Quickies

Highly entertaining, though best consumed a few songs at a time, Quickies is more than a novelty record, though certainly novel. [Jun 2020, p.90]

Merritt’s ability to blend comedy and heartache through finely observed character studies is one of his greatest strengths, and that skill in fine form throughout Quickies.

At times jovial and elsewhere solemn, Quickies is an anthology of flash fictions, thematically clashing against one another like "I've Got a Date With Jesus" and "You've Got a Friend in Beelzebub," yet otherwise twinning mischievously like "The Best Cup of Coffee In Tennessee" and "The Biggest Tits in History."

This is a record unanchored by the lofty expectations of previous releases. It’s a series of notes and remembrances, fond and mournful and often whimsical in nature, which provides ample evidence that the band still hasn’t fully excavated all the mysterious beauty that pop music has to offer.

As with other Magnetic Fields projects, some deeper cuts succeed more than others. Still, any lows aren’t particularly low.

The album rewards as time passes. Initially tracks change relentlessly and the notion of fifteen more feels like a chore, but by Quickies’ end you’ve encountered so many characters and so many songwriting modes that this slight album feels like an entire populated universe. The Magnetic Fields have pulled off their old trick of reminding you that there can be something to a gimmick after all.

Though it lacks the ingenuity of Holiday, the palpable tenderness of Get Lost or the rigour of 69 Love Songs, it does satisfy a need. [Jun 2020, p.36]

The album reinforces the unstoppable brilliance of Merritt's writing. At any length, instrumentation or investigating whatever ridiculous subject matter, he somehow manages to be effortlessly charming, funny, odd and above all catchy.

Despite its sizable number of tracks, Quickies does move along at a brisk pace—even if its scattershot sequencing makes it better to digest as the five 7 inch-EPs presented in the physical version.

Quickies is an issue of MAD Magazine in musical form. It’s a ton of fun, and absolutely a welcome relief to the situation we’re going right now.

Stephen Merritt and his many collaborators have made a wildly varied and highly entertaining album that reads like a book of poetry and plays like a soundtrack to a particularly fun (barely remembered) summer.