Rock Picks

DJ Quik at House of Blues

DJ Quik might be originally from Compton, but the spirit of the dude’s higher-level music productions reminds you more of the badlands of South Dakota than the streets of the Hub City. If you really listen to Quik’s music, I mean really break it down and go beyond the explicit lyrics, especially on his latest album, Trauma, it’s like listening to Lakota drumming. They both have strong heartbeats and are healing music. You think there’s no connection? Before my good friend Lakota chief Phil Crazy Bull died recently, it wasn’t traditional music he was bumpin’, but jams like “Tonite” and “Pitch in Ona Party” off the Best of DJ Quik CD I bought him. Don’t miss the spiritual warrior dance at the H.O.B. as DJ Quik, with a 14-piece band, performs all his classic hits for an upcoming live album. (Ben Quiñones)

Saturday

Seether, Flyleaf, Shinedown, Halestorm at Avalon

The atrociously named Winterfresh SnoCore Tour proves how unwilling the hard-rock mainstream is to let go of the mid-to-late-’90s. Carrying on in the hook-driven anthemic-chorus mold of your Nickelbacks and Creeds, the South African band Seether’s grizzled guitar chug on Karma and Effectnever lets up even when singer Shaun Morgan (duet partner and boyfriend of Evanescence’s Amy Lee) is in ballad mode. Flyleaf take a similarly harsh/empathic tack in what waiflike front woman Lacey Mosely terms “heavy positivism,” ripping you a new one even when she’s at her most vulnerable. Armed with enough confessional lyrics to choke emo nation while brandishing the odd softheaded message and keeping the pit churning, tonight’s crop might be dubbed self-actualization metal. So don’t act out, get some fist-pumping therapy. With Shinedown and Halestorm. 1735 N. Vine St., Hlywd. (213) 480-3232. (Andrew Lentz)

Coldplay, Fiona Appleat the Forum

Stop the press: Coldplay have been nominated for three Grammys! They’ve sold more than 10 million records, singer Chris Martin is married to Gwyneth Paltrow, and they’re having another baby! But that’s cool. The band’s latest album, X&Y, seems a conscious attempt to put all the glitz of their megastardom in perspective. A gently adventurous sound now touched by inoffensive electronics graces the British band’s simple piano/bass/drums luv songs, which is what this band has humbly offered from the start in unrevolutionary but not unprovocative ways. Fiona Apple, however, is far more intriguing from a comfort-threat angle, a temperamental, deep-thinking young diva prone to startling musical and lyrical revelations. She’s kicking and screaming as she leaves an old life behind on her latest, Extraordinary Machine, a brilliantly bizarre beast that drags her traumatic saloon songs through a minefield of intense, orchestrated hip-hoppy piano-pumping. Manchester Blvd. & Prairie Ave., Inglewood. And at Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim, Mon.-Tues. (213) 480-3232. (John Payne)

Sunday

Bonnie Raittat House of Blues

Last year’s Souls Alike is the first album in Bonnie Raitt’s long (but not bloated) discography that the singer-guitarist has produced herself. This is probably good for Raitt’s pocketbook, but it’s hard to think of an artist for whom it would mean less in terms of the music: As always, Raitt turns in a handsome, slyly sensual set of carefully selected pop-blues nuggets, alternating naturally between good- (or often bad-) times rave-ups and juicy slow-jam ballads. Raitt’s thing is her singing and playing, a focus she resists diluting with newfangled studio science. Watching her tonight, you should expect to be reminded of that. This show is part of Visa’s pre-Grammy “Signature Sounds” series. (Mikael Wood)


Monday

Listing Ship at the Echo

With such delicate acoustic-based tunes as “Destroying France” and “Ichabod Crane,” Listing Ship’s second album, 2005’s Time to Dream (True Classical), is a touch more pastoral and traditionally folkie than the band’s debut, Dance Class Revolution. That’s not to say that the artfully eclectic group don’t have their rocking moments: “Crooked Teeth” stomps with Velvet Underground stutter-strumming and an exotic, viola-laced buildup, while “Sleep of the Beloved” layers somber, trancelike vocals over a hazily electric Pink Floydian sprawl that evokes the first CD’s shimmering title track. When singer-guitarist Lyman Chaffee intones the old-timey “Death” or partner Heather Lockie (Eels, W.A.C.O.) gently coos the candy-cane-striped shuffle “The Temptation of Miss Piggy,” it’s possible to see how Listing Ship’s quieter interludes might appeal to fans of Keren Ann and the Cocteau Twins. With bass contributions from guest star Mike Watt (the Minutemen), Time to Dream slowly unwinds as a subtly intoxicating spell of enchantment. Also at Cole’s, Fri. (Falling James)

Fall Out Boy at House of Blues

From Under the Cork Tree, the breakthrough album by suburban-Chicago emo rockers Fall Out Boy, was right up there near the top of the list of 2005’s guiltiest pleasures. Not because the band play big, bright pop songs with hooks that sound best blaring out of the radio; if that makes you feel guilty in this fucked-up world of ours, you’ve got bigger problems than your taste in music. Rather, it’s because FOB use those big, bright pop songs to seduce junior-high boys and girls into believing the absolute worst about one another; the intimations of casual cruelty that run beneath the chugging guitars throughout Cork Tree are no kind of lesson for anyone. That said, killer tunes, guys! (Mikael Wood)