JUST AS FANS can't realistically expect bands to remain the same, bands can't insist fans indulge their every artistic whim either. Case in point: while the Velvet Teen sold out Bottom of the Hill last month for the release of their second album, Elysium (Slowdance), there was noticeably less of the heated fanfare that's greeted the Santa Rosa emo-pop trio in the past. The relatively lackluster response wasn't entirely due to the audience's unfamiliarity with the new material, either: full of intricately layered strings, piano, and horns, Elysium marks a vastly different musical direction for the band, and fans expecting more of the guitar-driven Death Cab for Cutie-isms of 2002's Out of the Fierce Parade (Slowdance) seemed nonplussed with their new sound.

Taking the stage at 11:10 p.m., keyboardist-guitarist Judah Nagler, bassist Josh Staples, and new drummer Casey Dietz – Logan Whitehurst left this spring for medical reasons – quietly kicked off their 90-minute set with Elysium's "Sartre Ringo." After the instrumental intro, the band effortlessly segued into "Penicillin (It Doesn't Mean Much)" and "A Captive Audience," a pair of meandering, melancholic new songs that, like much of the new album as a whole, don't have so much as a single full-fledged hook or guitar riff. In fact, aside from Nagler's wonderfully overwrought, Thom Yorke-ish wail, there was little to indicate these sweeping, understated songs were even the work of the same band whose debut sold upward of 15,000 copies on the strength of some of northern California's catchiest indie music.

Given the striking departure of Elysium, it wasn't surprising that, when the trio began a fourth new number, the soporific, six-minute-long "Poor Celine," the audience began growing restless. "Play something old!" a guy barked from the back. Two women next to him mocked rocking out, rolling their eyes, before exiting to the patio. Others began chattering among themselves. Up front, fans were far more enthusiastic, though some of them, too, seemed impatient for anything recognizable – even if it wasn't an actual Velvet Teen song. "Play your Magnetic Fields song. They're playing tonight, too, and you play it way better!" someone shouted, referring to the trio's cover of 69 Love Songs' "No One Will Ever Love You."

Instead, Nagler finally left his keyboard and strapped on a guitar to lead the band through a rousing run-through of Parade's "Radiapathy," an even better choice than the Magnetic Fields song judging by the wild audience response. The set's newfound momentum continued through three more melodic, angst-addled Parade tracks – "The Prize Fighter," "Into the Open," and "Caspian Can Wait" – that, with their careening, hook-driven choruses, offered welcome relief from the new material that had failed to click with much of the audience.

To the Velvet Teen's credit, Elysium isn't by any means a bad recording. Rather, it's a beautiful if often frustratingly indulgent album better suited to headphones than to a room of people waiting to sing along to "The Prize Fighter." And though it's masterfully produced by the band, the CD – with an average song length of almost seven minutes – is far too exhausting to endure in one sitting, which helps to explain why, by the time the trio closed their main set with Elysium's "Forlorn" and the 13-minute "Chimera Obscurant," the audience had already begun to dwindle.

Which doesn't mean, of course, there aren't listeners who are willing to stick with a band through even extreme artistic evolutions. But judging by the incredible excitement that greeted the encore, which rewarded the patient with older gems "Naked Girl" and "Counting Backwards," faithful fans also like to be reminded every now and again why they fell in love with the Velvet Teen in the first place. (Jimmy Draper)