Beth Tacular and Phil Moore left their hand-built cabin in the woods of North Carolina to hit the road promoting their new record, The Clearing. They stopped off at Lincoln Hall on Thursday with their band Bowerbirds to softly rock the quiet, but attentive crowd.

I actually thought the band was just Phil and Beth – but they were joined by multi-instrumentalists Mark Paulson and Leah Gibson, with Yan Westerlund on drums. Every member of the band played at least a couple different instruments over the course of the show.

They literally played every song off the new album except my favorite track Sweet Moment, but they threw in some older songs as well and brought out a couple from their first album to open the encore. I snagged a copy of the setlist →

Bowerbirds have an organic live presence – both in a sense of their earthy, rustic look and sound as well as their rhythm together. Their vocals are driven by Phil and Beth, but backed by soft harmonies from the rest of the band. Phil mostly finger picked the same vintage-looking acoustic while Beth switched between keys and accordion. Cello and violin compliments of Leah and Mark helped fill out many of the songs.

The opener was a band called Dry the River, who were pretty good as far as openers go. They had kind of a British Fleet Foxes sound with plenty of three part harmonies.

If they can keep their biodiesel van running, Bowerbirds have about a dozen stops left in the US before heading to Europe to finish of their tour.