LIVE MUSIC: Bowerbirds @ The Black Cat - 3/21/12

There’s a point you reach in every relationship you have with a band where you’re not quite sure if you are ready to commit. You like them a lot...maybe even A LOT a lot...but there’s still something that keeps you from feeling that they are just the right fit.

As a duo, Philip Moore and Beth Tacular have built their career on writing smart, emotionally evocative songs that play with the boundaries of what a folk song should or could be. On their latest album, The Clearing they certainly attempted to “fatten up” a little the instrumentation used, it definitely suffers from a seemingly unintentional sparseness of sound that can happen when so few people are working on a record resort to using the tools at hand rather than utilizing the freedom that, say, a full band might offer. And make no mistake - The Clearing is a fantastic record. It just wasn’t until seeing the songs performed live with a full band that it ever really clicked for me. And oh what a performance.

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