True Widow / Vom / The Downs @ Captain's Rest, 10 October

Both of tonight’s support acts bear superficial similarities with their headliner – being guitar/bass/drums trios that rely heavily (excuse the pun) on distortion – but the comparisons can’t be stretched far. The Downs recall early Spacemen 3’s more wigged-out space rock moments, while Vom’s lurching, atonal riffs, laid over insistent basslines, make them one of the more wilfully noisemongering and prickly bands around at the moment.

It all stands in disorienting contrast to Dallas slowcore outfit True Widow, who use feedback and noise to build space and tension, rather than aggression. If Low can be (lazily) summed up as Codeine without the loud bits, it’s tempting to say the Texans are more like a perpetually heavy version. Songs like Skull Eyes, certainly, have the awkward, flawed vulnerability of early Codeine; but there is little dynamic precision or variation to give a sense of development.

The strongest moments, in fact, utilise guitarist Dan Phillips and bassist Nikki Estill's male/female vocal combination in ways that place their sound closer to Alan Sparhawke's sleepy troupe. Their music is understated yet full, an exercise in texturing over complex songcraft, and the cumulative effect is mysteriously compelling: evidence that slowcore, in the right hands, still offers some potentially fertile ground.