Pleased to see that the Magnetic Fields’ new record “Distortion” is a complete return to form. Stephin Merritt had always drawn upon showtunes and standards for his lyrics and for the construction of his songs, mastering their craft and manipulating it to dizzyingly virtuosic effect, yet his sonic mise-en-scene was generally an indie synth-pop, at once both frail and dense, sourced in records like The Human League’s “Dare” and the ABBA catalogue. On 2004’s “i,” a career nadir, Merritt outlawed synths and turned to a largely acoustic sound which allowed him to explore his affection for the classic songwriting of the early and middle part of the century. This proved a quite lacking backdrop for the tangled web of humor and misanthropy which traditionally colored Merritt’s songs, resulting in a record that sounded unpleasant and showcased some of the man’s most anemic songwriting to date (yet being a Stephin Merritt record about half the songs were still timeless gems).

“Distortion” is something else entirely. The record taps the far richer aural fields of the Velvet Underground and the Jesus and Mary Chain, draping a fine set of songs from Merritt in layers of guitar squall and thunderous echo.

My favorite of the resultant tracks is, of course, a nastly blast of East Coast ressentiment entitled “California Girls,” which complains of the vapid, skinny bimbos that East-Coasters like Merritt (and myself) ridiculously presume to constiute about 94% of the population of the Golden State. “They breathe coke and they have affairs with each passing rock star,” seethes the tune’s narrator, though the blow is softened by Merritt’s decision to have his sweet-voiced drummer, Claudia Gonson, sing the song. Of course, the “blow” in question becomes deliciously literal in the song’s gory climax, in which Merritt pledges, “I have planned my grand attacks/ I will stand behind their backs/ With my brand new battle-axe/ I’ll make them taste my wrath/ They will hear me say/ As the pavement whirls/ I hate California Girls.” For someone who famously wrote “69 Love Songs” (and in reality he’s written at least a hundred more), Merritt remains a fantastic poet of loathing, and “California Girls” can be slotted alongside “Yeah! Oh Yeah” and “The Desperate Things You Made Me Do” as one of his best hate songs.

“Please Stop Dancing,” a Merritt-Gonson duet, is another highlight. Its simple lyrics and addictive melody don’t hinder its pointed rendering of the psychic agony of love lost. “I’ll Dream Alone” is not only one of Merritt’s finest lyrical showings but one of his greatest vocal performances, as he perfectly handles the epic grandeur of his melody even as it is awash in, well, distortion.

The album prompted a long-overdue trawl through the Merritt back-catalogue, the Magnetic Fields having been far and away my favorite band in high school. I discovered that my teenage glee has hardly worn off, and am completely restored in my firm conviction that Merritt stands as a peer among every great pop songwriter living or dead. It’s a travesty, really, that he’s never wriggled his way out of what he himself once described as “the indie rock ghetto.” His is a genius powerfully, almost sickeningly unfit to be mentioned in the same breath as Sufjan Stevens and Of Montreal. These meditations on songwriting genius returned me to one of my favorite of my own pieces of music writing, my review of Christine Fellows’ “Paper Anniversary.” I’ll post it shortly mostly to prepare for a grand revision of nearly every concept I introduced in it, though before I do that I will be very unnecessarily throwing in my two cents on Britney Spears’ “Blackout.” ‘Til next time.