Kevin Bronson on May 17th, 2013

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PAPA’s hometown blowout on Thursday night at the Troubadour came off as a little … well, loose – especially if you’d seen them this spring at South by Southwest, where they hit every note as if they were playing for lunch money. The perils of performing to a sold-out crowd of friends and family? Perhaps.

But make no mistake, PAPA sounded like the real deal Thursday, soulful and sturdy, romantically yearning yet frantically self-reliant. After kicking off the show with the galloping single “Put Me to Work,” the quartet mostly gave a preview of songs that will appear on its forthcoming album (an announcement about that album, and who will release it, is imminent). At their most reserved, PAPA’s songs are retro and almost coy; the bulk, however, sound outsized in the same way a couple of generations of New Jersey-bred rockers sound big.

Principals Darren Weiss and Daniel Presant hail from Encino, of course, but before Weiss drummed for indie darlings Girls he was a punk rocker, and he brings that ferocity to every lick in PAPA. That he also is the singer and frontman gives the quartet’s shows a certain spectacle quality. Longtime followers had to chuckle Thursday when the notoriously barefooted drummer took the stage in a suitcoat; no chance, the way Weiss plays, that coat was going to stay on for very long.

It didn’t. Weiss took Thursday’s hiccups in stride and turned the night into a sweaty mess of bodies and instruments in motion. There are plenty of singalongs in PAPA’s future, and this show provided a nice first run-through.

Openers Harriet, on the other hand, displayed new material that is more tempered and introspective that they showed on 2011’s “Tell the Right Story” EP. Fronted by singer-guitarist-pianist Alex Casnoff, once the keyboardist in Dawes and who played for a brief time in PAPA, Harriet debuted a new lineup featuring twin percussionists Henry Kwapis (a holdover from the old quartet) and Sam Skloff along with bassist Patrick Kelley and guitarist Matt Blitzer. (The latter three, all of whom played in the local band Rimpau, graduate from Cal Arts today.)

Casnoff’s new meditations only occasionally approach the bombast of Harriet’s first single “I Slept With All Your Mothers;” instead, the emphasis in on spacious arrangements, keen melodies and starkly personal lyricism. Even playing the opening set in a chatty room, the quintet found a receptive audience during the moments they got mighty quiet. Harriet has a new album almost completed, although release plans (and financing) are fuzzy at this point.

||| Previously: An interview with Darren Weiss. An interview with Alex Casnoff.