Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	68/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
The A.V. Club	B−
The Guardian
Los Angeles Times
MSN Music	A−
NME	7/10
Pitchfork	6.1/10
Q
Rolling Stone
Spin	8/10

Love at the Bottom of the Sea is the tenth studio album by American indie pop band The Magnetic Fields. It was released in the UK on March 5, 2012 by record label Domino and in the US on March 6, 2012 by Merge.

Two singles, "Andrew in Drag" and "Quick!", were released from the album.

The album was recorded by Stephin Merritt and Charles Newman at Bell Tree in Los Angeles; Mother West, Serious Business Records and Dubway Studios in New York; and Tiny Telephone in San Francisco.

It is the band's first release with Merge since 1999's 69 Love Songs. After releasing three albums relatively free of synthesizers as part of a "no-synth trilogy" (2004's i, 2008's Distortion, and 2010's Realism), Love at the Bottom of the Sea features the blend of acoustic and synthesized instruments that the band was known for in the 1990s. Stephin Merritt claims he took a fresh approach with the instrumentation, stating "Most of the synthesizers on the record didn't exist when we were last using synthesizers." All of the tracks on the album are less than three minutes long.

Love at the Bottom of the Sea was released in the UK on March 5, 2012 by record label Domino and in the US on March 6, 2012 by Merge.

The reception from critics has been generally favorable, with the average critical score being a 68 out of 100 according to review aggregator website Metacritic.

All tracks written by Stephin Merritt.

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Wikipedia