The Magnetic Fields know how to accurately title an album. 2004's I was composed of songs all starting with the letter I, and the sweeping 69 Love Songs from 1999 consisted of, well, 69 love songs. I wonder then why I was caught so off-guard by the sound of their new album, Distortion. With their new release, Stephin Merritt and his collective of New York-based musicians cast away the synth-pop and show tune-infused sound of the past in favor of a wave of reverb, chorus and other effects, channeling My Bloody Valentine and Jesus and Mary Chain over Stephen Sondheim and ABBA. Despite the textual departure, the Magnetic Fields' principal strength remains intact. Merritt's songwriting continues to provide the basis of the album's potency, and his seemingly never-ending pool of lovelorn tales and frustrations provides ample inspiration for great material. His melodies are still relentlessly catchy, and the omnipresent distortion doesn't at all detract from his trademark ironic and genuinely clever lyrics.

When working with a concept that pervades not only the theme and mood of an album, but indeed the actual sound, it would be easy for the band to alienate their original appeal. Yet this is not the case with Distortion. The effects, which are not limited to the guitar, are utilized in an intelligent and methodical way so that the resulting music does not at all suffer from over-noisiness. If anything, the effects create a fuller sound, fleshing out the sometimes minimal song structure and instrumentation. One oft-made criticism of the ambitious and generally brilliant 69 Love Songs was the simplicity of each track, many of the 69 tunes coming off like vague sketches rather than fully realized songs. While this in fact may have been the album's point, Distortion gives us 13 songs that are all expertly produced and thoughtfully orchestrated with a sea of echo and maxed-out gain knobs.

Though not completely consistent, the few weak spots are overridden by the standouts, which are as catchy and clever as anything Merritt has ever written. The second track, "California Girls," calls into doubt the Beach Boys' idealization of West Coast babes with a chorus that has been stuck in my head since I heard the song, posted on a blog a few weeks back. The bouncy "Too Drunk to Dream" and delightful "The Nun's Litany," a song told from the perspective of a nun longing to be naked as much as possible, similarly display the Fields' knack for lyrical witticism and melodic infectiousness while adhering to the overarching distortion thesis. The album also contains the lamenting "Mr. Mistletoe," which might be destined for a new best-of Christmas CD if it weren't so depressing.

The Magnetic Fields are slated to play two dates at the Somerville theater come February, one of which appropriately falls on Valentine's Day. Both dates, however, are already sold out so, alas, my grand Valentine's Day plan of hearing Merritt's reverberating bass voice explain how much worse his love life is than mine is not going to pan out. At least I have this latest entry into a celebrated discography, one in which Merritt and his Fields have not so much departed from their signature appeal by switching to a new distorted sound so much as they have annexed the very idea of distortion into their arsenal of musical ability.