Stanfordians come in three ages: students, sketchy grad students and professors. Until we re-enter the real world for vacations and trips into SF, we almost forget about the younger crowd, confined to high schools by day, swarming concert houses by night.

 

Such was the case last Wednesday night, when Slim’s was doused with teeny-bopping jailbait and Bieber-coiffed riffraff at Angus Stone’s San Francisco stop. The Aussie singer-songwriter and one half of Angus and Julia Stone found himself amid a sea of chilled-out hipsters and starry-eyed youngsters, swaying softly to his rubbery voice and saccharine lyrics. But we were thankful for the youth, if only because their infatuation with Stone inspired élan in an otherwise zestless crowd.

 

Cooing titles off his debut solo album, “Broken Brights,” Stone’s mouth dribbled such mellifluous nothings, one might expect a cartoon robin to fly right out and gift pearls to the crowd, who were so bewitched by the dulcet sounds from the stage they might have been petrified. On a stage lined with about a dozen guitars in different shapes and degrees, a second singer sounded of Bob Dylan, while a leftward guitarist feigned Bryan Callen in a Janis Joplin wig. The setting was sublime.

 

Above the Mission crowd, the ragged-looking singer met the expectations of a modest but satisfied following. After returning for his encore, Stone closed with a track a little funky, a tad groovy and not too far from the tunes one would imagine jamming to in the days when the Mission made a name for itself.

 

The perfect soundtrack for gloomy Caltrain rides, “Broken Brights” will get some play in hushed library rooms as we wave goodbye to summer and lament our younger years.