A few days ago I went to see The Magnetic Fields at the Town Hall, a concert hall close to Times Square, in the heart of the theater district.
A troupe opened performing Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart‘ in an old radio serial fashion, and this choice I thought was pretty revealing of the character of the band.
It was a nice acoustic concert, very casual. Stephin Merritt and Claudia Gonson consistently picked on each other between songs, and so cheering up the sourness and broken hearts in their lyrics, while staying in the sarcastic, playful and humorous line that is also a constant in Merritt’s work.
The concert introduced their last album, ‘Distorsion’. The song ‘I Hate California Girls’ particularly made me chuckle…