Quickies

Description

An incomparable lyricist capable of balancing arch wit with painfully acute observation. Guardian

Nonesuch Records releases the Magnetic Fields Quickies, a set of five vinyl EPs that features twenty-eight new short songs by Stephin Merritt, ranging in length from thirteen seconds to two minutes and thirty-five seconds. Quickies also will be available on CD and digitally.

Merritt explains his thinking behind the Quickies concept: Ive 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 Ive been listening to a lot of French baroque harpsichord music. Harpsichord doesnt lend itself to languor. So Ive been thinking about one instrument at a time, playing for about a minute or so and then stopping, and Ive 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, Ive only gone a short way. Now that Im working on a different album, Im enforcing a large notebook rule so that I dont 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 songwriters life with one song per year. New York magazine called the box set a celebration of Merritts 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 rocks 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 theatre pieces, including an off-Broadway stage musical of Neil Gaimans novel Coraline, for which he received an Obie Award. In 2014, Merritt composed songs and background music for the first musical episode of public radios This American Life. Stephin Merritt also releases albums under the band names the 6ths, the Gothic Archies, and Future Bible Heroes.