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May 11, 2020 By Lily Guthrie

The Magnetic Fields’ latest single, “I’ve Got a Date With Jesus,” is just one piece of the band’s elaborate puzzle. Quickies, their upcoming album, set for a May 15 release, is a five-EP box set with 28 semi-short songs, each titled with an eccentric, conceptual storyline. Joining the aforementioned single so far are “The Day The Politicians Died,” “Kraftwerk In a Blackout,” and “(I Want To Join A) Biker Gang,” with a couple dozen more to come. Listen to “I’ve Got a Date With Jesus” below.

In addition to lead singer and songwriter Stephin Merritt, Quickies features band members Sam Daval, Claudia Gonson, Shirley Simms, and John Woo, as well as Chris Ewen, Daniel Handler, and Pinky Weitzman. This is the Magnetic Fields’ first major project since 2017’s 50 Song Memoir, and you can listen to the decadent, lustful “I’ve Got a Date With Jesus” below.

Merritt had this to say in a previous statement about the album: “I’ve been reading a lot of very short fiction, and I enjoyed writing 101 Two-Letter Words, the poetry book about the shortest words you can use in Scrabble. And I’ve been listening to a lot of French baroque harpsichord music. Harpsichord doesn’t lend itself to languor. So I’ve been thinking about one instrument at a time, playing for about a minute or so and then stopping, and I’ve been thinking of narratives that are only a few lines long. 

“Also, I had been using a lot of small notebooks, so when I reach the bottom of the page, I’ve only gone a short way. Now that I’m working on a different album, I’m enforcing a large notebook rule so that I don’t do Quickies twice in a row.”

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