Info
- Artist:: The Magnetic Fields
- Album:: The Wayward Bus / Distant Plastic Trees
- Year:: 1991
- Label:: Merge
- Catalog:: MRG075CD
Track Ratings
| # | Title | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| The Wayward Bus | ||
| 1 | When You Were My Baby | ★★★★ |
| 2 | The Saddest Story Ever Told | ★★★★ |
| 3 | Lovers From the Moon | ★★★★ |
| 4 | Candy | ★★★★ |
| 5 | Tokyo A-Go-Go | |
| 6 | Summer Lies | |
| 7 | Old Orchard Beach | ★ |
| 8 | Jeremy | ★ |
| 9 | Dancing in Your Eyes | ★★ |
| 10 | Suddenly There Is a Tidal Wave | ★ |
| 11 | [silence] | |
| Distant Plastic Trees | ||
| 12 | Railroad Boy | ★★ |
| 13 | Smoke Signals | ★★ |
| 14 | You Love to Fail | ★★★ |
| 15 | Kings | |
| 16 | Babies Falling | |
| 17 | Living in an Abandoned Firehouse With You | ★ |
| 18 | Tar-Heel Boy | ★★ |
| 19 | Falling in Love With the Wolfboy | ★★ |
| 20 | Josephine | ★ |
| 21 | 100,000 Fireflies | ★★★ |
Log
2016-07-26
★ when you were my baby
★ the saddest story ever told
★★ lovers from the moon. ~~
so this is the perfect pop vein
★ candy
there’s a lot of 145 here too
★ (i wanna like old orchard beach but the clicking is obnoxious)
(though the other thing is the nice kind of obnoxious so it gets a pass)
(the b side originally came from distant plastic trees)
★★ railroad boy. oh god this is somehow wonderful
smoke signals is interesting, or also midi
★ oh wow you love to fail’s lead! (i don’t think her voice holds it up though)
★ oh wow kings’ noises!
★ falling in love with the wolfboy is so dynagear
★★ 100,000 fireflies. it grows on you
(★ and plant white roses is nice too)
2018-01-31
i’ve fallen in love with this
★★ when you were my baby
★★ the saddest story ever told
★★ candy. the first four tracks are impeccable. and you can absolutely tell how he was so influenced by spector. this might be the one where it comes through most clearly, since this side has a density you don’t find in distant plastic trees.
and i’ve started to really adore candy. it’s perfect. and i’ve also started to appreciate susan anway’s voice. it’s so droll and inflexible, and for some reason it’s mixed flat. “slowly lose my mind” gets drawn out though, and the inability to emote gets to me.
and my opinion on the old orchard beach has reversed. the sfx are ok. the loud synth is not.
★ lima beans, collard greens, memories of jeremy (i’ll probably love this one day)
★ dancing in your eyes
★ smoke signals
★★ you love to fail. i kinda wanna cover some of these songs, given our shared interests, but i feel like there’s a gestalt effect arising from what’s lacking in these songs.
★ and i was told it’s ok to like tar-heel boy
Notes
Originally released as just “The Wayward Bus” in 1992.
”The Saddest Story Ever Told” has a similar opening riff to “Then He Kissed Me,” by The Crystals (1963).
”Candy” has melodic similarities to “Terry,” by Twinkle (1964), and I wouldn’t be surprised if the name is an oblique reference to Candy Darling.
in event of moon disaster v2
the first four tracks have done more for me than my parents ever did
the name of the best song is…
so, in conclusion, the best song is either candy by the magnetic fields or rubber human by mili. they both have the same theme though, so it’s really your call as to which one speaks closer to how you feel.
…you do feel this way too, don’t you?
on susan anway’s voice: 2022-10-03
figuring out which song types your voice is most suited for is a frustrating process, the anway era is interesting because they were figuring out a lot of different things at one time. they threw a handful of ideas out there, they made her sing them all, and sometimes it worked out well.
of the ones that work:
- she coos so sweetly and directly in josephine
- in lovers from the moon, the natural diffusion in her voice picks up the echo beautifully
- her droll tone helps to sell the sarcasm in the lyrics, where it’s present
- candy i think fits as a subset of this. it sounds like she’s sitting you down for a painful conversation – one that nobody wants to have, but it needs to happen
everywhere else, her voice is functional. but i think that’s fine. his lyrics really feel like the sort that are supposed to be read out, and the melody just happens to be there as well.
but it does create an unusual feeling every so often, and it happens even in standout songs like 100000 fireflies.
i think that’s why it makes sense for stephin to eventually take over, because he also just needed his voice to be functional (and it only kind of is).
update 2022-10-08
(ref. NPR: The Magnetic Fields’ ‘100,000 Fireflies’ Sounds The Way Being Lonely Feels)
But when it came to the vocals, Merritt’s guidance for Anway was the opposite of what he’d given his machines. “I sent her demo tracks with me singing over them and strict instructions not to emote,” he says, “and let the lyrics convey the feeling.”
That poker-faced delivery has the effect of making Anway sound stunned by recent events — like someone in a dissociative state, blankly staring out the window, repeating the phrase, “I’m afraid of the dark without you close to me.” And it works. One could argue that by the strictest pop standards, “100,000 Fireflies” is more like a suggestion of a song than a complete composition — yet it’s that negative space that draws you close, that allows you to relate to the song so intimately. If the bombastic, maximalist arrangement of something like The Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” suggests that a song belongs to everyone, the translucent veneer of “Fireflies” signals that this is for you and you alone.
ok so it was intentional…
i’m not sure if i can say whether it works or not because i don’t have access to the counterfactual (and tar-heel boy isn’t a good exception to infer from), but i could see it being jarring if she emoted more. but also, i could see it not being jarring, since the dissonance would pick up the slack.
are there any songs or albums where the vocalist is hamming it up over relatively minimal arrangements?
- Young Marble Giants – Colossal Youth (1979) came to mind first as being similarly minimal all across the board
- “Blue Moon” [the Elvis Presley cover] is likely the pinnacle of what i’m thinking about, and i adore that song
- i believe the Baby Dee demos would also qualify
(also, for reference)
“The instruments on Distant Plastic Trees are a Roland S-50 sampler, a Korg Poly-800 digital synthesizer, and a Yamaha RX21 drum machine, all controlled by a Macintosh 512K computer running sequences,” he explains. Some tracks feature an ARP Odyssey synth played by hand; just one, “Plant White Roses,” adds an acoustic guitar. Merritt added humanizing touches to that landscape by leaning on Digital Performer, a piece of music software he favored “specifically because it had sophisticated quantization that could make sequences sound honest-to-God hand-played, because I did and do find strict clocks cheesy.”