B=F/(LxI)

Howdy!

I decided to make a post about my favorite band of this month - The Magnetic Fields. I had never really heard of them before...but I was perusing an mp3 blog and saw that they had their album "69 love songs". I was intrigued and downloaded it along with their album "Distortion". It took a little while to get into it...I mean it's hard to like 69 songs all at once, on first listen. However, on both albums there are some really stand out tunes and I've been listening to them on repeat for a while.

Wiki says The Magnetic Fields is a band led by New York City singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt. Albums released by Merritt under the name "Magnetic Fields" often make extensive use of synthesizers underlying clever lyrics, often about love, that are by turns ironic, bitter, and humorous.

So the synth's really remind me of the 80s new wave/synth stuff. Think New Order and some of The Cure. The main vocalist Stephen Merritt has a kinda deepish voice too (though not *quite* as doom as Ian Curtis' of Joy Division). But I really like the deep voice.

Anyways, this is not to say that all the music is like that. Distortion follows the synth trend quite well, but on 69 love songs there's more variety. Some is folky, some is synthy and others are just strange.

My favorites from 69 Love songs : Long forgotten fairy tale (reminds me a bit of New Order's - Temptation), The book of love, world love, time enough for rocking when we're old, grand canyon, the way you said goodnight.
From Distortion : Old Fools, the Nun's Litany and Till the bitter end.
But there really is a lot of great stuff in general.

I leave you with two songs, one from each. I'll have to listen to the rest of their albums now :)