Rock Picks: Steve Earle, Polvo, These Arms Are Snakes, Correatown

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9

Kid Congo Powers delivers evil riffs with a big smile on his face.

Correatown: a person, not a place

Related Content

• The Best Concerts to See in Los Angeles This Week
  May 13, 2013
• Tim Heidecker: L.A.'s Driest Wit
  May 15, 2013
• Music Picks: Rhye, Papa and Motörhead
  May 9, 2013
• The 20 Greatest Metal Albums in History: 20-11
  January 29, 2013
• Hot Chip, Passion Pit - Hollywood Bowl - September 9, 2012
  September 10, 2012

More About

• Motorhead
• Hollywood Palladium
• Lemmy Kilmister
• Metal and Hardcore
• Folk Music

Motorhead at Club Nokia
Lemmy Kilmister knows a thing or two about rock & roll. He used to roadie for Jimi Hendrix and was in the British psychedelic band Hawkwind for several years in the early 1970s. More recently, he’s fronted the unexpectedly groovy acoustic rockabilly trio the Head Cat, but he’s best known for combining the speed of punk rock with the power of heavy metal in Motörhead. Often dismissed as some barbarian biker-type thug, Mr. Kilmister is actually responsible for such surreally poetic flashes of insight as “We’re moving like a parallelogram” and “Ain’t felt this good for an hour” (which is surely one of the most succinctly accurate descriptions of being a speed freak ever). Unfortunately, Motörhead has never quite recovered from the loss of blazing guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clarke, who quit over musical differences back in 1982. While the band’s most famous songs come from the Clarke era, Lemmy has soldiered on with ever-changing lineups and growled similarly fearsome anthems on the ensuing albums, such as “Killed by Death” (from No Remorse), “Eat the Rich” (from 1987’s Rock ’n’ Roll), and the murkily throbbing title track of 1986’s Orgasmatron. Motörhead’s most recent studio CD, 2008’s Motorizer, features trademark barnburners like “Buried Alive” and the bludgeoned sentimentality of “English Rose.” (Falling James)

John Doe & Exene Cervenka, Kid Congo Powers at the Echoplex
Kid Congo Powers has added his distinctive style to crucial albums by the Gun Club, the Cramps, and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, but he’s not your typical guitar hero. For one thing, the former Brian Tristan is more interested in the spaces between sounds than in filling things up with flashy pyrotechnics. He plays minimalist chords in weird open tunings with swampy sound effects, avoiding the usual rock-guitar clichés. Backed by the Pink Monkey Birds (bassist Kiki Solis and drummer Ron Miller), Powers cobbles together an arty version of garage rock on his new solo album, Dracula Boots (In the Red Records). It’s filled with sotto-voce Beat imagery over fuzzed-out junkyard guitars, as well as the occasional noirish, shadowy instrumental. (The rusted-out echoes of “Kris Kringle Juju” and “Black Santa” aren’t exactly typical Xmas fare.) Headliners John Doe & Exene Cervenka of X are planning an acoustic set that will be even more stripped-down and elementally rootsy than their folkie side project the Knitters. Powers also performs at the Part Time Punks Festival on Sunday. (Falling James)

Also playing Friday:

CHROMEO, DESTRUCTO at Club 740; THE METERS EXPERIENCE at the Mint; LEDISI at El Rey Theatre; DARK STAR ORCHESTRA at Henry Fonda Theater; N’DAMBI at Amoeba Music; JANU & THE WHALESHARKS, RED ARROW MESSENGER at the Bootleg Theater; FRAN HEALY & ANDY DUNLOP (TRAVIS) at Largo at the Coronet; WILLY PORTER at McCabe’s; UNIVERSE, LACO$TE, GOOD LUCK AT THE GUNFIGHT, JOGGER, THE DELTA MIRROR at Mr. T’s Bowl; METRONOMY, DESTRUCTO, FOOL’S GOLD at the Roxy; BATTLE OF THE BANDS FEAT. KID INFINITY, ICY LITES, TPF, NARWHAL PARTY, OTHERS at the Smell; O’DEATH, SLANG CHICKENS, FRONTIER RUCKUS at Spaceland.

Polvo at Spaceland
On the just-released In Prism, their first studio disc since 1997, North Carolina’s Polvo come on like the math-rock sound they helped invent never went out of style (which of course it totally did): Though I didn’t dig these dudes as much as I did Drive Like Jehu (thanks to Jehu’s much higher hook-per-pound ratio), there’s no denying the undiminished majesty of Ash Bowie’s and Dave Brylawski’s guitars, which still ripple with a delicate musculature that none of their indie-scene successors seem capable of (or interested in) flexing. Polvo first got back together last year (with a new drummer) for All Tomorrow’s Parties, yet a solid live show is rarely a guarantee that a reformed band has anything left to say. On second thought, Polvo don’t really have anything left to say, either. But they do sound really good not saying it. (Mikael Wood)

Steve Earle at the Troubadour
Rebel troubadour Steve Earle is a living testament to country music’s boundlessly accommodating nature. The singer-guitarist first inflamed mid-1980s Nashville with a growling, blue-collar brand of upstart hillbilly rock, and powerful statements like Guitar Town and Copperhead Road not only proved commercially successful, they also endeared him to such insurrectionary forebears as Waylon Jennings. But Earle hit it so hard and lived it up so vociferously that he nearly destroyed himself (dope, police pursuits, arrests, more dope), a period that led to a self-imposed exile of several years in the early ’90s. Earle’s re-emergence — and subsequent triumphs — as an artistic provocateur haven’t been limited to music: He’s served as an author, poet, playwright, actor and broadcaster, and has recorded with everyone from the Pogues and bluegrass kingpin Del McCoury to Patti Smith and Joan Baez. Such a dizzying resumé highlights both his raging creativity and his indomitable will, and provides a deep stash of material more than adequate enough to guarantee his avid cult of followers a satisfying three nights of revolutionary insight. Also Fri. and Sun. (Jonny Whiteside)