The Magnetic Fields
69 Love Songs

THE REVIEW

Among the most incredible things about this "69 Love Songs" is certainly the disarming ease with which the usual hesitation to dive into such a work (sixty-nine love songs, are you kidding me?) is swept away by the first notes of the nursery rhyme of Absolutely Cuckoo. A very simple song, with the usual acoustic guitar - keyboard accompaniment and lasts a minute and a half. Right after, we find ourselves at the opposite end, as a warm piano enters with Merritt's baritone voice, singing phrases of extraordinary strength: I Don't believe in the sun: how could it shine down on everyone and never shine on me? how could there be such cruelty? The piece is I Don't Believe In The Sun, a masterpiece permeated by a disillusionment that is typically Merrittian, whose story has been told too much to be retold in this review. A story perhaps all too typical and overused to define musicians of all genres, a difficult childhood, with little Stephen tossed from one city to another, a shy and insecure boy, living a troubled life, which is reflected today in rather unaccommodating behavior...the same old story, basically.

But all this should not distract from the beauty of the album, which is not beautiful relative to the author's story, it is not a rough work where glimpses of the great artist can be seen, it is truly an absolute masterpiece, humbly offering an impressive number of gems, drawing from all the best of sixty years of pop music and more. And so we have the romantic All my little Words, The Book Of Love (there is a Peter Gabriel cover included in the album "Scratch My Back", Come Back To San Francisco, Parades Go By, My Sentimental Melody (the first disc is indeed the one that leans more in this direction), The Way You Say Goodbye and Bitter Tears, masterpieces dripping with pathos like the aforementioned I Don't Believe in The Sun, Papa Was A Rodeo, Busby Berkeley Dreams, in my opinion the most beautiful tracks of the album, not coincidentally placed one per each of the three discs, tracks leaning more towards electronics (a passion - almost - never concealed by the Boston genius) and experimentation, especially in the second and third disc, for example Underwear, It's A Crime, Strange Eyes, Love Is Like Jazz, Love Is A Bottle Of Gin, Promises of Eternity, Long Forgotten Fairytale, Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits, Fido your Flesh Is Too Long, country sounds (Absolutely Cuckoo, Rino Dakota, I Think I Need A New Heart, A Chicken With The Head Cut Off, I'm Sorry That I Love You brief musical sketches (sometimes frankly useless, here we have a few of the album's rare lapses in style), the best Boa Constrictor and Roses, rock accents as in When My Boys Walks Down The Street, I Don't Want To Get Over You and livelier moments, even if often the lyrics take on none of that liveliness: perhaps the most poignant is that of No One Will Really Love You, an absolute masterpiece, then The Luckiest Guy On The Low-East Side, Crazy For You But Not That Crazy and Kiss Me Like You Mean It.

In reality, my categorization is quite approximate, as many tracks represent, in their brevity, the magical meeting of multiple musical ideas, with the most disparate deployment of instruments, from voice-guitar or voice-keyboard pieces to pieces that evoke strings and percussion.

In essence, an extraordinary album, among the best of its era and genre. Love told in 69 songs without appearing for even a moment banal or sappy. Do not imagine anything of the "stilnovistic": a terrestrial, suffered love (fortunately not always :D), no angel woman (surely not angel, probably not even women) and nothing previously heard.

An album to listen to and love, which will serve as a benchmark for all pop to come, with an impressive emotional charge. Arm yourself with tissues and patience (of course, absorbing so many tracks is not easy) and buy it.