Daniel Merriweather at the Troubadour

The only thing more memorable than Daniel Merriweather's vocals Wednesday night at the Troubadour was the face he kept making while delivering them. Wonderfully expressive, this guy: eyes squeezed shut, cheeks bunched up, mouth moved pretty much entirely to the left side of his head. Picture a huskier version of Mr. Schuester from “Glee" crossed with one of those babies tasting a lemon on YouTube.

Merriweather's major-label debut, “Love & War," doesn't set you up for facial acrobatics. Out since last summer in England and due in stores here Feb. 23, it's a handsomely crafted retro-soul affair on which the young Australian's singing rarely breaks out of the production, most of which was handled by Mark Ronson, whose work on Amy Winehouse's “Back to Black" appears to have served as a blueprint.

Purposely or not, the music presents Merriweather's voice as just one part of an intricate mixture of sound, no more important than the horns or strings or old-school hip-hop beats. In your mind's eye you imagine people laboring in the studio rather than throwing down onstage.

That's utterly typical of modern pop, of course, and often for the better. (Who wants to see Ke$ha sitting on a stool, strumming her pain with her fingers?) Yet on Wednesday, Merriweather seemed to stake his claim on an older tradition, one that prizes the physical fact of singing.