Rock Picks: The Kooks, Neil Young, Jerry Cole Memorial

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23 

 
Sunburned Hand of the Man at the Smell

Lady Dottie & the Diamonds: Movin’ on up

Day sleeper: Kaki King

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• CALAVERA Alex
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• Neil Young
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Los Angeles doesn’t always get the attention of the Eastern Seaboard’s weirdoes and schizoids. Thankfully, tonight we’ll be visited by indefatigable New England mesmerists Sunburned Hand of the Man. Not so much a planet but an entire constellation intersecting Sonic Youth’s Ecstatic Peace galaxy, Sunburned spew out as many CD-Rs and vinyl sides a year as most so-called “normal” bands do their entire careers. Seems they’ve taken S.Y.’s decree from the late ’90s to release a thousand records literally. Touring this time as a sextet, this amorphous assembly of instrumentalists — crumbled drums, lithe bass, wild woodwinds, bubbling oscillators, hives of distortion and astral trails emitted from a battery of guitars — mold impromptu monoliths doused in phosphorescent liquids and gelatinous smoke. Hardly sticking to a single mode, style or even tonal palette, the Sunburned collective’s holistic experimentelia applies skill and savagery into its pursuit of all-in psych montages. This August, the group lost bass/synth man Adam Nodelman to a sudden and still-unresolved death. But if there’s one thing Sunburned is capable of, it’s always moving on. They’re absolutely regenerative. (Bernardo Rondeau)

 
Stereolab, Monade, Richard Swift at the Henry Fonda Theater

The “intelligent niceness” substrata in contemporary music offers bands like Stereolab, Monade and High Llamas, groups that have decided to take back the sweet & sentimental we all secretly crave to consciously exploit it for hypermodern dividends of emotional complexity and brain-tickling potential, even. Stereolab have — rejoice — come back really, really strong with their new Chemical Chords album (4AD), wherein founder Tim Gane and revolving crew zero in again on the very best space-age sounds of the ’50s and ’60s. Bossa nova, nouvelle chansons, classic Britpop, Motown and Philly soul are favorite stew parts, and the group find incredibly resonant ways to chop them all up and serve them heartbreakingly anew. While the favored constituent parts won’t seem surprising to longtime fans, the renewed invention and vigor will. Monade, meanwhile, is Stereolab singer-guitarist Laeticia Sadier’s own side project, roughly within the same brainy-romantic grounds as Stereolab, and heard to devastating effect on the newish album Monstre Cosmic (Too Pure). Singer/multi-instrumentalist Richard Swift mines a sweetly harmonized mixed bag of ’70s pop, early blues, ragtime, Bacharach and DeBarge. (John Payne)

 
Dar Williams at El Rey Theatre

For a songwriter who’s supported liberal causes and explored themes of gender identity and religious freedom, Dar Williams tends to make some fairly conservative music. The songs on her latest CD, Promised Land (Razor & Tie), are certainly tuneful in a pleasant, mainstream way, but the often-bland musical settings belie the ambition of much of her lyrics. “Buzzer” is a fascinating tale involving a researcher’s ambivalence about administering electroshock treatments to a hapless patient; while the semi-circusy keyboards are meant to be an ironic contrast to the lyrics’ heavy subject matter, the music ultimately comes across as slick and shallow. Williams takes the trouble in her liner notes to thank her old college pal Stephen Trask for introducing to her such wildly arty musicians as Nina Hagen and Yoko Ono, but her version of “Midnight Radio” (from Trask’s Hedwig & the Angry Inch) is a very hollow facsimile of such adventurous risk-takers, despite her solemnly worshipful shout-outs to “Patti and Tina and . . . Aretha and Nona.” Guest star Suzanne Vega’s true-blue vocals help to elevate the breezy “Go to the Woods,” but the rest of Williams’ words here deserve richer, darker accompaniment than the all-too-easy easy-listening backing producer Brad Wood has given her. (Falling James)

 
Also playing Thursday:

CHIODOS, SILVERSTEIN, ESCAPE THE FATE at the Wiltern; THE POLYAMOROUS AFFAIR at the Bordello; THE SKATALITES at Brixton South Bay; SONNY LANDRETH at the Canyon; HELEN STELLAR at the Echo; TINA DICO at the Hotel Café; TAJ MAHAL & THE PHANTOM BLUES BAND at House of Blues; JILL SOBULE, JULIA SWEENEY at Largo at the Coronet; THE STARLITE DESPERATION at Silverlake Lounge; THE BLACK WIDOWS at Taix; PILAR DIAZ at SiteLA; UGLY DUCKLING at Little Temple.

 
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24

Lady Dottie & the Diamonds at Molly Malone’s

Even with past and current members of such stellar bands as Earthless, Gogogo Airheart and Jejune, Lady Dottie & the Diamonds don’t sound like anyone else in San Diego. These Slow Death scenesters may have been in some ultrahip groups in the past, but this time around they’ve really been taken to school by Lady Dottie. The 60-something diva has gotten her players to forget everything they already know and taught them how to reach deep down inside their souls and come back out with some . . . soul. Lady Dottie & the Diamonds’ new self-titled CD (on the appropriately named Hi-Speed Soul Records) bursts with raw, nonstop electric blues that’s pumped up with enough explosive punk energy to appeal to fans of the BellRays and Sharon Jones. The album’s about evenly divided between authentically fiery originals like “Come Along Together” and “I Ain’t Mad at Ya” and highly charged remakes of such classics as “Walking the Dog” and “Have Love, Will Travel.” Dottie and keyboardist-singer Joey Guevara even duet on a jumpin’, gospel-soaked rendition of “Movin’ on Up” (a.k.a. the theme to The Jeffersons) that’ll have you knocking over bar stools in your hurry to shake it on the dance floor. Also at Alex’s Bar, Sat. (Falling James)