Track Listing

1. Three-way
2. California Girls
3. Old Fools
4. Xavier Says
5. Mr Mistletoe
6. Please Stop Dancing
7. Drive On, Driver
8. Too Drunk To Dream
9. Till The Bitter End
10. I'll Dream Alone
11. The Nun's Litany
12. Zombie Boy
13. Courtesans

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12607 in Music
• Released on: 2008-01-14
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
One of pop’s most skilful musical conceptualists, Stephin Merritt’s new album Distortion has been hailed as an attempt to build an album in the mould of The Jesus and Mary Chain’s feedback-strewn debut Psychocandy--although naturally, there’s also another reason: Merritt is a sufferer from "hyperacusis", a sensitive hearing condition, and these sweet-sung songs of love, alcohol, and heartache are designed to give you a glimpse into his experience of sound. If the thought of songs played through a curtain of shrill distortion is an upsetting proposition, fear not–-you’ll return with eardrums intact. Rather, the high-end is just an eccentric sort of frame for some of Magnetic Fields’ more approachable, arch, and all-round loveable songs. "California Girls", sung by collaborator Shirley Simms is shimmering West Coat pop spiked with strychnine ("See them on the big bright screen/Tanned, blonde and seventeen ... I hate Californian girls"). "Too Drunk to Dream" is a sashaying ‘60s pastiche that finds Merritt extolling the virtues of a life spent "shitfaced", while "The Nun’s Litany" sees Simms playing a woman of the cloth that dreams of shedding her habit: "I want to be a topless waitress/I want my mum to shed one tear". --Louis Pattison

Uncut 23.11.07
"Distortion" is great, though - and so much more satisfying than most indie chancers who try and co-opt the Reid brothers' (Jesus and Mary Chain) initial peerless formula of Spectorish bubblegum melody....What a curious and excellent album, all round." John Mulvey

NME 8.12.07
"The NYC industro-showtune geniuses return with another masterpiece, this time sounding like Psychocandy: The Musical..."

Customer Reviews

Some won't like it, but, this is a great album....
This album has has Jesus & Mary Chain comarisons left right and centre, but, for me, it's much more than that. The difference being that early JAMC wrote punk-pop songs, then immersed then in screeching feedback.

This album employs a similar tactic, but, the feedback is soft focus, recalling My Bloody Valentine, or even Slowdive as much as the JAMC.

The production is nearer that of early Magnetic Fields albums such as 'Distant Plastic Trees', but with soft voices over loud-ish music. Despite that, it is a POP! (with big letters - POP as in great catchy songs written from the heart, as opposed to X Factor) album. The more poppy it gets, the better it gets!!! 'Too Drunk To Dream' is Merritt at his best, pondering his own broken heart, along with one he lost, or can't have, and concluding that the only way to get rid of the pain is to get completely wasted. We've all been there. The typical Merritt themes are the same as ever - after over a dcade, would anyone expect otherwise...

'California Girls' sounds saccarine sweet, but, is a dig at a certin type of girl...

I could go through this album song by song...but, instead, I'll say that this is a brilliant album....if you're already familiar with The Magnetic Fields, this is essential. If not, get '69 Love Songs' first, then get this album...

Positive Feedback
To those of you familiar with the Handicapping system in horseracing, it is as if the music industry's powers-that-be have issued Messrs Merritt et al with an ultimatum regarding Distortion. Upon hearing this remarkable aural tapestry they would appear to have ensured that the Fields would drench every song with feedback in order to take away some of the listener's glee & create a level playing field for those less talented (mostly everyone else). Upon first listen I suspected that they had suceeded, until the melodies burst through the cracks like Edelweiss and led me to, unwittingly, turn a deaf ear.

Fuzzy Logic
The Magnetic Fields' 2004 album, i, may have been pretty good, but no one seemed to care because it wasn't 69 Love Songs. Such is the weight of expectation and excitement created by that three-disc pop masterpiece that Stephin Merritt may as well have packed up and gone home right there in 2001. Instead, he has stubbornly hung around, crafted some bizarre, unlikely music, and now: this.

Distortion sells itself, apparently, on the basis of being inspired by The Jesus and Mary Chain's Psychocandy. What the albums have in common is that the songs may be inherently poppy but are seen through a haze of instrumental distortion. Given, however, that co-vocalist Claudia Gonson has one of the sweetest voices around (here sounding more uncannily like the late lamented Kirsty MacColl than ever) and Merritt himself never exactly growls, the idea is doomed almost from the start. The distortion sounds like exactly like what it is: a gimmick stuck on in an effort to work up some listener enthusiasm for another album sent shivering into the world under the shadow of former glories. The thin, demo-quality production that is one of the Fields' persistent characteristics has never sounded so faded and inappropriate.

Dump the central conceit of the album, however, and at least you're left with some good songs. Especially noteworthy are "Til The Bitter End", which marries an electropop feel to a gorgeous, serpentining melody and "I'll Dream Alone", which has a little of the grandeur of the Walker Brothers. "Courtesans" - a yearning, undeveloped ballad that closes the album - comes close to profiting from the application of fuzz, but by this point the experiment is so bankrupt that it is too late to make a difference. When Merritt is capable of such striking melodies it is just frustrating to hear them wasted.

This isn't a grit-your-teeth, fans-only album like Merritt's solo Showtunes was, but it's nevertheless a worrying sign of decline. It's difficult not to feel that the baton of avant pop master has now conclusively passed from Merritt to Sufjan Stevens. New listeners skip back in the catalogue for more persuasive demonstrations of Merritt's songwriting: The Charm of the Highway Strip is pretty good if you feel that 69 love songs is too many.