Music Review: The Magnetic Fields - National Concert Hall, Dublin

Songwriters are forever looking inward for inspiration. But The Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt has taken the tradition to extremes with 50 Song Memoir, a five-disc album chronicling his life up to his 50th birthday.

This suggests an orgy of naval-gazing. However, Merritt is a wry and self-deprecating lyricist and the vicissitudes of his life become a prism through which to contemplate the human condition — the single ‘A Cat Call Dionysus’, for instance, uses Merritt’s troubled relationship with a family pet as springboard for a meditation on insecurity.

The conceit was carried through to his new live show — a two-night performance of the entirety of the record, bracketed with darkly witty narration from the singer and an artsy video show.