The following is a Designated Cheerleader piece by @MichaelCHearn for the Best Album of 1991 tournament. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you follow the link to vote in the tournament. Thanks!

I wanted to do this DC for the voters and players who were most like me: fans of The Magnetic Fields and especially their best works like 69 Love Songs and Holiday, who may have undervalued this album. Because maybe like me, your introduction to this album was as the second half of the two-fer with their next album The Wayward Bus, which does a lot to change the context of the album. Where Susan Anway as lead vocalist of the entirety gives it a fully different mood, where most of its experimental production feels like a run-on, and where "Railroad Boy," a personal favorite of mine of TMF and one I always considered underseen because it's so early in their works and sandwiched in that mammoth release, is actually technically the first song to introduce you to the dourly romantic world of Stephen Merritt's songwriting.

And so what I ask for those people similar to me is to give this album a fair shot as its own context: a debut album. And for that it's not only remarkable that so much of it is full-fledged and accomplished, but also daring and bizarre. As easy as it is to miss Stephen's drawl, Susan Anway's vocals here are strikingly apt to the tone of the album. As weird as some of the middle experimentative tracks are, it's an excellent sequence to be part of a bigger landscape of tracks. And as much as you can think of the eventual heights this band can and will reach, you can't deny the immediacy of beautiful tracks like "Josephine," "100000 Fireflies," and of course "Railroad Boy."

And for all those who've just never heard of The Magnetic Fields before? Welcome. I hope this speaks to a sadly romantic part of you in the way this does to all us fans.

– @MichaelCHearn