Rock Picks: Seun Kuti, Thievery Corporation, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
Also, Death Cab for Cutie, Ingrid Michaelson and more
THURSDAY, JUNE 19
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Romantic gambler Janiva Magness
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Seun Kuti: Fire dancer
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Robert Plant & Alison Krauss go 'round the roses.
Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter at the Echo
Jesse Sykes is a good witch. The Seattle singer is one of this country’s leading practitioners of hypnotic balladry, and she casts dreamy spells that are gently and subtly entrancing. Whereas Cat Power has a touch more soul and R&B in her similarly lulling music, Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter infuse their songs with more of countrified lilt while evoking the pastoral sweep and distinctively shadowy sylvan loneliness of the Pacific Northwest. Her solemn vocals and a coyote-howl harmonica light up the stark landscape of “Eisenhower Moon,” from her 2006 CD, Like, Love, Lust & the Open Halls of the Soul (Barsuk), while “Spectral Beings” lives up to its title with shivery harmonies and former Whiskeytown guitarist Phil Wandscher’s austere plucking. Not everything is so mellow, and bassist Bill Herzog and drummer Eric Eagle give the occasional uptempo tune like “You Might Walk Away” a bit of a Crazy Horse push. Still, we’ll be at the Echo just so we can close our eyes and drift away to billowing melodies like “How Will We Know?” (Falling James)
Hayes Carll, Old 97’s at Crash Mansion
It seems like Texas has more singer-songwriters than the other 49 states combined — but it also produces some damn talented ones. Houston-born Hayes Carll is a rising star following in the tradition of such sharp-tongued storytellers as Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, Robert Earl Keen and Guy Clark. Carll populates his Lost Highway debut, Trouble in Mind (which follows several critically praised, little-heard indie releases), with a colorful cast of characters. There’s Kate, “who’s as pretty as a plate,” and the guy whose girl dumped him for Jesus (“And that’s not fair/She says that’s he’s perfect/How can I compare?”), as well as the “barefoot shrimper with a pistol up his sleeve” and “an old lion tamer parked behind the bar.” Following his impressive Stagecoach set, Carll brings his rascally roadhouse music back to the Southland as he opens for the Texas-bred Old 97’s, whose new disc, Blame It on Gravity, soars with the band’s distinctive toe-tapping twang pop. (Michael Berick)
Nico Vega at the Viper Room
With just vocals, guitar and drums, Nico Vega transmit an orchestra’s worth of sultry, sometimes surly sentiment. The trio marry tenuously related sonic elements — adventurous, occasionally frantic garage grooves; alternately arpeggiated and dissonantly ominous guitar; Aja Volkman’s smoky-Siouxsie-vs.- sweet-&-sour-Björk vocals — with thinking-hipster’s rock (imagine the Like, only with actual problems). Onstage, it’s all about the wide-eyed, wackily fashionable Volkman stomping, strutting and sweating in defiance of her svelte, catwalk-ready aura. This perpetual buzz band (who are yet to even release an album — their debut’s due in October) flirt with melody rather than beat us over the head with hooks, seemingly tiring of each idea before the listener’s even fully grasped it. Admirable, but Nico Vega’s structural perversity is both their best mate and worst enemy: It keeps us coming back for more and earns muso cred points, but ultimately stems the seemingly inevitable mass-adulation tide. (Paul Rogers)
Martha Wainwright at the Troubadour
Although both of them have inspired a recent flood of media commentary and popular opinion, Emily Gould (the ex-Gawker blogger who recently shit all over The New York Times Magazine about her challenges as an expositress) and Carrie Bradshaw (with her emotion binge-and-purge buddies in the Sex and the City movie) aren’t really all that provocative, intellectually or otherwise. Sex and relationship tales à la Gould and Bradshaw tend toward the banal. Refreshingly distinct from this paradigm is the smoky, sexy mythology of badass singer-songwriters working without the smug Upper East Side–ness. Martha Wainwright (the sister of Rufus, and the daughter of Loudon III and Kate McGarrigle) has recently released a cool, dirty record called I Know You’re Married but I Have Feelings Too. Wainwright plays it seedy and tragic (or, maybe, just plays it for real) and works the salty, half-zipped femme-fatale angle like any sidelined sister would. (Kate Carraway)
Also playing Thursday:
DUFFY at El Rey Theatre; MARC COHN, SAM PHILLIPS at the Canyon; SEA WOLF, PATRICK PARK at the Echoplex; MEIKO at the Hotel Café; CECI BASTIDA at the Knitting Factory; WATKINS FAMILY HOUR, GLEN PHILLIPS at Largo; ADAM MARSLAND’S CHAOS BAND at Mr. T’s Bowl; THE ALMOST, EMERY, ENVY ON THE COAST at the Roxy; LETICIA CASTANEDA, G.E. STINSON & HANS FJELLESTAD, NOT IN THE HOUSE at Steve Allen Theater; VERY BE CAREFUL, SACCHARINE TRUST at Cafe Mariposa.
FRIDAY, JUNE 20
Janiva Magness at the Cellar
Blues singer Janiva Magness has a powerful set of lungs, but, just as important, she has a good soul and a warm, expansive heart. She was born and raised in Detroit, although both of her parents committed suicide when she was still a teenager. She bounced around various foster homes and, as a young mother, had to give up her baby daughter for adoption. Magness endured more than her share of tough times before stumbling into an Otis Rush concert and finding a purpose for her life. She reinvented herself as a blues diva, eventually relocating to Los Angeles in the mid-’80s, but she didn’t forget where she came from and became a passionate advocate for foster-care programs. On her excellent new album, What Love Will Do (Alligator Records), that generosity shines through as she interprets tunes by Bill Withers, Al Green, Ike Turner and her guitarist-husband, Jeff Turmes. The magnetic Magness moves seamlessly from the swampy voodoo of “I Want a Love” and the funky soul of “Bitter Pill” to the sinuously ebullient strut of “Freedom Is Just Beyond the Door” and the somberly moving piano ballad “Sometimes You Got to Gamble.” 201 E. Broadway, Long Beach. Also at Harvelle’s, Sat. (Falling James)
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