Rock Picks: Lucy Lawless, The Dagons, Big Daddy Kane and more

Grace Potter & the Nocturnals, Brandi Shearer at the Troubadour

Onstage, Grace Potter is a refreshingly down-to-earth singer who rips it up on her Flying V guitar when she's not pumping out warm sheets of sound from a Hammond B-3 organ. She and her Nocturnals trade in a retro, crowd-pleasing style of R&B-spiked classic rock that's roughly akin to Bonnie Raitt. "Here's to the Meantime," the best song on the Vermont group's major-label debut, This Is Somewhere, swaggers with molten Southern-rock riffs while Scott Tournet churns up some nicely woozy Stones-y slide guitar. Elsewhere, Potter relies too heavily on cliched phrases like "fading fast" and "finding the edge of the world," and you wish that she dug a little deeper on such hooky but lyrically facile tunes as "Mr. Columbus" and "Mastermind" (where she pledges her unquestioning obedience to some industry Svengali — hardly a radical riot-grrl sentiment). Brandi Shearer rocks occasionally with Motels-style songs like "Yes, Yes, Yes" on her Amoeba Records debut, Close to Dark, but she specializes in languid balladry such as the slinky, noirish jangle "You're Mine" and the charming folk tune "That's How You'll Know." Shearer gets a bit corny on "Oh, Singer," an ode to a mythically nostalgic America where everyone rides the rails and loves to pick cotton. Potter at Amoeba Music, Sat., 3 p.m. (Falling James)

Heavy D: Big daddy, big cigar

Magic-carpet riders Drug Rug

Hasain Rasheed

On their own island: Von Iva

Morning has broken: Mary Gauthier.

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More About

• Mirah (Musician)
• Lucy Lawless
• Jessie Evans
• Old School Hip-Hop
• Hip-Hop and Rap

Also playing Tuesday:

SHELBY LYNNE at Amoeba Music, 7 p.m.; HONEYHONEY at the Hotel Cafe; JILL SOBULE, TOM BROSSEAU at Largo; VIRGINIA CITY REVIVAL, PUSSYCOW at Safari Sam's; UPSILON ACRUX, POLAR GOLDIE CATS at the Smell.

 WEDNESDAY, JAN. 30

Mr. Lif & the Perceptionists at the Knitting Factory

If Yo! MTV Raps was filmed on location at Project Blowed (Leimert Park's weekly cipher), Mr. Lif would make the perfect host or, rather, MC. Though the young verbologist (he makes up words too) born Jeffrey Haynes is from Boston, there's something in him that recalls the rap renaissances in New York and L.A. — from the revolution-inspiring P.E. and KRS-One to the word-pondering/play of the Freestyle Fellowship. And with his Def Jux supergroup the Perceptionists — including the never-stuttering Akrobatik, also on vocals, and their friend Fakts One on the ones & twos — he's got the perfect partners to pass around all sorts of proverbial hot potatoes. Their 2005 full-length, Black Dialogue, was more of a tongue-lashing of our president, but it wasn't without its fun as "Let's Move" somehow made it to all the video games. (Daniel Siwek)

Von Iva, Jessie Evans at Silverlake Lounge

Hasain Rasheed

On their own island: Von Iva (Click to enlarge)

Morning has broken: Mary Gauthier. (Click to enlarge)

It's always a neat thrill when San Francisco's Von Iva bring their soul train to town. This fashion-forward trio of X-chromosomes somehow manage to set every dance floor on fire and let loose that pent-up inner shimmy. It's no wonder, once the music starts, there's a primal urge to grind with anybody in arm's reach. Or, at the very least, to want to lick singer Jillian Iva's legs. Their latest release, Our Own Island, is a treasure trove of stripped-down, luscious booty waiting to be, er, plundered. The music's a saucy little affair somewhere between Tina Turner and Tubeway Army with Giorgio Moroder in the middle. Also on tap is ex-Vanishing's Jessie Evans, who, along with Iggy Pop drummer Toby Dammit, mambos into town via Berlin bringing their sax-otic musical oddity in for a soft landing. Evans also at the Bordello, Thurs. (Kat Jetson)

Also playing Wednesday:

THE MARS VOLTA at U.C. Irvine's Bren Events Center; THE CHAPIN SISTERS at the Bordello; THE SECTION QUARTET at the Echo; MONTE NEGRO, CECI BASTIDA at Knitting Factory; DAVID GARZA at Largo; LEON RUSSELL at Malibu Inn; VONDA SHEPARD, CYDNEY ROBINSON at the Roxy.

THURSDAY, JAN. 31 

Mary Gauthier, Mark Olson at the Troubadour

Louisiana singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier, her growing legion of fans will tell you, doesn't just turn folk and country music upside down, she gives it a swift kick in the rump. Her deliberately rough-hewn tales of ruined lives on the skids wipe off the glossy sentimentality to which those genres' storytellers are often prone, harkening back to the starkly sorrowful tales of Johnny Cash or of Bob Dylan in his remotest bouts of gloom. Gauthier's recent Daylight and Dark album on Lost Highway is a ponderous, weighty thing that requires some real listener commitment, made much easier by the strangely uplifting effect of its artful melancholy. The album was produced by sound artist/roots-music visionary Joe Henry (whose own recent album, Civilians, vies with Daylight as the Americana album of 2007). Henry, along with guests Van Dyke Parks and Loudon Wainwright III, gives Gauthier's amazingly authoritative voice ample room to reverberate through the skull and right down to the heart. With former Jayhawks singer Mark Olson. (John Payne)

Also playing Thursday:

JESSIE EVANS, DAME DARCY at the Bordello; DENGUE FEVER at the Echoplex (see Music feature); THE BOWMANS at the Hotel Cafe; BLACK DAHLIA MURDER, 3 INCHES OF BLOOD at the Key Club; ENTRANCE, LANGHORNE SLIM, RUMSPRINGA at Knitting Factory; WATKINS FAMILY HOUR at Largo; AIRBORNE TOXIC EVENT, DEADLY SYNDROME, CASTLEDOOR at Spaceland.