The Magnetic Fields haven’t released a new album since 2012’s Love At The Bottom Of The Sea, but a Facebook post from the band suggests that it has something special in the works for early next year. For starters, the band has announced that it is “hard at work” on a new album, but if that’s not exciting enough, the album’s title—50 Song Memoir—makes it sound like it’ll be a spiritual successor to the Magnetic Fields’ iconic 1999 masterpiece 69 Love Songs.
The group will also be performing at the Brooklyn Academy Of Music on December 2 and 3, and the description of the set explains that Magnetic Fields frontman Stephin Merritt will be celebrating his 50th birthday at the shows with “two distinct programs of new songs—one for every year of his melodious existence.” That’s a fancy way of saying “50 songs,” which is presumably where the 50 Song Memoir name comes from. Also, the new music will apparently cover “everything from bedbugs and Buddhism to [Merritt’s] conception by hippies on a houseboat in St. Thomas.”