SEEING THE PAPERCUTS in 2004 was a little bit of a time-travel trip. I remember seeing the band two or three years ago at what I thought would be their last appearance as a local band. South Bay native Jason Quever moved to Portland, Ore., San Diego, god knows where else – it's hard to keep track of the indie pop diaspora these days. Last I heard, he'd returned, ditching the rhythm section he'd borrowed from San Diego band Moon and Sixpence, and was building a recording studio in the Excelsior.

I was expecting the show to be a hint of nostalgia for the late-'90s indie pop scene that seemed to have ruled this town, when Aislers Set played every weekend and people like Michael Eberhard booked obscure acts like OutHud and Ninety Nine at San Francisco State University. I don't remember when I first met Quever, but I first saw him perform with Duster in '97 or so. For a while he was known as "the most emo guy ever," which was a hard title to earn in this town or in that era and not one he may have found particularly flattering, especially since that label has come to suggest Dashboard Confessional singing about getting bitten by a radioactive spider.

Still, something of the awkward-music-genius stereotype sticks to the Papercuts aura. I recently dug up a demo cassette of four-track recordings Quever must have done in Portland six or more years ago that are stunning in their quality and sheer loveliness.

With a modest and catchy debut album on Cassingle USA and production credits for Casiotone for the Painfully Alone and Cass McCombs, the Papercuts were one of the underrated gems in town even by my reckoning, which was mostly based on inconsistent shows. Quever was always tinkering with the lineup of his live band, even doing several shows accompanied only by his acoustic guitar. While his willingness to bare all in a solo performance is commendable, the layered production integral to Papercuts records requires a full band to fill out their sound live.

On a recent night at the Bottom of the Hill, not packed but decently attended, Quever, keyboardist Malcolm Pullinger, and drummer Jeremey Brown played songs from their new album, Mockingbird (Antenna Farm). I don't want to say the music resembled Americana, folk rock, or anything so easily written off. If anything, it reminded me of Galaxie 500 and Oakland's Gris Gris, another young group that know their pop history and employ tons of reverb.

The preceding performer, Antenna Farm labelmate Bart Davenport, played the pleather-jacket lothario to Quever's stage persona of a wildly vulnerable indie pop introvert. Quever shrugged at the end of particularly complex guitar parts and announced after a few songs, "That was it. That was the dance party."

This isn't to suggest that all Papercuts songs are mopey. Even though Quever has dropped drum-machine dance beats for a Hammond organ and rainy-day instrumentation, the new songs seem ambiguously hopeful. I used to think Quever sounded a little like Billy Corgan without the growl, or even a castrato Gordon Gano, but it could be my faulty memory playing tricks on me. He tends to swallow his consonants, but when he pitches his longing vowels into the mic, the voice is identifiable only as his.

There were waltzy parts where the drummer stood up, songs that reminded me of the Doors, maybe an older song, and mostly stuff I didn't recognize till I listened to the album. The title track comes off like some dramatic spaghetti-western theme, and "Pan American Blues 2" feels like an epic writ small in Quever's hands. It's lush and cinematic in a simple, homey way.

They ended the set with "Well I Don't," its brushed drums and heavy tremolo conjuring up a '50s soda fountain scene. I saw a couple in front of me, boy and girl arm in arm, barely moving, apart from maybe a toe tap or a gentle sway. Ordinarily, public displays of affection, however tasteful, bring out the cynic in me, but the entire moment made me want to grab ahold of someone or something, even if it was an inadequate notebook. I tucked away the critical tools for a moment and just let the music hang in the air, free of disruption. It seemed like the right response to the cherubic vocals, quasi-doo-wop tone, and eyes-closed euphoria spilling off the stage like a sentimental fog. (George Chen)