Love at the Bottom of the Sea

AlbumMar 06 / 201215 songs, 34m 21s
Synthpop Indie Pop
Popular

The Magnetic Fields return to their electropop roots (and their former home at Merge Records) for their 10th studio release, *Love at the Bottom of the Sea*. Fifteen short, synth-soaked songs in 34 minutes show off Stephin Merritt’s wordplay, wit, and gift for arrangement. Delivered in his distinctive sleepy deadpan manner, along with some quirky leads by Shirley Simms, these meditations on love and lust are catchy (“Quick!”), droll (“God Wants Us to Wait,” “Andrew in Drag”), dark (“You’re Girlfriend’s Face”), and goofy (“Goin’ Back to the Country,” “All She Cares About Is Mariachi”). In many ways, this is classic Magnetic Fields. Scratchy textures, skittering rhythms, and synthesizers have replaced the guitars that dominated the past three releases, yet it seems like a natural progression. *Love* will surely please old fans.

6.1 / 10

The record that marks the end of Magnetic Fields' self-imposed "no synth trilogy" is also the first Magnetic Fields album in a more than a decade that isn't organized around a formal limitation.

D+

Can a sigh of relief also be a sigh of condescension? On the surface, Love At The Bottom Of The Sea is exactly what many Magnetic Fields fans have been hoping for: a return to the freewheeling, synthesized sounds of the group’s earliest records. But it is also the most suffocatingly arch Magnetic Fields album ever, an…

5 / 10

7.4 / 10

For the band's first batch of new material on Merge since 1999's 3LP classic _69 Love Songs_, Stephin Merritt & Co. crafted a witty, synth-dappled collection of songs that sound like they could've been created during the band's mid-'90s halcyon days. Then again, it's not really fair to act like Magnetic Fields fell off. While 2004's i sounds a bit flat when compared to several of the group's 10 (!) albums, and 2008's excellent, Jesus (and Mary Chain)-worshipping _Distortion_ may have confused a few fans unfamiliar with _Psychocandy_, this is a group that has consistently delivered clever, wildly-well-put-together odes to love and loss for mor...

Check out our album review of Artist's Love at the Bottom of the Sea on Rolling Stone.com.

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Discover Love at the Bottom of the Sea by The Magnetic Fields released in 2012. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.

Following the profile-raising 69 Love Songs, Stephin Merritt largely ditched the synthesisers that had characterised great swathes of the Magnetic Fields’ previous output, embarking on a ‘no-synth’ trilogy that culminated in 2010’s Realism. Love at the Bottom of the Sea restores electronics with a vengeance, its opening seconds sounding more like Michael and Janet Jackson’s Scream than a ukulele-playing ABBA-fanatic has any right to.

6.0 / 10

Every overriding theme on a Magnetic Fields record (this one's all acoustic! This one's titles all start with "i"!) is a ruse

8 / 10

After the dainty delights of 2010’s ‘Realism’ provoked a distinctly mixed response, ‘Love At The Bottom Of The Sea’ finds The Magnetic Fields returning to their synth-pop roots.

The focus of the album is once again electronics, but with the cynicism at a higher pitch than usual.

7 / 10

The comparisons with 69 Love Songs aren't going to stop – and once again the latest Magnetic Fields album can't quite match up, writes <strong>Tim Jonze</strong>

55 %

[xrr rating=2.75/5]Love at the Bottom of the Sea was supposed to be Magnetic Fields’ return to form, the re-collision of the two key elements that mastermind Stephin Merritt has been holding separate from fans since 1999’s 69 Love Songs.

86 %

Question: what was that one movie where the teenage girl meets a dashingly handsome man of a different, otherworldly species, falls head over heels in love, and then permanently changes her species so that she can be with him? No, not Twilight. Oh, yeah, The Little Mermaid. I would really like that movie, if not

4.0 / 5

6 / 10