Although Merritt's circle of high school friends was small, it included the older sister of Claudia Gonson, who sings in Future Bible Heroes and has contributed vocals and drums to the Magnetic Fields (though just the former on stage; live percussion and loud sounds are painful to Merritt, who suffers from a hearing condition called hyperacusis). "Stephin and I met in 1983," says Gonson, who is also Merritt's long-time manager. "My sister walked in the door with him, and I happened to be sitting at the piano and playing. He immediately sat right down next to me and started playing, and we've been great friends ever since. I'm pretty outgoing and he's very reserved, so with us I think it's a case of 'opposites attract.' He named his publishing company Gay and Loud for the two of us [laughs], the second part being me. [Merritt is, as Wikipedia puts it, openly gay.] He'll come up with these crazy, off-the-wall ideas for projects, which as a manager I sometimes have to explain to him are impossible to do. But then again, a lot of them sound ridiculous at first and then Stephin persists and they turn out to be brilliant. The best example is 69 Love Songs [1999, Merge Records]."
Although the Magnetic Fields had released five critically adored albums prior—including two featuring vocalist Susan Anway, 1990's Distant Plastic Trees and 1991's The Wayward Bus (since reissued as a twofer), and 1994's Brian Wilson-endorsed The Charm of the Highway Strip (all on Merge)—it was the insanely ambitious and, er, cunningly titled three-disc breakthrough 69 Love Songs that cemented Merritt's genius and won him the undying ears of aficionados of erudite pop. Number 465 in Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, the opus was originally intended to be a musical revue a la Stephen Sondheim (another Merritt muse), but, owing to logistics, has only been performed live a handful of times. The biting, bitter words of those "songs-about-love songs"—"I Don't Believe in the Sun," "I Think I Need a New Heart," "No One Will Ever Love You," "How Fucking Romantic"—are delivered in Merritt's downcast bass voice and Gonson's surreally carefree chirp against a gray-hued synth pop/cabaret backing that plays like Kurt Weil meets Ian Curtis. Since that masterwork's ascension, the Magnetic Fields have released four more exalted offerings, 2004's i, 2008's Distortion, 2010's Realism (all Nonesuch Records), and 2012's Love at the Bottom of the Sea (Merge); a new album is planned for 2015.
And then there are the side bands. The 6ths, a project that sees Merritt's songs sung mostly by an ever-changing cast of vocalists, has produced two albums: 1995's Wasps' Nests (London Records), featuring performances by Lou Barlow (Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh), Dean Wareham (Galaxie 500, Luna, Dean & Britta), Georgia Hubley (Yo La Tengo), and others; 2000's Hyacinths and Thistles (Merge) ups the ante with cameos by Odetta, Gary Numan, Melanie, Bob Mould, and Soft Cell's Marc Almond. The Gothic Archies, a self-described "bubblegum-goth band" (geddit?), is the duo of Merritt and Magnetic Fields accordionist Daniel Handler, who is perhaps better known by his literary pen name: Lemony Snicket. "Mr. Merritt's songs are romantic but scathing, ambitious but compact, experimental but catchy, and heartbreaking but artful," says the novelist, who with the Gothic Archies has recorded three albums, contributed music to the audiobook versions of his own best-selling A Series of Unfortunate Events books and Neil Gaiman's Coraline, and soundtracked Nickelodeon's "The Adventures of Pete & Pete."
Future Bible Heroes is the trio of Merritt (lyrics, instruments), Gonson (voice), and Christopher Ewen (melodies, instruments), and has thus far waxed three albums of sickly subversive electro-dance pop, all of which were recently repackaged as the box set Memories of Love, Eternal Youth, and Partygoing (Merge). 2013's Partygoing is defined by Merritt as "a party album about aging, suicide, loss, and despair." A colorful candy shop of percolating synths and happy vocals, its aim would seem to be to get blissful revelers shaking their booties to movers like "Sadder Than the Moon," "Digging My Own Grave," and "Let's Go to Sleep (And Never Come Back)"—only to have the lyrics creep up, sink in, and stomp all over their buzz. Another plum track is "Keep Your Children in a Coma," whose blackly amusing lines suggest modern parents place their kids in a stupor because "You can't let them go to school / for fear of bullying little beasts / And you can't take them to church / for fear of priests."