''Distant Plastic Trees'' is the debut studio album by American

indie pop Indie pop (also typeset as indie-pop or indiepop) is a music genre and subculture that combines guitar pop with DIY ethic in opposition to the style and tone of mainstream pop music. It originated from British post-punk in the late 1970s and sub ...

band

The Magnetic Fields The Magnetic Fields (named after the André Breton/Philippe Soupault novel ''Les Champs Magnétiques'') are an American Band (rock and pop), band founded and led by Stephin Merritt. Merritt is the group's primary songwriter, producer, and vocali ...

, released in 1991. Lead vocals on the album are performed by Susan Anway. The album is noteworthy for its stripped down sound and largely synthesized instrumentation.

Stephin Merritt Stephin Raymond Merritt (born February 9, 1965) is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, best known as the songwriter and principal singer of the bands the Magnetic Fields, the Gothic Archies, and Future Bible Heroes. He is ...

himself described the album as a "small record, intentionally small" and heavily inspired by

Young Marble Giants Young Marble Giants were a Welsh post-punk band formed in Cardiff, Wales, in 1978. Their music was based around the vocals of Alison Statton along with the minimalist instrumentation of brothers Philip and Stuart Moxham. Their early sound was ...

. The song "Babies Falling" is a cover of a song by The Wild Stares.

Release

''Distant Plastic Trees'' was originally released in Japan and the United Kingdom on the

RCA Victor RCA Records is an American record label currently owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside RCA's former long-time rival Columbia Records; also Aris ...

and Red Flame labels, respectively. The album was released in the United States on the band's own imprint, PoPuP.

Merge Records Merge Records is an independent record label based in Durham, North Carolina. It was founded in 1989 by Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan. It began as an outlet for music from their band Superchunk and music created by friends, and has expande ...

reissued the album in 1994 as a double album compilation with the band's second album, ''

The Wayward Bus ''The Wayward Bus'' is a novel by American author John Steinbeck, published in 1947. The novel's epigraph is a passage from 15th-century English play ''Everyman (15th-century play), Everyman'', with its archaic English intact; the quotation refe ...

''. The song "Plant White Roses" was omitted from the Merge reissue.

Reception

The New Rolling Stone Album Guide ''The Rolling Stone Album Guide'', previously known as ''The Rolling Stone Record Guide'', is a book that contains professional music reviews written and edited by staff members from ''Rolling Stone'' magazine. Its first edition was published in 1 ...

'' wrote that the first two albums "showcase sexually ambiguous lyrics, loopy arrangements, and the disaffected voice of Susan Anway ... But they also suffer from an air of inconsequentiality." ''

Trouser Press ''Trouser Press'' was a rock and roll magazine started in New York in 1974 as a mimeographed fanzine by editor/publisher Ira Robbins, fellow fan of the Who Dave Schulps and Karen Rose under the name "Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press" (a reference to ...

'' wrote that "the baroque pop structures of songs like 'Smoke Signals' are redolent of the classics Merritt clearly holds dear, but his impressionistic wordplay — which often alights on bracing, upsetting images — seldom settles into simple cliché."

Track listing

Personnel

– songwriting, instrumentation and production ;Additional personnel *Susan Anway – lead vocals *Ken Michaels – engineering *Wendy Smith – album cover *Art Daly – insert photo

References

{{Authority control The Magnetic Fields albums 1991 debut albums RCA Victor albums