Justin Timberlake’s country boy shtick a little wooden

Call it an earnest return to his Tennessee roots or a cynical ploy to grab red state ears, but however you slice it, American pop star Justin Timberlake’s sleek suit-and-tie to cosy flannel metamorphosis at the Bell Centre Sunday night was about as authentically rustic as the synthetic blades of grass that grew from the show’s stage. Timberlake performs again at the Bell Centre Monday night.

Of course, Timberlake is a pop singer first and foremost, and his current Man of the Woods shtick — which yielded a critically contentious album of the same name this year — largely incorporates basic Southern and rural tropes into a more streamlined traditional pop framework. It was something to keep in mind when Timberlake and his bandmates were huddled around a campfire in the middle of the Bell Centre, his backing vocalist taking the reins on a cover of John Denver’s Thank God I’m a Country Boy — Justin Timberlake might play Sally Goodin all day if he could, but he still worships at the altar of Michael Jackson.

The Man Of The Woods Tour, Montreal, QC, Canadá +21 images

On the album, the awkward result of this country-pop marriage was Timbaland and Neptunes production with ill-fitting folksy bells and whistles, which at worst sounded like FutureSex/LoveSounds superimposed with Smokey the Bear commercial jingles or a Duck Dynasty parody gone wrong. On stage, the show’s energy noticeably spiked when he trotted out the aughts hits — which did not receive new Appalachian arrangements, outside of the prescient Drink You Away — and there was apprehension mixed with modest approval when he dropped a few new ones in succession. Montreal is generally cool with kitsch, so it was perhaps unsurprising that Timberlake bestowed the honour of “lit-est and loudest” audience of the tour on Sunday’s crowd.

It didn’t help that Timberlake and his 15-piece backing band, including brass and vocal sections, sounded muddy most of the night, which didn’t matter so much when everyone is singing over the star on Cry Me a River or Mirror, but was painfully evident when trying to catch the words of less-familiar fiddle funk tune Midnight Summer Jam or the hokey title track. The many moving parts of the ice level-spanning stage — which included a winding road dotted with a few trees — did a better job of capturing the fascinating contradiction of trying to present a down-home good time in a cavernous arena. This was a highly Instagrammable show — as photogenic as it was inaudible — with Timberlake coming close to the crowd and even dancing at floor level.

The one Man of the Woods song that succeeded in feeling like a big pop hit despite its humble exterior was Say Something. On this tour, Drink You Away was the only song performed from Timberlake’s previous album, 2013’s 20/20 Experience Part 2, and it’s easy to envision Say Something being the one future live staple to emerge from Man of the Woods’ many misfires. Single Supplies succeeds as a campy apocalyptic vision for the InfoWars set, but it didn’t stand out as a late throwaway near the two-hour mark of the set, which ended with an obligatory clap-along to Can’t Stop the Feeling, a song on the Trolls movie soundtrack that unexpectedly became a huge hit.

On this night, flannel-clad Timberlake was the proverbial tree in the woods, only there was a packed Bell Centre audience to witness him and his flimsy conceit fall. A crowd-pleasing Las Vegas residency, free from the constraints of integrating new material, might be the back-to-basics strategy he employs next.

Montreal Gazette