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"The Magnetic Fields is a band led by the New York City singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt. Albums released by Merritt under the name 'The Magnetic Fields"'usually consist of synth-pop music in a 1980s style underlying clever lyrics, often about love, that are sometimes ironic, sometimes bitter and sometimes celebratory. While The Wayward Bus and Distant Plastic Trees (now available together as a compilation) are sung by Susan Anway, all subsequent albums are principally sung by Merritt himself.
The band began as Merritt's studio project, with Merritt playing all instruments. With the help of friend Claudia Gonson, who had played in Merritt's band The Zinnias during high school, a live band was assembled in Boston, where Merritt and Gonson lived, to play Merritt's compositions. The band's first live performance was at TT the Bear's Place in Boston, MA in 1991 where they played to a sparse audience expecting to see Galaxie 500 spinoff Magnetophone. The live performance sounded nothing like the recordings, which continued to be true for the band until recent years when the two sounds - studio and live - began to converge.
Their most significant, popular, and critically-acclaimed album to date is the triple album 69 Love Songs. It showcased Merritt's powerful songwriting abilities and the group's musicianship, demonstrated by the employment of unorthodox instrumental arrangements (including ukulele, banjo, accordion, cello, mandolin, piano, flute, xylophone, Marxophone, and various percussion instruments, in addition to their usual setup of synthesizers, guitars, and effects). The album also features guest vocalists Shirley Simms, Dudley Klute, LD Beghtol and bandmember Claudia Gonson - each of whom sings lead on six songs as well as various backing vocals - plus Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket) on accordion, and longtime collaborator Christopher Ewen (of Future Bible Heroes) as guest arranger/synthesist. Violinist Ida Pearle makes a brief cameo on the popular Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side."
[reproduced or excerpted from the Wikipedia article "The Magnetic Fields" and its use is thus licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License]
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