Once in a generation tour of landmark indie pop classic in its entirety comes to London
It’s been 25 years since Boston’s The Magnetic Fields found a breathtaking career peak with 69 Love Songs, and the same ambition that drove the record’s conception in 1999 finds Stephin Merritt and co. playing the album in its entirety across two night sets around the UK and Europe.
Merritt had already garnered a reputation for combining lyrics of rare insight and incisiveness with captivating pop melodies by the time 69 Love Songs came into being. Previous album Get Lost was a concise, clever pop record that spurred covers by The Divine Comedy, Tracey Thorn and Better Oblivion Community Center, but it only hinted at the scope the band would employ to document such a vast cross section of the romantic experience. The album is a product of intensive writing sessions in storied New York bars Dick’s and St. Dymphna’s (itself later immortalised by Better Oblivion’s Conor Oberst in Til St. Dymphna’s Kicks Us Out), where Merritt would eavesdrop on tipsy conversations and steal nuggets of pathos for his characters.
