“Try and applaud gently,” remarked Magnetic Fields frontman Stephin Merritt at a show in Austin earlier this month, bristling at the crowd’s uproarious response. For the sunburnt audience members, in town for the SXSW Music Festival, it was an easy request: Inside a dimly lit club, the Magnetic Fields’ chamber pop provided an ideal respite from the din of brand-pushing stars or eager-to-please upstarts.
From the group’s live show, you’d have trouble telling that its latest, tenth LP, Love at the Bottom of the Sea (Merge), marked the return of synthesizers to the band after a three-album absence. The collection’s wormy, clanking electronic pulses, which threaten to overpower the songs’ subtler charms, are disposed of live, leaving only well-mannered orchestration.
And acoustic sounds like cello, ukulele and piano make the album’s mostly deranged narrators seem all the more dangerous. “Your Girlfriend’s Face,” a warning shot at the lover of a cheating spouse, could be delivered by a cast member of The Sopranos. Other relationship sagas end in similarly tragic if less gruesome ways: Both the marvelous single “Andrew in Drag,” about a man’s unrequited obsession with a dolled-up friend, and cock-tease anthem “God Wants Us to Wait” rhapsodize about broken lines of communication in witty, self-contained soliloquies. Broadway types would be wise to attend: The package, unplugged live or peppered with electronics on record, seems ideal for a bloody, sex-filled staging—the kind followed by polite applause.—Andrew Frisicano
Party-starting Slavic revivalists DeVotchKa open.