Music Arcades: The Magnetic Fields: The Wayward Bus/Distant Plastic Trees

I try to imagine myself listening to this CD as though it arrived, unknown, via a lucky dip, as with Sunday's Tompaulin album. And in that thought-experiment, I kind of like it, but not as much as Tompaulin. I would not have predicted that this ensemble would go on to make the greatest album ever made.

But they did, although in the case of Distant Plastic Trees, you could barely call The Magnetic Fields an ensemble. No musicians are credited aside from "Susan Anway sings Stephin Merritt songs", so I'm assuming Stephin programmed or played all the instruments himself. It makes it less of an indie-rock album — all the better for that, and sounding more like the approach Stephin has reverted to with his theatre pieces (now that he can afford to?) of writing, arranging and producing but removing himself from the 'picture' of the performance.

Some people still rate 100,000 Fireflies from DPT as Merritt's best ever song, but I can't see it myself. The album also features Josephine, the song that led me to discover Alasdair Roberts, singing it on A Warm and Yeasty Corner. And I like Summer Lies from The Wayward Bus: I detect a faint pre-echo of The Things We Did and Didn't Do in it.

I should have said that this CD is a re-issue of the first two Magnetic Fields' albums, the ones before Stephin Merritt was 'forced' to become lead vocalist himself, after Susan left New York to pursue interests outside music. The Wayward Bus is the second, and Distant Plastic Trees the first, with a 4'33" silent track separating them on the CD. This is clearly an homage to John Cage and his 'silent' piece, 4'33", but, let's be clear, it is not a cover or performance of the piece as some have argued. The Magnetic Fields have performed 4'33" at least once, as an encore to the 69 Love Songs show at the Somerville Theatre in Boston on 8 December 2000, but 4'33" is not completely silent: the whole point is that the composition draws your attention to the non-intentional sounds of the environment and performance. So a blank track cannot be a performance.

I'm in a footnotey mood at the moment — even more than usual — so I'll mention that the young woman, leaning on an old pickup truck with her beau, in the black and white photograph that adorns both the CD itself and the inlay booklet is alleged to be Stephin's mother. I can't remember where I read or heard that, and even if I could give you a citation it would only be citing a rumour. I thought it might have been on this trivia page, but no (there is an interesting theory about The Magnetic Fields' version of "Heroes", however, which I wish I'd read before I went on about it last week). During a Magnetic Fields tour a few years ago, a fan mentioned on the mailing list that they'd seen Stephin's mother at one of the shows. Wow, I thought, they must have an inside track to know what his mum looks like. A few days later, the tour reached London and I saw a short sixtysomething woman in the foyer. No mistaking, no inside knowledge required, it was Stephin's mum.