Early last year I missed Vetiver playing Los Angeles out of sheer laziness, and the situation almost repeated itself last night as I sat around debating until the opening band was well into their set. Maybe that’s appropriate for a band whose casual, near-languid energy is both their defining strength and weakness, but an earlier relisten of 2009’s admirable Tight Knit convinced me.

Their set was actually tighter than expected, ironically benefiting from the schizophrenic setlist that frontman/vocalist Andy Cabic allowed his bassist to “guest write.” Cabic wryly noted how they seemed to awkwardly alternate between electric and acoustic, cover song and original; fortunately, the approach doubled as a healthy way to keep their roots folk audience from getting complacent. Tight Knit highlight “Sister” lost some of the rhythmic snap it has on record; otherwise the band were exact in their recreation of the album’s sound, and certain songs — mainly the labored white-funk of “Another Reason to Go”— were stronger in this context, given actual bodies to bump around. Cabic’s a potent vocalist, too, substituting the studio’s smooth edges with a contoured lilt that feeds into his troubadour aesthetic. It’s already hard to believe this band emerged out of the mid-decade “freak folk” scene: they feel eternal in their reliability, shuffling from one literate bastion to the next like a comedown lullaby for the frantic and hype-hungry.