Phosphorescent / Timber Timbre @ Night&Day, Manchester

Timber Timbre are a string fest as a lap steel is channelled through cascading, stretching, distorting pedals. A violin provides harmonies and drones, occasionally climaxing in a chorus of melancholic heart. Above this is the juxtaposition of blues guitar and whooping vocals; think Nick Cave at his Bible Belt preacher parody.

If anything, this dominant macho role adopted by the vocalist overpowers and occasionally undermines the toil of both violin and lap steel; as they try to manoeuvre around the driving guitar licks their endeavours are in vein, as the rock steady folk tales shatter the aesthetic and interrupt the structure. Beyond these trappings – and, incidentally, the guitar/vocalist – the sound is pregnant with ideas and emotion.

Phosphorescent are a different kettle of fish entirely. Beginning their set with the punctuality of a recently derided stadium rock group with racist tendencies, they enter into an extended intro consisting of the band working through a variety of melodies and rhythms akin to a New Orleans Jazz ensemble – if said ensemble played guitars…and were stoned.

Despite their investment into experimental, improvised sound their commitment proves fruitless. The track disappears into the ether and the band begins their set proper. Comprised of a balance between the newer, more conventional country and the lucid Americana of older records the show is a blend of the familiar and the abstract respectively.

‘Wolf’, with its drawn-out melodies and breaks in sound give main-man Mathew Houck opportunity to impress. With his guitar lowered by his hip, held down by the neck, he adopts the microphone with his free hand and cries out with heart-on-sleeve emotion. It’s all very dramatic, but when the band attempt any crescendo the sound, as Houck points out later, is, “A swarm of bees”; there’s a dampening reverb which continues throughout the truncated set.

Part due to the lack of originality in the new material, part due to the sound issues, by the time Houck returns to the stage for a solo encore they are on thin ice. It’s only in his desperation to redeem the show that his charm propels to the fore – a mix of his boy from the North country steeliness and his verbose honesty – it makes for great voyeurism, if nothing else.