Rock Picks

Dos, Chuck Dukowski Sextet, Carla Bozulich at Safari Sam’s

SST Records punk circa 1979 rethinks and regrinds. Black Flag bassist Chuck Dukowski has Frankensteined a new version of his sextet featuring exotic femme vox and the woodwinds of Cruel Frederick’s Lynn Johnston, a topnotch improvisational conceiver — you know this won’t be formula. Two bassists who’ve lurked inside each other’s heads for a quarter-century, Mike Watt and Kira Roessler, are Dos to the max. And Carla Bozulich may have arrived on the South Bay scene a little later than the rest, but she’s made equal impact with Ethyl Meatplow, Geraldine Fibbers, her Red Headed Stranger tribute, the Night Porter, etc.; lately she’s been invading realms of noise and vocal abstraction. Arrive fortified. 5214 Sunset Blvd., Hlywd. (323) 666-7267. (Greg Burk)

Mason Jennings, Chad VanGaalen at the Troubadour

Minneapolis-based singer-songwriter Mason Jennings is who Jack Johnson would’ve become if Johnson had grown up a brainy Midwestern lefty instead of spending his college years as a Santa Barbara surf bum. Like Johnson, Jennings plays neatly arranged folk-pop ditties about life and how to live it, a skill that’s earned him a devoted following of relatively amiable fraternity brothers. (Both men also wear tidy, close-cropped haircuts.) Jennings has just become the first artist signed to Glacial Pace, a new Epic Records imprint headed by Modest Mouse front man Isaac Brock; expect an album with drummer Dave King of the Bad Plus this spring. Canadian indie guy VanGaalen is Sub Pop’s latest sensitive post-emo crooner; his stuff is more assertive than Iron & Wine’s, but somewhat less memorable, too. (Mikael Wood)

Sunday

Jeff Tweedy at the Henry Fonda Theater

With Wilco on a brief hiatus, Jeff Tweedy must be feeling restless again. This year he’s revisiting the myriad side projects that often confound fans of his critically slobbered band: another record with his Albert Ayler–meets–Poco trio Loose Fur, another whimsical collaboration with Scott McCaughey’s Minus 5, and another back-porch jam session with alt-rock supergroup Golden Smog. Tweedy’s ever-changing set lists on this brief solo tour have thus far unveiled new tunes like “Is That the Thanks I Get?” and “The Ruling Class” as well as Smog faves, underplayed Wilcoia, Uncle Tupelo chestnuts and a cover of Mott the Hoople’s “Henry and the H Bombs,” a song he’s been doing since Wilco’s first tour in 1995. Tweedy’s band mates open both shows: drummer Glenn Kotche on Sunday night and prodigal-son guitarist Nels Cline on Monday. 6126 Hollywood Blvd., Hlywd. (213) 480-3232. (Matthew Duersten)

Eleni Mandell at Tangier

Eleni Mandell comes in many guises. There’s the noirish underground romantic from such early albums as Thrill and Snakebite, her languorous phrasing accented by her softly decisive acoustic-guitar strokes. Then there’s the warmly inviting down-home cowgirl of Country for True Lovers, contrasted by the late-night jazzbo captured on 2004’s smoke-filled Maybe, Yes EP. The local singer-songwriter reveled in her breezy pop side on Sex, Fashion and Money, the 2005 debut CD by the Grabs, a side project with Blondie’s Nigel Harrison and W.A.C.O.’s Steve Gregoropoulous. Miss Eleni even rocks out on occasion, as with her seductively glammed-up version of Cole Porter’s “I Love Paris,” from Paris Hilton’s notorious burger-chain TV ad. At heart, though, Mandell is an unrepentantly dreamy balladeer with a gift for cinnamon-streaked, horchata-sweet melodies. Expect to meet all of these personas during this monthlong Tangier residency, where she’s backed by a full band. (Falling James)

Tuesday

I See Hawks in L.A. at Safari Sam’s

These freewheeling lords of California psych country approach their music almost as if it were a portal, an unseen threshold that, once crossed, promises a wholly unpredictable experience. Based on an instinctive, atavistic fixation with primal forces and the beauty of nature, the Hawks’ singular style always operates on an epic scale, exploring weird panoramas of hallucinatory metaphor with a sound as much traditional hillbilly as it is accelerated lysergic-rock spontaneity. With high doses of surrealism from the twisted brain trust of maverick songwriters Rob Waller and Paul Lacques and the solid country foundation provided by veteran bassist Paul Marshall and brilliant fiddler-mandolinist Brantley Kearns, any flight taken with the Hawks assures a view to startling new perspectives. Up, up and away. 5214 Sunset Blvd., Hlywd. (323) 666-7267. (Jonny Whiteside)

Dntel, The Long Lost, Becky Stark, Winter Flowers at the Echo

Tonight’s music is designed quite explicitly to make you want to kill yourself and fuck the body. Along with local gloom merchants Dntel, the Long Lost, Becky Stark, Winter Flowers, and black-crack dealers of “depressing discos” Tommy DeNys, Frosty, Nobody and Jimmy Tamborello, you also get free teardrop face painting at Give Up’s “A Violet Valentine.” Ay, La Sad Girl! Started three years ago at the Bigfoot Lounge by Mark “Frosty” McNeill and Tamborello, Give Up salons sprang from McNeill’s and Tamborello’s “frustration [at] deejaying to crowds demanding dance-floor action. Everyone listens to sad music but rarely hears it when they go out. This year, we thought what better day to get sad than Valentine’s Day?” And this is the day you’ll look so sad that the corners of your mouth meet and everyone thinks you’re whistling. (David Cotner)