THE PHOTOS FROM GRIZZLY BEAR’S BECK’S FESTIVAL BAR SHOW ARE HERE.

For a moment there, Sydney went Grizzly Bear mad. Tweets ranged from the enamoured (“Grizzly Bear were so beautiful, I think I might be pregnant!”) to the disgruntled (“If you have tickets to Grizzly Bear this evening… Fuck you and that delicious horse of yours”).

The impossibly romantic Recital Hall shows rendered the Brooklyn four-piece instant legends. Even the weather seemed to be paying attention as the summer heat momentarily gave way to some appropriately drizzly wind and rain. Not so appropriate for those forced to stand outside the makeshift hall of the Beck’s Festival Bar, but that kind of atmospheric perfection doesn’t come for free.

Stepping in for original supports The Middle East was Montreal’s scruffily handsome Patrick Watson. With vocals as silky as Buckley’s and at times delicate as Elliott Smith’s, Watson plays off his band’s spirited array of odd sounds and rhythms, the skeletal percussion of Beijing filled out with a littering of ethereal strings and keys, animated banjo and ukulele plucks, and curious tinkering blips.

The man is a storyteller, so the fact that he ended up strapping on a ridiculous-looking series of microphones branched precariously through the top of a backpack so he could wander slightly awkwardly about the crowd sort of made a lot of sense.

Grizzly Bear followed with Veckatimest’s opening song, Southern Point. The delightful thing about seeing the boys perform live is how wonderfully psychedelic their wailing guitars, echoing percussion and roof-raising harmonies are when they have this much space to swirl about.

The sweetly lumbering bass of crowd favourite Cheerleader was soon offset by the broody Ed Droste’s faultless vocals that sound almost impossibly good in a live setting. One can only imagine how incredible their Recital Hall performance the Monday earlier would have been, given the improved acoustics.

Yellow House’s Lullabye played out like a rapid time-lapse of a ripening piece of fruit: the bare, distorted guitar and understated vocals growing progressively fleshy and rounded with rich harmonies and cymbal-laced drum crashes. The band’s beseeching cry of “Chin up, cheer up” was repeated warmly as the song tumbled plumply to the floor.

They continued with the more abstract, meandering material from the 2006 LP, with Knife and Little Brother running together seamlessly in a haze of drawn-out, incoherent sighs and organic percussion. Veckatimest’s ambling Fine For Now followed, the band obviously in no hurry to pander to the audience by plying them with frequent bigger melodies (which of course made their arrival all the more powerful).

Brought in by its playful piano stabs, one of last year’s most sophisticated pop outings, Two Weeks, suddenly beckoned the room back out of their dreary hypnosis. While You Wait for the Others carried on the night’s turn of smoky chamber pop, the four continuing to astound with their ability to deliver the delicate pieces to the room and those still braving the weather in its rainy peripheries.

Closing the night with an encore driven in by an impish recorder, Grizzly Bear deliver one of those live experiences that require the crowd to do little but be quietly astonished.