The Magnetic Fields - Realism

Sam Davol, a Harvard graduate, plays the cello that opens Realism, leading into the vocals of fellow alum Claudia Gonson and John Cage acolyte Stephin Merritt. This kind of pedigree doesn’t obstruct the opening track’s immediate pop embrace; by the third, the whimsical and sardonic “We Are Having a Hootenanny Now,” it’s almost hard to believe.

The Magnetic Fields is an enormously talented band blessed with the genius of Merritt, one of the decade’s most prolific and accomplished singer-songwriters. He delivers lines as offhandedly brilliant as, “You can’t go ‘round just saying stuff because it’s pretty/And I no longer drink enough to think you’re witty,” and as scathing as, “I want you crawling back to me down on your knees, yeah/Like an appendectomy sans anesthesia”—both within the album’s first two minutes.

Realism is intended as a companion to 2008’s Distortion, offering a classical folk foil to the former’s noise-drenched pop. Like its predecessor, Realism adds more worthy songs to the canon of Magnetic Fields classics. “Always Already Gone” is Gonson’s gorgeous lament of predictably fleeting love; “The Dada Polka” is a mournful poem about ephemeral life that, fortunately, sounds nothing like its title suggests; “The Dolls’ Tea Party” exploits the Fields’ typical camp tendencies.

Realism is no radical departure—after exhausting all the stylistic tropes and conventions of pop over the course of their 1999 triple-disc magnum opus, 69 Love Songs, that hardly seems possible. That album is still the best entry into the work of one of music’s preeminent songwriters, and that it has inevitably informed every album the band has made since is a testament to its impossible diversity. But Realism is smart, charming and almost arrogant in its effortless display of musical acumen—which is to say, everything one could desire in a new Magnetic Fields release.