Kevin Bronson on October 31st, 2014

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Delta Spirit began as a wiry, busker-led, southern California-bred bunch of folkies who were light on the delta but brimming with spirit. Four albums later, they brim with arena-rock aspirations, but as the old guard discovered Thursday night at the El Rey Theatre, that boys-next-door charisma remains intact amid their muscular new sound and extravagant visuals.

• ||| Photos by David Benjamin

Playing the third of four L.A.-area shows in four days, the quintet of Matt Vasquez, Jon Jameson, Brandon Young, Kelly Winrich and Will McLaren raged for 18 songs and 100-plus minutes, seldom backing off the fever pitch they attained on their new “Into the Wide,” which came out in September and in most ways is a better U2 album than the one U2 just gave away.

The sonic and conceptual expansiveness of Delta Spirit’s new album belies the Hurricane Sandy-damaged Brooklyn hovel in which it was conceived, but the scope of the songs (seven of which they performed) played well in a big room, even on a night given to a bit of nostalgia.

O.C. native Jessica Dobson of Seattle-based Deep Sea Diver, who opened, fondly recalled opening for Delta Spirit during the summer of 2007 at the Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa. Those were the days, huh?

And speaking of Deep Sea Diver, the quartet’s 40-minute set was worth the price of admission alone. With a new EP just out and one of the best albums of 2012 on their resumé, Dobson, her husband-drummer Peter Mansen and friends previewed songs from their sophomore album, planned for March, and pretty much set the bar high for anybody trying stylistically complex indie-rock. Dobson, once Beck’s touring guitarist, also delivered a devastating cover of Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand.”

But the biggest curiosity of Deep Sea Diver’s set was the 6-foot-10, high-cheek-boned man who sat – absolutely motionlessly, downright menacingly – on a folding chair stage right of the quartet. For eight songs he sat there, staring straight ahead and barely blinking. Then, during the finale “You Go Running,” he got up, busted out some intense dance moves and descended into the crowd to lead the handclaps.

It turns out that if you’d seen Deep Sea Diver’s new video for “One by One” [embedded at the end of this narrative], you were in on the joke. The mysterious tall man is Dobson’s brother-in-law Jon Mansen. He is very tall.

Delta Spirit followed amid spectral visuals projected against a backdrop of vertical white panels, opening with the lead single “From Now On” and segueing quickly to “Tear It Up,” one of four songs they would play from their self-titled 2012 album. The duality between old and new was never more pronounced than when, six songs in, they played an amped-up version of the gospel-tinged “People C’mon” from their 2007 debut and followed with the massive “Take Shelter” from the new album.

Their big 2010 single “Bushwick Blues” served as kind of a halftime show before Vasquez announced “Welcome to the second half of our set” and launched into “Language of the Dead” and “Patriarch,” doing some shadow-boxing during the latter. He took the keys for oldie-but-goodie “Trashcan” before heading into “Children,” which the band had to interrupt because of a scuffle in the crowd. “Most of our fans aren’t assholes,” Vasquez said. “Sorry about that.”

“California” (2012) and “White Table” (2010) roared to end the main set before Delta Spirit returned for an encore “Strange Vine” (with Dobson guesting on vocals), “Into the Wide” and “People Turn Around.”

It all made for quite a statement. Both Delta Spirit’s album and Thursday’s presentation of the their bigger persona run contrary to so much of today’s insular, genre-conscious music that it’s a novelty to witness a band embrace the concept of “go big or go home.” Delta Spirit has gone big.

||| Live: Delta Spirit plays tonight at the Observatory.