Stephin Merritt at Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis (15 May 2015)

Stephin Merritt Setlist

Andrew in Drag1 The Book of Love1 A Chicken With Its Head Cut Off1 The Dead Only Quickly2 Epitaph for My Heart1 Forever and a Day Give Me Back My Dreams3 One Hundred Thousand Fireflies1 I Wish I Had an Evil Twin1 Josephine1 Kiss Me Like You Mean It1 Love Is Like a Bottle of Gin1 My Husband’s Pied-A-Terre1 The Nun’s Litany1 One Long Fairytale1 A Pretty Girl Is Like…1 Quick!1 Reno Dakota1 Shipwrecked2 This Little Ukulele1 The Ugly Little Duck Very Funny1 The World Is a Disco Ball4 Xylophone Track1 Your Girlfriend’s Face1 — Encore — Zombie Boy1 Footnotes: 1: The Magnetic Fields 2: The Gothic Archies 3: The 6ths 4: Future Bible Heroes

Advance Base Setlist

New Song (‘incantation demons’) New Song (‘you don’t call me ever on the phone, please come home’) New Song (‘only girl from back home’) Christmas In Milwaukee Pamela Summer Music Cold White Christmas * My Sister’s Birthday Natural Light * White Jetta * Kitty Winn * Casiotone For The Painfully Alone

Stephin Merritt just played a themed “A to Z” concert, twenty-six songs in alphabetical order, at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis, last night. Of course, fans of The Magnetic Fields (Merritt’s band) shouldn’t be surprised by this theme. After all, the band is known for doing these concept albums, notably for their ambitious 69 Love Songs (a three-disc set featuring 69 songs) and i (14 songs starting with “I”).

 

Opener Advance Base (Owen Ashworth, formerly of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone) started his set with mostly songs from his forthcoming Nephew in the Wild album. Since the upcoming album’s tracklisting (or lyrics) were not released, I couldn’t tell you the proper titles. The latter half of his set featured a couple of Casiotone For The Painfully Alone songs (“Cold White Christmas”, “Natural Light”, and “White Jetta”).

The Redwood City, Californian (“just west of Chicago”) said last night that it was his longest time he’s ever spent in Minneapolis… but had lived in the midwest for good time.

Ashworth was also very thankful for the incredibly respectful audience, as the singer noted that it’s not always the case when he sings these quiet songs.

Accompanying Stephin Merritt on stage was cellist Sam Davol, also from the Magnetic Fields.
Since the set list was put together with very specific order, the two would often take a little time to tune on every couple of songs. This is the challenge of doing some of these concept shows (particularly with the recent popularity of “full album” tours). Thankfully, there is a small blessing to these tuning moments, Merritt would often give brief introductions to songs to break the awkward silence.

The two started their set a little after 9pm with “Andrew in Drag”, followed by the timely choice of “The Book of Love”, which is enjoying a top ten single in the Netherlands and Dublin charts, thanks Irish singer Gavin James covering the Magnetic Fields song. Coincidentally enough, we will be seeing James tonight (May 16th) with Kodaline. I’ll be listening to see if he plays “The Book of Love” on his live set.

Other interesting tidbits from Merritt’s set included a The 6ths song “Give Me Back My Dreams”, written by Merritt but originally sung by English singer Sally Timms.

I didn’t know this, but the Magnetic Fields song “A Pretty Girl Is Like…” was in response to Irving Berlin‘s “racist standard” song “A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody”.

“Xylophone Track” was dedicated to BB King, who recently passed away in his sleep in Las Vegas on May 14 at age 89 (to Type II Diabetes). Incidentally, according to Spotify, their streams of the music of BB King have “increased by 9800%” following the iconic musician’s death.

My personal highlight was the Gothic Archies‘ “Shipwrecked”, which got plenty of laughs from the audience. If you didn’t know, the band featured Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, and was meant as a soundtrack of sort for his book, “A Series of Unfortunate Events”. You can read about the project on weheartmusic from 2007.

The rest of the 90-min set goes pretty much as you would expect for the A to Z, ending on the 25th song “Your Girlfriend’s Face” and with the 26th song reserved for the encore, “Zombie Boy”.

If you love the various works (and unique deep, deep bass vocals) of Stephin Merritt, you definitely need to see this memorable A-Z tour.

Remaining tour dates: