Lost in the time tunnel #6 – The 6ths

In the sixth of this series of pieces on albums that have seemingly disappeared off the radar, Martin Gray turns his attention to the debut album from – wait for it – The 6ths, just one of several intriguing side projects of Magnetic Fields’ mercurial lynchpin and founder Stephin Merritt.

Nowadays everybody in the discerning indie / alt pop circles knows of the songwriting genius of Magnetic Fields and the main guy behind it New York native Stephin Merritt, mostly thanks to his ambitious 1999 epic undertaking 69 Love Songs (a 3xCD set) which effectively helped boost his previously – albeit relatively cult level – profile and brought him massive critical acclaim and plaudits as well as considerably greater commercial success as a result.

However, his Magnetic Fields project had already issued several albums prior to this watershed moment: Distant Plastic Trees (1991), The Wayward Bus (1992), Holiday (1994), The Charm Of The Highway Strip (also 1994, a tongue-in-cheek concept album of modern electronic country music), and Get Lost (1995 – its cover a deft pastiche of the 1982 Visage single The Damned Don’t Cry), whilst his second concurrent project, titled The 6ths, was conceived specifically as an outlet for Merritt’s own compositions but sung by an array of guest vocalists from various indie bands of note and repute.

As if that wasn’t enough, at the same time during this most productive period of activity in the 1990s, Merritt also recorded further albums under two other guises: The Gothic Archies and the Future Bible Heroes, bringing to ten the total number of album releases during this decade alone (1991 to 1999).

Stephin Merritt’s debut 1995 release for The 6ths – and its title, Wasps’ Nests – was borne out of a perverse desire to have the most difficult-to-pronounce band name and album title. Given that anybody afflicted with a lisp** would soon have problems enunciating these, it’s pretty much in keeping with Merritt’s famously droll sense of humour. This was further confirmed when the second album by The 6ths released five years later in 2000 was given the equally oblique title of Hyacinths And Thistles (like the first, featuring another stellar cast of guest vocalists, many from more well known UK bands this time).

** we all remember that infamous occasion during the very same year of 1995 when guest Top Of The Pops presenter Chris Eubank was – unceremoniously? – assigned the task of getting his tongue around the words: ‘now at number 6 in the singles charts, it’s Suggs with Cecilia’ when the Madness frontman graced that particular episode with his smash hit cover version!

Merritt’s albums during this period came out initially on an array of small independent labels, after which his more notable releases appeared on Merge Records before being issued by the Warners-affiliated Nonesuch Records. However, his debut album for The 6ths was, curiously, issued domestically in the UK on the then newly-formed Factory Too (distributed by London Records) which was formed by Tony Wilson a couple of years after the demise of his original Factory Records in 1992, as a new vehicle to put out recordings by three principal Manchester acts: The Durutti Column, Space Monkeys and Hopper.  Stephin Merritt’s debut by The 6ths ended up being the sole Factory Too release that was by another artist – and the token one – from outside of the UK.

Joyously Eclectic

Wasps’ Nests is a joyously eclectic album, comprising fifteen tracks, most of which stay the right side of three minutes or so. It’s one of the most accessible albums of Merritt’s fascinating and idiosyncratic career, given his expert songcraft and his inimitable and wry sense of self-deprecating humour in his lyrics. It’s almost a logical progression from his immediate predecessor released under the Magnetic Fields alias, The Charm Of The Highway Strip. This latter recording (released on Setanta in UK) was intended as a concept album of sorts, ten short and succinct pop tracks performed in a curious hybrid acoustic / electronic style, in which all of the compositions were off-kilter takes on what an album of modern synth-laced country and western ballads would sound like, but all delivered in his lugubriously dour baritone that’s been likened to that of a resigned Ian Curtis on downers.

As with his two previous Magnetic Fields recordings, Merritt’s particular mode d’emploi lies in his adroit deployment of a retinue of instruments that are as odd and unconventional in the contexts of indie pop as you’re likely to get (ukuleles, cellos, harmoniums, melodicas, toy pianos, zithers, ethno flutes, hand percussion, even sampled domestic appliances in some cases), many of which are filtered through various processing effects as to render them virtually indistinguishable from the usual electronic components being utilised. It is these ersatz qualities which make almost all of the arrangements on those two albums – and indeed here on Wasps’ Nests – sound so arresting and unorthodox, but nonetheless instantly appealing to the ears.

The diverse retinue of guest vocalists – literally a veritable who’s who of indie rock – that grace Wasps’ Nests certainly provide the variety of moods, colours and contrasts. It’s a roughly 6:8 split of female and male luminaries from various indie and alternative pop acts of the day, many of them from the US scene, others from New Zealand. Some surprising cameos are included here, notably REM’s (early years) producer Mitch Easter, who guests on the sprightly toytown electropop of Pillow Fight which recalls UK’s almost forgotten new wave synth pop alchemists New Musik.

Other celebrated indie stars include Amelia Fletcher of UK twee pop legends Heavenly and Talulah Gosh whose signature bright starry-eyed vocals guest on Looking For Love (In The Hall Of Mirrors), whilst king of the slacker guitar gods Lou Barlow (Sebadoh/Dinosaur Jr.) is his usual moody and despondent self as he croons his way through the melancholy urban ballad In The City In The Rain.
Elsewhere we also have a guest appearance from Anna Domino as she does a convincing approximation of Annie Lennox on the upbeat Eurythmics-meets- Erasure-sounding Here In My Heart, and Georgia Hubley from mighty alt-noise pop specialists Yo La Tengo delivering her trademark serene and sweetly cool vocals on the hushed mechanical chugging of Movies In My Head.

Dean Wareham from the bands Galaxie 500 and Luna makes his appearance on the wonderful Falling Out Of Love With You, blessed with synthesised handclaps and effervescent guitars, whilst another indie pop/lo-fi luminary, Barbara Manning (28th Day, World Of Pooh), kicks off the album with the sumptuous and addictive earworm that is San Diego Zoo, one of the undisputed highlights of an album already resplendent with many celestial moments. Given that her birth place is indeed California’s second city San Diego, it’s thus fair to assume that Stephin Merritt wrote and titled this song specifically for her to sing, and it’s as flawless a pop song as you can possibly expect.

Another surprising voice on this collection is that of Mary Timony – otherwise renowned for being in bands specialising in darker, less immediate genres such as drone and post-rock/experimental noise (Helium, Wild Flag, Autoclave) and yet she’s here lamenting the fact that her date never arrived despite all her best efforts to make herself look great, as the insistent chiming-and-thudding bounce of All Dressed Up In Dreams comes across like the saddest and happiest tune at the same time. It’s clear that the author of these songs excels in offsetting angst-ridden lyrics against deceptively jovial candyfloss-machine pop arrangements.

Whilst fourteen of the fifteen pop songs on here feature one of an eclectic roll call of guests, one track, nevertheless, is blessed with the dolorous deadpan voice of Merritt himself, making just one cameo lead vocal appearance on an album whose songs were purposely meant for others to sing. His characteristic glum and mournful tones can be heard on track two, immediately after the sun-drenched glory of Barbara Manning’s opening salvo. He takes centre stage for the typically sardonic and doleful Aging Spinsters where he implores his subject (whose name is Diana) to ‘marry young’ as he can’t bear to see her ‘old and alone’ and later ‘rotting in the home for aging spinsters’.  There’s a hilarious couplet in the second verse where he suggests his friend find someone ‘that’s loyal as a dog / who will still love you when you look like a frog’. Business as usual then?

Other striking cameos include Superchunk founder Mac McCaughan whose vocal on the piano-driven Dream Hat is yet another earworm that sticks in your head on first listen (McCaughan was also behind the setting up of renowned indie label Merge Records with whom Merritt later signed). Robert Scott from New Zealanders The Clean guests on the naggingly catchy Heaven In A Black Leather Jacket, whilst D.C’s Mark Robinson (from Unrest, Air Miami and founder of TeenBeat records) has a star turn on another of the album’s unabashed highlights, the truly beautiful and melodic Puerto Rico Way, featuring a gorgeously melancholy flute motif which runs throughout the song, shadowing his warm and understated vocals.

Jeffrey Underhill (Honeybunch, Velvet Crush) guests on You Can’t Mend A Broken Heart, an uptempo pop tune which seems to be stuck in a locked groove towards the end before it abruptly cuts out, whilst another indie veteran from Auckland, New Zealand makes an appearance here too: Chris Knox (from 1970s punks The Enemy), bringing the album to a close with the appropriately mournful ballad When I’m Out Of Town.

This album was afforded very little promotion or indeed publicity when it was originally released in 1995. At the time I wasn’t even familiar with Stephin Merritt or Magnetic Fields, and it was purely by chancing upon some of the reviews of this album in monthly magazines such as Select, Uncut, VOX and Q as well as the weeklies such as NME and Melody Maker that prompted me to investigate.  And inevitably, on first listen of the album I was immediately smitten. It was one of those albums that I would play twice a day every day for a period simply because of its sheer accessibility and its addictive and ear friendly tunes.

The next album by Stephin Merritt I would pick up shortly afterwards was The Magnetic Fields’ The Charm Of The Highway Strip, followed by Get Lost from 1996, and by the time his first critically acclaimed masterwork – the audaciously sprawling 69 Love Songs – was released right at the end of that glorious decade, his stock had already risen by several notches and he became the alternative artist (or indeed maverick indie pop connoisseur) with which so many people now hold him in such high regard.

Listen to the entirety of Wasps’ Nests here on YouTube.

That difficult second album by The 6ths

When Merritt finally released the successor to this first 6ths outing, titled Hyacinths And Thistles, in 2000, expectations were inevitably much higher than they ever were when Wasps’ Nests was quietly snuck out to little or no fanfare half a decade previously. By this point he’d almost become a household name (whatever that implies) and the critical reception to the second 6ths album was indeed very favourable. That album differed slightly from the first in that several of the guest singers were far more successful 1980s-1990s pop artistes who’d enjoyed much chart success during their prime: names such as Gary Numan, Clare Grogan (Altered Images), Marc Almond and Sarah Cracknell (Saint Etienne), as well as other renowned faces Bob Mould (Hüsker Dü/Sugar), Neil Hannon (Divine Comedy), Momus and Sally Timms (Mekons) among others.

The only downside to this however, and this is only my personal impression and point of view, was that this time around, the songs were less memorable and  not quite as immediate, they didn’t stick in my head after the first two or three listens unlike how those on the debut album did. They were just kind of there, and didn’t really do much else to move or engage or even enchant.

Furthermore, there was one of those – in hindsight – supremely annoying gimmicks that many CDs for whatever dubious reason opted to have around this time. And I don’t mean the secret hidden track that comes 15 to 20 minutes after the last track ends. No, this was much more insidious and self indulgent. The final – fourteenth – track listed here, Oahu, lasts a staggering, patience-draining and frankly soul-sapping TWENTY-EIGHT MINUTES AND TEN SECONDS. Yes, you read that right! 28:10 !!

And about twenty-five of those minutes consist solely of one single motif – an ascending and descending glissando of arpeggiated bell synth, which repeats itself over and over … and over and over again, but getting progressively slower in tempo and delay each time it does. To some that might sound like one’s idea of meditative bliss, but to me it’s just exasperatingly tedious and yawnsome…. and, er, that’s it. It does nothing else at all, just the same thing getting slower and slower and slower. It’s a disappointingly anticlimactic way of ending the album and it’s a completely gratuitous and pointless exercise just to pad out the CD given that the actual running time is around 37 minutes proper before that extended coda begins.

It’s regrettable for me to say so, but as a result of this the second 6ths album was immeasurably marred by this one ill-advised contrivance. And when placed side by side with the first album, it just isn’t as strong or cohesively consistent either.  Still, at least there was one absolute corker of a debut album by The 6ths. Tellingly, there hasn’t been another such venture back into this particular territory to date, but if any album that’s been lost in the mists of time is truly deserving of a belated 30th anniversary reappraisal as well as maybe a timely reissue on vinyl* (but please dear god, don’t make such a thing happen on Record Store Day, I implore you!), it’s Wasps’ Nests.

It remains a truly timeless and enchanting thing to behold: an exquisite mini-banquet of seductive perfect pop delights.

* there was a November 2017 reissue on very limited vinyl that was only available in the US through The 6ths Bandcamp page but inevitably this soon sold out within weeks.

Listen to and purchase music from The Magnetic Fields on Bandcamp

All words by Martin Gray

Other articles and blogs by the author can be found on his profile.