Gig review: Celeste at Brudenell Social Club, Leeds

“I wanted to do something a little bit different,” California-born Celeste Epiphany Waite – known to most mononymously by her first name – tells a jam-packed crowd spilled across two tiers of the Brudenell Social Club’s main room.

Stood in the middle of her audience, hair framed in shadow, there’s something tremendously, tremulously tangible about this fascinating stagework; nominally sparse and austere, with moodily effective results.

The Brighton-raised singer-songwriter may have Culver City printed on her birth certificate, but she unmistakably hails from the post-Winehouse school of Third British Invasion sound; smoky neo-soul tempered by R&B and jazz stylings.

Her imprint on the domestic scene was assured around the turn of the decade; BBC Sound of… success and BRIT Rising Star Award winner, a gold-certified number-one debut album, an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song.

It makes this underplay show – billed as An Intimate Evening with Celeste – all the more curious, particularly with revelations concerning the prolonged and complicated gestation of sophomore record Woman of Faces.

Warmly received, the star has been vocal about her clashes with label Polydor and the production team assembled to help deliver her latest collection to the world. It paints a curious distress over the wider picture of her latest work; a feat of impressive authorship that nevertheless may leave fans wondering where compromise might have been foisted upon her.

Perhaps the purpose of this stripped-back deliverance sheds light on the matter. Accompanied by a string trio and pianist on the stage while she holds court atop a step on the floor, Celeste’s approach finds pre-war continental club flavours in the way it feels half-lit and half-hushed; an intriguing exploration that nevertheless leaves ample room for her vocals to shine. Melancholic spectres feast on opener When Dreams Are Made of Gold, while Everyday lurches with heavier cinematic vibes.

Throughout, the star appears in a constant battle with the sound desk, repeatedly asking for her in-ear monitors to be tweaked and touched up. But if her voice was the main hook to her flush of success half-a-decade ago, it remains gloriously undimmed; Lately, written with the local Leeds group Gotts Street Park, offers a magnificent wooziness to her delivery, while Both Sides of the Moon captures her in full flight.

“I like the risk of thinking I might fall,” she says before Happening Again unfurls with a moonlit hue. Here, she seems more likely to soar.