The Dreaming Moon
Stephin Merritt is one of American music's great eccentrics — responsible for the 69-song triple album 69 Love Songs (1999), one of the most audacious projects in pop history. But the early Magnetic Fields records, made on cheap synthesizers in the early 1990s, have their own austere beauty.
The Dreaming Moon, from 1994's Holiday, is characteristic early Merritt: drum machine, synthetic strings, a melody like a forgotten lullaby, a lyric oscillating between romantic and quietly devastating. The lo-fi production suits the songs' emotional register perfectly.
The Magnetic Fields have released over a dozen albums across thirty years, each a different experiment in form. Merritt's bass voice has become one of the most recognizable in indie music.
"Merritt writes pop songs the way other people write novels — with architecture."