Review: THE MAGNETIC FIELDS: 69 LOVE SONGS, Barbican Hall

Wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of American metal band Goatwhore, Stephin Merritt and his Magnetic Fields bandmates arrived in London last weekend to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their genre-blending album 69 Love Songs.

I interviewed Merritt in 2012 and, since then, I have held to a never wavering belief that he is one of the oddest individuals working in music today. Now, that’s something of a bold statement but hear me out. There are some well-read individuals around but, asides from perhaps Nick Cave, how many singer-songwriters would name their most famous band after an old French surrealist book or casually remind a Barbican audience that we are sat in what used to be known less than a century ago as Cripplegate Without? How many auteurs with what might politely be called a cult following could persuade an indie music label out of North Carolina to release a 3CD collection of 69 all-original no-covers songs, very few of which have hit potential but, between them, have enough insight into the human condition to fill a hundred theatres? How many artists have created a plethora of side bands with names like The Gothic Archies, The 6ths and Future Bible Heroes that attract one-off contributions from the likes of blues legend Odetta and British musicians such as Gary Numan, Marc Almond, the Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon and St Etienne’s Sarah Cracknell? 

In person, Merritt is even odder. Despite having spent many weeks on the road in the US and UK, he is far happier in a studio or, even better, swigging vermouth and composing away in an NYC gay bar. He dislikes touring, not only because he thinks of it as being mainly for “bands who release bad records” but also because of the hyperacusis he suffers on one side; on stage, he typically sits on the far right and sticks a finger in his left ear whenever the sound of the audience clapping reaches painful levels.

On top of that, while most musicians have entire PR teams working 24/7 just to make them seem hot, cool and relevant, our man from Yonkers, New York has a notoriously tetchy and awkward public demeanour. He speaks with a languorous air, his slow drawl eschewing any filler words like “um” and “ah” in preference to saying absolutely nothing at all while his mental cogs spin around. His reaction to even the most standard of questions can be barely concealed vitriol; as one MTV journalist put it, "interviewing Merritt is like trying to get car keys from a guy who’s been drinking since noon. Walk up to a stranger on a city subway, stand uncomfortably close and ask if he’s been circumcised, and you’ll get roughly the same reaction as asking Merritt about his creative process." 

There’s little doubt that 69 Love Songs is something of a cultural institution that still resonates today. 1999 was the year of The Matrix, American Beauty and Fight Club, slyly counter-culture masterpieces masquerading as blockbuster Hollywood fare and, while the millennium bug presaged a world-ending tech meltdown, Merritt released a collection which ranged from pure sunshine pop to deeply disturbing numbers about necrophilia and fatal heartache. The songs covered a wide range of gender and sexual perspectives but the ever-inventive songwriter deployed his bandmates for extra effect with his long-term lesbian collaborator Claudia Gonson singing songs from the viewpoint of gay or straight males. As she put it in a recent interview, “it’s normal now, but 25 years ago it felt electrifying”.

So what about now? Does 69 Love Songs still work in 2024 as a musical work or a live experience? The answer to the second part is heavily reliant on the first as the album is always played out over two nights in the same order as on the original CDs. Merritt has played around a little with the format of some of the tracks over the years but he has left most pretty much just as they were when they were first released. That said, the most highly stylised songs like the jarring trio of “Experimental Music Love”, “Punk Love” and “Love Is Like Jazz” have never sounded on stage quite like their recorded equivalents with the latter now coming across like the Count Basie Orchestra falling heavily down a very long staircase. The demonic “I Shatter”, though, still has the power to conjure up images of Satan and the fiery bowels of hell.

The latest Magnetic Fields touring band sees Shirley Simms stepping in on ukelele for Gonson alongside Merritt, Sam Davol (electric cello), Chris Ewen (keys) and Anthony Kaczynski (guitars). Kaczynski and Simms help out on vocal duties and, individually, are excellent. The former makes “The Luckiest Guy On The Lower East Side” sound as bouncy and fresh as ever and, while her renditions of “Sweet Lovin’ Man” and (as seen here) “Reno Dakota” lacked lustre, I could hear Simms sing “Washington DC” all day long.

Together, though, Kaczynski and Simms are not the double act we’re looking for: every time they joined forces, their voices form a kind of strange anti-harmony that seemed to suggest two people tackling the same song from different angles. Simms and Merritt, on the other hand, are simply dynamite as the battling couple on the fan-favourite duet “Yeah! Oh Yeah”. As ever, Davol stays as silent as the grave when not playing and is ever happy to sit behind his instrument playing beatific cop to Merritt’s grumpy cop.

Merritt himself is, well, still Merritt. He’s laconic, he’s sardonic and if love is indeed like a bottle of gin, it is hard to think of him as its tonic. Even on “The Book Of Love” (69 Love Song’s only major hit thanks in part to a much-admired Peter Gabriel cover version), he hardly seems sold on the idea of spending life with another human being. If there’s a less likeable front man around who hasn’t been caught doing something despicable, I can’t think of them. And yet the man who sings “no one will ever love you honestly/no one will ever love you for your honesty” is never less than forthright and happy to tell his audience what is on his mind. Beneath the mock-misanthropy lies a highly talented individual who, even if his voice is still more akin to Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen than to Freddie Mercury, is as genuine and authentic a human being as you will ever find plying their trade on a London stage. 

Is this the last time we’ll hear 69 Love Songs played out in full? There was nothing like it when it came out and there still isn’t (even considering Merritt’s 2017 opus 50 Song Memoir which had a song for each year of his life). It was, and will likely always be, the soundtrack to my every heartbreak and every failed date, my casual fling when I’m feeling down and a never-failing provider of a unique kind of aural catharsis. A couple of the more twee numbers sound dated now but, ironically, the ones inspired by his love of 80s synth pop are bang on trend again. It’s a timeless album and I for one sincerely look forward to hearing it again live. 

The Magnetic Fields played in the Barbican Hall on 31 August and 1 September 2024. Future dates can be seen here.

Photo credit: Mark Allan

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