The Magnetic Fields brought their fall tour to a close yesterday after a full weekend of performances that brought them from Columbus, Ohio, to Philadelphia to Washington, DC. Getting a head start to the weekend's gigs, the band played in Jersey City, New Jersey, on Thursday night, leading The Star-Ledger to write: "As offbeat as he is, Merritt is also a pop purist. His songs were full of graceful melodic twists and clever turns of phrase. There is, simply, a poetry to his words that you rarely hear at a rock show."
The Magnetic Fields brought their fall tour to a close yesterday after a full weekend of performances that brought them from Columbus, Ohio, to Philadelphia to Washington, DC.
Getting a head start to the weekend's gigs, the band played the Loews Jersey Theatre in Jersey City, New Jersey, on Thursday night, leading The Star-Ledger's Jay Lustig to laud the "sweet-and-sour synergy" that comes from the pairing of the very different personalities of the band's singer/songwriter Stephin Merritt and pianist/vocalist Claudia Gonson.
Lustig writes: "As offbeat as he is, Merritt is also a pop purist. His songs were full of graceful melodic twists and clever turns of phrase. There is, simply, a poetry to his words that you rarely hear at a rock show."
Read the full concert review at nj.com.
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After Friday's show at the Southern Theatre in Columbus, Curtis Schieber reports in the Columbus Dispatch that "the Magnetic Fields amplified the emotions in leader Stephin Merritt's songs," continuing:
In the perfect venue for the job, the quintet injected tunes from 20 years of recordings with vibrancy and detail, making the novel engagingly clever and the sentimental bittersweet. The band repeatedly found honest blood-and-guts in even the most maudlin from Merritt's huge songbook.
Shieber credits Gonson with being "the band's secret weapon," calling her "de-facto host, comic foil, beleaguered commentator, and most importantly, someone who could sing Merritt's most aching songs with not a whiff of irony" and "with Leonard Cohen-like finesse" to boot.
Read more at columbusdispatch.com.
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Prior to Saturday's show at the Merriam Theater in Philly, The Morning Call's Len Righi spoke with Stephin Merritt about Distortion, the band's latest Nonesuch release. Righi credits Stephin with having "exerted an insistent tug on indie-pop since 1990 by crafting simple, clean, melodic songs that lean heavily on keyboards," and examines the very different sound of the new record, containing, though it still does, "Merritt's provocative black-hearted whimsy." The article can be found at mccall.com.
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