Kevin Bronson on December 8th, 2008

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Even ravaged as they have been by the effects of a cold, Little Joy — the six-piece co-founded by Fabrizio Moretti of the Strokes — showed a packed house at the Troubadour on Sunday a good time. Which, I suspect, tells you more about the packed house at the Troubadour than it does the music of Little Joy, the well-meaning side project helmed by Moretti, Brazilian singer/guitarist Rodrigo Amarante and singer/multi-instrumentalist Binki Shapiro.

Moretti could have come out and recited poems and this crowd would have loved it. Which he almost did, at the beginning, confessing that when he heard, while on tour, that the health department had closed down the band’s namesake bar in Echo Park for a few weeks, “my heart just stopped.” Awww.

On with the show: Little Joy’s slight, tropicalia-infused pop — I kept thinking, “Jimmy Buffet Covers the Strokes” — goes down easy. What Sunday’s set lacked in tightness, it made up for in geniality; Fabrizio, a drummer in his day job, seemed amused to no end by his own foul-ups on guitar. He kept the banter lively, though, even if the 45-minute set had all the urgency of a five-minute shuffle to the refrigerator after a nap.

“I (bleeping) love Los Angeles, and I want to buy each and every one of you a drink,” he told the crowd at the (encore-less) finish, adding quickly, “in my dreams.”

In a lot of dreams.