The Magnetic Fields: 69 Love Songs 25th anniversary 
Brighton Dome
★★★★★

STEPHIN MERRITT, master of ditties, is not one to shy away from ambitious projects. Upon its release in 1999, the three-part 69 Love Songs broke the mould and set a whole new standard for the concept album.

Its genre-bending 69 tracks, all the more impressive for being consistently tuneful and entirely penned by Merritt himself, are awash with a fun, ironic humour, yearning beauty, painful reflection and palpable regret.

It's an album about being in love, out of love, trapped in love, unrequited love, toxic love, spurned love, first love, straight love, gay love, bisexual love — about love in the broadest sense of the word.

The Magnetic Fields, completed by singer and ukelele player Shirley Simms, electric cellist Sam Davol, guitarist and vocalist Anthony Kaczynski, and synth-man Chris Ewen, have tasked themselves with the equally ambitious enterprise of performing the epic three-hour magnum opus in full over two nights in each city of their tour: Bristol, London, Brighton.

Dry, droll and dour, Merritt, with a bass voice as deep as Barry White’s, perches on a stool behind a keyboard and a hidden collection of percussive instruments, welcoming devotees to night one of the songathon, which recites the first 35 tunes.

There’s the mournful I Don’t Believe In The Sun, the folksy All My Little Words with its poignant lyricism, the indie-pop I Don’t Want To Get Over You, and Broadway-esque showtune The Luckiest Guy On The Lower East Side.

The Book Of Love, made famous following Peter Gabriel’s cover of it, is spellbinding. There are frequent forays into country (A Chicken With Its Head Cut Off, The One You Really Love, Kiss Me Like You Mean It, Papa Was A Rodeo and I’m Sorry I Love You) and attempts at punk-rock (Punk Love), avant-garde (Experimental Music Love), old Hollywood piano ballad (Busby Berkeley Dreams), murder ballad (Yeah! Oh Yeah!) the political (World Love “love, music, wine and revolution”) and even Scots dialect (Wi’ Nae Wee Bairn Ye’ll Me Beget).

Perhaps funniest of all, though, is their not-so-flattering take on jazz (Love Is Like Jazz — “you make it up as you go along”), which sees Merritt play various percussion instruments before lobbing them on the floor and Davol momentarily leaving his elegant tinsy electric cello to eat a sandwich.

Among the highlights are those tracks sung by Simms, who also covers for the absent Claudia Gonson in some of the real stand-outs of the album. There’s the one-minute Reno Dakota about a spurned lover (“do not play fast and loose with my heart”), Come Back From San Francisco, Sweet Lovin’ Man, If You Don’t Cry (... “then you just don’t feel it deep enough”) and of course the utterly moving Acoustic Guitar.

Kaczynski finalises the first night by standing under a spotlight and crooning out Promises of Eternity, before Merritt signs off by announcing “a 22-hour interval.”

Fortunately, anyone who needs a little longer than 22 hours will have another chance to see them in London next week.

The Magnetic Fields play the Union Chapel, London, October 14 and 15. For tickets and more information see: houseoftomorrow.com.