The Magnetic Fields are back to their old ironic tricks, or at least they will be come January 26 when their new album Realism is released on Nonesuch. Stephin Merritt has always found a key strength in representing the full roller-coaster of emotion love creates within us, and this album looks no different after a cursory glance over the tracklist. “We Are Having a Hootenanny” can quickly turn into “Seduced and Abandoned” while one is forced to “Walk a Lonely Road.”Everything Is One Big Christmas Tree.” The end. Full tracklist below.

Realism:

01. You Must Be Out of Your Mind
02. Interlude
03. We Are Having a Hootenanny
04. I Don’t Know What to Say
05. The Dolls’ Tea Party
06. Everything Is One Big Christmas Tree
07. Walk a Lonely Road
08. Always Already Gone
09. Seduced and Abandoned
10. Better Things
11. Painted Flower
12. The Dada Polka
13. From a Sinking Boat

(Via: P4K)

Online retailer Insound, has announced a collaboration with designer Mike Perry, called “Insound 10 Classic.” A collection of posters, t-shirts, and tote bags, it’s the sequel to Insound 20, which debuted last summer. Insound 20 was a collaboration with designer Jason Munn, who designed merchandise for the creme de la creme of indie rock, including Grizzly Bear, the Hold Steady, and the National, among others.

This time, however, Insound and Perry have chosen to focus on “iconic bands from indie rock’s great history,” including 10 bands that span a 20 year period, and will use the project to “create a visual narrative and revisit great older or defunct bands’ visual identity through new designs.” Many of the bands featured have had no new merchandise on the market for a decade or more. The “narrative” begins in 1977’s punk scene and winds through new wave and 80s “college rock” before arriving at the current world of indie rock. The artists are as follows:

Richard Hell & The Voidoids
The Feelies
Beat Happening
Galaxie 500
The Magnetic Fields
Sunny Day Real Estate
The Olivia Tremor Control
Apples in Stereo
Sleater-Kinney
The Promise Ring

Pre-order Insound 10 merchandise here. Products will be available in September.

Make space on your coffee table, because on September 15th Algonquin Books is releasing Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records. Written by author John Cook and the founding father-and-mother themselves, Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance, the book will include first-hand accounts regarding the history of the independent label Merge Records, as well as exclusive stories about Spoon, Arcade Fire, the Magnetic Fields, Superchunk, Lambchop, and many other Merge veterans. Other goodies to be found inside include hundreds of band photos, album art, handwritten lyrics, concert posters, playlists, and an introduction by Ryan Adams. If it’s even half as poetic as his now notorious (and defunct) blog posts, that alone will make the book purchase worth it.

Ordinarily we probably wouldn’t care to tell you about musical theater news, but this isn’t just musical theater. It’s Stephin Merritt does musical theater — yes, that Stephin Merritt, of The Magnetic Fields, The Gothic Archies, The Three Terrors and now, Coraline: The Musical, opening tonight off Broadway.

Merritt said Coraline is not for the faint of heart. “When I am dictator,” he told The Village Voice, “compulsive homosexuality will remove the problem of children. Soon, I will be dictator. Until then, small children should not come to Coraline.”

It’s been four years since Merritt acquired the rights to Coraline, a book by Neil Gaiman that involves a young girl who lives a boring suburbian life before she discovers an entry way to another world inside her house. Merritt’s music for the show is equally as fantastic — the score was composed for a six-piano orchestra, played by one musician, with 20 other pianos littering the stage.

Coraline’s songs are accompanied on a toy piano, those of her parents and adult neighbors on a grand piano, and those in the other world on a prepared piano. The prepared piano, developed by John Cage, is a piano whose strings have been kitted out with all manner of detritus—here, the elements include screws, rubber erasers, playing cards, pipe cleaners, and sleigh bells. “By putting small objects between the strings, you change not the pitch but the timbre of each individual note—it sounds like 88 people playing different small percussion instruments,” explains Merritt. The auditory result is uncanny, lending even the simplest tune the feeling of an eldritch lullaby.

It’s been a labor of love for Merritt, who told the Voice, “I don’t think it’s frustrating. It’s too fun to be frustrating. If it weren’t fun, it would be perfectly maddening.” After having adapted three Chinese operas with director Chen Shi-zheng and being compared throughout his career to Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, it’s about time. The show opens tonight at the Lucille Lortel Theater.