So, I finally got around to listening to The 6ths, one of many intriguing side-projects to spring, Athena-like, from the mind of Magnetic Fields impresario Stephin Merritt. And in a way, what’s most immediately interesting is the way the Wasps’ Nests album prefigures so much of Merritt’s later, better known work. (For context, the conceit behind The 6ths is that it’s a sort of modular band: Merritt writes all the songs, and each is performed by a different indie icon—folks like Lou Barlow of Sebadoh, or Mary Timony, or Luna’s Dean Wareham.) In almost every track on the 1995 6ths album, you can spot the seeds of something off that critic’s wet dream 69 Love Songs (or, less often, another MF album). What’s extra intriguing, though, is that the same basic melody is often radically transformed between its pupal 6ths form and its final version. A tune that appears as an Abba-esque technopop number on the early album might show up in the guise of a slow, rambling ballad on the later one. So, just as a first pass, here are the most obvious ones (though not always obvious from the linked excerpts):
- “Aging Spinsters” = “I Don’t Believe in the Sun”
- “All Dressed Up in Dreams” = Hybrid of “I Don’t Really Love You Anymore” and “The Flowers She Sent and the Flowers She Said She Sent.”
- “Falling Out of Love With You” = “Promises of Eternity”
- “Looking for Love in the Hall of Mirrors” = “I Think I Need a New Heart”
- “Here in My Heart” = “World Love”
- “You Can’t Break a Broken Heart” = “I Don’t Want to Get Over You“
These are just the ones that sort of leap out at you unbidden; presumably other parallels would emerge if one were to sit down and listen the whole Magnetic Fields corpus and then listen to the 6ths record. Anyway, as someone who was raised Wagnerian, I find it sort of fun to watch how these motifs unfold and change—often drastically—and reemerge over the course of a songwriter’s career; might be an amusing exercise for a lazy Sunday if you’ve got the relevant albums on hand.
Addendum: I may be pushing it with #4. Actually “Looking for Love” sounds a lot closer to “Blue Thunder” from another Dean Wareham band, Galaxie 500.
3 responses so far ↓
1 steveintheknow // Apr 3, 2007 at 11:04 am
“Get Lost” is still my fav, even more so then 69 love songs, but that’s probably just a sentimental thing. I just drove back from Dallas listening to that and “Charm of the Highway Strip”…. So, a great and totally relevant post. In my little world anyway.
2 Emily // Apr 3, 2007 at 6:09 pm
My friend Eric, a grad student at UT Austin, runs a radio show dedicated to Stephin Merrit–The House of Tomorrow Night. check it out.
3 steveintheknow // Apr 4, 2007 at 8:56 am
Emily
Thats funny. I clicked on your link and…I know The Theater Fire (I used to be on the same small time indie label), and Jerm Pollet (well at least my wife does). Anyway, small world.