental Devo of the "Hardcore Tapes," but catchy like those of "Duty Now for the Future," in a proteiform and impactful spoken-sung-recited style.
Stands out the evocative, dreamy beauty of "’13 Big Enough for Both of Us" and "’14 I Wish I Had Pictures," nostalgia, in its own "canaglia" way, reminiscent of the transparencies in Islands in the final explosion of the homonymous Crimson track. The batch closes with "’15 Somebody's Fetish," a happy ending on the fragile boundary between love and fetishism that, after so many personalisms, projects towards personalism, rich in trust in humanity, jesting, ironic, without histrionics, roughly like this: "Everyone is someone else's fetish. / ... from science to necromancy / nothing is so terrible it is not then practiced... / so I with my wildebeest face / my idiosyncrasies, the fruit of freedom granted by Grace / And with Cupid find a corner at the end even for me / I who lived isolated, / awkward monkey.../ I write a song for you, specially for you. / Everyone is someone else's fetish." Without the 49 predecessors, it wouldn’t have been the same, hoc videtur... ah, remember Zebra, the epitaph of "69 Love Songs."
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