By playing just the first few songs from their opening set at Washington's Black Cat, Mazzy Star pulled off yet another trademark hypnotic feat: complete crowd sedation. Starting with somnambulant stares and coming damn close to full body paralysis, the audience was rapidly transformed into a lobotomized cross section of Capital youth.

The drug of choice, of course, was Hope Sandoval, whose overwhelming schoolgirl beauty and lush, lilting vocals lulled her captors -- both men and women -- into pleasant submission with the very first number, "Among My Swan"'s hauntingly sorrowful "Disappear." But even zombies like a little variation now and then, and with the exception of an oh-so-gentle sway triggered by David Roback's trippy-country guitar, the crowd was given no reason to do anything more than gawk wide-eyed until the performers -- plagued throughout by a piss-poor, squawking sound system -- called it quits after a mere hour onstage.

Backed by a three-piece band, Sandoval and Goback delivered their strongest performances early on, churning out in succession, "She Hangs Brightly"'s spirited "Ride It On," "Swan"'s "Flowers in December" (featuring Sandoval's more-than-adequate turn on harmonica), and "Brightly"'s "Halah," which the diminutive chanteuse, dressed in a black crochet top that offered plenty of navel gazing, delivered with sweeping melancholy.

Motionless underneath a mystical crystal chandelier, Sandoval, left hand on hip, right hand hanging limp at her side, worked almost every song with the same disinterested pose and pouty frown. Though she needed no help capturing everyone's attention, white strobe often backlit her tiny frame, and green, red, and blue stage lights would periodically fade in and out on her face.

The relationship between the singer and the skilled guitarist (whose impressive resume lists being the founder of paisley underground bands Opal and the Rain Parade) has fused to symbiotic and equal over the years, yet tonight Roback stayed hidden in the shadows, obscured by darkness and leaving Sandoval virtually alone.

The only evidence of any honest emotion occurred during a song break, when some out-of-place barbarian in the crowd grunted hostile indecipherables at the fragile singer. Roback, in an apparent act of near-brotherly love, nonchalantly tossed splashes of bottled water in the general direction of the shouts. The guy shut up, Roback went back to his guitar, and so concluded the high-adventureportion of the evening.

After an all-too-brief second set that closed with "Brightly"'s driving, drum-heavy "Ghost Highway" -- and without satisfying several cries for big hit "Fade Into You" -- the band left the stage for good as quietly as they started. Surprisingly, there was very little exit applause. For many people