Iron & Wine @ Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 15 Feb

Watching Iron & Wine, Sam Beam’s ever evolving folksy-rootsy-bluesy-jazzy troop, perform in Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall beneath a halo of illuminated clouds is both a frustration and a delight. It’s a frustration because, while the sound is lovely in the Bridgewater, the fact that everyone has to sit in the midst of pristine acoustics that pick up every breath imposes a churchy sense of needing to behave on everyone. As a result, Sam Beam has to poke and prod to get people to yell “wh’hoo” and “all-right!”. This inbetween sense – halfway between a rock’n’roll gig and a recital – seems appropriate for Iron & Wine who are themselves inbetween a lot of the time; between the stripped back minimalist folk of their debut The Creek Drank the Cradle, and the maximalist rustic clatter of 2007’s The Shepherd’s Dog.

So we zing back and forth, from the low key evening opener Winter Prayers (from 2013’s Ghost on Ghost) to About a Bruise, one of five songs from their sixth and latest record Beast Epic, which is as cacophonous as they get. Along the way we take in the stripped back acoustic troubadouriness of a one-man cover of New Order’s Love Vigilantes, and the avant-awkwardness of a piece like Last Night.

There are songs – Sodom, South Georgia from Our Endless Numbered Days, Call it Dreaming from Beast Epic, and 2002's Dearest Forsaken – that draw cheers, greeted like old friends, held like palms in front of the low crackling fire that is Sam Beam’s voice. And there are songs that feel like they should be performed in an art gallery in New York, that feel too mannered or fussy, that try too hard, that push us ever so slightly away (Wolves, Someday the Waves, Low Light Buddy of Mine).              

It’s why the band receives a partial ovation at the end – there are people in the Bridgewater Hall who get exactly what they want, a little bit of all of the different kinds of Iron & Wine that exist. And then there are people who remain sitting, who get slivers of the Iron & Wine they like, whose delight is sprinkled with a measure of frustration.