Quickies The Magnetic Fields

• 1 Castles of America 00:34
• 2 The Biggest Tits in History 02:12
• 3 The Day the Politicians Died 01:57
• 4 Castle Down a Dirt Road 01:47
• 5 Bathroom Quickie 00:46
• 6 My Stupid Boyfriend 02:01
• 7 Love Gone Wrong 02:13
• 8 Favorite Bar 01:12
• 9 Kill a Man a Week 00:59
• 10 Kraftwerk in a Blackout 01:49
• 11 When She Plays the Toy Piano 02:06
• 12 Death Pact (Let's Make A) 00:17
• 13 I've Got a Date With Jesus 02:16
• 14 Come, Life, Shaker Life! 02:35
• 15 (I Want to Join A) Biker Gang 02:21
• 16 Rock 'n' Roll Guy 02:33
• 17 You've Got a Friend in Beelzebub 01:13
• 18 Let's Get Drunk Again (And Get Divorced) 01:15
• 19 The Best Cup of Coffee in Tennessee 02:07
• 20 When the Brat Upstairs Got a Drum Kit 01:52
• 21 The Price You Pay 01:52
• 22 The Boy in the Corner 00:55
• 23 Song of the Ant 00:43
• 24 I Wish I Had Fangs and a Tail 01:51
• 25 Evil Rhythm 01:47
• 26 She Says Hello 01:01
• 27 The Little Robot Girl 02:11
• 28 I Wish I Were a Prostitute Again 02:15
• Total Runtime 46:40

Info for Quickies

The Magnetic Fields’ Quickies album comprises of twenty-eight new short songs by Stephin Merritt, ranging in length from thirteen seconds to two minutes and thirty-five seconds, performed by Merritt and band members Sam Davol, Claudia Gonson, Shirley Simms, and John Woo, along with longtime friends and collaborators Chris Ewen, Daniel Handler, and Pinky Weitzman.

Merritt explains his thinking behind the Quickies concept: “I’ve been reading a lot of very short fiction, and I enjoyed writing 101 Two-Letter Words, the poetry book about the shortest words you can use in Scrabble. And I’ve been listening to a lot of French baroque harpsichord music. Harpsichord doesn’t lend itself to languor. So I’ve been thinking about one instrument at a time, playing for about a minute or so and then stopping, and I’ve been thinking of narratives that are only a few lines long.

“Also, I had been using a lot of small notebooks, so when I reach the bottom of the page, I’ve only gone a short way. Now that I’m working on a different album, I’m enforcing a large notebook rule so that I don’t do Quickies twice in a row.”

Quickies features Merritt and other Magnetic Fields band members Sam Davol, Claudia Gonson, Shirley Simms, and John Woo. They are joined by longtime friends and collaborators Chris Ewen, Daniel Handler, and Pinky Weitzman. To date, Stephin Merritt has written and recorded twelve Magnetic Fields albums, including the beloved 69 Love Songs and the 2017 critically acclaimed Nonesuch box set, 50 Song Memoir, which chronicled the first fifty years of the songwriter’s life with one song per year. New York magazine called the box set “a celebration of Merritt’s sky-high range as a writer and a player, through the exploration of the circumstances that helped cultivate it … a delightful flip through the untold back pages of one of rock’s most singular voices, and, all in all, the best damned Magnetic Fields album in the last ten years.” Merritt has also composed original music and lyrics for several music theater pieces, including an off-Broadway stage musical of Neil Gaiman’s novel Coraline, for which he received an Obie Award. In 2014, Merritt composed songs and background music for the first musical episode of public radio’s This American Life. Stephin Merritt also releases albums under the band names the 6ths, the Gothic Archies, and Future Bible Heroes.

The Magnetic Fields

Stephin Merritt
With his band the Magnetic Fields, Stephin Merritt has written, produced and recorded 10 albums, including 69 Love Songs, which was named one of the 500 best albums of all time by Rolling Stone. As well as making albums with Future Bible Heroes, the Gothic Archies, the 6ths and as a solo artist, he composed the scores for the Academy Award-nominated film Pieces of April and for Eban and Charley. He recently published his first book, 101 Two-Letter Words, illustrated by Roz Chast.

Stephin Merritt (born 1966 in New York City, United States) is a singer-songwriter. He has created and played principal roles in the following bands: The Magnetic Fields, The 6ths, The Gothic Archies, and Future Bible Heroes. He briefly used the name The Baudelaire Memorial Orchestra as an attribution for a song written for Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, entitled "Scream and Run Away". Further music was recorded for the audiobook versions of the series and is attributed to The Gothic Archies. Under his own name, he recorded and released the soundtracks to the films Eban and Charley and Pieces of April. The soundtrack to the late Nickelodeon show The Adventures of Pete & Pete featured many of his songs. He and director Chen Shi-Zheng have collaborated on three pieces of musical theatre; Orphan of Zhao (2003), Peach Blossom Fan (2004), and My Life as a Fairy Tale (2005). Select tracks from these works have been released on Nonesuch Records under the title Showtunes. Merritt is openly gay. His lyrics are known for bending and blurring the gender line; examples include the song When My Boy Walks Down The Street, sung by a male vocalist, which contains the lyric "and he's going to be my wife". He is fascinated with the undead, often making veiled or explicit references to vampires. Other frequent motifs in his lyrics include trains and railroads, the moon, dancing, eyes, and, of course, love. Merritt has a Chihuahua named Irving, after Irving Berlin. He was raised Buddhist by his counter-culture mother. He attended the progressive Massachusetts high school, The Cambridge School of Weston and briefly attended NYU before moving back to Boston. He is a smoker, and is known to light a cigarette while performing on stage. He has worked as a copy editor for Spin Magazine and Time Out New York. One of Merritt's most notable quirks is that, when interrupting his speech for thought, he does not use linguistic placeholders such as "uh" or "er" to indicate that he is not done speaking, but instead simply stops speaking. This leads many interviewers unfamiliar with this behavior to cut him off before he has finished answering a question. In a September 2005 interview conducted by The Onion's AV Club, alternative rock musician Bob Mould was reminded of an interviewer who once referred to Mould as "the most depressed man in rock." Mould's response was, "He's never met Stephin Merritt, obviously." Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

Booklet for Quickies