It’s asking a lot of an audience of a certain age — ahem — to return two nights in a row for one performance. Specifically, a performance of a masterwork so sprawling, its 69 songs must be played in two consecutive shows, 35 songs or so a night. I’m not talking Wagner’s “Ring” cycle. I’m talking an indie act from Boston that, in a Doug Flutie-like Hail Mary for the college-rock-radio ages, released an album 25 years ago of 69 tracks requiring three CDs (or these days, six vinyl records). It was titled “69 Love Songs,” the band was the Magnetic Fields, and not surprisingly, that sort of ambition begs for less of a traditional act than an impresario, a Prince-like figure.
Stephin Merritt is that guy.
Like other pop svengalis who suggest genius, he’s slight in person. At Thalia Hall in Pilsen on Wednesday night, he sat on a tall chair at the edge of the stage, legs akimbo, in a T-shirt and jeans and curled ballcap. He carries himself like Eeyore, deadpan, droopy, avoiding eye contact. Following night, the same. For the first time in decades, Magnetic Fields is playing “69 Love Songs” in full; Friday and Saturday, they repeat the whole cycle. (All shows sold out.) It’s important to note what Merritt looks like because, these songs, this exuberant flood of creativity, show tunes, rock tunes, torch ballads, campfire ditties, electronic experiments and jokes about string theory and headless chickens, one crafted beauty after another — Merritt’s personal presentation, always at odds with his multitudes, is a character in itself on “69 Love Songs.”
A lot comes out of that unassuming corner of the stage and his flat center-of-the-earth-deep baritone of a voice. He’s not alone, of course: Magnetic lifers — Claudia Gonson (keyboards, occasional lead vocals), John Woo (guitar, banjo), Sam Davol (cello), Shirley Simms (ukulele, occasional lead vocals) — rounded out the band, arranged in rows, like a modest orchestra. (Minus traditional percussion, handed mostly on synths by Chris Ewan.) Merritt described this band as the “original cast” of “69 Love Songs,” and that wasn’t a quip. The Magnetic Fields never felt like a traditional band but a flirtation with American theater and the Great American Songbook.
Bands routinely play full albums live these days for a decent reason, because the album as a complete thought is a concept that has been pummeled by streaming and playlists that disregard an artist’s intent. The argument against the full-album show is also compelling: It steers acts away from new material in favor of routines, and strips away whatever spontaneity live music offered.
But something like “69 Love Songs” requires complete obsessiveness, a live monument to endlessly fretting on a theme. For “Reno Dakota,” Gonson stood behind her keyboard and, as if performing a recital at a school concert, sang with plaintive drama about being ghosted by a lover, delivering Merritt’s hilarious Sondheim-like lyrics with a moving sincerity: “You know you enthrall me and yet you don’t call me / It’s making me blue, Pantone 292.”
At the conclusion of night one, a spotlight focused on new member Anthony Kaczynski (a Jeff Tweedy doppelganger), who stood to sing the melodramatic “Promises of Eternity,” which, like the other 68 songs, was written by Merritt: “What if the show didn’t go on? / What if we all got jobs and got to bed before dawn. … That’s just what the world would be / If you fell out of love with me.”
Merritt, who has admitted “69 Love Songs” sprung from an admiration of Sondheim and composer Charles Ives, originally imagined the album as a theatrical revue of sorts. He has also said the songs are not about love but the semiotics of love songs, the love song as a medium itself.
The thought is exhausting.
Besides, what’s here is more compelling than ironic detachment, or even another jukebox musical. What came across at Thalia Hall was how wrong (or knowingly wry) Merritt can be. As many ways as you can slice a love song and hold it beneath a microscope — you’d think people would have had enough of silly love songs — Merritt is too smart to downplay the messy emotions that can sneak into even the sappiest tune. On stage, he’s all indie snark; introducing “The Book of Love,” his often-covered wedding standard, he claimed: “I wrote this next song to be sung by a 7-year-old Danish girl on ‘Denmark’s Got Talent.’” But then his baritone intrudes, deflating that irony. Night one began with the first song on “69 Love Songs,” a near-carnival novelty titled “Absolutely Cuckoo,” and then, elegantly, Merritt introduced the band by trading off its lyrics with each of the members until — I’m sheepish to admit — I felt a tear whelm up.
Merritt and Co. — who glance at each throughout and smile, as if they’re surprised themselves at how durable this all sounds so many years later — stretch the idea of the love song as an elastic vehicle as far as audiences might accept. Most of the songs are a couple of minutes or so, but within pop parameters, the variety gets dizzying: He finds room for bitter tears and how hard it is to say goodbye and how seeing a lover changes your weather but also, somehow, love as filtered through the death of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. (Top that, Taylor Swift.) A highlight of the second night was one of Merritt’s most touching tunes, “Papa Was a Rodeo,” sung to a man named Mike, about a love affair that’s lasted 55 years. Love in these shows is gay and straight and bi and medieval and country Western and Dylan-esque: “No one will ever love you for your honesty.” Ouch. Still: “Be we in Paris or Lansing / Nothing matters when we’re dancing.”
If Sufjan Stevens’ own indie landmark “Illinois” is going to be a Broadway show, this is a trilogy.
By the end of night two, you’re inside this music, hearing banjos in your sleep. The tape-loop mash of “Experimental Music Love” segues, literally, into “Meaningless.” Merritt and Gonson trading murderous insults on “Yeah! Oh, Yeah!” — “Are you reaching for a knife? / Could you really kill your wife!” — is a romance ‘til death. Not every song works. With 69, how could they? Merritt’s flat affect and tireless ambition means it eventually becomes a wall of sound, an endless romance with the record itself, a lust curdling into disgust, but remembered as large as the Grand Canyon.
Because that’s love, too.
And what’s wrong with that, I’d like to know.
“69 Love Songs” 25th Anniversary continues through Saturday at Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St.; thaliahallchicago.com
cborrelli@chicagotribune.com
