The Prom

The second song finishes up to smatterings of applause from the audience scattered throughout the room. Singer James Mendenhall drops his hands from the piano and sighs the sigh of a hotel lounge singer staring into his empty tip jar. "What next?" he asks his band members. It's not clear if he's asking about the set list or long-term plans for the future.

David Broecker, the Prom's bass player, checks the set list. He makes a couple of suggestions. Mendenhall nods his head. "Let's play 'Ink.'" And with that fanfare, they launch into the song "Ink on the Paper," my favorite off the album Under the Same Stars (Barsuk). They play it well. Mendenhall's piano sets the jittery melody and Broecker is center-stage bopping along with his bass.

This is the second time I've caught the Prom. The first was in L.A. Broecker no longer has a Billy-Crudup-in-Almost Famous 70s mustache. In both shows, however, the Prom was the last band to go on and no one stuck around to see them. When it comes to disappointment, they're a bunch of real troupers. "Ink" ends and is met with a solid round of applause before some instrument tuning. Everyone waits patiently, quietly, for the next song. Drummer Joel Brown speaks into the thick silence. "Thanks to everyone who came out for... uh...being out." And then no one says anything. Mendenhall gives his drummer a smirk that says, "Nice one, asshole." And then another song is played.

The sparse crowd is definitely into them, but it is a sparse crowd. The Prom, however, doesn't skimp on their commitment to the songs. They play everything in the set with the same level of enthusiasm, like they would enjoy playing the songs even if the room were empty. And they are genuinely grateful to the crowd for coming out?we know because they say so quite often. Earlier there was a crowd here at the Mercury Lounge, and now there isn't.

?Earlier, when I was first getting my hand stamped, I heard through the doors a guy screaming: "Less cock! More rock!" So I rushed in to see if there was some cock on display. Onstage I found two skinny white boys holding guitars and wearing barely fitting black t-shirts flanking a pretty Indian girl on bass. The skinny boys were yammering away to each other about nothing anyone cared about, and I realized the guy had really shouted, "Less talk! More rock!" I ordered my first beer.

There was a nice crowd at that point. The band was San Francisco's Stratford 4, and they had some sweet little indie-rock basics going on. The guitars swayed the songs along while the skinny white boy on the right talked through a sequence of catchy syllables. The highlight of the set was near the end, with a great shimmery rocker, "Hydroplane," off of their debut CD The Revolt Against Tired Noises (Jetset). Its wobbly guitars carried the skinny white boy's refrain, "Every time I see your face I start to hydroplane." The outro built louder and louder until the skinny white boy stepped from the mic to turn his back to the audience and lift his arms in the air for a few seconds, before returning to the mic to finish the song. I'm not sure why.

But I didn't dwell on it because the couple standing in front of me proved to be much more interesting. They were speaking quite calmly to each other, occasionally taking sips from their drinks or chuckling, and all the while the guy's hand was cupping the girl's ass at such a low arc that he was in a position to curl her like a dumbbell. I'm familiar with the dry hump, and this was a dry finger-fuck on public display. Their faces betrayed no knowledge of there being a labial massage in progress. They could have been talking about the weather or cigarette prices. Anyway, I guess it just made me feel kinda lonely.

My friend was having a birthday party at Collective Unconscious around the corner, at which the Star Spangles were expected to do a set. I was hoping the next band would bore me enough that I could run to make an appearance there before the Prom took the stage.

The next band was Mazarin. Four gentleman who looked unemployed and a drummer who had that Ron Howard type of elephantiasis of the male-pattern baldness. They played a 60s kind of psychedelic rock and it really woke up the then-crowded room. Noisy guitars bubbled over the melodies, blurring the beginnings and endings to the songs. "Memories Change in Patterns," released by Sub Pop as part of that label's now-defunct Singles Club, just screamed through the room and I was glad I didn't leave to go to my friend's party.

Then I left anyway. But it was during their last song and it was a cover and whatever. I'd be gone slightly longer than a pee break.

The party seemed to be at halftime. It was for the Reverend Jen Miller, host of the Anti-Slam, and so it was one-fourth party, one-fourth open mic and the rest looked to be an alcohol-drenched Greco-Roman wrestling match of sorts. I ran in long enough to apologize for not being there before and to say I'd be there later. I ran back to the Mercury Lounge and found a little tiny crowd waiting for the Prom to take the stage.

This set was much more satisfying than when I saw them at L.A.'s Spaceland, where they gracefully left the stage after a half-dozen songs once they realized the handful of people left in the club were just waiting to go home. Tonight, there are more people and everyone here wants them to go on with their ominously timed tunes about heartsickness. From Seattle, the Prom is a three-piece: piano, bass and drums. From behind his piano, Mendenhall sings stretched-out harmonies that could be lifted from a Wings album. "These songs are like letters," he sings on "Ink," a tribute to a love lost that reminds me of Squeeze's "Black Coffee in Bed." The record is full of letters, all of them seeming to say, "Goodbye, good luck, now get your ass back here." The downright mournful "Brighter than the Moon" begins with the line, "We wish you the best, we think you'll go far," in a sweet falsetto over a lonely piano. It goes on and on with the "You deserve better" sentiment until the band joins in for the closing refrain, "It all seems clear," which Mendenhall sings as if he believes it less and less with every repetition.

The set ends, the crowd applauds and Mendenhall mutters, "Anyone wants to talk to us about t-shirts or anything, come on up." I run back to Collective Unconscious enamored with the Prom and hopeful for their New York return. Inside the space, the Star Spangles are playing before a violent sea of drunkenness and debauchery. I get an eyeful of their outfits and I find myself enamored with the Star Spangles' style and hopeful that more teenagers will want to dress up like the Black Crowes.