The chapel at Philadelphia’s First Unitarian Church — a functioning place of worship that is also one of the city’s best music venues — was the perfect place to see Brooklyn’s Death Vessel. The first time I saw frontman Joel Thibodeau play, he was alone on stage at the Mercury Lounge in New York doing an moody, introspective, all-acoustic set. This time, he was backed by a full band that threatened to outnumber the tiny audience — an upright bassist, a lead guitarist that sometimes switched to a banjo and a ukulele, a violinist, and a drummer. The tunes they played, mainly from the new album, Nothing is Precious Enough for Us, were markedly more uplifting and dramatic than I had remembered, country rock shot through with expansive balladry and a gentleness that exploded into twangy, desert-evoking electric guitar rock-outs. A lot of people make a big fuss about how Thibodeau sounds like a girl, but to me, his soprano is beautifully genderless. At one point, one of the amps on stage buzzed with an AM radio frequency, which though unintentional, fit the performance perfectly, further driving home the sense that we were riding with the band in an old pickup somewhere on a dusty highway.

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