Pitchfork

One composes urbane indie-pop songs, the other is a Pushcart Prize-winning author who has written Sleater-Kinney's press bio and liner notes for Sufjan Stevens. Stephin Merritt (of Magnetic Fields, 6ths, Future Bible Heroes, and Gothic Archies fame) and Rick Moody (best known for 1994's The Ice Storm) traded wits last night at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.

As part of the Y's November reading series, the two sat down to talk about "The Lyricist's Voice." Merritt also performed three songs on his ukulele, including one from the Gothic Archies' recently released The Tragic Treasury: Songs From a Series of Unfortunate Events, an accompaniment to Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events book series.

The song, "Walking My Gargoyle", has only a "tenuous" connection to Snicket's stories, Merritt admitted. "I have a Chihuahua which has gigantic, gargoyle-like ears," he said. "It's a song about the pleasure of walking your pet, but it's a gargoyle."

In a constant deadpan, Merritt downplayed the extent to which his other songs are autobiographical, however. "I've been wildly mischaracterized as saying none of my songs are autobiographical, when they are far too short to be," he explained. "'Let's dance now'-- is that autobiographical? 'I love you, baby'-- is that autobiographical?"

Between sips of Chivas Regal, Merritt also performed the Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs classic "The Book of Love". Turns out Moody chose this song to be played at his own wedding. Merritt asked him why he didn't pick a selection from Meat Loaf's catalogue instead.

"It's a song about being moved by something while knowing how corny it is," Merritt said of "Book of Love", describing it as one of several "manifestos" on his 1999 triple-album. "A strange thing to want to hear at your wedding, in my opinion."

The 6ths' "Aging Spinsters", Merritt's other performance of the night, is apparently at least biographical, if not autobiographical. According to Merritt, a friend insisted his songs were autobiographical, so he decided to write one about her-- "using her name, Diana, and telling her the thing she least wanted to hear, which was, 'Get married, Diana.' And she did get married."

The evening's literary conversation also spanned the poetics of Stephen Sondheim, two mid-70s hits both called "The Best of My Love" (by the Eagles and the Emotions, respectively), the politically loathsome melodic pleasures of both "Deutschland Über Alles" and "Another Brick in the Wall", the synths on Queen's Hot Space, and the irrelevance of "authenticity".

Merritt is "the finest songwriter of my generation," said Moody, who was famously dubbed "the worst writer of his generation" by a critic for The New Republic. Moody also said "there's no genre" in which Merritt can't compose. And no one mentioned this year's weird spat over the dandyish songwriter's apparent distaste for rap music.

Mostly, though, Merritt just talked about writing songs, which he says he remembers doing as far back as age nine, when he composed a "dull" tune called "What Do You Do When There's Nothing to Do". With Merritt, the words always come first, even if they're just placeholders to help remember a melody.

"I sit around in bars, in the corner, under a lamp with a little black book writing lyrics," Merritt said. "I don't write anything down until it's a lyric."