Rock Picks: MIKA MIKO, SILVER PINES, OLIN & THE MOON, LIVING THINGS

Friday/January/1

Mika Miko play their last show ever on Friday at the Smell (unless they reunite).

Tim Eriksen, formerly of Cordelia’s Dad, gigs the Coffee Gallery Backstage.

Location Info

Map

The Smell

247 S. Main St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Category: Bars/Clubs

Region: Downtown

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Echo Curio

1519 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026

Category: Galleries

Region: Echo Park

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More About

• The Viper Room
• Mika Miko
• Chris Martins
• Veruca Salt (Band)
• Jane Monheit

Mika Miko at the Smell
With tonight’s show, the third of a three-night stand, Mika Miko kick off the new decade — a fresh beginning that’s also an unexpected ending, since this is the L.A. band’s final performance. Just last month, Spin magazine called them a “must-hear act,” apparently forgetting to add the word immediately. In the past five years, Mika Miko have scratched and clawed their way through crude, frantically noisy bursts like “Forensic Scientist” and “On the Rise,” which have more in common with arty-goofy punk groups like Twisted Roots, the Urinals and (the early) Redd Kross than they do with slick, modern emo-punk professionals. Yet even as Mika Miko have occasionally expanded into jazz-funk experimentation and postpunk grooves, such as the recent “Sex Jazz” 7-inch on Sub Pop, they haven’t strayed far from the exhilarating giddiness and direct punk-rock simplicity of tracks like “I Got a Lot” and the defiantly silly “Turkey Sandwich,” both from their 2009 CD, We Be Xuxa. Tonight’s finale might already be sold out; check to see if tickets are still available for their New Year’s Eve set. (Falling James)

The Mystery Lights, Seasons, The Ignorant, Asa Random, Andy Clockwise at Echo Curio
It’s about time Salinas adds another merit badge to its Brownie vest. Not that giving us John Steinbeck and providing fresh produce to the Western United States are anything to scoff at, but the city has yet to distinguish itself in the new millennium. While the Mystery Lights aren’t exactly an example of musical futurism, the band’s country-fried take on surf-tinged garage rock is as fresh as Central California’s more famous wares. Songs like “2012” build on a backbone of British Invasion rock set to punk pacing, while others — “Big Black Eyes” for instance — ride forth on a roughshod jangle. Singer Mike Brandon isn’t yet of drinking age, but he can howl like the Walkmen’s Hamilton Leithauser, and his band’s energetic act includes spry covers of Kinks classics and choice Nuggets bits. Word is the Mystery Lights’ van was impounded on a recent trip to play in our fair metropolis. Let’s give our country cousins a better reception this time around. (Chris Martins)

Also playing Friday:

SQUIRREL NUT ZIPPERS, STEVE SOTO & THE TWISTED HEARTS, THE GARBAGE GIRLS at El Rey Theatre; RESONANCE (DJ SET) at Amoeba Music; SWEET & TENDER HOOLIGANS, ANKHESENAMEN at House of Blues.

Saturday/January/2

High Castle, Kit, Knight Rider, Protect Me at the Smell
Punk rock, sorta, dude, but all these bands tonight at the Smell play something that sounds and feels like the real anarchic, boundary-obliterating thing. San Francisco’s High Castle are Shaggy on drums/vox, Erin on guitar/vox and Wilson on bass/vox, and they make a viciously pumping and real hellish wall of sound — you don’t need to know more and it wouldn’t do you any good if you did. Oakland/L.A.’s Kit feature members of XBXRX and Hawnay Troof, and they’ve created this very fine EP with Mike Watt called “Dreams Are Burned” in which they’re actually sculpting a new shape of punk rock and funneling it into your mind via your loins (or something). It’s vicious, political and a big thrill, and it’s got horns on it, too. Knight Rider excel at a kind of sickly-green electro-sleaze music, and please enjoy the dancey, punky-pop electro-thump thrashin’ etc. from Protect Me, the Van Nuys duo formerly known as Ima Gymnast. (John Payne)

Jane Monheit at Catalina Bar & Grill
Jazz-pop singer Jane Monheit has a lovely voice, with an unerring tunefulness as she sends aloft delicately rippling sighs that blend seamlessly into the chords and the spaces they leave behind. It’s a flawlessly smooth instrument whose only drawback is that it’s too pretty — all of the time. For all its impressive beauty, there’s seldom contrast or anything truly bluesy, dark, unknown or scary. (Forget atonal.) Seldom is heard a discouraging word, and even the bluest ballad is rendered with a gossamer prettiness and sentimental obviousness that threaten to push the song right into the elevator. Monheit is certainly charming and nimbly playful on standards like “Between the Devil & the Deep Blue Sea” and “Stardust” on her recent album The Lovers, the Dreamers and Me, but the polite, restrained arrangements tend to lessen the chances of anything really fiery or soulfully eternal occurring. Like so many vocalists, she has perhaps a bit too much reverence for the Great American Songbook, but, on the other hand, she’s open-minded enough to break down material by Fiona Apple and Corinne Bailey Rae. Her remake of Rae’s “Like a Star” is initially treacly and laborious, but by song’s end, the syrupy arrangement drops away long enough to reveal how enchanting Monheit can be with just that fabulous voice and a little tasteful backing. Also Fri. and Sun. (Falling James)