Wow, this is interesting. A ten-year-in-the-making documentary on the Magnetic Fields and its notoriously private (plus misanthropic and surly) singer-songwriter Stephin Merrit is apparently mostly complete and will be screening at The San Francisco Film Society’s acclaimed SF360 Film+Club, a bimonthly social screening series.
Directed by Kerthy Fix and Gail O’Hara (Merrit’s longtime photographer that has been shooting the band for over ten years), the doc has no name according to the SF site (it’s just listed as “A Sneak Preview of a Film About Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields”), but IMDB has the title, “Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields” listed. Here’s a bit of the synopsis, perhaps a small bio if you’re unfamiliar with their work.
With his unique gift for memorable melodies, lovelorn lyrics and wry musical stylings that blend classic Tin Pan Alley with postmodern grooves, brilliantly idiosyncratic singer/songwriter Stephin Merritt has distinguished himself as one of contemporary pop’s most beloved and influential artists. This remarkably gifted and prolific tunesmith records and performs as a solo artist and also leads numerous alternative bands including Future Bible Heroes, the Gothic Archies, the 6ths and, most famously, the Magnetic Fields, whose 1999 three-disc opus 69 Love Songs is widely considered a masterpiece of traditional songcraft and irresistible synthpop.
We’ve said it once, we’ll say it again. Most indie-rock bores us to tears these days, but we always sit and pay attention when Merritt releases anything. And 69 Love Songs is a total ’90s masterpiece. Merrit and his various musical incarnations are no strangers to film either and he has contributed or written entire scores for movies like “Pieces of April” (an uneven picture made immensely more tolerable thanks to his songs), “Eban & Charley,” “Tarnation” (Peter Gabriel butchered one of his best songs for “Shall We Dance”) and he also penned the music and lyrics for a 2009 off-Broadway stage musical of “Coraline,” by Neil Gaiman among many other musical projects outside regular standard album releases (including songs for the children’s book series for Lemony Snicket’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events”).
Merrit is an odd fellow. Terse, acidly witty, dry as the Sahara and one of the most difficult interview subjects of the last few years of popular music, so it’ll be interesting to see him (presumably) open up. The film screens Sunday, February 28, at 8:00 pm. Hopefully it makes the rounds at film festival soon after. Can’t wait to see it. Here’s just one of the many, many, many exquisite pop songs on 69 Love Songs, “Grand Canyon” (but don’t sleep on the early synth-pop work too, it’s also great).