The Magnetic Fields

Stephin Merritt has 50 identical sets of underwear and a latent ambition to be Walt Disney. He has written an album of 69 Love Songs and, now, 50 Song Memoir - one for each year of his life. Artpop genius? Conceptual prankster? “I am,” he admits, “a questionable narrator...”

- Michael Bonner

ONE of Stephin Merritt’s earliest memories is of living in Upstate new York during the late 60's with his mother and their cat, named Dionysus. “My mother tells me, though I don’t remember directly, that I used to lock Dionysus in my toy box,” recalls Merritt today. “So Dionysus and I had a highly contentious relationship. But what I do remember is Dionysus running away. Dionysus got out on the back balcony and we saw him jumping from roof to roof. In my memory of this, I am above the railings – where really I was three years old and I would have been below the railings. So already I am a questionable narrator.”

Dionysus’s fleet-footed exit across the rooftops of Syracuse is recounted on 50 Song Memoir, Merritt’s latest album under the Magnetic Fields moniker. As the title suggests, the record is an autobiographical collection of songs, one for every year of Merritt’s life. Such a task may sound daunting, but it speaks to Merritt’s love of concepts and a rigorous inner logic that have characterised his work in Magnetic Fields and three offshoot bands: The 6ths, Future Bible Heroes and The Gothic Archies. Among such projects, the album i featured songs that all began with the ninth letter of the alphabet; another, full of distorted guitars, was called Distortion.

His most successful album, 69 Love Songs, succeeded both as a smutty number gag and a vast, witty survey of the art of writing love songs.