Gig review: Jane Weaver at Brudenell Social Club, Leeds

There’s a strong case to be made for there being an unbridgeable ocean-wide chasm between academic study of squishy vintage synth experiments and pure pop exuberance on the musical map.

Jane Weaver’s output posits a compelling counter-argument.

Since 2014 album The Silver Globe launched Weaver’s music towards the headiest outposts of the cosmos after the more conventional singer-songwriter offerings of her earliest solo works, the Manchester-based musician and songwriter has confidently sustained two seemingly conflicting musical impulses.

Alongside a keen interest in the enduring creative potential of vintage synths and more ominously haunted ends of soundtrack or library music, Weaver is clearly an authority on ‘motorik’ repetition that leads back to belatedly celebrated German proto-electronica pioneers.

As suggested by the capacity crowd at the sold-out Brudenell tonight, however, you don’t need a certificate in esoteric cult noodling to appreciate Weaver’s music, as this taste in experimentation is seamlessly complemented by an ability to craft captivating tunes with a capital ‘T’, leading to an uncompromisingly idiosyncratic yet accessible signature psych-pop sound that’s equally well-suited for heavy airplay and analytical chin-scratching.

“Everything’s under the microscope,” Weaver quips at the start of tonight’s compelling 90-minute set, acknowledging that this is the first date of the tour in support of typically impressive new album Love In Constant Spectacle. Later, she enquires whether the audience is enjoying her first exposure to playing guitar on stage after an extended break in tones that suggest some degree of uncertainty about how this is all working out.

There is no need to worry: from the robust riffs of the opener Quantify (from Weaver’s Record Store Day 2024 exclusive 7in single) onwards, Weaver and the four-piece band are on compelling form, with only the reluctance to stretch too far beyond the original recorded parts suggesting that this is a group still in search of their ‘tour legs’.

Although all of Weaver’s albums from the last decade are acknowledged, the set leans towards Love In Constant Spectacle, with the new album’s hazier templates colliding fruitfully with the live band’s robust pulse and emphasis of earthily loping rhythms.

Alternating between guitar, keyboard and swirling around the stage instrument-free to focus purely on singing, Weaver is a jovial, entertaining presence: tonight’s banter provision includes unsuccessful attempts to identify the Leeds-based author of an online Yorkshire Kardashians parody, demonstration of a suitably doom-laden synth chord for soundtracking a dystopian film, and an impromptu onstage review of a wine from a Brad Pitt-owned vineyard.

By the soaring renditions of Mission Desire (from 2014’s Silver Globe) and The Revolution of Super Visions (from 2021’s Flock), accompanied by an arresting light show that has the Brudenell’s backwall pulsate with rotating patterns, the band has shaken off any initial stiffness to make the most of the material’s potential for levitational grooves.