What would you do?

One way to make people aware of your new CD is to go to where people buy them and give them a free sample. Last Saturday night, Deathray wasn’t giving away its new five-song EP, White Sleeves (Doppler Records), but the foursome did put on a spiffy performance that clocked in at just under an hour at Pug’z, an “indie” record store, actually owned by Tower Records, on Folsom Boulevard in East Sacramento.

The 7:30 start made the event more family-friendly than the usual, much-later nightclub gigs. And there were several very small children in the audience of about 100—including singer Dana Gumbiner’s toddler son Jack, a charming little fellow and budding musician who got in some impromptu microphone time midway through the set.

As the event was a record-release party, the first part of the set featured songs from the new EP. The band was somewhat hidden from the crowd behind a proscenium arch on the back wall, which was festooned with silver and gold CDs and a hanging American flag. The audience clotted in the back around the CD racks that run the length of the store; the sight lines offered were not optimal. But, hey—it’s a record store, not Old Ironsides.

You could hear just fine, though. While Todd Roper’s drums and Victor Damiani’s bass provided a solid foundation for Gumbiner’s Beatlesque vocals and occasional strums on his Rickenbacker 360, it was Greg Brown’s guitar—the same weathered Guild electric he’s been playing for years—that really cut through the atmosphere. Brown’s fills and leads bent, snarled and ricocheted around the room, taking on a life of their own. When Brown would launch into an extended solo, like he did on his own song “White Sleeves,” it was like hearing some English beat group fresh back from Rishikesh with a head full of Maharishi.

The other numbers sounded swell, too. Brown and Gumbiner both have developed into accomplished smart-pop tunesmiths. The former’s “White Sleeves” and “Not the Same” and the latter’s “Make and Do,” “Let’s Be Friends” and the superb “Making Sure It’s Canada,” all from the new EP, came off like the product of some elegant cross between the Cars and XTC. And give the band credit for reinventing tunes from the self-titled CD it recorded for Capricorn three years ago—“Baby Polygon,” “Only Lies” and “10:15,” slowing them down and turning them inside out, rendering them trippy in the process.

A fine show. My only two complaints? Deathray never performs Gumbiner’s gem “What Would You Do” anymore, and his stellar ballad “Please Be What I Need,” which the band did perform, isn’t on the new record. Otherwise, tops.