James Arden checks out the garage rockers latest album.
The Christian rock band from Brighton bring religion to the masses.
Recipe for modern R'n'B album: liberal helpings of guest rappers and an overdose of sexual euphemisms.
Reviewed by: Ben Rackstraw
With so many bands taking increasingly blatant inspiration from 80s groups, and hip-hop acts disappearing more and more into the möbius strip that is sampling culture, it’s refreshing to hear Stephin Merritt, Magnetic Fields frontman, come out saying he wants Distortion, his band’s ninth album, to “sound more like the Jesus and Mary Chain than the Jesus and Mary Chain.”
The question is, even if it is a stated intention, is this kind of imitation valid over the length of an album? With ‘’Distortion’’ the answer is a definite yes.
The lightness of touch and magpie attitude with which Merritt seems to treat his music makes this album overwhelmingly entertaining.
The thirteen tracks, each with the buzzing feedback and pounding post-punk drumming of the ‘Chain, and none clocking in at much over three minutes, never outstay their welcome. Beach Boy melodies mix with a Velvet Underground aesthetic, and glittering gems of pop lyrical genius sit alongside nursery rhyme style drunken rants performed as a Gregorian chant (I’m not even joking, check out ‘Too Drunk To Dream’ – “Sober, life is a prison /Shit-faced, it is a blessing, / Sober, nobody wants you, / Shit-faced,they’re all undressing”).
The lightness of touch and magpie attitude with which Merritt seems to treat his music makes this album overwhelmingly entertaining, within the instrumental strictures he has placed his band there is so much invention that it is hard not to raise a smile. This has the potential to be even more rewarding after multiple listens, and goes some way beyond a fitting tribute to a great 80s band.
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