The Magnetic Fields at Town Hall in NYC, February 2008

Photo Credit: Kathyrn Yu

The Magnetic Fields in New York City was a fragile performance by a band that seemed like they might blow away and disintegrate in the lights of Times Square if the audience all exhaled at the same time. Stephin Merritt slouched in a stool throughout the performance. The speakers were turned low. The piano was muted. The soft cello of John Woo (not the film director) was the lead instrument. And the crowd sat as still as three thousand concertgoers have ever sat.

The opening act, Interstellar Radio, was a literary performance troupe who performed a dramatic reenactment of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell Tale Heart. Interstellar Radio’s lead actor Adam Green performed all the characters and Rob Amesbury provided a gentle Steinway piano accompaniment with Matthew Beals providing the crisp sound effects—squeaky hinges, snapping celery broken bones and of course (with a mic under his chin) the echoing thumping that sounded more like a heart beat than an actual heart beat does. Green’s frenetic performance as the madman provided a stark counterpoint to The Magnetic Field’s subdued performance. Poe’s stories brim with men clawing at the edges of the world—either desperately trying to escape reality or searching for a scrap of reality to wrap around themselves. Poe’s unreliable narrators have to tell stories because they’re mad. Merritt’s unreliable narrators have to tell stories because they’re madly in love. A narrow distinction.

Time for a confession (not a Poe confession, and this definitely isn’t the place for a Merritt confession), I don’t know The 6ths or The Gothic Archies and I don’t even have any of the other Magnetic Fields albums other than 69 Love Songs. I? No. The Charm of the Highway Strip? No. Blasphemy to the assembled Merrittians but, in my mind, knowing 69LS and feeling those melodies constantly coiled in my heart and the lyrics perched on my tongue seemed like criteria enough to enjoy the show.

It would be dishonest to deny the centrality of 69LS in the mind of me or the vast majority of TMF fans. This 3 disk collection is the closest anyone has ever come to encompassing what it means to love someone (with the possible exception of Frank Sinatra’s version of “Where or When” from 1958’s “Only the Lonely”). 69LS covers every genre from country ballad (”Kiss Me Like You Mean It”), toe-tapping pop (”Chicken with its Head Cut Off), aching monologue (”Love is Like a Bottle of Gin”), comic show tune (”Zebra”), and everything in between (there’s even an Irish sea shanty “Abigail, Belle of Kilronan). Stephin Merritt has a unique ability to write songs that embody the beauty, zaniness, anger, hope and pain of being in love.

His characters don’t just sing about finding and losing love—they tell stories that are heartbreaking and familiar. They call to mind moments and feelings that you’re sure you’ve lived through, that you’re sure you remember but that you can’t quite place—who couldn’t have said “The things we did and didn’t do come flooding back to me now”
and haven’t we all thought “I’m in free fall. This could be love, or nothing at all.” at least once? Or, at least we want to think we have.

The Town Hall set list mainly consisted of songs from Distortion, TMF’s latest album and its first since 2004’s I, with only a scattering of older songs.

But the songs from Distortion are damn good, they show the dragon sharp wit and insight that Stephin Merritt does so well. They’re funny and touching, they sparkle and dance and could never disappoint. And they were performed without the fuzz and electricity and (perhaps) anger that led to the album title. The Distortion songs sounded just like the older songs, and just like the Future Bible Heroes songs, and just like The 6ths and so on. If Merritt sees distinctions between these albums and these projects, then they weren’t on display on Saturday night.

This could have easily been a recipe for disappointment. Walking into The Townhall I know that if they played “The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side” I would have danced a jig in the aisle. If “How Fucking Romatic” appeared my chest would have tied itself into a bow and if I was blindsided with “Nothing Matters When We’re Dancing” I would have!. Instead, I found new songs, new jokes and new stories told with a familiar yet brand new wink. Now I know why courtesans never cry, I was presented with a delightfully perverse list of the things that Nuns like, and I heard a lovely little ditty about a threeway.

And though I would have been happy to hear them perform all three disks of 69LS in order, the relative scarcity of them on Saturday night made them seem even more precious when they did appear.

The last song before intermission was a version of “Papa Was a Rodeo” that mined the song for all of its quiet theatricality. They told a full story. Merritt is at his best, when he produces songs that go beyond tunes and lyrics and instead tell coherent tales with a structure and a life that would seem impossible for something only three-and-a-half minutes long.

Photo Credit: Kathyrn Yu

Though Merritt can tell a story when he wants to, he evidently never wants to tell one when he’s on stage. Claudia Gonson played the Steinway and provided almost all of the inter-song chat. Gonson would mostly banter with herself, with Merrittt mumbling an occasional word or two that were almost always unintelligible. The other band members, Woo, Sam Davol on cello and Shirley Simms on vocals never uttered a word.

Silence was valued at Saturday’s show—at one point Merritt looked out at the audience and sshhhed us. I couldn’t hear anyone talking, but evidently Merritt could. This was not a show for audience interaction, nor was it a show for musical improvisation. Merritt sat on a stool at the end of the stage and when not playing his bouzouki (which is larger than a ukulele but smaller than a mandolin), would rest his hand on his face and survey his band “mates” with a blend of disappointment and pity. I was reminded of James Brown docking his horn section’s salary every time they missed a note—I’m sure Merritt remembers every chord that Davol missed and every key that Gonson didn’t hit quite hard enough, even though no one else in the crowd could hear any imperfections. At one point, while Simms was singing, Merritt leaned back with his brows furrowed and repeatedly mouthed “Faster! Faster!” across the stage to Gonson. She sped up imperceptibly; Merritt nodded but didn’t smile and went back to his bouzouki.

Merritt’s perfectionism can be heard in every track he produces. Every rhyme seems exquisitely and deliberately placed, every note slots into the note before it and leads to the note after it—the songs are constructed slowly and precisely. This meticulousness does not translate into a live show designed to thrill visually, or into a show where the musicians descend into riffing or altering the arrangements of songs. Merritt writes all the music, and he enforces how it is performed. Slowly and calculatingly. The most energetic moment of the night came towards the end when Gonson stepped out from behind the piano and did slight pirouettes while singing the role of the soon to be jilted (and perhaps knifed) lover in “Yeah, Oh Yeah.”

Yet it was The Magnetic Field’s tenderness and unruffled performance that provided the night’s power. The most effecting moment of the night came during “The Book of Love” (a summation of all the wonderful and terrible things in that mythic tome) performed by Merritt alone. He ended the song with his voice barely raised above a whisper, the metallic notes of his bouzouki steadily slowing as the song progressed. We were left with more than just a man singing a love song; instead, we were presented with a man willing to slow down his performance and his lyrics to a pace and a quietness that forced the audience to examine him closely. Merrittt doesn’t rip up the floor boards of his soul to expose his beating heart, instead he makes us slowly dig for it, and along the way we discover something quietly and steadily beating. Something that is familiar, because it is our own.

“I will stay if you let me stay and I’ll go if you let go but I won’t go far
away because you’re my only home”

Photo Credit: Kathyrn Yu

SET LIST (I think!)

1. When I’m Out of Town
2. No One Will Ever Love You
3. California Girls
4. The Abandoned Castle of My Soul
5. The Nun’s Litany
6. I Looked all Over Town.
7. Epitaph for My Heart
8. I Don’t Believe You.
9. Pieces of April
10. This Little Ukulele
11. All Dressed Up in Dreams
12. Zombie Boy
13. Papa Was A Rodeo

Intermission

14. Take Ecstasy With Me
15. Courtesans
16. Crows Everywhere
17. Too Drunk to Dream
18. Book of Love
19. No River
20. Drive On Driver
21. What a Fucking Lovely Day
22. Yeah oh Yeah
23. It’s only time.

Encore:
24. Threeway
25. Perfect Skin
26. Grand Canyon

–Posted by Richard