Rock Picks: The Kooks, Super Furry Animals, Willie Nelson and more

Super Furry Animals, Holy Fuck at the Echoplex

Once more we have Welsh wizards Super Furry Animals coming 'round with a new album of multicolored rock/pop head-scratchers that in essence make all other music sound needlessly harsh and tedious. Hey Venus! (Rough Trade) is their eighth record, again replete with their odd blend of muscularly sunshine-y pop and, uh, kind of Welsh Motown sounds, occasionally electronicized toward the dance end and splicing all manner of pop mood and mannerism together in head-tiltingly unpredictable ways. While Hey Venus! slightly reins in the band's meanderings into musical madness, in its cunningly cheerful fashion it is every bit as advanced and progressive as, say, Radiohead, and with a far higher standard of inventive harmony and melody to boot. And dig the swooping, life-affirming string arrangements by Sean O'Hagan of High Llamas, which pick these warped Welsh-pop wonders up and hurl them toward the sky. Holy Fuck open with their aggressive take on a futuristic dance noise. (John Payne)

Wild Don Lewis

Damion Romero tries to defuse the bomb.

Eva Vermandel

Song whistler Alela Diane

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More About

• Evenings McCabe
• Jennifer O'Connor
• George Clinton
• Aretha Franklin
• Nokia Theatre

Also playing Friday:

Eva Vermandel

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Song whistler Alela Diane

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Forever and a day: Willie Nelson

William Landers

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Dead Moon rising: Pierced Arrows' Fred Cole

BOYS II MEN at the Canyon; WYCLEF JEAN, LYFE JENNINGS at House of Blues; NELLIE McKAY at Largo (see Music feature); PETER CASE, JIM LAUDERDALE, DOYLE BRAMHALL at the Mint; COLIN GILMORE at Pig 'N Whistle; THE STUDIOFIX at the Scene; RUMSPRINGA, BAD DUDES at the Smell; OLLIN at the Barn Burner, Pasadena.

SATURDAY, FEB. 9

Zbigniew Karkowski, Damion Romero, Daniel Menche at Beyond Baroque

Beyond music returns to Beyond Baroque with a night of noise that will sodomize your ears like a 12-inch dildo attached to a stunt kite. Polish composer and feedback sculptor "Biggie" (word!) Karkowski worked the fringes of the '80s avant community in Sweden, is at UC Santa Barbara on a residency, and tonight collaborates with bass-frequency merchant Damion Romero, celebrating the release of their 9 Before 9 CD (Blossoming Noise). You might remember Romero from such bands as Slug and Telium Group, but recently he's been working as Speculum Fight and with Japanese noise outfit Astro (ex-C.C.C.C.) to form Astromero. Daniel Menche, Portland noise artist, has for the past 15 years explored the swallowing of contact microphones, battering his body to see what comes out on tape and, lately, "organ and trumpet destruction," as heard on his Bleeding Heavens CD on Blossoming Noise. Also: Joe & Joe, Ulrich Krieger, Monsturo. 681 Venice Blvd.; 7:30 p.m. (310) 822-3006. (David Cotner)

Editors, Hot Hot Heat, Louis XIV at the Wiltern

This unusually consistent bill gathers a trio of bands more admirable for execution than originality, but they're darn good listens nonetheless. Editors are the Brit Interpol, and that's no slight on either act. Each simultaneously tore Joy Division apart then reconstructed their only-way-out, numbingly claustrophobic post-punk with a cinematic, radio-ready sense of scale. Editors' sophomore effort, last year's Every End Has a Start, initially appeared to be that critic's fave: an inadvertent self-caricature of their previous release (in this case 2006's Back Room). Not so. It's simply a more sedated, less hi-hatty take on the same: evocative, mood-changing ditties dependant on Tom Smith's late-night, borderline-gothic pleading/preaching and his bandmates' lean dynamics. Hot Hot Heat's energy and XTC pop has proved surprisingly durable, but they've yet to upstage '03's breakthrough single "Bandages." With all the fuss (around here anyway) about San Diego's Louis XIV a couple of years back, you'd have thought they'd be headlining the Wiltern by now. Their primally saucy yet consciously crafted material might still take 'em there. (Paul Rogers)

Also playing Saturday:

PERCY SLEDGE, ROSE ROYCE, JOHNNY FARINA at L.A. Sports Arena; BUCK, KEPI GHOULIE at Alex's Bar; BASTARD SONS OF JOHNNY CASH at Cozy's Bar & Grill; T-PAIN at House of Blues; BEAT JUNKIES at Knitting Factory; STAN RIDGWAY at McCabe's; THE DAZES, CHUPACOBRA, CHOPSTICKS, BLACK WIDOWS at Mr. T's Bowl; MANIC HISPANIC, DEATH BY STEREO at Safari Sam's.

SUNDAY, FEB. 10

Michael Hurley, Matteah Baim, Alela Diane at McCabe's

Another installment of Arthur mag's "Sunday Evenings at McCabe's" series finds three somewhat like-minded exponents of a darker and far rougher American folk tradition that has generally been swept under the rug. In the cartoon accompanying his recent album Ancestral Swamp (Gnomonsong), veteran singer/guitarist/banjo player (and cartoonist) Michael Hurley says, "There never was a mutant who didn't long for the open road. I guess it sorta relaxes me." What'd he mean by that? See the feature story on Hurley in the music section. Former Metallic Falcons singer-songwriter Matteah Baim performs material from her eloquently melancholy Death of the Sun record and other choice selections. You might've heard her singing on Devendra Banhart's Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon album; she is an extraordinarily expressive singer and electric guitar player. Nevada City-born singer-songwriter Alela Diane offers brutally unadorned heart songs that conjure the parched, empty (or terrifying full) vistas of her birthplace. (John Payne)

George Clinton & P-Funk at the Vault 350

With his ceaseless SRO road work, signature extraterrestrial outfits, freak-tone dreadlocks and that luxuriously fractured manner of speech, it's hard to believe that funk overlord George Clinton is pushing 70, yet there's clearly no stopping the unhinged old geezer. Tirelessly serving as visionary musical director (or, perhaps more accurately, ringmaster) of the 20-piece P-Funk orchestra, the mad rhythm-wrangler has insinuated himself so thoroughly into American music culture that he's become a figure as instantly recognizable as he is unrivaled. Clinton is a crusader, one irreversibly committed to pumping out those distinctively cataclysmic P-Funk grooves, and along the way he's bequeathed unto us an immortal catalog — "One Nation Under a Groove," "Atomic Dog" and, yes, "Maggot Brain." Forget Hillary — this is the Clinton we need as leader of the free world. (Jonny Whiteside)