Stream: Future Bible Heroes, ‘Living, Loving, Partygoing’
Kevin Bronson on
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As anybody who’s spent time with Magnetic Fields’ 1999 opus “69 Love Songs” – or the rest of their catalog, for that matter – can attest, Stephin Merritt ranks as one of the most provocative and prolific songwriters of the past two decades. Only a year after releasing his main band’s 10th album “Love at the Bottom of the Sea,” Merritt has rebooted one of his side projects, Future Bible Heroes, his electronic trio with Claudia Gonson and Chris Ewen. Future Bible Heroes’ discotheque has always been a thorny mental space – go ahead and dance, sure, but confront the neuroses that beg for all that catharsis in the first place. So it is with the new album “Partygoing” (due June 4 on Merge), FBH’s first release since 2002. Merritt describes the themes for the new album as drinking, dancing and death, and acknowledges some of it was inspired by his time living in Los Angeles. (“When the evening falls in Tinseltown / the stars come out to play,” Gonson sings in a song as woozy as 3 a.m. in Hollywood.) And if you’re late to the party, Merge is compiling the entire Future Bible Heroes catalog into one collection, “Memories of Love, Eternal Youth, and Partygoing” – which includes remastered versions of 1997’s “Memories of Love,” 2002’s “Eternal Youth” and the band’s EPs and one-offs. There’s a lot of genius in these 54 tracks – the title track of the EP “I’m Lonely (And I Love It)” has always been a favorite, as well as their bent cover of the Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me.” Singularly fantastic.
||| Stream: “Living, Loving, Partygoing”
Photo by Kimberly Butler
I loved the first album and the EPs from then but I never got into the second one. The word puzzle for each song was pretty fun. I’ll have to dig them out and give them a spin.
I always like those singer who write their songs themselves. Because when song is written by yourself, then you know the background in which the song is written, as a result you can add real time feelings while singing the song. I appericiate the words that came out of the Stephin’s pen. I like his singing but I love him as a songwriter.