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While many UCLA students were partying to blow off post-midterm steam last Thursday night, two musicians were representing the lyrically driven anything-goes style of New York’s anti-folk scene at The Avalon in Hollywood.

Jack Dishel, former guitarist for the now defunct anti-folk anti-heroes The Moldy Peaches, displayed his serious side and his ability to sing and write songs with his new group, Only Son.

While The Moldy Peaches sang about crack, crazy burgers and greyhound buses, Only Son focuses on more conventional themes such as love and lethargy in a fashion similar to alternative rock artists such as The Unicorns and Beck.

Nonetheless, Dishel maintained the irreverent sense of humor of The Moldy Peaches in his on-stage banter. During his introduction for the mellow “My Museum,” Dishel pledged that the upcoming song was so brutal that “your mama’s not gonna recognize you,” but quickly admitted that the song “is (actually) not that heavy.” In tune with the audience’s waning reactions, Dishel demanded louder applause to console him over the death of his dog, but quickly reprimanded the audience for supporting “dog murder.”

Coming straight from a “Jimmy Kimmel Live” recording, Regina Spektor, who fled the Soviet Union at age 9 for New York because of growing anti-Semitism, said that we “live really fast (in Los Angeles).” In an attempt to keep up, she played about 20 songs from her four releases, including her latest album, “Begin to Hope.”

Spektor’s first eight songs showcased her multi-tasking abilities for filling in the missing sounds of a full band. During “Poor Little Rich Boy,” Spektor violently drummed on a wooden chair with her right hand, played the piano with her left hand, and sang ferociously into the microphone – a feat comparable to rubbing one’s head and stomach simultaneously, only better.

In a flowing navy blue dress and her “beautiful, but difficult, TV curls,” Spektor’s looks complemented her stunning and innocent demeanor. As the “marry me Regina!”s reached a heightening crescendo, a shyly smiling Spektor commented that she did not think she had “even gotten this many cat calls in bars.”

Even when Spektor’s three-piece band joined her on stage, her personal quirks – hiccupping, breaking up syllables, silly lyrics and the occasional airplane noise – marked the songs as uniquely hers. Instead of alienating the audience, Spektor’s eccentricities provoked crowd participation and amusement. While the audience sang along to the morally uplifting lyrics in “The Ghost of Corporate Future,” it took the most pleasure in joining her on playful lines such as “He steps right into somebody’s fat loogie / And everyone who sees him says, ‘Ew.’”

While many of Spektor’s songs are intensely soulful or punk-inspired, she decided to end her encore with the dance-inducing “Hotel Song,” in a successful attempt to decelerate the quarter-system pace of our Los Angeles lives.