A NINE- to-five, Monday-through-Friday desk job is an inhumane way to cage the human spirit, and the cognitive dissonance the weekend brings – work, work, work, work, work, quick, go have fun! Work ... – doesn't always help. I spent Monday trying and failing to "be part of the team," opting for my Bartleby the Scrivener "I would prefer not to" act, staring at the wall of my cubicle. After work I went to my volunteer gig HIV testing at the needle exchange, feeling low-energy and not really emotionally available. When that was through, I needed some comforting myself.

The Music Lovers at the Make-Out Room was the right prescription to scrub the dull patina of pain and diverted aspirations off my day. I caught about half a sweet and soothing song by openers New Telepathic Friends before heading out for a bite with J, who'd caught her stepfather cross-dressing over the weekend. Comfort food was in order.

When we got back to the club, my eyes were fixed at half-mast and I had a serious case of pork chop nod. J and I settled into a vinyl booth, got somewhat cozy to the romantic sounds of Amy Cooper, and debated the coolness of a guy in a red hoodie and '80s Foster Grant sunglasses. You can't get away with that anywhere in San Francisco nowadays. You've got to drive at least to San Bruno, where "retro" is called "out of style."

The Music Lovers have their presentation down, especially amid the tinsel spider plants, pearls, and moonlit disco ball ambience of the Make-Out Room. Accordionist and keyboard player Jun Kurihara, who apparently is a pop diva of some renown in her native Japan, looked devastating in her velvet dress, like a statue with a squeeze box. Now, before you get the idea the Music Lovers are some kind of polka band, I've got to say I've never heard the accordion used to such glorious effect as on "This World Versus the Next World," a track off their new album, The Words We Say Before We Sleep (Marriage). Not to speak unkindly of the instrument, but it can squeeze on the brains. Kurihara, however, laid down a lush layer of sound, a sustained hum over which Bryan Cain wove a silver-toned guitar line on his fat hollow-bodied Gibson reminiscent of the sounds generated by Sterling Morrison on the Velvets' third album.

Singer Matthew "Ted" Edwards's mellifluous, thoughtful voice lingered on the sweetly melancholic, with songs like "Sometimes People Just Do Stupid Things." Do I have to pay posthumous royalties if I use that title as an epitaph? "She wasn't worth it, but you didn't want to hear," Edwards sang. That line, and the song's title, could encapsulate, I don't know ... the past decade or so of my life. The guy should really open a late-night advice line. Plus, being English, he said really cool things between songs, like "We're playing a collection of songs from our forthcoming long player."

Though The Words We Say doesn't come out until October, the band are already working on a new record, and I'm glad. I don't mean to let the air out of the new release, but it doesn't have Kurihara or Cain on it, and though the band function admirably as a trio with a different drummer and some special guests, the record just doesn't capture the multitextured grandeur of their live sets. Recordings rarely do; it's a very different feel. The record is quieter, more downbeat, but there's a sense of catharsis and the hope of an upcoming love interest in the voluptuousness of all those instruments working together.

You know, this show made me realize I really needed a new pop band in my collection. The sustained organ tones of "Brother I Am Walking" had me thinking of "Tempted" by Squeeze. Does it take an Englishman to write really moving pop songs? Not always, I guess, though it seems American bands drift from sweet to sugary too easily.

Some guy, overcome by the mood, maybe, kept bumping his corduroy-clad ass into my head while dancing, no matter where I scooted my chair. I guess I'm just lucky like that. I went to check in with J, who'd remained in the vinyl seclusion of the booth.

"These guys are fucking good," I said.

"Yeah." She nodded. "Do you like Cousteau?"

According to J, the Music Lovers sound "almost identical" to Cousteau. Which goes to show how much my collection needs a transfusion.

I went back to my chair near the front of the stage and wondered if they were derivative for all of about 10 seconds. Then, lost amid the soaring, heart-wrenching instrumental break of "The Sea of the Sun," an anthemic prayer for the heartbroken, I decided I didn't care. (Duncan Scott Davidson)