Rock Picks: Rooney, Lili Haydn, Dizzee Rascal

Also playing Friday:

BITTER: SWEET at El Rey Theatre; DARKER MY LOVE, CRYSTAL ANTLERS at the Echo; WHITE RAINBOW, WHITE FANG, TOM WATSON, DAVID SCOTT STONE at Echo Curio; RHINO BUCKET, JETBOY, VAINS OF JENNA at FM Station; XU XU FANG at Mountain Bar; THE CONTROLLERS, THE DOGS at Relax Bar; VICTIMAS DEL DR. CEREBRO, SECTOR LIBERTAD at Safari Sam’s; EARLIMART, THE MOVIES at Spaceland; ADAM MARSLAND at Brennan’s Pub.

The Duke Spirit shakes a tail feather.

Summer Darling: Our bassist has fallen and can’t get up.

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More About

• Dizzee Rascal
• Rooney (Musical Group)
• Lili Haydn
• Peter Walker
• The Duke Spirit

SATURDAY, JULY 19 

Lili Haydn at the Roxy

The dazzlingly talented singer-violinist Lili Haydn is at her best on her recent CD, Place Between Places, when she strays from standard song structures and wanders into stranger landscapes. “Can’t Give Everything” and “Satellites” are well-crafted but seemingly unremarkable tracks until they digress into wilder passages where her soaring violin slithers enchantingly into Martin Tillman’s guttural distorted cello. Like Kate Bush, she transcends her sometimes facile imagery by layering everything in grandly lavish arrangements, especially on “Memory One,” a poignant ode to her mom that fills in its sparse piano backing with waves of welling fuzz and backwards sound effects. Her violin swoops and dips through “Saddest Sunset” with a woozy exoticism à la John Lennon’s “#9 Dream” that’s undercut only by the clichéd words; lyrics are an instrument too, and the weaker ones here distract from the impressive musicianship. Haydn, who accompanied Roger Waters at Coachella this year, closes the album with a majestic Pink Floyd–style ramble through Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain,” which is inlaid with frantic curlicues of spacy wah-wah violin. (Falling James)

Also playing Saturday:

(Click to enlarge)

Summer Darling: Our bassist has fallen and can’t get up.

(Click to enlarge)

Baka Beyond’s transglobal hoedown

WOLF PARADE at Henry Fonda Theater; THE ZOMBIES at the Canyon; DEVON WILLIAMS, SILVER DAGGERS at the Echo; GIRL IN A COMA, VON IVA, KILLOLA at Knitting Factory; JANEANE GAROFALO at Largo; TALL FIRS at Mountain Bar; BONEBRAKE SYNCOPATORS at Redwood Bar & Grill; KINGSIZEMAYBE at Taix; VERY BE CAREFUL, ERIC BACHMANN at Tangier.

SUNDAY, JULY 20 

Download 2008 at Gibson Amphitheatre

Just as the once-disparate performers of the early punk explosion inevitably devolved into mere formula and codified styles, post-punk bands like Gang of Four were expanding sonic possibilities by making music that was more aggressively experimental and less retro. While it’s heartening to see Gang of Four finally get some long-overdue recognition for its sound — which takes massively jagged shards of maxi-funk and pairs them with catchy, propaganda-like slogans (“I Love a Man in Uniform”) — it’s worrisome that this forward-looking band might succumb to the fuzzy nostalgia that’s encompassed so many of their peers. But it’s encouraging that GoF are billed tonight not just with other blasts from the past — such as the Jesus & Mary Chain, whose influential, chocolate-&-poison-laced candied echoes sometimes reveal a hollow core — but with new musicians like the unpredictably arty guitarist Kaki King, Norse electro gods Datarock and the trippy New Orleans combo Mute Math. Keep an eye on that Love-lovin’ British combo the Duke Spirit, who have been hovering around L.A. for the past few weeks. The Dukies have a compelling heaviness and moody drive that’s softened by singer Liela Moss’ bewitching charisma and idealistically yearning lyrics, with memorable songs that end up somewhere between the Cult at their most magical and the Nymphs at their most melodic. (Falling James)

Pierced Arrows at Spaceland

Authenticity is a precious commodity in modern garage-rock, with many young bands today looking fairly silly in their grandparents’ hand-me-down psychedelic duds, but Fred “Deep Soul” Cole is as real as rock & roll gets. He got his start on the Sunset Strip in the ’60s with such bands as the Weeds and the Lollipop Shoppe (who released a classic garage-rock nugget of decidedly sinister paranoia, “You Must Be a Witch,” in 1968) before moving to Portland and launching an underrated Led Zep–style hard rock band, Zipper, in the early ’70s. (Cole’s distinctive howling vocal style was even praised by an early fan named Janis Joplin.) When punk rock hit the PacNorWest, Cole and his bassist-wife, Toody Cole, didn’t need to change their sound to fit in; if anything, punk rock belatedly caught up with the stripped-down, elemental and raucously raw music Fred had been making since his teens. More recently, the Coles have reconfigured their long-running band Dead Moon as Pierced Arrows, augmented by new drummer Kelly Halliburton on such quintessential ravers as “In My Brain” and the sublime pop-fuzz crush of “Caroline.” (Falling James)

Also playing Sunday:

FEIST, SHARON JONES & THE DAP-KINGS at Hollywood Bowl; MURPHY’S LAW, THE JOHNS, G.G. ELVIS at Alex’s Bar; AZALIA SNAIL at Echo Curio; EEK-A-MOUSE at Malibu Inn; THE BLASTERS, JON RAUHOUSE at Safari Sam’s, 12:30 p.m.; ELENI MANDELL at Tangier.