Mp3 of the Week: Hooray for Earth's Noel Heroux (Magnetic Fields cover)

DOWNLOAD: Noel Heroux, "I Don't Want To Get Over You (Magnetic Fields cover)" (mp3)

It’s impossible to make a Magnetic Fields song sound any darker. Stephin Merritt cannot be out-baritoned. And as songs about doomed love affairs go, no one is likely to sharpen the streak of Meritt’s self-abnegating black comedy, of which this is among the best examples. But one easy way to make a Merrit song better is to make it sound fuller. Noel Heroux, the erstwhile leader of Hooray for Earth, is a Magnetic Fields fan, and this solo version (an out-of-the-blue demo on which he plays all the instruments) is less a remix or a reimagining than a careful restoration: he attunes his own, prettier baritone to approximate Merrit’s amphibian croak, but adds a little velvet in just the right places. He stays true to the original’s reverb-y guitars but layers them thickly, until the melody pounces like a Phil Spector production, instead of like MagField’s self-consciously brittle twang. It’s a very fine song that now sounds just a bit finer. Grab the mp3 above, then catch Hooray for Earth at Great Scott this Saturday, October 13, with Age Rings and Harris.

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