Rock Picks: Sunset Strip Music Festival, Neil Innes, Cheap Trick

Also playing Tuesday:

GRAVY TRAIN, BRIDEZ at the Echo, 7 & 10 p.m.; OURS at the Roxy; THE MAE SHI, DEATH TO ANDERS, DIE ROCKERS DIE, THE LIGHT FM at Spaceland.

Tara Punzone

The Casualties are still mad at Ronald Reagan.

Frozen Pictures

Neil Innes: How sweet to be an idiot with a tiny guitar

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WEDNESDAY, JULY 2


Magic Lantern at Echo Curio

Whittier-born and now Long Beach–based, Magic Lantern honor their moniker with streams of mottled electricity and kinetic fantasias. A prodigiously noisy quintet with two radioactive guitars orbiting in mantric figure eights, they effuse abandon instead of narrative clarity. Less ebb and more flow, their torrents of distortion and echo are expansive, allowing for tones and other sonic flotsam to get carried off in its burbling tides. There’s a bit of Spacemen 3’s bulb-blowing glare and far-gone languor to their approach, sure. But Magic Lantern are mercifully not psych pastiche. It’s more apt to say they jam instead of improvise, as the latter often implies either acting out by the totally untrained or random applications of scrupulously learned techniques. Both have a dusty whiff of academia. Magic Lantern are not methodical; they’re miasmic. They’ll be dropping their debut album, High Beams, on Not Not Fun Records this August, so bring some cash for a CD-R and stake your claim to having been there. 1519 Sunset Blvd., Echo Park. (Bernardo Rondeau)

Also playing Wednesday:

THE BOWMANS at the Hotel Café; TODD RUNDGREN at the Key Club; KIND HEARTS & CORONETS at Mr. T’s Bowl; MIA SABLE, PATRIA JACOBS, SUKI EWERS at Tangier; CASXIO at the Troubadour.

THURSDAY, JULY 3


Constantines at the Troubadour

The Constantines are probably the best rock band out of Toronto (via two shitty college towns in Ontario: London and Guelph), and probably Canada at large. A live Constantines show is a cyclical affair: Arena-rock seriousness builds to fuzzy punk pleas and instrumental histrionics, eventually giving way to a coaxing pastoral lust. The band, always good, have become great after close to 10 years, four albums (and handfuls of EPs and compilation appearances), deals with Arts & Crafts in Canada and Sub Pop in the U.S., and now a few established side projects and the odd celeb collaboration. The Cons are heirs apparent, and constantly made analogous, to Neil Young’s Canadiana-fixated rock resonance (the band’s alter ego, Horsey Craze, has recorded Young songs), Bruce Springsteen’s double-denim working-man spirituals and Fugazi. The air in utopia may be poisoned, but the Constantines are working on it. (Kate Carraway)

Also playing Thursday:

NICO VEGA, THE GROWLERS at the Hammer Museum; FREE MORAL AGENTS at Alex’s Bar; THE KIDS OF WIDNEY HIGH at Mr. T’s Bowl; CHANA at Temple Bar.