Rock Picks: George Clinton, the Kris Special, Banyan

Also playing Monday:

WADDY WACHTEL at the Joint; GAY BEAST, TLEILAXU MUSIC MACHINE, KAWAIIETLY PLEASE, FRENCH QUARTER at Pehrspace; JAKE LA BOTZ at the Redwood Bar & Grill; BIPOLAR BEAR at the Smell; ROCCO DELUCA at Spaceland.

Shades of Eleni Mandell

Banyan’s Stephen Perkins digs in.

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More About

• Aaron Beaumont
• George Clinton
• Kris Special
• Eleni Mandell
• Cody Bryant

TUESDAY, JANUARY 6

Eleni Mandell at the Hotel Café

Los Feliz chanteuse Eleni Mandell’s latest CD, Artificial Fire (Zedtone), rocks a little more electrically than her previous releases, thanks in large part to Jeremy Drake’s “space fog” and flickering dots of arty guitar. In the past, Mandell has claimed that her low vocals and acoustic-based ballads don’t mesh well with a full band, but her current lineup of supporting musicians (which includes longtime bassist Ryan Feves and drummer Kevin Fitzgerald) gives her plenty of room to breathe. Drake spins angular, Television-style licks on the title track, where Mandell finds herself staying up late, getting dreamy and poring over maps. Despite such occasional — and tentative — experiments in volume and rock arrangements, the singer remains, at heart, a laid-back romantic balladeer, even when a delicate interlude like “It Wasn’t the Time (It Was the Color)” culminates in an unexpected crescendo of fuzzy noise. Her simple-minded, narcissistic lyrics are still a major weakness, but Mandell’s languidly enchanting phrasing and her band’s inventive arrangements usually keep things from getting too cloying. Guest stars, including X percussionist DJ Bonebrake and singers Charlie Wadhams and Inara George, help flesh out the tunes with additional sonic depth and coloring. (Falling James)

Also playing Tuesday:

SEASONS, MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY at the Bordello; SARA LOV, PATRICK PARK at Spaceland.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 7

Banyan at the Mint

In the handbook of rock & roll dos and don’ts, somewhere near the top should be a rule about banning supergroups. These harebrained schemes reek of publicist stench or rotting flesh from players whose 15 minutes were up long ago. Either way, rarely do they account for good tunes, because three-chord shredders are not schooled in the same fashion as improv-heavy jazz players and blues men. But, like a broken clock, Banyan prove there are exceptions to this rule. Composed of drummer Stephen Perkins, bassist Mike Watt, guitarist Nels Cline and trumpet player Willie Waldman, the quintet (painter Norton Wisdom creates on a vertical canvas behind the band) takes jazz’s play-the-head-then-let-’er-rip approach for an instrumental set with enough raw emotion to make Bird smile. The best part is, you don’t even have to like Jane’s Addiction, the Minutemen or Wilco to dig Banyan, because the last thing on these guys’ minds is running through their collective résumés. The result is the best jazz/punk/funk/rock hybrid since Miles Davis introduced the word “fusion” into the jazz-rock lexicon. (Ryan Ritchie)

Tom Verlaine & Jimmy Rip’s music for experimental film at Silent Movie Theatre

So, so freshly creative is the way veteran guitar artists Tom Verlaine and Jimmy Rip apply themselves to the live interpretation of little-seen vintage avant-garde films. Verlaine, of Television fame, and studio-session mainstay Rip add digitally burnished new angles to these grainy, black & white images, sometimes in the cranking chunks of scree that might be indicated by the oblique geometrics of the films, but just as often in roiling lyrical modal moves that have the effect on the attentive participant of birthing a third entity of sensation, when heard in combination with the abstract projections onscreen. Films included are Emak-Bakia by Man Ray, Fernand Leger’s Ballet Mecanique and Hans Richter’s Rhythmus 21. Verlaine is a guitar hero’s hero, a wonderfully idiosyncratic player who meanders his way into spiky-then-soaring melodic lines; you seem to hear the process in his playing. It was this stumbling into splendor that made Television sound so very different, an artful process by a master that will be on rare view tonight. At 8 & 10:15 p.m. (John Payne)

Also playing Wednesday:

ILENE GRAFF at the Canyon; GUNS ’N BOMBS at the Echo; SALLY KELLERMAN at Genghis Cohen; PATRIA JACOBS, BOLL WEEVIL at Taix.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 8

Sabrosa Purr at the Roxy

Yes, there are still amateur Angeleno bands building robust reps through self-financed recordings and compelling club shows (and without monkeying themselves out to reality TV). Sabrosa Purr are an odd collision of loner, stoner introversion and crotch-thrusting fuzz-box rawk. They lurch from the ultra-ethereal, flotation-tank vocals and slithery, succulent guitars of “Suckerpunch Kiss” to the open-shirted glam strut of “Fashion Kills” without so much as an explanation or apology. Though probably more convincing at the former than the latter, they seldom sound contrived. Yet for every moment of earnest Pink Floyd–ish psychedelia, each hint of enigmatic early Cure b-sides or sexy T-Rex flexes, Sabrosa Purr are really all about the original Jane’s Addiction — they’re eclectic because Jane’s were. The heavily delayed yelps of “Killing the Aries” and “Sabrosa Purr, Pt. 1”’s druggy whimper are downright Jane’s addicted, but they’re lost in enough love to forget and forgive. Few bands traverse heel-stomping, classic-rock crunch and eyes-clenched, headphone bliss like this. (Paul Rogers)