MAGNETIC APPEAL

Taking the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy as his inspiration, Magnetic Fields honcho and beloved misanthrope Stephin Merritt fed back every instrument (even the accordion) on his recent Distortion, layering each track under blankets of fuzzy reverb and creating a most frosty collection of songs with familiar Fields subject matter: self-loathing, unrequited love, and the undead. On “Zombie Boy,” Merritt sings about a reanimated sweetie who’s “pretty pure for so long in the ground” but “smells like a sewer.” Last we checked, there were quite a few moderately priced tickets left on Craigslist for this week’s quickly sold-out shows (balcony seats originally went for $25 a pop, and orchestra seats for $30), but you might have to be the luckiest guy on the Lower East Side to score a ticket to this four-night stint at face value. With the Interstellar Radio Company.
Feb. 21-24, 7 p.m., 2008