Seraphina Lotkhamnga on February 27th, 2011

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Pop music has its mood swings, but the melodrama can be addictive as sugar when tales of romance and life lessons are dipped in a coat of jangly guitars, heavy percussion and catchy choruses. Fortunately, Merge labelmates Telekinesis and the Love Language manage to sustain attention even after the inevitable crash that typically follows a blissful saccharine high.

At the Echo on Thursday night, bleeding-heart pop was as thick and sweet as molasses when the Love Language’s Stuart McLamb crooned his way through a set featuring songs from the their self-titled debut and their latest, “Libraries.” Considering the fact that McLamb’s venture into songwriting derived from heartbreak, there was palpable bittersweetness in songs such as “Sparxxx,” where he laments in legato, “Oh, honey, do you what you want.”

• ||| Photos by Carl Pocket

But just as the Love Language’s sound has moved on from lo-fi to more polished, the band also became more headstrong with newer songs like “Heart To Tell.” The Raleigh, N.C.-based band ended their highly energetic set with “Brittany’s Back,” a song whose introductory bass line pulsed through the entire room – and which served as a nice bookend to earlier ’60s-influenced ballads “Blue Angel” and “This Blood Is Our Own.”

Whereas The Love Language served up stylized heartbreak-pop, Seattle’s Telekinesis offered a dangerous amount of neurological sugar. After nearly canceling the show due to their malfunctioning van in San Francisco earlier in the day, Telekinesis (which now regularly includes Cody Votolato of Blood Brothers on guitar and Jason Narducy on bass) couldn’t stop gushing over the packed room. Appropriately sweethearts to their core, Michael Benjamin Lerner and his bandmates didn’t waste any time showing fans their appreciation and kicked off with the opening track off of “12 Desperate Straight Lines,” “You Turn Clear in the Sun.”

Much of Telekinesis’ material is surreptitiously sunny – in “Car Crash,” Lerner drums merrily while repeatedly singing dark lyrics such as, “Will I die alone / You know I’m so alone.” Switching spots with Votolato a few times to play the guitar, Lerner was also as personable as his lyrics were. Joking about how the Love Language’s McLamb copied his striped T-shirt on purpose or pointing to a random crowd member and saying, “Okay, this one’s for you,” Telekinesis’ frontman jaded outlook on life ironically seemed to make him dauntless as he performed. Even after their trying day in regards to travel, the trio also returned to the stage for an encore which offered old favorites, “Awkward Kisser” and “Tokyo.”

L.A.’s Devon Williams opened up the night.