OUT WITH THE NEW : Scarnella, Malkmus Have Trouble Holding a Museum Crowd Not Used to Off-Center Rock

Carla Bozulich and Stephen Malkmus may be familiar faces and voices to the alterna-rock cognoscenti, but this week they offered something completely different, appearing in unaccustomed formats and playing previously unheard music at the Long Beach Museum of Art.

Moonlighting from his band, Pavement, one of the leading fixtures of ‘90s indie rock, Malkmus gave his first solo performance since he was a novice songwriter playing at open-mike nights. Bozulich and guitarist Nels Cline are two glued-together pieces of the shattered Geraldine Fibbers, the acclaimed Los Angeles band that went on indefinite leave after losing its record deal early this year.

Billed as Scarnella (an anagram of their first names), the duo on Wednesday night played challenging, off-center material from a forthcoming debut album, ranging from songs for a sad cabaret to a final, cathartic, double-guitar feedback onslaught.

Personality was the only familiar touchstone for fans of Pavement or the Geraldine Fibbers. But that was little help to many in the crowd. A good part of the house were of regulars of the weekly series not versed in the ways of experimental rock duos and off-kilter, ironist wise-guy indie-rock auteurs. Many of the picnickers chattered through Malkmus and fled during Scarnella.

Indie-rock was a departure for this well-programmed series, which usually focuses on world music or roots-rock and progressive country acts, such as next Wednesday’s bill of Dave Alvin and Chris Gaffney.

Neutral listeners who could get past Scarnella’s drones and abrasive, noise-rock may well have been drawn in. Bozulich aimed her husky, wounded alto with the dramatic acuity and transfixing intensity of a fine actress; this was a welcome chance to hear her in quieter, less cluttered arrangements than Geraldine Fibbers sets typically allowed.

She grimaced at the outset when informed that the outdoor stage had fixed lighting that would keep her under a white glare. But mood lighting wasn’t needed to bring alive her somber musings on mortality and deep hurt.

Sonic Youth-like guitar drones, and occasional bursts of static and noise from Bozulich’s sampling keyboard, steered Scarnella even further off-center than the stylistically free-ranging Fibbers. But with Bozulich mainly playing bass and Cline sometimes stomping a beat on bass drum, Scarnella generated rock momentum with minimalist means.

“The Most Useless Thing,” a world-weary tango that called to mind Tom Waits under the influence of Kurt Weill, had its wry moments: “You’re never alone when you’re by yourself/You simply join the ranks of/The ones whose ship has sank club.” On another number, Cline played a reverberating, endlessly circling riff that was a poignant litany, a hopeless prayer. On the saloon ballad “I Thought About You,” Bozulich crouched against a stage monitor singing about unbridgeable distances between people; she had dedicated the number to her mother, who was in the audience.

The memorable clincher was “Millennium Fever Ballad,” an echo of traditional folk strains as Bozulich sang about time growing desperately short--and how that can be a prod to emotional openness and honesty. The concluding, long, feedback freakout was instructive and even a little entertaining. At one point, Cline crouched over his guitar hollering into it through a bullhorn-like device, giving the instrument a human-sounding howl. The two guitarists resembled kids playing soldier, with lots of amplifier wattage at their disposal instead of imaginary munitions.

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Malkmus’ set fit the imprint he has made in Pavement: a mixture of careless performance, underdeveloped technique, puzzling lyrics and very dry humor thrown up as a bulwark against his own amateurism. Nevertheless, his talent as a song crafter and his intermittent emotional focus made it worth bearing with him through some of the most sloppy, noodling and just plain awful passages that are apt to be offered up on a high-profile stage.

Attempting solo-acoustic guitar bits proved a bad idea; Malkmus might as well have been back at an open mike, given his halting paces along the fret board. But with the help of some taped, rudimentary rhythm tracks, he managed to rock while framing some of his characteristically appealing pop hooks.

“Care Rope” called to mind the jauntiness of John Sebastian but undercut the music’s cheerfulness with lyrics that seemed to drive at how sellers and pitchmen inflame and exploit the public’s yen for a thrill.

One of Pavement’s trademarks has been its casual put-downs of other pop figures. Malkmus upheld that tradition by questioning Gillian Welch’s credibility as a comfortably raised Southern Californian singing in an old Appalachian style.

It was a lead-in to a song built out of chunky beats and guitars, and a defiant yelp, “I don’t care”--borrowed from a Creedence Clearwater Revival oldie “Porterville.” With its lively, swampy beat and petulant lines and images--such as “Get up punk, it’s flag day--salute me” and “The melanoma neighbors in their cardboard graves”--it paralleled the enthusiasm and irony of Beck’s “Loser.”

The opening act on a bill hand-picked by Bozulich was Hot Tinkle, a marimba and glockenspiel duo whose plinking and trills often suggested the furtive movements of cartoon cats and mice.

Members Joseph Berardi (former drummer in Stan Ridgway’s band) and Rincy Samucake didn’t go in for showy flourishes that might have given the performance an extra dimension, but they did display a sense of humor for one crowd-pleasing number by covering the marimba with tinfoil, lending a high-hat cymbals and drum rim effect to their percussive tapping.