Emma Pollock @ Soup Kitchen, Manchester, 13 May

"I'll try not to talk too much tonight," says Emma Pollock before she's even played a note. "More time for, you know, the actual songs." Generous in performance and an engaging storyteller, Pollock is suddenly part musician, part raconteur. Thankfully, she reneges entirely on her initial promise, and her frequent annotations frame and colour her set. 

Backed by her excellent three-piece band, the ex-Delgado showcases recent career high In Search of Harperfield – she opens, as on the album, with Cannot Keep a Secret and Don’t Make We Wait – alongside a handful of back catalogue gems (I Could Be a Saint and a tender, solo House on the Hill). Alabaster and Old Ghosts beguile and bewitch. She reworks Intermission minus its original strings ("It's lovely to take a song and make it move") and responds to the warm affection of a switched-on Friday night crowd. The voice, as ever, is a smokey, soulful wonder.

Before a chilling Clemency ("I will clip your wings while sleeping / If you venture home again"), Pollock ponders the personal histories that fire her songs, and their deeper meaning: "Sometimes songs aren't about something that happened. They’re about retribution, revenge. Times when all you want to do is come home." She frowns as if she's been unclear. No need. In Search of Harperfield, as compelling an account of shared lives and the illusion of memory as 2016 has yet delivered, connects via its rangy eloquence. And it's entirely fitting that its creator has stories to tell about her stories.