Customer Reviews

The Charm Of The Highway Strip [Vinyl]

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4 star:		(2)
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I first heard this album about eight years ago, and I have listened to it several times a month since. It just doesn't get old--the more I hear it, the more remarkable it is. Many people have commented on Merritt's eclectic instrumentation, which is indeed striking. But the really fantastic thing about his music is just how great he is at turning out a tune. The instrumentations are novel, but not novelties, and the tight melodies have the charm and stay-in-your-headness of folk tunes. Stephin Merritt is just so damned smart--and not in a look-at-me-I'm-so-deep or hipster way, but in the understated, constant, prolific manner that makes for lasting songwriting. His lyrics are also smart and moving, even when, as with the 69 Love Songs trio, he insists on claiming they're ironic or meta. He's a master at wry, pithy little lines that stick with you a lot more strongly than most of the abstract, self-congratulatory crap that passes for poetry these days.

I've listened to each Magnetic Fields album several times over--I'm completely addicted to them, in fact--and while there's not a bad one in the bunch, Charm of the Highway Strip does stand out as the most consistently fantastic and aesthetically unified project. Give this album a try. You won't regret it-none of the many people I've forced this on have.

Seriously, if you are a magnetic fields fan, BUY THIS. You may not prefer the more dark, country, sound of this album as opposed to the often springy 69 love songs, but i guarantee you, there is no way not to fall in love with this album. By my second listen, this album was already sacred to me, and right now it is sitting in its case after my last spurt of listenings, waiting patiently until the time is right for me to take it out again. My nightmare would be to overplay this album. Stephen Merrit's low voice will make you feel lonely as he sings of a girl's fear of trains, or a lonesome highway, but at the same time he soothes you, in making you too feel like an explorer on some vast, endless highway. The songs on this album make you feel that while you may be lonely, it's an almost noble thing to be.

I will shamelessly say that Stephan Merritt's voice soaring sadly with the lyrics "your eyes are the mesa verde/big and brown and far away" never fail to cause the little sharp pricklings behind my eyes that are the precursors of tears. This album makes me want nothing more than to drive the miles of lonely roads that these songs deal with so beautifully, in a pair of cowboy boots and a sunburn. Merritt has never sounded better, his thick voice wrapping the lyrics in warm wooly blankets of sound and not twanging too much over what are really country songs with a few indy rock effects thrown in for good measure. And why not mix country with indy rock? It's pure americana, baby, and it makes me homesick like a motha.

Most people who listen to the Magnetic Fields tend to prefer Stephin Merritt's more pop-oriented releases like HOLIDAY or DISTANT PLASTIC TREES/THE WAYWARD BUS. True, Merritt excels at creating beautiful ABBAesque homemade songs and often resembles a modern-day Phil Spector. However, THE CHARM OF THE HIGHWAY STRIP is unquestionably my favorite Magnetic Fields release. It is likely due to the consistent travel theme throughout -- a cohesiveness that lacks in his previous efforts. If you are looking for catchy singles, I'd suggest the other albums -- they offer some great immediate fixes. But if you are like me, and prefer the complexities of a forty-minute mini-concept album, this one is for you. It is a gorgeous collection of dark songs combined with the Stephin Merritt's usual wit.

Don't be fooled by the number of times 'ABBA' is repeated in the reviews of this CD--there's a fair dose of Leonard Cohen here too. There's a really satisfying intellectualism to Stephen Merrit's music that he never pushes into anything pretentious--it's especially pronounced in The Charm of the Highway Strip. This album combines cynicism and wonderment with both the hokiest and the most authentic aspects of American musical culture. It's a great expression of how it feels to spend your life on a massive, paved continent, where (whether you like it or not) your most important relationships are with vehicles and roads. Definitely worth hearing!

"After all those days/ on godforsaken highways/ the roads don't love you/ and they still won't pretend to" has got to be one of the best choruses ever in any song. Stephin Merritt has got to be one of the best songwriters around. And "The Charm of the Highway Strip" has got to be one of his best efforts. These songs about life on the "Lonely Highway" may all be sad, but they're all good. He meshes the oddly uncheesy blips of cheap keyboards with cello and guitar in the same beautiful way he always has, but this time it seems to have more meaning. He covers love, the expansion of the west, and above all, traveling, but the overall effect is the one described in the chorus to another gorgeous song, which goes "When the open road is closing in/ and the dotted yellow lines begin to spin."

I'm relatively new to the Magnetic Fields: I picked up their new CD Distortion about a month ago and was impressed. Then I ordered 7 other Magnetic Fields CD's and I was a little taken aback. They didn't have the almost Jesus and Mary Chain noise of Distortion. But soon I adjusted to the quirky pop sound of the Magnetic Fields and this CD quickly became my favorite. The Amazon reviewer is an idiot: "But much of this particular stretch of the Fields is lacking in charm, since Merritt's wry stance chafes a bit too hard against the guileless melodies." It a very quirky country sound, full of longing and ache and wry melancholy, and the CD is held together very tightly by the controlling metaphor of the road. I buy tons of CD's and this one is going to be one of my favorite purchases of 2008. I'm wondering how I've missed listening the the Magnetic Fields for all these years!

I'm in a Magnetic Fields month, or maybe a Magnetic Fields six months, who knows? Haven't dipped into 69 Love Songs, yet. And that's probably a six month project itself. But of I, The Wayward Bus/Plastic Trees, and Charm of the Highway Strip, Charm is my current favorite. Like the work of Handsome Family, Giant Sand, and Hank Dogs, this country is not going to be crashing into the mainstream any time soon. Made up of equal parts electronic, synth mixes, cello, and something that sounds like a harpsichord (personally I hear more Phil Spector than Abba in the music), every one of these nine vocal songs -- the tenth, Dust Bowl, is an instrumental that can be skipped -- trades on the classic country themes of trains and highways. Only in Merritt's hand they are neither appealing nor romantic, but obsessions that promise escape and deliver only more pain and loneliness. Which, of course, is exactly what defines Merritt. Lonely Highway, with its references to Jackson, might be the fate that awaited Lee and Nancy, Johnny and June, after they got married in that "fever hotter than a pepper sprout." My two current favorites are I Have the Moon (though written eight years or so earlier, it's what Drusilla might have sung to Spike on Buffy after he became human) and Fear of Trains, where Merritt joins the Ramones in having the KKK take someone away, in this case the history of a Native American girl. Next week the favorites are likely to be different. What's certain is that Charm of the Highway Strip as a whole is going to be a very long-term favorite.

While CERTAINLY not techno (that realm encompassing entirely computer-generated and simulated noises), the Magnetic Fields present us with a gentler view through technology, using all types of uncommon instruments, processed and spliced and reassembled and such within the computer. Merritt's lyrics are outstandingly simple, expertly capturing the emotions that we don't realize that we feel, but undoubtedly do. This album is a gentle chronicle of wanderings, all around Merritt's deep, brooding voice. Warm. Think Pete and Pete, possibly. Anyhow, it's damned good.

Merrit is by no means the best country crooner this world's ever seen, but this is probably the closest you'll see Merrit get to doing a country album (short of a couple songs on 69 Love songs). For what it's worth, he succeeds in producing the best (and possibly the only) indie/lo fi road album in the world. Musically, the songs are like old fashioned country with synthesizers. The result is nothing short of amazing, espeically with Merrit's strong lyrics. Merrit's Peter Murphyesque baritone suits the songs fine, as he sings such songs as the opener Lonely Highway and Born on a Train. Highlights are Born On A Train, where he remarks "Some roads are only seen at night/ghost roads - nothing but neon signs/but some nights the enon gas gets free/and tunrs into walking dead like me." I Have the Moon and Long Vermont Roads have similar themes of traveling the long ronely roads. Merrit goes full fledged goth on Crowd of Drifters, where he sings as a "traveling salesman/I got lost in a crowd of drifters." Basically the album reads like a Bauhaus travelogue with country guitars and synthesizers, all to amazing degrees of effect.