Wish I Was in Those Magnetic Fields

About this time two years ago, Ben and I had the pleasure of seeing The Magnetic Fields at Town Hall. Ben saw them in D.C. last month, but since I'm out of the country, I'm missing these shows (and haven't yet listened to the new album either).

But the New York Times' Nate Chinen put together a solid review of their Town Hall show.

Describing Stephin Merritt, he writes,

His cleverness as a songwriter — the oldfangled alchemy of wit, craft and subtext that tends to get coded as drollness — serves partly as a safeguard, keeping pathos at a manageable remove.

I really like the clause defining drollness.

But then he really captures Merritt here:

At one point Ms. [Claudia] Gonson observed that in “Realism,” Mr. Merritt had finally made an album to match his muted wardrobe. Mr. Merritt received this assessment grumblingly, an earth-toned Eeyore.

An earth-toned Eeyore indeed!