Jonathan Wilson – The Ruby Lounge, Manchester 01/02/12

Some artists dabble in paying homage to their favourite era in music. Others go full-on method – Jonathan Wilson belongs firmly in this category. The LA-based singer-songwriter resembles a finalist in a Harvest-era Neil Young lookalike contest with his lanky hair, dishevelled attire and air of perma-stoned laidback-ease. Little in tonight’s relaxed but spirited performance suggests Wilson and his four-piece band are aware it’s 2012 and not 1972.

Lifting judiciously from Wilson’s debut of last year – the wonderfully dreamy Gentle Spirit – with a few previews of fresh material, the set appears to lift its musical clues and templates wholesale from the few hugely productive years around the time when West Coast musicians soundtracked the fade from the utopian ethos of the late sixties into the crashing comedown of the early seventies . Many of the tunes aired tonight tackle themes – unity, gentle vibes, getting it together amidst natural beauty – that went out of style around the time irony and music first got together. A self-styled scholar of LA’s loose and laidback ‘Canyon Culture’, Wilson has revived a bygone spirit of collaboration between musicians by launching old-fashioned jam sessions at his Laurel Canyon HQ. His band pay scant attention to the clock or showmanship. In a way rarely attempted since auditoriums routinely filled with thick clouds of sweet smoke, songs are allowed to sprawl organically into epic durations, there’s guitar and organ solos galore, and tempos tend to hang around the area between sleepy and just woken.

Add to this an occasional whiff of incense drifting from the stage and it all might sound suspiciously like a credibility-stretching recipe for a musty post-hippie blues parody. Granted, there are times when the noodling is served in patience-testing quantities, and Wilson’s whispery vocals don’t always do justice to the melodic strength of his material, leading those in the audience prone to distractions to spark up conversations. But Wilson’s music is a more complicated beast than the vintage West Coast throwback shorthand suggests. The excellent rhythm section insert a sturdy backbone to such horizontally beautiful gems as ‘Can We Really Party Today?’, highlighting the captivating sense of unease that throbbed just below the mellow surface on Gentle Spirit. The duelling guitars of ‘Desert Raven’ and a funk bass-fuelled rendition of Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘The Way I Feel’ positively – in search of a better word – rock, forcing even the most persistent chatterers to shut up and listen.

At 37, Wilson’s done the rounds as a producer and a jobbing guitarist for long enough to not even try to attempt to please anyone other than himself now that the spotlight’s finally on him. Occasionally, he’ll lead you down alleys where few would want to venture. Most of the time, as when a particularly stinging guitar solo is unleashed during a noisy meltdown in the middle of an otherwise stately new ballad, inspiring a loud cheer, just like extended solos used to back in the day, he’s twisting timeworn templates into compelling new shapes.