New music Tuesday: Magnetic Fields, Beach House, Four Tet, and Los Campesinos!
Lots of chances to spend money on great music today
Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields
A.V. Club music critics are feeling very generous today, though that might have something to do with the amount of great music dropping on this eventful Tuesday. Heading up the list of big-ticket releases is Magnetic Fields’ Realism, which gets an A- from Noel Murray, who writes that “longtime fans will appreciate that Realism sounds more like classic Magnetic Fields than anything Merritt has done lately, but they’ll especially enjoy the pithy bleakness of songs like ‘Seduced And Abandoned’ (with its built-in explanation: ‘and baby makes two’) or the gleefully smart-aleck Facebook references in ‘We Are Having A Hootenanny’ (in which a chorus of voices urges listeners to ‘take our personality quiz’).” Also scoring an A- is Beach House’s much-buzzed Teen Dream, which doesn’t remake the Baltimore duo’s dreamy formula as much as refine it. Writes Chris Martins: “There are little clues scattered throughout Teen Dream—the tempo-warping keyboard tones on “Norway,” the Pixies-like haunt of ‘Walk In The Park’” the crashing drums that close ‘10 Mile Stereo’—but Beach House’s progress is measured in moods that deepen with each release.”
Martins also raves about the new Four Tet record There Is Love In You, who says “if this isn’t the best Four Tet record yet, it’s certainly a fresh face for [Kieran] Hebden” in his A review. The latest Los Campesinos! record Romance Is Boring is also a winner, says Murray, who writes that the album “largely stays the course, though the title—and its cover image of a bloody leg—signals a record that’s more openly cynical about all the usual pop mainstays” in his B+ review.
