Stephin Merritt will perform original music he has written to score a screening of Tod Browning's 1925 silent film The Unholy Three, starring Lon Cheney, at The Town Hall in New York City on May 18, 2019. The Magnetic Fields front man will be joined by accordionist and novelist Daniel Handler (with whom he collaborated on The Tragic Treasury: Songs from A Series of Unfortunate Events on Nonesuch) and viola player Pinky Weitzman for the one-night-only event. In The Unholy Three, Browning, best known for his films Dracula and Freaks, presents the tale of three sideshow performers—"the unholy three"—who conspire and commit a series of robberies. For tickets, visit thetownhall.org.

This is Merritt's first live silent-film scoring event on the East Coast, following his successful live score to two other Tod Browning films, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916) and The Unknown (1927), at the Castro Theatre for the San Francisco International Film Festival in 2010 and 2014, respectively.

The Magnetic Fields' latest recording, 50 Song Memoir, was released on Nonesuch Records in 2017. The five-disc collection chronicles the 50 years of Merritt's life with one song per year. He sings vocals on all 50 songs and plays more than 100 instruments, from ukulele to piano to drum machine to abacus. The Wall Street Journal called it "a highly entertaining summary of pop culture of the past half-century ... 50 Song Memoir is a treat." To pick up a copy, head to iTunes, Amazon, or the Nonesuch Store, where CD and vinyl orders include a download of the complete set at checkout. The album can also be heard on Spotify and Apple Music.