Last Saturday and Sunday nights Stuart and I went to see beloved indie pop band The Magnetic Fields perform their landmark triple album 69 Love Songs over two nights The Barbican Hall in London's glitzy Barbican Centre.
Celebrating its 25th anniversary all 69 Love Songs were a joy to behold, together again for the first time in 20 years.
Lead singer/songwriter Stephin Merritt set out to write 69 Love Songs using most of the known popular music styles, from punk to country to soul and jazz. The result is simultaneously ironic, tongue-in-cheek, bitter, and humorous, creating a cult classic that launched the band into the mainstream.
Merritt were joined by Magnetic Fields’ members Sam Davol, Shirley Simms, Chris Ewen, and Anthony Kaczynski to perform the triple album across both evenings.
Back in the day Stephin Merritt and his band The Magnetic Fields used to be the best-kept secret of the New York underground music scene, a shibboleth for the cognoscenti. Then they went and produced their epic triple CD 69 Love Songs, and suddenly they were the critics' choice in every publication on both sides of the Atlantic, strangers are stopping you in the street to tell you that you must go and buy it, and if you want to retain that recherché aura you're now obliged to play only the very early albums, or drop casual references to Merritt's aliases (The 6ths, The Future Bible Heroes, The Gothic Archies).
69 Love Songs was originally conceived as a theatrical revue, and the decision to perform it over two nights as a complete opus, as if it were Wagner's Ring Cycle, is a kind of ironically self-aggrandising joke, but one in which the audience can feel complicit. The band's chamber-music style of performance belongs to small venues, and the Barbican Hall, although large, is intimate enough to appreciate the acoustic feel of the set, which is largely due to the absence of a live rhythm section.
It's impossible to describe 69 Love Songs without reference to as many other artists, since each song is in part a homage to (or is it a send-up of?) the variety of musical styles the genre embraces. Influences range from Phil Spector to avant-garde composers John Giorno and Steve Reich, with pastiches of Johnny Cash, Johnny Rotten, the Human League and Scottish folk song. Merritt has been labelled the greatest songwriter of his generation by the US music press, and it's compulsory to compare him with Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, though vocally his murky subterranean baritone is Leonard Cohen chain-smoking Camels. It's had to do justice to Merritt's cynical humour and deft lyrics, which rival Tom Lehrer's for audacious rhyming.
On the first night the audience appears to be taking it all terribly seriously. The set gets off to a difficult start with the chirpy 'Absolutely Cuckoo', a song not designed for live performance due to a complete lack of breathing opportunities, but other songs seem better suited to the stage than the studio, such as the heart-breaking "All My Little Words", the sublime "The Book of Love", the beautiful "Nothing Matters When We're Dancing", and "I Don't Want to Get Over You' which goes to show not all these love songs are intended as a cynical undermining of the genre (though 'How Fucking Romantic' and 'Yeah, Oh Yeah' are firmly in that vein).
By the second night the audience seems to have got the hang of it; the polite applause has turned into whooping and whistling between each song. Merritt perches atop his high stool enjoying the ride. The songs are getting more laughs too, from "Love Is Like a Bottle of Gin" to "For We Are The King Of The Boudoir" to the splendidly ludicrous lyrics of the final song, "Zebra", which heralds a riotous standing ovation.
69 Love Songs, for all its postmodern in-joke status, is a major achievement. If you missed them this time, you can still buy the album, and will find yourself wondering how The Magnetic Fields ever managed to stay a secret for so long.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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