For over twenty years Stephin Merritt has led The Magnetic Fields through the often turbulent waters of the music industry to achieve a longevity and cult success many groups can only dream off. Rarely touring and with sporadic album releases The Magnetic Fields and their fans continue to support each other with little regard for the status quo. With Merritt’s unparalleled ear for melody and deadpan lyrics once again leading the charge this March sees the release of the groups tenth album, ‘Love of The Bottom of The Sea’. With the return of synthesisers to proceedings Clash caught up with the songwriter to discuss bars, lyrics and disco.
– – –
First and foremost, how are you today?
SM: Fine. A little jet lagged. Arrived 6.30 yesterday.
You’ve mentioned before that you don’t like spending too long recording albums. How long did it take to put together ‘Love at the Bottom of the Sea’?
SM: I said I don’t like spending too long in the studio?
The actual recording process…
SM: On ‘69 Love Songs’ I spent a year in the studio. For ‘Distortion’ I spent six weeks in the studio and then a year and a half mixing the damn thing. I spent about nine months on this record.
The new LP sees the return of synthesizers to the songs. Why did you decide to a do a synth free trilogy for the past three albums?
SM: I was bored with the restraints of synthesizer sounds. My roots are in New Wave and electro pop and growing up I expected every record to have a sound I’ve never heard before. When that stopped happening I became more and more bored with synthesizers. So I thought I would take a break from that and concentrate on other instruments and then hope someone would do something new with synthesizers when I wasn’t looking. Which in fact happened. Most of what people have done which is new with synthesizers is not actually to do with making new tones, but more about different ways of organizing pitch so that the more interesting things aren’t with ‘definite’ pitch. They may be squiggily sounds or screeching chaotic sounds, or things that suggest jungles or flocks of birds or large groups of…something happening in the distance. We try not to use bleeps and bips you would associate with classic synthesizer. So I got a lot of those in and slathered those all over the record. There are also sounds people wouldn’t identify with synthesizers. I tried to use the instruments in a way that would blend with those which you can’t really tell…I think traditionally in The Magnetic Fields…on the last three albums you can’t really tell it’s a cello. Some people haven’t realized we’ve been using a cello for fifteen years.
That’s what I love about all your records and especially ‘69 Love Songs,’ the instruments have been molded in such a way that they sound fresh. You put the record on and you can tell it’s you.
SM: I try to make sure I include mistakes and enigmatic things on the cello so that people with reasonable good stereos can tell it’s a cello. It doesn’t really seem to work (laughs).
I’ve been listening to ‘Andrew In Drag’ constantly since it was posted online. I think the lyrics are genius, so funny. Does it ever frustrate you that some critics in the press paint you as the doom and gloom figure – Do you think the humor in your lyrics are often missed?
SM: I’m happy to say I don’t read the press.
A wise choice.
SM: When I was a teenager I adored Soft Cell, I adored them before I realized they were joking. I continue to adore them after I realized they were joking (laughs). I understand why people don’t necessarily acquaint humor with music from having had that experience. Once you realize music and humor can go together quite well you can take it or leave it. Like The Smiths…the great thing about The Smiths is that they’re REALLY funny as well as very sad. They’re definitely having a joke at the same time, ‘Hairdresser On Fire’ (Morrissey Solo); if it isn’t funny it’s really scary. I’m fairly sure it’s supposed to be funny.
Over the years you’ve written so many songs about life and love – are there ever any topics or big clichés you like to avoid?
SM: Are there clichés I like to avoid? I think if I thought of a cliché I should avoid I would consider it a challenge. I like to grapple with clichés. Is there a particular cliché I might be avoiding you’re aware of? I like to cover them all really.
With ’69 Love Songs’ you produced sixty-nine love songs on different forms of love…
SM: Largely dealing with cliché forms…
…yeah, you did them all so well I wondered during the writing process of that album you ever thought ‘oh that might not work’, but it seems you viewed it all as a challenge.
SM: Well there were songs I didn’t use. There is a song from this album called ‘I’ll Go Anywhere with Hugh’, I think I started writing that in time to put on ‘69 Love Songs’ and I just couldn’t finish it in till recently…there is a lot of those. The 69 Love Song notebooks contain a whole lot of fragments that I didn’t finish off. I often take decades to finish a particular song (laughs).
For Realism ‘Irving Berlin and old folk music’ were stated as influences, while The Jesus & Mary Chain were for ‘Distortion’ – were there any particular artists you had in my mind when making ‘Love At The Bottom of The Sea’?
SM: I though while I was making it they I wasn’t working with any particular model in mind but having made it The United States of American (group) is extremely relevant to it. I don’t know how much The United States of America means in England but they only made one record in 1969 with modular synthesizer and things running through it, like putting a violin through a ring modulator, phasing the drums, things most people wouldn’t do till ten years after that. They used a lot of chaotic elements from the electronics that weren’t necessarily specific pitches and that seems to have been an unconscious model for me on this new record. But other than the United States of America I haven’t used any particular recognizable models.
The tour kicks off in March. Who will you be bringing and what unique instruments will be making an appearance?
SM: Well I’m going to be playing the harmonium and melodica…oh and kazoo. On ‘The Horrible Party’ I play the electric kazoo, I have an electric kazoo which is also a midi kazoo but I didn’t use the midi part. We’re playing acoustically on the tour so I’m just going to play the acoustic kazoo.
Do you still tend to write lyrics hanging out in bars?
SM: I haven’t written a shred of a song outside of a bar in fifteen years.
Do you ever get distracted by the noise?
SM: What the noise distracts me from is the music which is always going on in my head anyway. If I’m not hearing music in the air I’m hearing it in my head, and if I’m hearing it in my head it’s probably not my own. If I have music playing in the background then I can work on music deliberately. If I’m not hearing anything then it’s harder for me…I’ll start hearing a television commercial from when I was a child. Once in a while, every few months or so, I’ll stare off into space and realize I’m not hearing anything. There isn’t any particular music going around my head but it’s very rare. Usually when I’m falling asleep or waking up I already have music around my head and I think a lot of people are like that but for me it’s so pervasive I pretty much need to have music playing in order to concentrate on writing music. Plus if there’s music playing I can respond to it. It needs to be a certain kind of music…early 20th century serial music pianos aren’t really gonna be helpful. Hip-Hop, yelling rhythmically is not going to be helpful. It needs to be relatively simple with a steady beat, preferably something I already know and preferably something I don’t particularly love so I won’t be listening to it. Which is why I tend to sit around in bars with 70’s disco playing. They’re not all that hard to find in the gay world. Gay men break down into two age groups, before and after the aids crisis. So there is the old people bars and the young peoples bars and I hang out in the old peoples bars, and that’s what they play, 70’s disco. The good old days before everyone dropped dead.
Do you have a writing regime or…
SM: I can’t really follow a regime, I just sit a bar for a few hours and if it happens it happens.
– – –
Words by Sam Walker-Smart
‘Love at the Bottom of the Sea’ is out now.
