Every band associated with the Elephant 6 collective in the ’90s refracted ’60s psychedelia through different lenses. For the Olivia Tremor Control, Smile and Sgt. Pepper were the touchstones. Their mission: to find out how many disorienting looped-tape collages they could fit into a lo-fi pop set without sacrificing their angelic vocal harmonies and sweet-tooth hooks. By the time OTC disbanded, in 2000, they had only two full-lengths and a mess of EPs and singles to their name. And with Elephant 6 disintegrating, out-of-print legendhood seemed to suit a band whose songs were soundtracks to half-finished narratives and fleeting dreamscapes. Still, when a NYC reunion show was scheduled for August 3 — OTC’s first US appearances in six years, not counting a couple of gigs in Athens, the adopted home town of OTC leaders Will Cullen Hart and Bill Doss — tickets moved so quickly that they had to add a second.

Playing to a sold-out Bowery Ballroom last Wednesday for nearly two hours, OTC navigated their way through most of both of those two proper albums (1996’s Music from the Unrealized Film Script Dusk at Cubist Castle and 1998’s Black Foliage: Animation Music, both on the defunct Flydaddy label), including the kaleidoscopic, 20-minute "Green Typewriters" suite. Re-creating chaotic experimental interludes as deftly as the haywire pop orchestrations that characterized their studio sound, the band swapped instruments mid song, took obscure audience requests, and marched through the crowd shaking large sticks adorned with jingle bells during the celebratory "Grass Cannons." A surprise appearance by a nerve-racked Jeff Mangum, the notoriously reclusive leader of Neutral Milk Hotel, was a mid-show highlight. After shouting a couple of choruses, even Mangum seemed ready to help OTC spearhead an Elephant 6 revival.