The Magnetic Fields aren’t your average indie-rock band, not least because of songwriter and band mastermind Stephin Merritt declaring his disdain for the genre in the concert’s accompanying programme notes, but that by putting on an entertaining, witty and intimate concert, they actually manage to achieve the impossible and get a London audience to shut up and pay attention.

Even before the band enter onto the stage, there are clues as to their unusual relationship with their audience, with each other and with the act of playing a live show. Despite the relative vastness of the Barbican’s main stage, the Magnetic Fields’ set-up is a modest and unassuming one, just five chairs arranged in the centre of the stage in a closely packed semi-circle, like a miniature version of a school music class. The lack of spectacle continues when the band walk onto stage silent and unannounced. 

Well, fortunately the room isn’t completely silent – sitting down at her electric piano co-vocalist and band manager Claudia Gonson tells the audience about an overzealous event organiser at the previous night’s show in Leamington Spa (an unusual choice of town to play for such a short tour) who’s misinterpretation of the band’s demands lead to them putting up signs demanding absolute silence from the audience, leaving the band to believe that they weren’t going down well. Gonson concludes her anecdote by telling the audience that it’s ok to applaud, but anyone who talks will be shot, which might be a joke but it still had an effect – making for an unusually well behaved audience, with not even the now ubiquitous sight at gigs of audience members watching the show on their held-aloft camera phones.

It’s a strange quirk of fate that band mastermind Stephin Merritt was gifted with a rich songwriting ability, while also cursed with a severe form of the hearing condition hyperacusis. Reacting to the warm audience response at the end of each song Merritt covers his left ear, and it’s a strange situation for a fan to be in, that your method of showing approval is causing the subject physical discomfort. But, despite his general reputation as a cantakerous old sourpuss, he doesn’t seem to mind the attention.

The first half of the band’s set mainly mixes material from latest album Realism (which I have reviewed here), with tracks from their magnum opus 69 Love Songs – their attention to which shows that they know what many of the devoted have come here to hear. However, the loudest audience response goes to one of the more obscure tracks, Shipwrecked, written by Merritt for his ‘bubblegum-goth’ Gothic Archies side-project to accompany the final book in the Lemony Snicket (aka sometime Magnetic Fields member Daniel Handler) series, which is here rewritten as a cute call-response number between Merritt and Gonson and the band’s other vocalist Shirley Simms.

The unusual set-up of the band also applies to the relationship between Gonson and Merritt, having been in the band together for more than two decades the two banter like an old married couple – or in this case a couple made up of a gay man and ditzy female friend, rather like a version of Will and Grace that’s actually funny. The two good-naturedly bicker about scat-singing as a method to cover up forgetting verses, pen theft among band members, the very imminent break-up of the band (which hopefully Merritt was only joking about) and British Airways (Gonson is clearly not impressed by being ‘fucked over’ with their recent strike, leading Merritt to hastily smooth things over by dedicating the next number to the wonderful people in BA baggage claim). The two also have a self-deprecating attitude to their songs – Merritt introduces the song I Don’t Want To Get Over You with ‘everything in it is a lie’, and later semi-bitterly adds to his announcement of the number I Don’t Really Love You Anymore ‘yeah, right’, whereas first act closer Looking for Love (In the Hall of Mirrors), a track by another of Merritt’s side-projects The 6ths, featuring a guest appearance by Talulah Gosh/Tender Trap singer Amelia Fletcher, is introduced by Gonson and Merritt having a conversation about how all of their songs are about going to gay bars, Gonson also contributes plenty of amusing anecdotes about the haphazard nature of arranging a tour throughout the evening.

The second half of the band’s set does lean towards the sillier side of their repertoire, featuring Realism’s comedy numbers We’re Having a Hootenanny and the Dolls Tea Party, followed by 69 Love Song’s faux Scottish ballad Wi’ Nae Wee Bairn Ye’ll Me Beget in quick succession, but also features some favourites from the band’s older records (oddly the loudest cheer of the night is awarded to their ‘94 or 95′ country music album The Charm of the Highway Strip) such as All The Umbrellas in London, a fitting choice for a cold rainy night in London (although as Gonson points out it didn’t go down so well in Leamingston Spa) and early synth pop song 100,000 Fireflies, rendered somewhat less heartbreaking and more quirky and amusing by its acoustic rearrangement, and Merritt taking on the vocal duties from the band’s original and long departed singer Susan Anway. And the set, and evening culminates in an amusing encore of 69 Love Songs favourite Papa was a Rodeo, in which the diminutive Merritt finally gets off the rather high stool he had been sitting on all evening, to deliver a brilliantly cheesy karaoke version of the song, featuring a mirrorball and half-hearted lasso style moves with the microphone cord. 

So despite the lack of spectacle the band more than make up with their banter, not to mention the songs. It’s enough to make you wish that all London gigs could be like this.