Rock Picks: Supersuckers, Bloc Party, Melvins

THURSDAY, Dec. 27

Are you ready for some Hank III? (Photo by Mike Boles)

Not just your everyday ordinary Suckers... (PHOTO BY STEPHANIE NEAL)

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More About

• David Cotner
• Hank Williams III
• Kevin Shields
• Hip-Hop and Rap
• Knitting

Are you ready for some Hank III? (Photo by Mike Boles)
(Click to enlarge)

Not just your everyday ordinary Suckers... (PHOTO BY STEPHANIE NEAL)
(Click to enlarge)

Jake Shimabukuro rocks his mighty uke.
(Click to enlarge)

Reverend Horton Heat, Hank III, Nashville Pussy at the Wiltern

As every holiday-music expert knows, nothing says the day after the day after Christmas like a triple bill of redneck cowpunk. Reverend Horton Heat mastermind Jim Heath has an album coming out in January by his new side project, Reverend Organdrum, on which he tries his capable hand at old-school Hammond B-3–based soul-funk. Don’t be surprised if he throws in a tune or two from it tonight, but expect him to spend the majority of his set concentrating on his signature rockabilly rave-ups (request“Bales of Cocaine”), as well as stuff from We Three Kings, his spirited 2005 Yuletide set. Backstage at the Gibson before a tribute to Hank Williams Jr. a few weeks back, Shooter Jennings told me that Hank Jr.’s son Hank III probably wouldn’t be caught dead at a fete for his father. Sad, but true? Nashville Pussy are actually from Atlanta, which isn’t to say the handle’s inaccurate. (Mikael Wood)

Build an Ark at Temple Bar

The many different genres and subgenres that arrive during any given period of time — whether it be punk, fusion, drum & bass or bebop — tend to run their course and then vanish, to be sorted out later. L.A.-based Build an Ark exists outside this rat race of hits and misses, flavors and varietals, and the proof is Dawn, the 28-piece collective’s 2007 full-length. Moving from gentle piano compositions that recall the underrated South African pianist Abdullah Ibrahim to the percussive expansiveness of Alice Coltrane’s mind-blowing free-jazz work, Build an Ark’s 10 compositions unroll like silken rugs, and, as the whole reveals itself in all its colorful glory, little patterns start to emerge, be it Joshua Spiegelman’s luxurious flute, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson’s viola, Dwight Trible’s vocals or Carlos Niño’s unobtrusive production. If you’d like to experience true spirit this season, Build an Ark will provide it. (Randall Roberts)

Kevin Shields at the Smell

Not the My Bloody Valentine guitarist — although with the prospect of a new MBV album, a name change may be in order — Kevin Shields tonight kicks off the Smell’s 10th-anniversary series, which stretches into January. Not a stretch: to say that Kevin Shields, a.k.a. Eva Aguila, is quite simply one of the most polymorphously creative women working in the Los Angeles music scene today. Not only does she tirelessly uphold the fine spazzy DIY standards of the Deathbomb Arc aesthetic on her latest CD,Death of Patience, she also knits and crochets CD and cassette cases for her label, Hate State. Her instrument is a table festooned with effects processors creating a hail of noise blossoming forth like the scent of new sex in the shower, mingling with the miasma of melody that splits the noise perplexingly in half and elevates the experience to another plane entirely. Also: Argumentix, Budweiser Sprite, I.E., Kyle H. Mabson, Teenage Zsa Zsa, Toxic Loincloth. (David Cotner)

Also playing Thursday:

CHRIS VALENTI, BRIAN TRAVIS BAND, THE DIRGES at Mollly Malone’s.

FRIDAY, Dec. 28

The Electric Prunes at the Knitting Factory

In the shimmering realm of mid-’60s psychedelic-garage rock, few songs have assumed such gravitas — or stood the test of the time — better than the Electric Prunes’ “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night).” With that song’s mixture of haunted imagery, taut musical dynamism and more hallucinogenic atmosphere than you could drop onto a jumbo-size sugar cube, the Prunes won an underworld immortality; while the band’s promise was ultimately squandered (on a couple of weirdly opaque Capitol albums that they hardly played on), their prowess was stunning — get an earful of the superlative Live in Stockholm ’67 set. And this here, kiddies, is the genuine article Electric Prunes, not some gaggle of creeps with the original bassist, but the entire classic-at-their-prime lineup, still bending heads with a perfectly executed bandstand purity that is far more rebel celebration than nostalgia-hobbled re-creation. Don’t miss it. (Jonny Whiteside)

SATURDAY, Dec. 29

Bavab Bavab, +dog+, Hop-Frog Kollectiv at Il Corral

It’s the final show at Il Corral, a place that has for three tumultuous years presented some of the most aggressively interesting — and occasionally just plain aggressive — new music in 21st century Los Angeles. Since January of 2005, all manner of noise has sandblasted the performance space, not to mention the rowdy neighbors, area muggings, assaults by key Satanists and the sweaty limitations of a confined venue. It’ll reincarnate in 2008, moving to a new space, Zero-Point, in SoDo (South Downtown). So enjoy the shrieking cacophonous bilge of +dog+; the minimalist noise pop of Bavab Bavab (the duo of Il Corral proprietress Christie Scott and Il Corral soundman Stane Hubert); and the mystical rhythms of postmodern primitives Hop-Frog Kollectiv. They wave goodbye as if in reply to Col. Troutman’s “It’s over, Johnny!” by channeling the spirit of John Rambo: “Nothing is over!” (David Cotner)