Band follows the leader in easygoing performance

His body contorted into an S-curve, Vetiver's Andy Cabic still managed to be the picture of relaxation at Johnny Brenda's on Tuesday night. Although he'd just flown in the day before to begin a month-plus tour, and he and his band had yet to rehearse, there was no tension in his hunched shoulders, and not much in his music. Even as he related leaving his valuable-filled tote bag in an airport cab, he never seemed to stiffen.

Early on, the quintet's "Rolling Sea" set the tempo with its easy, boneless lope. Drummer Otto Hauser, who also plays with the Philadelphia psych-folk band Espers, caressed his snare drum with brushes, while guitarist Sanders Trippe played blues-driven solos unencumbered by distortion, carving out clean lines of melody in the foggy air.

Vetiver's latest album is called Tight Knit, and it does mark a step forward from the amiable shamble of previous recordings, which were produced and released by the freak-folk guru Devendra Banhart. In the past, the Vetiver moniker has largely served as an alias for the San Francisco-based Cabic and a rotating cast of sidemen, but its lineup has begun to coalesce into something more bandlike, with a corresponding uptick in musical precision.

Such things, however, are relative, and luckily so. "Everyday" upped the tempo, buoyed by Cabic's brisk acoustic-guitar strum, but it still felt like an unhurried stroll down a sunny street, without any need to rush from verse to chorus and back again.

All that ease can lull the listener to sleep. Its indie-rock roots notwithstanding, the band frequently recalls the Grateful Dead in their more compact moments, especially since Cabic's sliding voice and his tendency to swallow lines makes him a dead ringer for Jerry Garcia. The same thing that makes them an unfailingly pleasant listen makes their songs blur together into one mellow vibe.

The openers, Sian Alice Group, had no trouble distinguishing between numbers. The London-based quintet swapped instruments after practically every song, which ranged from beat-driven drones to gauzy lullabies. Showing the influence of post-rock bands like Tortoise and Laika, they added touches of glockenspiel and pocket trumpet to trance-inducing beats, topped with the ethereal voice of Sian Ahern, who often seemed more interested in singing sounds than words. They closed with an extended riff on a single note, played at alternating octaves, coalescing into a massive slab of sound that finally shattered under the impact. The release was all the sweeter for the tension it followed.