Festival Music
50 Song Memoir
King's Theatre
Nicola Meighan
four stars
INDIE-pop dramatist Stephin Merritt is one of music's master-craftsmen, and he can fairly helm a stage bedecked like a time-travelling kitsch haven, too.
Merritt's band the Magnetic Fields have ploughed a droll baroque-pop furrow since 1989, upturning assumptions about art and sexuality, and toying with ideas of what makes an album – not least on 2004's alphabetical LP, i (in which every song title began with that letter), and 1999's self-explanatory magnum opus, 69 Love Songs.
The baritone wordsmith recently turned 50, and marked the occasion in typically wry and erudite fashion by releasing an autobiographical album comprising one song for each year of his life so far. This first of two nights at Edinburgh International Festival charted Merritt's first quarter-century, in a neon haze of electro torch-songs, disco dirges and new wave wig-outs, backed by a kaleidoscopic chamber group whose kit included ukuleles, tubas, vocoders and stroh violins.
Call-and-response gospel serenade No was a joy (“Will there be peace in our time? No”) and Judy Garland made spellbinding use of a magic mirror/film screen that hung ornately above the stage.
Merritt reclined atop a stool throughout, ensconced within a theatrical set that was equal parts exotic boudoir, sonic trove and treasure chest, but even without such day-glo surrounds, his lyrics would have been centre-stage – from goth-rock requiem A Cat Called Dionysus (“Every day, another crisis”), to industrial-pop lament The Blizzard of 78 (“We made the Cramps sound orchestral, that’s an achievement I guess / As for rehearsal, we made The Shaggs sound like Yes.”)
His inter-song tales about childhood, escape and his mother's dire taste in men were moving, humorous and wise – as were these curious, illuminating songs of Merritt's life.
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