Better than: A Pink Floyd laser show.

When I walked into Bowery Ballroom late Friday night, I did not expect to be stepping into an iTunes visualizer. Alas, Bowerbirds have incorporated a verifiable light show—complete with Merriweather Post Pavilion's cover-esque mosaics—into their live show. It fits the band's folk-but-not-quite aesthetic almost too perfectly; the music seemed to move its way through the empty dark spaces as if it was designed for the lights and not the other way around. Of course, that is not to say that the music was not top-notch: the band has always been a champion live act (this is my third time seeing them), and adding songs from this year's beautiful The Clearing did not hurt in the slightest.

From the archives of "Possibly 4th Street," a video column in which we've invited musicians to perform live and impromptu somewhere in New York City, here's some excellent footage of Bowerbirds performing in a Williamsburg Surf Shop.

Rob Trucks

Outside Monster Island

After they re-released Hymns for a Dark Horse, but before they recorded, let alone released, their most recent Upper Air, the Bowerbirds (primary members and off-stage couple Phil Moore and Beth Tacular) met us just a block from the Williamsburg waterfront. Across the street, an electrical power station hummed. Down the street, jackhammers and condo construction dust, signs of the changing (pre-recession) Brooklyn shoreline. All obvious counterpoints to a moveable acoustic duo that's gotten a lot of press for their solar panel-powered, AirStream-sheltered homelife in the austere hills of North Carolina.

They play the Bowery Ballroom this Friday, December 4 and Union Pool on Saturday, December 5.