Steph Tai's Review of Rusty Spell's The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs Vol. 1

You read it right, it's my friend Rusty's (and his girlfriend Liza's) covers of Vol. 1 of 69 Love Songs. Without it, we would not have discovered our mutual interest in indie pop. So.

Some of the covers are great, like "I Don't Believe in the Sun," "All My Little Words," "The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side," "I Think I Need a New Heart," "The Book of Love" and "Nothing Matters When We're Dancing." But some are too over-the-top silly for me, like "A Chicken with Its Head Cut Off" (with chicken sounds!) and "I Don't Want to Get Over You" (with the whispers) and "Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits" (with the vocal distortions). This just shows I'm more of a purist, hunh.

Also, the instrumental cover of "100,000 Fireflies" ("100KF") (not from 69 Love Songs Vol. 1) is really great.

As a side note, Rusty's singing voice sounds totally unlike his speaking voice, which is kinda disconcerting.


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