One last 2008-in-review post. Sadly, it’s to mention my biggest musical disappointment of the year, the Magnetic Fields’ Distortion
But Distortion just isn’t that good. Not so much bad as mediocre, it lacks any real standout tracks to break up the just-okay ones, a situation further exacerbated by the sheets of noise inexpertly slathered over everything, further blurring the songs together. Merritt is (correctly) celebrated for his wit, but here it largely fails him — the lyrics to “California Girls”, “The Nun’s Litany”, and “Zombie Boy” aren’t very clever and lack bite, leaving “Too Drunk To Dream” the only real example of Merritt’s gift for deadpan lyrics (and that song, in turn, suffers badly from muddy distortion obscuring its melody). The slower, melodramatic material does work better — “Old Fools”, “Mr. Mistletoe” and “Drive On, Driver” are all quite good, and use their noisy backdrops to better effect — but they badly need quality lighter material to balance them out, and without it, the album’s sequencing is thrown completely out of whack.
This is especially a problem at the end of the album. It closes with Distortion’s single most devastating track, the spare, heartbreaking “Courtesans”. But before this, we have the dullest stretch of the record: the dirge-like “Till The Bitter End”, the okay-but-not-great “I’ll Dream Alone” (another good song sabotaged by overdoing the feedback), the rather inane “The Nun’s Litany”, and the flat-out retarded “Zombie Boy”. By the time “Courtesans” shows up to weave its subtle charms, I was bored and worn out, and it took me five or six listens to the album before I even noticed that the last song might be worth paying attention to.
When I add it all up, I come up with five good-to-great tracks, another four that are either enjoyable or at least inoffensive, and four that I really dislike. That doesn’t really seem like a bad ratio, but to adapt Howard Hawks’ famous quote to a different medium, a good album is three good songs and no bad songs. And although I tried desperately to love this album, I ultimately gave up on it.
p.s. I don’t really care that much for that Vivian Girls album
is one of my three or four favorite jazz LP’s), Hubbard was a forceful, exciting player with an amazing tone. He will be sorely missed.
this year, and was knocked out by its mix of angular art rock and beautiful dream pop. You can see my review of the album 
— Reading 
– I only downloaded the four Lily songs off this eight song split EP. Apparently recorded around the same time as Eccsame The Photon Band, my favorite Lilys album, and hopefully offering more of the same slow, dreamy pop music.
