When Opposites Attract! Outrageous Cherry & The Magnetic Fields

Last week I revisited the Magnetic Fields "69 Love Songs," and by my count, there are really only about 28 to 35 songs in the 3 disc set that I truly like and/or love. That’s a lot of filler for a collection I once held in such high regard. Yes, there was a time a few years ago where I felt that the best gift you could give someone you cared about was Stephen Merritt’s masterwork, but as time goes on, tastes change and so too do perceptions. Listening to it again, it would appear that while some tracks are meticulously crafted with love, others seems to be spat out like watermelon seeds. The quirky songs are as catchy as ever, and some of the ballads still hit me on a gut level, but there are others that affect me merely because they remind me of the time in my life that I discovered them.

As I worked my way through the 3rd disc, I came across the track, "Meaningless," which has never really been a favorite of mine, although I can relate to it’s unabashedly bitter take on relationships. As I listened to the track, my mind drifted off, and suddenly I found myself humming another song in my head, "Togetherness" by the band Outrageous Cherry.

I first posted about Outrageous Cherry all the way back in April ‘06, you can check that out here, although the links are D.E.A.D. "Togetherness" was the first OC song that I ever heard; I remember sitting at my girlfriend’s computer, after reading about them, and searching for them on Limewire or Soulsearch, or whatever it was I was using at the time. Listening to it that first time, it didn't quite sound like “crazy Psychedelia” I imagined it would from the article, but several years later when I heard it again within the Jangle-Pop context of their album, "Out there in Dark," it made much more sense to me.

Strangely, both songs start at different ends of the "Love Spectrum" but eventually reach the same conclusion: breaking up kinda sucks. In a head to head comparison, I think “Togetherness” is a better song. While Merritt seems to fancy himself a lyrical wordsmith with a literary sheen, his deadpan delivery can undermine his harder sells, in other words, it’s just hard to take him seriously sometimes. Outrageous Cherry vocalist Matthew Smith’s straight-forward approach on the other hand, while not overly sentimental, nor immediate, really hits home as the song builds to it’s final refrain.

The Magnetic Fields – “Meaningless” (mp3)
Outrageous Cherry – “Togetherness” (mp3)

Thoughts?

–Popkoff