Rock Picks: Autolux, Rickie Lee Jones, Black Mountain, the Gourds, and more

Dead Meadow at the Echoplex

These days, Washington, D.C.'s Dead Meadow make a kind of lush, langorous, albeit very heavy, brand of psychedelia, having evolved just a tad away from the gargantuan stoner walls of distorted riff and sludge and swirling atmospheric effects of their initial releases. Yet Dead Meadow's newfound melodic splendor and painterly poise still come complete with a taut muscularity that slaps the band's dreamily droll tales of fantasy wide awake. Rather a lifestyle as well as a mere band, Dead Meadow build castles in the air and on the ground as they crisscross the country in their multicolored bus, preaching the word via one consistently excellent catalog of non-brain-damaged head medicine. For the ultimate Dead Meadow experience, get a copy of Feathers, their 2005 CD on Matador. They've got a new one out imminently called Old Growth. (John Payne)

Mat Honan

The Harpeth Trace just found out that their dog died.

The Donnas: Neon angels on the road to ruin

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The Atomic Sherpas, The Cordovas at Mr. T's Bowl

New ideas are so rare today that rock critics are often happy if a musician stumbles accidentally onto a good groove or manages to cobble together a decent lick or two in a set of otherwise forgettable songs. But there's no critical ambivalence regarding tonight's lineup, which boasts some of the hardest, heaviest and most versatile musicians from the local punk, funk and free-jazz scenes. The Atomic Sherpas are awesome mofos who can play anything, from the nimbly dizzy and jazzy horns of "Clockwise" and Vince Meghrouni's mad flute melody of "50 Yds. Sprechenzie Bebop" to the pumpin' roadhouse blues of "You Know It Ain't Right," which is located in the electric-blues universe somewhere between the Sheiks of Shake and vintage Top Jimmy & the Rhythm Pigs. These cats write their own tunes, but they have no problem shifting easily into tight, heavy-funk James Brown workouts. The Sherpas are well matched with the local Meters tribute band the Cordovas, who are led by the bent Saccharine Trust jazz-punk guitarist Joe Baiza and will dish out a similarly spicy gumbo for this Mardi Gras potluck. The Atomic Sherpas also kick out the jams Saturday at Taix. (Falling James)

Black Mountain at the Troubadour

I'm a practical kind of girl. But were Stephen McBean an actual hilltop guru instead of another bearded Canadian hippie with a guitar, I would happily crawl across expanses of brutal terrain on my small hands and weak knees to worship at his dirty feet. The laconic leader of a couple of Vancouver-based rock bands — fume-fueled heavy-toke rockers Black Mountain and its deeply sexified moody blues alter-ego Pink Mountaintops — McBean is a droll deep thinker with a penchant for the super sounds of the Sixties and Seventies. Black Mountain's just-released second full-length, In the Future, is a heady scroll of their patented (and often-reviled) Zep-esque-ness, though unlike their formidable self-titled debut, Future is soberer and several steps removed from their fogged-up stoner zenith of yore. Still, the music manages to evoke a heretofore-unheard proggish psych that skews sensitively and is engagingly human instead of antisocial purple noise, the usual provenance of drug rock. (Kate Carraway)

Also playing Tuesday:

Andy Goodwin

Out of their heads: The Gourds
(Click to enlarge)

JESCA HOOP at the Hotel Café; BLUE CHEER at the Knitting Factory.

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 6

The Donnas at Crash Mansion

We've tried so hard to love the Donnas, but they've never made it easy. Allison Robertson is an absolutely shredding guitarist, and Torry Castellano is an authoritatively solid, underrated drummer. The beguilingly brooding Maya Ford is the quintessential silent-but-deadly rock bassist, while Brett Anderson has a fine voice and exudes a ton of onstage charisma. On paper, the Palo Alto quartet possess a lot of the right influences, taking the giddy pop of Nikki Corvette and the garage-punk of the Bobbyteens and amping them up with a metallic Runaways edge, but they inevitably add up to something less than the sum of their parts. The chief culprit is the songwriting, particularly the cliche-riddled lyrics. The band attempt to maintain a tuff-gal image on their latest album, Bitchin' (on their own label, Purple Feather), but songs like "Smoke You Out,""Like an Animal" and "Wasted" (not the Runaways classic, unfortunately) don't sound all that convincingly rebellious or shocking in this post-riot-grrl era. Unlike, say, Turbonegro, the Donnas don't twist hard-rock stereotypes into something fresh or satirical. As Spinal Tap once warned, "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever." (Falling James)

Also playing Wednesday:

VELVET REVOLVER at the Wiltern; LEON MOBLEY at the Derby; LOS AMIGOS INVISIBLES, SI SE at House of Blues; BEDOUIN SOUNDCLASH, WESTBOUND TRAIN at the Knitting Factory.

THURSDAY, FEB. 7

The Gourds at Safari Sam's

With one foot in the frat house and the other in the barn house, the Gourds have carved out a name for themselves over the past decade with their comic cosmic Americana. Think NRBQ cross-pollinated with the Sir Douglas Quintet. These scruffy Austinites, led by dual front men Jimmy Smith and Kevin "Shinyribs" Russell, have charmed audiences from Bonnaroo to Bumbershoot with such irreverent originals as "I Ate the Haggis" and "Hooky Junk", but they probably are best known for their wonderful hick-hop jam of Snoop Dog's "Gin and Juice". Last year's terrific Noble Creatures, however, shows them nicely polishing up their sound. The opening cut, "How Will You Shine?," for example, boasts soulful horns. While they still deliver their wild, gonzo tales (witness the album closer, "Spivey"), they also dig deeper emotionally on "Steeple Full of Swallows" and "Promenade"— two gorgeous (or maybe "Gourd-geous") ballads that rival the best of the Band. (Michael Berick)