At one point in 2010 documentary, Strange Powers, an admirer of The Magnetic Fields asks if anyone else could to write songs like Stephin Merritt does.  Any attempt to do so, he warns, could be dangerous. It’s hard to disagree. Such is the tonal high wire that a typical Magnetic Fields song walks; a delicate and unlikely balance of lush romanticism, caustic wit and unabashed schmaltz that imbues Merritt’s grand album concepts and arch wordplay with a profound and lasting emotional bite. The music too is a strange beast. Keening melodies and radiant singalong hooks are cast off with apparently preternatural ease,…