Pop songwriting virtuoso Stephin Merritt and his cult musical group the Magnetic Fields completed a pilgrimage from the music conservatory division of the indie rock avant garde in the early nineties to songwriting immortality with 1999’s monumental 69 Love Songs and never looked back. 2010 saw the release of their 10th record, a sold-out six-night stint at the Old Town School of Folk Music, and the premiere of a documentary about the group, Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields at SXSW. The film is an endearing portrait of the cerebral baritone who is often lazily labeled as simply prickly or aloof but is adored fiercely by his fans and guarded jealously by his friends and an ever-present chihuahua. We talked with co-director Kerthy Fix about this spending a decade making this documentary, about exploring the creative relationship between Meritt and his collaborator Claudia Gonson and about Meritt’s place in music history. more ›

Recounting an intimate and first experience with the live music of The Magnetic Fields shouldn't be an exercise in summarizing, or critiquing, their setlist choices. You could have played their records 100,000 times over the past decade and memorized every word, but none of this would prepare you for the first time you hear Stephin Merritt's voice command the still air of a theater of devoted fans, then subsequently break every one of their hearts. more ›

On "You Must Be Out of Your Mind," the lead track on the Magnetic Fields' newest and tenth career release, Stephin Merritt croons aloofly, "You can't go around just saying stuff because it's pretty". Merritt has made a career, and built a public personality, around his curious ability to issue profound truths about the human condition with a bored and flippant demeanor. more ›

Chicagoist first picked up David Rakoff's acclaimed Fraud a few years back because he was Canadian and we had a thing for our neighbors to the North. Then we discovered Rakoff was gay and, well, hot (our criteria for picking new authors today) and we were hooked. Rakoff is a regular on This American Life and has been called by TimeOut Chicago an amalgamation of "the wit of Stephin Merritt, the observations of Jerry Seinfeld... more ›

Pop music's greatest curmudgeon, Stephin Merritt – who moonlights in the 6ths (just try and pronounce that band name) and Future Bible Heroes (just try and think of a better band name) – will bring his main project, The Magnetic Fields, to our beloved Old Town School of Folk Music ("Now, not even in Old Town!") for a handful of shows this weekend. Merritt, a self-professed rock music snob, has disdain for nearly all... more ›