Sharon Van Etten at Manchester Cathedral

4/5

THERE'S something slightly disconcerting about seeing Sharon Van Etten smile between delivering lines like: "Burn my skin so I can't feel you."

Far from being the tortured artist of her lyrics, the Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter has an easy stage persona, joking about the poor stage design as she scrambles over a monitor and egging on her lead guitarist after he delivers a particularly gnarly solo on I Don't Want To Let You Down.

The jovial element threatens to undermine the emotional connect on the stripped-down I Love You But I'm Lost and the droning shoe-gaze of Break Me, tracks taken from her recent album Are We There that detail the fallout from a long-term relationship.

Yet when she fully engages with the material, Van Etten (pictured) brings a religious hush to the cathedral - as she does with the lightly soulful Tarifa, on which her four-piece band deliver backing vocals. The same applies to Keep, performed solo on acoustic guitar, one small remove from being a torch song.

The track pre-dates breakthrough album Tramp, from which only Give Out is played as an encore. Van Etten's contrary approach to the set list confounds audience expectation and the fact that it pays off is in large part due to keyboardist and backing vocalist Heather Woods Broderick.

Credited by Van Etten as the first person she sang with outside of choir, they make regular eye contact throughout the set and their close harmonies on Tell Me and Life of his Own - "about being an independent woman" - have the vintage country feel of Jenny Lewis.

Van Etten's band bring a '70s feel to much of the material, with louder numbers such as Don't Do It and Taking Chances almost an extension of Ryan Adams's current work.

The classic country-rock arrangements sometimes miss the confessional hush of the studio recordings. But the tracks do gain something live in relating to the communal experience of audience members who've been hurt by love.