Inside the realm of modern-rock music there's a world inhabited by those who believe pop perfection is all that matters — imagine a world so small! — and pop-folkie Elliott Smith rules there.

        Mr. Smith, he of the meager voice and melancholy songs, played to a sold-out Southgate House Thursday night. Those gathered were the converted, and he stuffed a thousand snappy melodies into his 80-minute set for their pleasure. But to the uncoverted, those melodies seemed to run together and repeat, and the snappy melody was an end in itself, like a parade of slow, sad radio jingles.

        There are better ways to put pop perfection to work. Like Mr. Smith, Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices has an endless supply of melodies in his head, but he shoots them through with rock guitars and dreamy lyrics. Mr. Smith's backup band, a trio, did not rock. The instrumentation seemed designed to re-create several of the songs he played from his new album, the piano-heavy Figure 8, but it ended up making everything sound like Ben Folds Five, which is not intended as a compliment.

        Then again, he writes in a disaffected mode popularized in the '90s — one mantra went, “everything means nothing to me” — so if he were to rock out perhaps he'd get lost among the post-grunge crowd.

        Far more interesting were openers Grandaddy from Modesto, Calif. The five-piece band, and most specifically singer Jason Lytle, have a way with a melody, too, but found much more interesting ways to present it.

        Their lavish noisescapes recalled Mercury Rev and the Flaming Lips. They sounded like an American Radiohead, which may explain why they're more popular in England than here.

        They played a couple of songs from their new album The Sophtware Slump in a quick 35-minute set, but the knockouts were covers: “Dreaming My Dreams With You” and “You Are My Sunshine,” rendered with the band's psychedelic-pop stylings. Waylon and Governor Davis aren't just honky-tonk heroes anymore.

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