Rock Picks: Dethklok, Billy Bragg, Erykah Badu, Mr. Gnome

MONDAY, JUNE 9

Lipstick traces: The Detroit Cobras

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Playing Monday:

DANITY KANE at the Wiltern; KEVIN SHIELDS at the Echo Curio; AFTERNOONS, WESTERN STATES MOTEL at Spaceland.

TUESDAY, JUNE 10

Tony Joe White at the Key Club

The venerable swamp-rock auteur Tony Joe White — whose songs have been covered by Elvis Presley, Tom Jones, Dusty Springfield, Waylon Jennings and Hank Williams Jr. — roars back into town not only with an impeccable four-decade musical pedigree but also a positively brain-pulping new album. A master of dirty-toned electric-guitar eloquence and off-kilter, ultra-maxi groove mongering, White has consistently explored forbidding musical territory, areas fraught with menace and passion, and he has an abiding insight when it comes to matters of human folly. On the just-released Deep Cuts, the singer-guitarist’s perspective is as resolutely insightful and deeply funk-informed as ever; produced with tastefully apocalyptic doses of severe techno-distortion by his son Jody, it’s a kaleidoscopic mixture of instrumental thrillers and some startling remakes (“Soul Francisco” becomes an ominous, symphonic fuzz and wah-wah workout thrilling in its audacity and execution), all perfectly framing White’s richly muddy, near-subsonic vocals and lowdown, incendiary guitar style. White remains a fabulously individualistic artist, and one who rocks with a vengeful intensity that’s nothing short of wondrous. (Jonny Whiteside)

Billy Bragg at El Rey Theatre

Whenever Billy Bragg pops up in town, it’s like one of those supposedly long-extinct prehistoric fish being dragged from the depths by some unsuspecting fisherman. See, Bragg shouldn’t exist anymore either: He’s a working class, folk-punk protest singer, replete with social conscience, message-before-money ethics, and worthy cause associations (championing parliamentary reform in his native Britain, and he’s a former face of the left-wing musicians’ collective Red Wedge, alongside Paul Weller). He’s been called a “one-man Clash” — a one-man New Model Army might be more like it. Yet here comes the craggy featured, sometime Wilco collaborator again, headlining another theater with his honestly accented busker’s timbre and gently rollicking, proudly organic material — not just political stuff, but romantic and nostalgic expressions too — that still adds a little aggro to trad-folk, Dylanesque and Motown ingredients. Like that crusty old fish, it’s kinda heartening that Bragg’s still out there somewhere — and with minimal mutations. (Paul Rogers)

Also playing Tuesday:

PRISCILLA AHN at the Hotel Café; AIMEE MANN at Largo at the Coronet; REBIRTH BRASS BAND at the Mint; JEREMY ENIGK, DAMIEN JURADO, HAPPY STARS at Spaceland; ROB DICKINSON at the Viper Room.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11

dd/mm/yyyy at the Roxy

The high-art-plus-heaviosity indie-rock band dd/mm/yyyy (and, yeah, you do say it “day month year”) are as emphatically spazzy and earnest as after-school skate kids rolling on Pizza Pockets and big ideas, but the Toronto band’s high-strung and cluttered art-rock bangers are ordered enough to get inside of. Crossing the sweet dampness of Do Make Say Think and the lurid, unhinged freedom of Battles with the friends-forever, post-ironic sensibility of Canadian indie rock at large, dd/mm/yyyy are the crossover darlings of their city’s bro-centric noise community, as well as the shifting indie scene. Their new EP, 777, is a quickie follow-up to last year’s album Are They Masks? and is an antecedent to whatever effed-up, experimental sound is contained on their next full-length, which is expected to spin heads in the fall. (Kate Carraway)

Singer at the Smell

Just like Battles simplify the carpal-tunnel intricacy of brainiac headbangers Don Caballero, whose Ian Williams plays guitar for both, and deliver its somewhat pop reduction, now Singer takes the shambling, dizzy algebra of U.S. Maple and somehow turns it into abstract expressionist hard rock. Guitarist Todd Rittman and drummer Adam Vida were one-half of U.S. Maple, though the latter didn’t join until that band’s “country” swan song Purple on Time. In Singer, they’re joined by multi-instrumentalist Ben Vida and drone magi Robert A.A. Lowe, both of whom release solo explorations in textured electricity through Kranky Records (Vida as Bird Show, Lowe as Lichens). Altogether, these Chicago all-stars discombobulate toker tropes on Singer’s debut, Unhistories. Noodles get tangled and riffs crumbled up. Guitars chime mystery chords or drip, dash and dot like scrambled Morse code. Instead of rhythm, drums splash tones: metallic cymbal splotches and deep ridges of tuned plastic. Bring towels and brooms — these guys are messy. (Bernardo Rondeau)

Also playing Wednesday:

SPAIN, ANGELA CORREIA at the Echo; WAILING SOULS at the Echoplex; MALACATES TREBOL SHOP, PALENKE SOUL TRIBE at the Knitting Factory; REBIRTH BRASS BAND at the Mint; OSLO at Spaceland; ELENI MANDELL at Tangier.

THURSDAY, JUNE 12 The Detroit Cobras at the Troubadour

More than anything, the Detroit Cobras’ Rachel Nagy and Mary Ramirez are passionate fans of crucial R&B, soul, pop and garage music, and over the course of four albums they’ve covered great songwriters like Jackie DeShannon, Irma Thomas, the Staple Singers, Willie Dixon, Solomon Burke and the Shangri-Las. Unlike a zillion other cover bands in the world, the Detroit Cobras get away with such musical poaching because Nagy is an unrivaled vocal powerhouse whose interpretations are sometimes even more memorable than her classic inspirations. This is a rather mighty achievement when you consider that she’s holding her own with such giants as Otis Redding and Koko Taylor, but Nagy’s voice is simultaneously serene and fiery, lit up with a saucily boozy and wise-cracking, rude confidence that makes a soul-revising latecomer like Amy Winehouse seem like a shrinking violet. Ramirez prevents the group from coming off as some slickly reverential museum piece by riffing with dirty, punky garage chords, a major reason that the Detroit Cobras are the ultimate rock & soul party band. (Falling James)