New York, NY (Top40 Charts) The Magnetic Fields' City Winery residency, originally scheduled for spring 2020 to celebrate their new album Quickies, begins in their hometown of
Boston this weekend. The band will perform at intimate City Winery venues in seven cities - Boston, New York, Philadelphia, DC, Atlanta, Nashville, and Chicago. See below for details and ticket links. In addition to Quickies, the band will be performing a wide variety of songs spanning their 30+ year career, including from the album 69 Love Songs.
Songwriter Stephin Merritt "has encompassed a panoply of emotions and subjects over the years," writes WBUR's Jim Sullivan in an interview with Merritt ahead of this weekend's shows in Boston. "Songs may be wry, arch, whimsical, squirm-inducing, hilarious or mournful. Some songs are queer-centric, others not."
Quickies-released last year to critical acclaim-is twenty-eight short songs by Stephin Merritt, ranging in length from thirteen seconds to two minutes and thirty-five seconds, performed by Merritt and band members Sam Davol, Claudia Gonson, Shirley Simms, and John Woo, along with longtime friends and collaborators Chris Ewen,
Daniel Handler, and Pinky Weitzman. Mxdwn says: "It's like Merritt has made a storybook here, a collection of character sketches, or maybe even poignant profanity, such that Quickies is undeniably vivid," while the New Yorker praises Merritt as "a mordant wit whose work connects upon contact, and whose obvious sophistication never curtails his naughty streak."
To date, Stephin Merritt has written and recorded twelve Magnetic Fields albums, including the beloved 69 Love Songs and the 2017 critically acclaimed Nonesuch box set, 50 Song Memoir, which chronicled the first fifty years of the songwriter's life with one song per year. New York magazine called the box set "a celebration of Merritt's sky-high range as a writer and a player, through the exploration of the circumstances that helped cultivate it … a delightful flip through the untold back pages of one of rock's most singular voices, and, all in all, the best damned Magnetic Fields album in the last ten years." Merritt has also composed original music and lyrics for several music theater pieces, including an off-Broadway stage musical of Neil Gaiman's novel Coraline, for which he received an Obie Award. In 2014, Merritt composed songs and background music for the first musical episode of public radio's This American Life. Stephin Merritt also releases albums under the band names the 6ths, the Gothic Archies, and
Future Bible Heroes.
THE MAGNETIC FIELDS CITY WINERY RESIDENCIES
Oct 23-25 Boston
Oct 28-31 New York City
Nov 2-4 Philadelphia
Nov 6-8 Washington, DC
Nov 11&12 Atlanta
Nov 14 Nashville
Nov 16-19 Chicago.
