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Stephin Merritt has been called a lot of things since he began making thinking-man's pop under the name The Magnetic Fields. Drama queen, depressive, mope and jerk all come to mind. Fun and scrappy don't. At least they didn't until last Thursday at New York's Irving Plaza.
Merritt and the current live version of his Fields -- manager/best
friend Claudia Gonson on piano and the occasional lead vocal, John
Woo on guitar and banjo, Sam Davol on cello -- were on stage in
front of a sold-out crowd for the last stop on what Merritt called
their "interplanetary, intergalactic" tour. While the tour wasn't
quite that long, Merritt's three-disc dissection of the
most-overused four-letter word in English -- 69 Love Songs
-- is already the best selling title in the Fields catalog and its
success is what landed him onstage at Irving Plaza. But could a
band known mostly as a one-man studio effort could pull off its
cerebral pop in a setting that large and that live?
If the question was on Merritt's mind, he wasn't showing it. "Hello
again," he croaked in his signature baritone while stepping up to
the mike. "We're blasT. But we're always blasT." The sold-out crowd
was -- in their own way -- anything but, hugging themselves and
swaying in patient, polite rapture while Merritt crooned his way
through 69 Love Songs highlights like "A Pretty Girl Is
Like..." and "I Don't Believe in the Sun."
Rather than playing with taped loops as they have in the past, the
percussion-less Fields relied on Gonson's piano to drive these
stripped down live versions, while Davol's cello provided the
roadside scenery. Even more notably absent than layers of
studio-only sounds were the guest vocalists who graced 69 Love
Songs. For someone known as a curmudgeonly loner, Merritt
makes a great band leader, one whose greatest strength is knowing
when his voice, or Gonson's, just isn't right for a song. So while
tape-trading fans will no doubt delight in a bootleg of Gonson
singing the Fleetwood Mac-tinged "No One Will Ever Love You," the
song was one of the night's only disappointments because Shirley
Simms -- who sang it on the album -- absolutely owns it. Ditto for
Merritt singing out of his range on "The Luckiest Guy on the Lower
East Side."
But overall, the show's surprises were exceedingly pleasant,
Merritt's attitude chief among them. He laughed, he joked with the
audience when a fly died in his Courvoisier, and did all those rock
star things that he's known for not doing live. Between songs,
Gonson said "We're selling t-shirts after the show," which prompted
Merritt to turn to the audience, raise an eyebrow and ask, "Are
you?" Then, when a woman in the front row taunted him, Merritt
produced his wallet and said "I'll pay you ten dollars for your
shirt, right now." Although it took her a little longer than
Merritt to disrobe -- he sang the going-off-to-war ballad "Abigail,
Belle of Kilronan" shirtless -- one song later, he was wearing a
red-and-silver-glitter "Oink If You Like Pork" t-shirt and (wonders
never cease) a big, goofy grin. Even when the crowd's screamed
requests pissed Merritt off enough to give an "Oh, f--- off!," his
delivery was more smile than sneer.
All this good nature permeated the set list, as New York fans who
have been denied pre-69 material in recent shows got more
than they'd ever dreamed. Merritt returned to his very first record
to deliver "Lovers From the Moon," and "Suddenly There Is a Title
Wave," and stayed on the nostalgia bandwagon with "Born on a Train"
and "You and Me and the Moon," which came off marvelously, even
sans-drum machine. The treats continued with unreleased live
favorites like "Kissing Things," "As You Turn to Go" and "Just Like
a Movie Star," some or all of which may be on another Merritt
project, the upcoming 6ths record, Hyacinths &
Thistles.
Still it was 69 Love Songs that Merritt and company
returned to, closing the show with "The Things We Did and Didn't
Do," which featured Woo's plinky banjo stepping up to dance with
Gonson's piano. And just as quickly as the melody popped up out of
nowhere and blew you away with its simple-seeming gorgeousness, it
was gone and the show was over. Not totally unlike love.
HARRY THOMAS
(December 7, 1999)