Written by DCist contributor Dave Weigel

The husband-wife musical combo can typically make two choices about its act. It can be insufferably cute—here, think of Sonny and Cher. It can be so cool and collected that the audience doesn’t even notice the flashes of gold on their fingers—here, I’d nominated Thurston and Kim. Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel of Mates of State fall somewhere in the middle of the pack. There is no onstage cuddling. There’s no cutesy banter. Throughout a 19-song set at the Black Cat, they only indulged in one romantic anecdote.

”This club has a special meaning to us,” Gardner said shortly before they left for an encore. “Ten years ago, when we were living in Kansas, we drove here to see a show. Then we drove right back!”

On Tuesday, with their two daughters in tow, Mates of State gave D.C. a night of pleasant pop music that would have been worth driving a few hours to see. Not quite the 18 hours it takes to motor from Lawrence, KS to the Black Cat, but if any West Virginian came here to cure his piano pop withdrawal, he got his money’s worth.

He would have taken in an unusual one-two billing. Mates of State are touring with Brother Reade, who took the stage as a two-man drum-soloing act, pounding out rhythms that sounded like the intros to My Morning Jacket songs that would never come. After ten minutes, Jimmy Jamz (a.k.a. Major Jamz) stepped away from his drum set for a series of rarely engaging hip-hop tracks. “This song is dedicated to the Los Angeles Clippers!” Jamz said, unironically, to a puzzled crowd. “We all gotta live with the fact that we ain’t Bob Dylan,” he shouted, throwing shapes at the front row. “We just chillin.’” This went on for a while.

Gardner and Hammel won the crowd back instantly. They walked onstage to no fanfare before the set started, fiddling with their instruments, then heading backstage again. When they returned they skipped the banter and tore into “Goods,” the four-year old song that redefined their sound and launched them into their current level of soundtrack and NPR bumper music celebrity. Gardner banged out a two-chord hook on a keyboard set for maximum crunch, then started singing the song’s “da-da-da” chorus in harmony with her husband. The melody ricocheted around the room, the crowd warmed up, and Gardner and Hammel wrapped it up with warm harmonizing built on artificially deep lyrics: “It’s all in your head.” They had found the template for the night and wouldn’t waver much from it.

The formula didn’t always work. Critics have been split on the duo’s new album, Re-Arrange Us. If you’re cynical, it sounds like a soft pop record with the best tricks—sawing violins, ringing piano keys—borrowed from bands like Stars. But on stage it’s clear that the new material is the most rich and diverse that Gardner and Hammel have ever written. “My Only Offer”, the album’s subtle piano and horns-based single, is as catchy as the suburban-ennui lyrics are sobering. “In secret, we believe,” sang Gardner and Hammel, bobbing their heads, “we're nothing, nothing, nothing that we need.”

The band’s older material got just as bright a reaction in the room, but between newer songs the act could grow monotonous. As talented as they’ve always been at writing hooks, Garnder and Hammel have only just started truly fleshing out their material. Their penultimate song, a cover of George Harrison’s “Something”, sounded out of place among the bouncy songs from the first half of their career.

If Mates of State is not yet a great band, it’s getting easier to imagine it becoming one. As long as the two of them keep their cuteness in check.