Hitchcock’s voice is holding up quite well. You can hear a bit more strain at the top of his register, but not much. Rock-solid timing has never been his strong suit, and the one-two punch of “no drummer” and “lots of frantic strumming” led to several noticable gaffes. Hitchcock, who seemed relaxed and in good humor throughout, joked that we were getting the “organic” version of the show, from which the mistakes would subsequently be excised by the professional film crew.

Since there was a professional film crew (one could imagine that there might be some sort of 25th-anniversary hoopla for I Often Dream of Trains in the works for next year…) quite a lot of attention was paid to visual presentation, with Robyn taking the stage as a backlit, top-hatted silhouette, and wearing a black-and-white polka-dotted shirt against which his black-and-white polka-dotted electric guitar almost disappeared.

Highlights for me included the haunting, weird, and beautiful “Flavour of Night,” and “I Used to Say I Love You,” one of Hitchcock’s most straightforward, sad, and incisive songs (I think its lines “But you were reluctant/Although I was so hot/Now I understand it/But back then I did not” is genius). The barbershop trio arrangement of “Uncorrected Personality Traits” was outstanding, as were the three-part harmonies on faux-country “Ye Sleeping Knights of Jesus” (with lyrics updated from Cold War anxieties to Global Warmng anxieites). (Hitchcock also revised “This Could Be the Day” to make it slightly less un-PC, or perhaps he just mumbled. Either way, I can’t say I blame him.)

My favorite of Hitchcock’s trademark loopy anecdotes involved the recent colonization of Boston, and the construction of Logan airport after several hundred planes had landed there. The introduction to “This Could Be the Day,” was also memorable, casting the song’s narrator as one of the “Mojave Shrimp,” waking to fornicate (with a passel of synonyms) after the arrival of the once-in-several-decades deluge.

I appreciated many of I’s songs better live than on record. The stripped-down chamber music arrangements (ukelele, acoustic guitar, cello, and voice) left Merritt’s sparkling melodies and incisive and often very funny lyrics naked rather than masking them with layers of overdubs. (A live album from The Magnetic Fields seems unlikely, but I’d pay a pretty penny for one, for sure.)

I love the latest Magnetic Fields album Distortion, which swathes Merrritt’s compositions with washes of feedback and trebly, compressed drums not-entirely-unlike Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy (given Merritt’s hearing impairment, it seems likely he’s made an album he himself can scarcely stand to hear). But I was definitely eager to hear the soft acoustic cores of Distortion’s tunes . Since my wonderful girlfriend loves The Magnetic Fields at least as much as I do, it was a cinch that we wanted to attend both shows.

I’m glad we did. The Valentine’s Day show was a slightly off night for The Magnetic Fields; Merritt was clearly feeling under the weather, and there was at least one notable timing flub. Still, it was pretty magnificent. The surprise for me was that vocalist Shirley Simms has joined the touring lineup. Her voice has a harsher upper range than Gonson’s (not unpleasantly so; her timbre reminds me a bit of Neko Case) that expanded The Magnetic Fields’ harmonic palette substantially. The setlist ranged through other Merritt projects, like the 6ths, the Future Bilble Heroes, and the Gothic Archies. I was delighted to hear the magnificent, brooding, and funny “Crows,” from the Gothic Archies’ The Vile Village.

The second night Merritt seemed more comfortable and in better humor; the band was tighter. There were only a handful of repeat songs, mostly from the new album. Simms’ showpiece, “Drive On, Driver” was one of them. With the noise stripped away, it’s evident what a sturdily-constructed country song it is. Unlike earlier country efforts like “Papa was a Rodeo,” there’s nothing especially quirky about its lyric; I can easily imagine some Nashville star having a big radio hit with it. On both nights we were treated to Merritt taking the lead vocal on “The Nun’s Litany,” presumably saving Simms’ from potential embarrassment and/or catcalls that might result if she reprised her album performance of the nigh-pornographic lyric.

The Interstellar Radio Company opened both sets with radio-style dramatizations of two short stories, Poe’s classic, “The Tell-Tale Heart” (for Valentine’s Day, natch) and under-appreciated SF writer Robert Sheckly’s “Ghost V.” Actor Adam Green’s high-key, twitchy style was well suited to both stories (I can believe playing Dracula’s Renfield is his long-time ambition) but despite bravura stomp-box work from Green to simulate dialogue with a remote party, it was sound-designer Matthew Beals who really stole the show. He seamlessly melded old-school radio broadcast techniques with the high-tech audio processing power of an onstage laptop to frequently stunning effect. He went basic and traditional for the grisly bits of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” inspiring a ripple of audible revulsion through the audience even though everyone could see how innocuous his actions were. “Ghost V,” with its several fantastic monsters and other worldly setting, gave Beals some room to really go nuts with the computer. Streams are available at the Interstellar Radio Company site, but you’ll miss the fun of seeing the props arrayed and wondering, “what on Earth are they going to use that for?” and you’ll miss being impressed by how much isn’t down to clever digital manipulation.