Tomberlin and Dear Nora at the Murmrr Theatre

The Murmrr Theater seats about 700, but Sarah Beth Tomberlin (known by the mononym Tomberlin) and her band stand in the middle of the pit, and only about 150 of us encircle her in folding chairs. The theater, formerly a temple, seems a fitting space for Tomberlin’s music to fill: her soundscapes feel otherworldly, hallowed, reverberating through the hollow of the space.

She is accompanied by several other instrumentalists: a clarinet, saxophone, bassist, keyboardist, and drummer. Her set is mostly pulled from her 2022 record “i don’t know who needs to hear this,” with others thrown in from her 2018 and 2020 EPs, respectively. Each time a song begins, the audience lets a small gasp escape, identifying the chord changes and settling into the excitement of recognition. The timbres that make up a Tomberlin song; The plucking of her acoustic guitar accented with the occasional twinge of a pedal steel or synth, supported by a steady and firm bass drum, ring through our ears as we sit, eyes transfixed on her fingers on the fingerboard. Her endearing, adolescent voice is “perfectly tuned but reluctantly played” as ‘Baby’s’ advertisement for the show suggests. She sings, “I’m not a singer, I’m just someone who’s guilty.” Not knowing I would write this review, I jotted down those two lines in my Notes app, which hit me hard in the third row of five.

Tomberlin’s authenticity is elevated by the intimacy of the venue. A pause between songs goes into alternate tunings, as she befriends an audience member who commended her for improved stage banter. Moments of silence are steeped in insecurity and fear, from awkward glances she gives her audience, to occasional remarks about how scary it is to perform. As soon as the first strum of the next song comes, though, all of the tension seems to fall away from her. She is in her music and held up by the sound, she is taller than ever. As Tomberlin, she doesn’t quite look you in the eye, almost like she’s singing to herself.

What was already a phenomenal experience was only heightened by the performance by the opening act Dear Nora. I was taken aback by their guitar chops, with exciting melodic choices. Katy Davidson of Dear Nora has a broad discography going back several years, still finding new ways to bend and pull under her songwriting. While they don’t have the same studio sound of Tomberlin’s music, it communicated very well live. At the end, another treat: Davidson brought Frankie Cosmos out to perform a recently-released collaboration called “Flag (into the fray).”