Another one of the highlights of Merge Records 20th Anniversary, of course, was the Magnetic Fields.  Surprisingly the Magnetic Fields took the stage in the middle of the first night of the festival.  Their performance was wonderful, and I was kind of shocked that they played on night one.  This was my third time seeing them, and this time at the beginning of the set Claudia made a comment about Stephen’s hearing, and how clapping and hollering hurts his ears…but unfortunately the crowd didn’t realize how serious she was.

It was great to see the Magnetic Fields perform in a venue as small as the Cat’s Cradle, and part of this was that we were able to stand so close to the stage.  But on the other hand it was painful to watch someone like Stephen Merritt, a musician that I respect and who’s music I love, be in so much pain when his fans cheer for him (to the point where he had to stop playing when people cheered in the middle of a song).  I hope that in the future it will be made more clear that Stephen can’t handle loud clapping, and that the crowd will show their appreciation in another way (in the past Claudia had suggested snapping your fingers). Despite this their set was wonderful, expect for when a Palmetto bug attacked Claudia and Shirley.  Here are some photos from their set:

the pallmetto bug attack during “Comeback from SF.”  You can even see the bug fly across the stage (video by cotafloata):

While this was the Magnetic Fields announced that their XX Merge appearance will be their only show of 2009 it won’t be too long before we hear more from them…Stephen Merritt has said that the new album is almost finished, and should be out in January 2010!

More of my XX Merge photos can be found here.

This is part of my Going To XX Merge series, you can read the rest of the series here.