Magnetic Fields - "Strange Powers"

Stephin Merritt (the creative force behind the Magnetic Fields) cites Abba as his favourite band. I do not. I do, however, cite The Magnetic Fields as one of my favourite bands. Can I not hear ABBA in the Magnetic Fields? I can. I hear elements of ABBAESQUE gaudiness and saccharine poppiness. But the Magnetic Fields set these elements in a wholly (and holy, mind you) Merrittorious context. ABBA does not have lyrics like these:

"In Las Vegas where the electric bills are staggering,
the decor hog-wild and the entertainment saccharine.
What a golden age, what a time of right and reason,
the consumer's king and unhappiness is treason."

And Merritt isn't just channeling ABBA, he's turning the sound on its head. He creates from the pop showiness of ABBA and the dense harmonies of the Beach Boys, as well as the simple and melancholic melody of Joy Division, something entirely his own. He creates his own world of seedy Ferris Wheels, cotton candy, electric lights. And he manages to pull off that most difficult of feats: to mirror the whimsy of his lyrics in his music. This is all perhaps best exemplified by the triple album 69 Love Songs but is also present on the more easily swallowed Holiday from where I pulled this track.

"Strange Powers" also kind of feels like a contemporary pop "I Wanna Be Your Dog," but that might just be me.

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Flying Saucer Attack - "In The Light Of Time"

Let's say some people on a ship off the coast of Blackpool had been sailing around for maybe a few hundred years and lo and behold discovered a four track cassette recorder. And let's say one of the sailors was a sage. Then I guess they probably would have fashioned some guitars and harnessed the music of the seas, as well as the spheres, and recorded "In The Light of Time."

Or let's say some flying saucers came down from the skies and attacked the Earth not with beams, but sheets of snail-paced, pastoral and delay-drenched drone-folk, then that would be a Flying Saucer Attack.

OK?