Brutal times bring brutal sounds. Check out this premier proponent of the neo–bad-boy electronic wickedness: King Cannibal, aka Zilla, aka English art-school dropout Dylan Richards. He's got a scary sound, real threatening stuff that chews you up and spits ya out. Cannibal's bruising catharsis is a smashdown of inhumane industrial-urban sound scrappage tightly bound till popping. Ensconced in crunky beats/counterbeats derived from dance hall, dubstep and drum & bass, ingeniously morphed to throb out a genuinely dangerous ambience. It's best experienced on his recent Ninja Tune set called Let the Night Roar, which has earned jaw-drop props from the likes of Amon Tobin and Kid 606, among numerous venerable others. So, King Cannibal at the Low End Theory club: a bit of the old ultraviolence, sonically speaking, which feels awesome. (John Payne)
Also playing Wednesday:
The beguiling Beth Thornley plays the Hotel Café.
PHOTO BY OLLY HEARSEY
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FINDLAY BROWN, PIZZA, COBRA LILIES at the Echo; COURTNEY MELODY at the Echoplex; HUUN HUUR TU at Zanzibar.
Thursday/February/11
THE THERMALS, THAO WITH THE GET DOWN STAY DOWN AT THE TROUBADOUR
"Since you left, I'm only more sincere/I swim in it," Thao Nguyen declares on her new album of breakup songs, Know Better Learn Faster (Kill Rock Stars). If her lyrics are more personal and less ironic now, they're still just as weirdly witty as the words on her previous CD, 2008's We Brave Bee Stings and All. Nguyen deals with her heartbreak with ever-changing lyrical moods, from anger ("What am I, just a body in your bed?") and gallows-humor resignation ("Everybody please put your clothes back on") to disarming vulnerability ("Bring your hips to me") and back to grief again ("We have sad sex/We move steady to forget"). What makes it even more fascinating is the way that the Virginia-raised singer-guitarist and her Bay Area band — drummer Willis Thompson and bassist Adam Thompson — transmutes her romantic despair into such wondrously varied musical settings. "Oh No" is austere and ethereally spacy, while the title track culminates in a psychedelic, Flaming Lips–style tangle of violins and guitars. "When We Swam" is a positively endearing slice of funky indie-pop, and "Cool Yourself" marches off into the sunset with festive piano and horny exclamations. Thao With the Get Down Stay Down open tonight for the earnestly appealing, if relatively straightforward emo pop-punk Portland trio the Thermals. (Falling James)
Justin Townes Earle at the Echo
This Nashville-reared New Yorker gets his last name from his dad (country-rock veteran Steve Earle) and his middle name from his dad's hero (folk-country legend Townes Van Zandt). Put that shit in pop terms — "Hey, Rebecca Madonna Jackson, what's your new record sound like?" — and you can see why the dude might go cross-eyed at questions regarding his legacy and the roots-music tradition he's inherited. (Not that Earle doesn't court some of the familial talk that comes his way: "I am my father's son," he sings in "Mama's Eyes," a track from last year's Midnight at the Movies.) Still, it must be said: As heard on Movies and its fine 2008 predecessor, The Good Life, Earle's stuff does indeed split the difference between his dad's bar-band abandon and Van Zandt's prairie-Zen introspection. He can't decide whether he wants to love or fight, think or act — so he does it all. (Mikael Wood)
Also playing Thursday:
JAMES MCMURTRY, JOHNNY BURKE at the Mint; EDITORS, THE ANTLERS at the Wiltern; RICHARD THOMPSON at Largo at the Coronet; IMAAD WASIF, BECKY STARK, VOICE ON TAPE at Spaceland.
