Photo by Bradley’s Almanac
Late baby boomers and Gen X-ers packed into the 9:30 Club by the couple Monday night, vying for an appropriate amount of space to observe gypsy-rockers Devotchka and indie-pop mainstays The Magnetic Fields take the stage. The sold-out performance felt all the more packed by the need for everyone to have a few square inches of personal space to hug their date from behind.
Devotchka’s acoustic set was the more energetic half of the evening. Nick Urata crooned a selection of the band’s trademark songs, including “100 Other Lovers,” “The Man from San Sebastian” and “We’re Leaving,” with just the right amount of imperfection. Tom Hagerman on violin and accordion and Shawn King on trumpet and percussion provided texture that transported fans to a different, more romantic place and time.
Hagerman was particularly brilliant on “The Clockwise Witness” and the crowd appreciated him as he plucked out the sweet, introduction to the song about pretending to be something different than what one is.
Though Devotchka did their part by warming up the crowd, when The Magnetic Fields took the stage it was as if all the energy was sucked out of the club. Pianist, vocalist and apparent band manager, Claudia Gonson’s pedantic explanations and counting off the start to nearly every song reduced the set to seeming like a freshman seminar entitled The Magnetic Fields: 101. She visibly annoyed the brains behind the band, Stephin Merritt by not getting on with the songs.
Despite the onstage conflict, which included Merritt pushing his music stand and songbook to the ground about a quarter of the way through the show, the five-piece band sounded nice. Merritt has publicly admitted that he does not enjoy performing, but still fed the audience favorites such as “Busby Berkeley Dreams” and “A Chicken With its Head Cut Off.”
Vocalist and eight-string ukulele player, Shirley Simms, lent an air of alt-country to the night on songs such as “Your Girlfriend’s Face,” from The Magnetic Field’s recently released album, Love at the Bottom of the Sea. Other tracks from the new album that made it onto the set list included “Andrew in Drag,” “My Husband’s Pied-a-Terre” and “The Horrible Party.”
The general lack of showmanship in the performance paired with a subdued crowd had an Ambien-like effect and as bedtimes drew near, couples began to trickle out of the club. Regardless of the pretty boring show, most of the concert-goers probably popped 69 Love Songs into the CD player on the way home and hummed along to “The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side” with no love lost for The Magnetic Fields.
