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Recent Articles
Recent Articles by Ben Westhoff
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National Features >
Houston Press
A flight attendant's smackdown with the wife of mega-preacher Joel Osteen inspires a whole new set of commandments.
By Rich Connelly
City Pages
Today Denver, tomorrow the Twin Cities.
By Matt Snyders and Bradley Campbell
The Pitch
A country musician rescues Waylon Jennings' tour bus from the scrap heap.
By C.J. Janovy
Village Voice
The provocateur who brought you "Piss Christ" pinches off a new concept.
By Lynn Yaeger
The Magnetic Fields
Distortion
Nonesuch
Published on January 24, 2008
True to its title, the latest album from Stephin Merritt's long-running prickly pop project the Magnetic Fields is full of feedback and reverb. While it might seem that such sonic intrusion would disrupt these carefully crafted tunes, that's not the case. In fact, Distortion is as pretty, melodic and fully formed as anything Merritt has done. From the surf-rock near-instrumental "Three-Way" to "California Girls" (which pays homage to and skewers the Beach Boys) to "The Nun's Litany," this slightly dissonant dream-scape of an album is charming, irreverent and catchy throughout thanks to Shirley Simms, a longtime friend of Merritt's who lends her '60s and '70s radio-style vocals to every other track. Despite the songs' debt to Phil Spector, Merritt's lyrics are, thankfully, as bitter as ever on tracks such as "Mr. Mistletoe," on which he sings lines like "Oh, Mr. Mistletoe, wither and die, you useless weed/For no one have I." Merritt learned long ago that pretty ditties and sour sentiment go together perfectly, and he has never better expressed it better than he does here.