The Magnetic Fields “69 Love Songs” (1999)
My first thought on reading about this one was “why would anyone do this?!” both to themselves and to the listener.
The title is not a misnomer or an exaggeration, there are actually 69 songs.
Three discs.
Nearly 3 hours of music to work through. It is a veritable
musical marathon.
It’s that marathon aspect which is offputting rather than the actual music, which is not unenjoyable for the most part, it covers a range of genres and
styles. To my ears the ‘base sound’ is an indie pop-rock akin to the
Violent Femmes, but the music goes from 60s hippy folk to 80s synth pop,
stopping in along with way to visit jazz, reggae, morose Leonard Cohen
style ballads (well rendered with singer Stephin Merritt’s deep
baritone), country, and 70s pop rock.
A lot of the songs clock in well under 2 minutes, which is something of a
relief given the number of tracks, but can also make the listening
experience a bit dizzying and harder to latch onto.
