NPR's All Songs Considered has this new segment "Project Song" where a musician type's given 48 hours to write a tune based on the materials the Public Radio peeps provide. The first person selected, our favorite hangdog Stephin Merritt, kick started his creative juices with the year 1974 and a creepy Phil Toledano photo of a dude wearing dolls and faces all over his body Freddy Kruger-style (you can see it over at the site). Basically, NPR plops him next to a "makeshift bar" (he's used to writing in noisy, public watering holes), a bunch of instruments (guitar, bass, drums, synthesizers, sitar, samplers, grand piano, Scotch, noisemakers, etc), the definition of a Shepherd Tone, and sets him to work. Of course, the ever productive scribe behind 69 Love Songs and one Volvo jingle was up for the task, and the song he creates, "The Man Of A Million Faces" -- melody based on the numbers 1, 9, 7, 4 on the piano, subject the guy in the photo as a criminal mastermind -- is as gorgeously gloomy as you'd come to expect (especially for fans of the Fields's darker territories). The pulse is pretty insistent -- as SM points out, it's a one-section, loop-based composition, which he attributes to as an "artifact of this way of working."
Speaking of working: Note we see the lyrics throughout the footage, but never any music. As Merritt tells NPR:
I read an interview with ABBA a long time ago ... They said they never write down the music ? because they figure if they can't remember it, then other people won't remember it.
Watch Stephin get funky here. Magnetic fans, appetites awakened, remember the band's new album Distortion will be out 1/15 on Nonesuch, with a U.S. tour to follow in February and March. Finally, while over at NPR's recently upgraded site -- lots of a/v streaming! -- you should check out Carrie Brownstein's truly awesome blog. Congrats, Carrie! We're so proud: Remember when she was still working at that FeministBookstore?
