The World According to Stephin Merritt

On his eighth album with the Magnetic Fields, music's most revered misanthrope transforms cacophony into Distortion. Below, the man with a million idiosyncrasies proves himself to be quite normal, charming even, and yes, the world's most trying conversationalist.

By Nick Haramis

Stephin Merritt—the prolific musician behind the Magnetic Fields, Future Bible Heroes, The 6ths, and The Gothic Archies—has built himself a reputation, to put it lightly. He's been called everything from irascible and angsty, to prickly and even racist. He often asks audiences to boo instead of clapping at live shows, because the latter hurts his ears. He named his chihuahua after composer Irving Berlin. He annunciates slowly, deliberately, which can be especially unnerving over the phone. 20 seconds of reticence can turn into painful eternities while waiting for a simple response. He'll often throw questions back at the interviewer—as you'll see below—and his terse, economic people skills are at times nightmarish.

But this isn't to say that Stephin Merritt is a bad guy. On the contrary, despite truncated conservation that masquerades as misanthropy, Merritt can be quite genial when he wants to be. He laughs, shows acute self-awareness, and lights up when discussing documentary films—not at all the monster that precedes him. And, regardless of his temperament, we're here to discuss Distortion, his eighth (some say best) album with the Magnetic Fields. Inspired by the cacophonous drone made famous on the Jesus and Mary Chain's Psychocandy, this album finds Merritt once again constraining himself with various sonic experiments. It's at once challenging and brilliant, not unlike the man behind the music.

BLACKBOOK: This new album veers in a completely different direction from your previous work with the Magnetic Fields. Why the shift?

STEPHIN MERRITT: Only the production style came from Psychocandy. Everything else came from the ether, from my hard work and experience, from my brain. I’m not sure if I understand the question.

BB: What inspired your writing this time out?

SM: Sounds like you’re in a lawn mower. Is there something you can do about it?

BB: Let me rephrase the question. How is a production-driven concept album different from a thematic one?

SM: All of the songs were complete before I decided to apply this production style to them. So the two things didn’t meet in any way. To me, the whole fun of the record is that the two things don’t interact. The songs don’t know that this is going to be done to them.

BB: How did your label react to Distortion?

SM: What did you read?

BB: I read somewhere that Nonesuch Records had a strong reaction to the album, but it was unclear whether or not they considered your experiment a success.

SM: Different people reacted differently. I’m having difficulty picking out a story in this.

BB: Let’s skip it. Is it easier for you to work within constraints?

SM: As opposed to what?

BB: As opposed to making an album without confining yourself to various restrictions.

SM: I only know how to make records with artificial constraints. I guess other people have automatic constraints, like not knowing what they’re doing, or not being able to play an instrument well enough, but we have that taken care of.

BB: Are your side projects as concept-driven?

SM: I don’t see them as side projects.

BB: Do they work in different ways to satisfy different needs that you have as an artist?

SM: It’s more that I don’t trust the audience to like everything I want to do, so I compartmentalize. I’m aware that some people dislike the sounds of synthesizers, for example, and so I have Future Bible Heroes.

BB: You’ve said that sincerity has no place in popular music.

SM: I just don’t think sincerity applies. I don’t think sincerity has anything to do with music.

BB: That seems counterintuitive.

SM: Well, not to me. I don’t think that sincerity has anything to do with artistic expression at all, let alone music, which is completely abstract. You want to talk about lyrics? They could theoretically be sincere, if you have no art whatsoever in your lyrics.

BB: You recently moved to L.A.

SM: I moved my studio, yes. Since rent in New York is 10 times what it is in L.A., I figured this would be a good place to keep extending my studio. And I wanted to be near Hollywood.

BB: In New York, you frequent certain places to write and create music. Have you found anything in L.A. yet?

SM: I have not. It’s difficult to find bars that are open in the afternoon. I seem to be doing most of my writing in New York, which would be okay if I was spending more time there. But I haven’t been in a songwriting phase either. I haven’t found bars, but I’ve found cafés. L.A. is a dream world of outdoor cafés.

BB: Do you have an audience in mind when you’re making music?

SM: That doesn’t apply, no. I’m not thinking of a particular person while I’m trying to write music. It’s complicated enough without thinking of a target audience. The exception to that would be The Tragic Treasury: Songs From A Series of Unfortunate Events by the Gothic Archies. I had to make sure I didn’t use any swear words because there was going to be a significant part of the audience who were children, and I’d been told using swear words would be unacceptable. That was the only constraint that I’ve had from the powers that be.

BB: In your opinion, what lends pop music to being underrated by critics?

SM: Is it underrated?

BB: I think it’s an easier target than most genres. It gets a bum rap when, say, pitted against contemporary indie rock. Is there something about popular music—say, ABBA, for example—that lends itself to that sort of criticism?

SM: Yours is a narrow definition of pop music. Where are you going with this? When I talk about popular music, I’m referring to music that you don’t have to wear a tuxedo to listen to. Hold on for a moment. [Answers door. Dog goes apeshit.] It was the Girl Scouts.

BB: Sounds like your dog ate them.

SM: He just came back from having a pedicure, and he’s very upset. He hates nail stuff, so the last thing he needs is a Girl Scout on the doorstep. He’s been traumatized already today.

BB: There’s a real nostalgia for authenticity in mainstream music.

SM: People don’t seem to realize when they’re living in the golden age of things. I believe we’re living in the golden age of the documentary. I don’t think anyone over 12 would think we were in the golden age of popular music. We’re living in a really difficult time for popular music. I guess we can’t pick our golden ages otherwise we’d always be in one.

BB: What documentaries spoke to you?

SM: I saw something called Billy the Kid. Super Size Me was amazing, as was Hands on A Hard Body. It’s about a truck contest where 10 people, 20 maybe, start out with their hands on the truck and the last person left, um, wins the truck. But it’s in Texas in the hot sun and it’s kind of brutal. Naturally, you learn more about the lives of these pathetic people, and their need to win a pick-up truck.

BB: You recently participated in an event called “Listen Again: Music You Should Change Your Mind About Right Now,” and were listed as a panelist. True story?

SM: There was a misunderstanding. They said, “Would you like to come to this event?” They didn’t say, “Would you like to be in this event?” So we were kind of shocked by each other and went back and looked at the emails and had a good laugh about the misunderstanding. That’s what happens over email. Everything is so ambiguous.

BB: It’s funny, your accepting an invitation to that panel discussion, given your insistence that you can’t remember listening to a single album from 2007.

SM: It’s not like I’m proud of it. I’ve just been too busy to go out to the places where I would usually hear the latest thing.

Photos of Merritt with the Magnetic Fields by Chris Buck; photo of Merritt on his own by Marcelo Krasilcic.