Rock Picks: Raveonettes, Amebix, Thorns of Life

AMY RAY AT THE TROUBADOUR

As half of the Indigo Girls, Amy Ray has excelled in confessional folk with its heart and mind in the right place. But her solo work, especially last year’s Didn’t It Feel Kinder, has mastered the art of burning rock. The smoky, earnest “Birds of a Feather” took flight as one of 2008’s most criminally underrated songs. The bouncy “Blame Is a Killer” met somewhere in the middle between Sleater-Kinney and Sheryl Crow, and the booming stomp of “Bus Bus” was as darkly comic as “SLC Radio,” which cracked wise on the sexual and religious intolerance of the Mormon nutters who bankrolled Proposition 8, months before it passed. Released on her own label, Daemon Records, and flipping expectation the finger, Didn’t It Feel Kinder proved Ray is no one-trick pony. Her live show should seal the deal. (Scott Thill)

Sean P. Costello

The Spanks

Whitman

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• Chromeo
• George Jones
• Amy Ray
• Knitting
• Arts and Crafts

Also playing Wednesday:

BRIAN WILSON at the Wiltern; CITY & COLOUR, WILLIAM ELLIOTT WHITMORE at El Rey Theatre; THE SOFT PACK, AM at the Echo; CAPTAIN SEAN WHEELER & ZANDER SCHLOSS at Redwood Bar & Grill; BOLL WEEVIL at Taix.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 29

THE MORNING AFTER GIRLS AT THE VIPER ROOM

In the interim before the spring release of their Alone full-length, please check out the Morning After Girls’ stuff at www.myspace.com/themorningaftergirls, then hie yer way down here to the Viper by 9 p.m. sharp to gorge on it live and live to tell the tale. The album, with production and mixage overseen by Alan Moulder of NIN infamy, will be the first from Australia’s MAG fellas. The songs on the band’s site foretell a genuinely thrilling blast of over-the-top rocksonica mess-strew somewhat in the mold of My Bloody Valentine and maybe Primal Scream in the way it places shiny architecture applied to intuitive, raw, rocky noisemaking. Something that harnesses the blood/guts of a trad rock band facing the monolith of technology with desire and trepidation, taking a wary step in and plunging headlong into a seemingly limitless black hole is, well ... that’s a sound that’s harder to get than might initially appear to be the case, and it’s valuable when found. So don’t miss it tonight. (John Payne)

Also playing Thursday:

LABELLE at Nokia Theatre; PEPPER, SHWAYZE at Club Nokia; DISTURBED, SEVENDUST at Hollywood Palladium; RUPA & THE APRIL FISHES at El Rey Theatre; 2 MEX & EVIDENCE at Blue Cafe; BOOGALOO ASSASSINS at the Bordello; VALERI, ANARAK at the Echoplex; DEAD ROCK WEST at the Hotel Café; FIREBALL MINISTRY at House of Blues; SIMON STOKES at Knitting Factory; BAJA BUGS at Spaceland; NICKEL EYE, LOW VS. DIAMOND at the Troubadour; BEAT KILLERS at Que Sera.