Kevin Bronson on November 15th, 2008

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“I told the label we’d never played a carnival,” frontman Ed Reyes [above] said before the Little Ones’ homecoming show Friday night at the Echo. Well, that accounted for the balloon sculptor and the cotton candy man, not to mention the passel of extended family dotting the packed room. All that was missing was a Ferris wheel.

The L.A. quintet, playing their home turf for the first time since the much-delayed release of its debut “Morning Tide,” provided the colorful ride. Their set was characteristically energetic and tighter than past outings — “they’re road-tested now,” observed one fan — even if it didn’t seem to have the same guileless quality of their early performances. Of course, that was 2006, before label woes (the band was signed to Astralwerks in the U.S., then dropped shortly before “Morning Ride’s” original release date) hardened the Little Ones’ little hearts.

Now on the short roster of Chop Shop Records, the Little Ones [that’s Ian Moreno, left] still were unfailingly upbeat, dispensing an upper most bands would envy. You almost wish they had more in their arsenal — the encore was only one song, the hit from their ’06 EP, “Lovers Who Uncover.” And if you were lucky enough to get in the door in time for the 9 o’clock set, the Little Ones’ exuberant finish qualified as surreal, considering the mournful beauty of openers Other Lives.

The Stillwater, Okla., five-piece provided the emotional antithesis to the headliners with a set that, while heavy on the drama and the melancholy, was never cloying.

Other Lives has an album finished and an EP just out, and the band’s orchestral take on indie rock — its compositions have movement and movements — rewards the patient listener, with its guitars reined in to allow space for Jenny Hsu’s cello, Jonathan Mooney’s violin and the piano and powerful vocals of frontman Jesse Tabish [right].

The emotional juxtaposition of the sets — Texas indie-rockers What Made Milwaukee Famous played in between — wasn’t lost on Tabish, a modest and reserved type. “It seems to work,” he said of the shows the bands have played together, adding with a smile, “I’m just not very good at writing happy songs.”

||| Live: The same three bands play tonight at the Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa.