It's irresistible but not entirely fair to compare Clues to the Unicorns. Clues frontman Alden Penner founded the Unicorns along with Nick Thronburn (now of Islands, Human Highway, and other acts); while Penner's been relatively quiet since that band broke up, Thornburn's output has been wildly varied and not always quite up to their previous band's peak, Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone? So, it's tempting to imagine that Clues might be everything that Thornburn's bands haven't been, or, better, everything that the Unicorns was (or even better than that). But that's also like hoping that the Breeders of Frank Black and the Catholics alone would one-up the Pixes—sometimes a certain combination of personalities along with a band's time and place (not to mention the listener's age and frame of reference) all just spark in ways that are can't quite be recreated. Which isn't to say that later bands can't be good or exciting, but just that it does them a disservice to hold them up against past glories.

So, with that labored preamble, how the hell was Clues last night at the Vera Project? Well, they were just great (and yet still I put the Unicorns on my iPod for my walk home). The five piece band rotated instruments, at any given time consisting of two drummers, one on a normal kit, the other standing and playing a floor tom, a torn-up cymbal, and a variety of percussive junk (a fire alarm bell, a turntable platter as a gong), lightly overdriven guitar, bass, occasional trumpet, and keys and a Realistic (Radioshack) Moog MG-1 (not to mention one of those little $200 buy-one-give-one-to-an-impoverished-African-free laptops). Their sound at times came closer to the bright, bouncy cartoony brashness of the Unicorns than has any of Thornburn's projects; at other times, it was more dark and sinister, foreboding quiet erupting into storm clouds of shredded guitar and wild drumming. The dual drummers allowed for otherwise straightforward pop and rock songs to incorporate unusually complicated percussive undercurrents (on one song the sometimes bassist sometimes drummer pulled off an especially impressive off-time rhythm on the cymbals that, upon her closing out the song solo, elicited some cheers). Penner sang, ranging from falsetto to near shouting to a whisper, alternately playing guitar, bass, and keys. I don't know the band's songs well enough to pick any out (they're all just youtube cilps currentl), but the last three or so they did were definitely their strongest and most upbeat.

Penner's banter was subdued. He greeted the crowd saying, "How goes the battle, Seattle? Clues is with you, in the blue" (the lights were kept a dim blue for most of the set, except during one song for which Penner requested "party lights"); Penner appreciatively described the ambience as like being underwater. If Penner wasn't terribly intent on engaging the crowd, a bandmate of his more than made up for it during one song, donning a zig-zag striped afghan like a cowl before jumping into the crowd and tossing the blanket around with and at the audience and into the air, where it would hang like a magic carpet for just a second before falling onto some kid or another. That I didn't leave with songs stuck in my head by heart after one show suggests maybe that these guys aren't going to explode my (maybe unfair) expectations, or maybe it just means that I need to see them again, or hear a record, before I fully form an opinion. I'm looking forward to doing so.

Briefly, elsewhere on the bill: City Center are a duo who owe an incalculable debt to Animal Collective and to a lesser extent High Places (the latter of whom they've begun to repay by including them in their top 8). I got at least a little excited thinking that maybe this was a newish local band—if you're going to blatantly bite off of AC, you certainly could do worse than these dudes—but it turns out they're from New York. They built their songs using a pair of Dr Samples, delay pedals, guitar, a floor tom and cymbal, and a pair of mics. Their vocals were alternately piled-on layers of blurry delay or brief, piercing yelps (sounds familiar, no?). Sometimes things got out of control and clipped a bit or else seemed to be reiterating just slightly beyond the band's control, but for the most part they built some pretty grooves and summoned out of the bright murk the occasionally stirring chorus. Entry level bros, but endearingly so. Local six-piece band Iji (who include both saxophone and, what was that an omnichord?) seem to aim for the ebullient band geekery of Architecture in Helsinki or Los Campensinos (with maybe a touch of Vampire Weekend's studiously loose grooves), but they don't quite hit those marks—the band is about 110% enthusiasm, a percentage that unfortunately doesn't leave a lot of room for anything else.