FRIDAY/MARCH/26
Back in black: Metric
Love 2 is in the Air.
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JAY-Z AT STAPLES CENTER
Less than a month before he's scheduled to rock the opening night of Coachella — and not long after his show last November at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion — Jay-Z lands at Staples Center for the next-to-last date of his North American BP3 Tour (the trek wraps up Saturday at the Palms in Las Vegas). That's a pretty serious case of market saturation, but if anyone can stoke the fires of demand to meet such supply, it's Hova, whose once-edgy merger of the roles of rapper and businessman has now become hip-hop's dominant mode. Tonight he'll front a 10-piece band in a set you can expect to pull heavily from last year's The Blueprint 3, which found the MC back in fine block-rocking form following 2006's mushy Kingdom Come (remember that wack-ass Chris Martin collab?) and 2007's insidery American Gangster. With Atlanta crack rapper Young Jeezy and R&B smoothie Trey Songz, as well as any number of unannounced surprise guests. (Mikael Wood)
METRIC, CODEINE VELVET CLUB AT THE HOLLYWOOD PALLADIUM
Inspired by a trip to Buenos Aires, Metric's singer-keyboardist Emily Haines let the world know that she was back in black, in typically morbid and poetic fashion, with the stirring declaration "Help I'm Alive," from 2009's Fantasies. She confronts her romantic ambivalence head-on during "Sick Muse" (where she declares that "All the blondes are fantasies") and "Satellite Mind" (where she confesses that "I heard you fuck through the wall ... I can feel you most when I'm alone"). Such sentiments are juiced up by James Shaw's angular guitars and Josh Winstead's typically muscular, spiny bass lines. Whether she's climbing Shaw's skyscraper riffs or swimming languidly in pools of somberly melodic soundscapes, Haines is always captivating, and even cryptically hopeful when she sings, "Send us a blindfold, send us a blade/Tell the survivors help is on the way." Codeine Velvet Club is a new project from the Fratellis' Jon Lawler and lounge singer Lou Hickey. Despite brassy neo-swing orchestration and Hickey's perky vocals, their new self-titled CD on Dangerbird Records sometimes feels hollow at the core. However, a few of the less-derivative tunes, like the gauzy ballad "Nevada," hint at the pair's still-unfulfilled pop potential. (Falling James)
TRIORGANICO, J. ROCC AT THE TIME TUNNEL IN EL CID
An eternally mystifying mélange of heart and modernity, Brazilian music will always enthrall for its urge to gobble up every moving sonority in its path and combine it with the beauty of its Afro-Euro roots. Triorganico's Convivencia album (out on the excellent Now-Again label) gives these L.A. garage-bossa fellas a chance to display a fresh cannibalization of those roots in decidedly rougher, truer tones. Their palette mostly derives from '60s-'70s Latin-jazz greatness, an era that reinvigorated South American sounds with heat, grit and wondrously intuitive invention. Featuring expat Rio man Fabiano do Nascimento on guitar, Pablo Calogero on saxophones and woodwinds and Ricardo "Tiki" Pasillas on percussion, Triorganico shakes the dirt offa the roots in warmly felt and deliciously skewed angles. Speaking of which, do not miss Buyepongo's new-old take on Afro-Colombian cumbia, Muamba's hip-hop/samba slams and J. Rocc — the master — resonating earth-sound turntablisms alongside DJs Fresko, Rich Spirit and Renz. (John Payne)
Also playing Friday:
WIZZARD SLEEVE, THE LAMPS, MODERN WITCH at Show Cave; JON BRION at Largo at the Coronet; LYNDA CARTER at Catalina Bar & Grill; LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC at Walt Disney Concert Hall; ART OF SHOCK at Key Club; THREE BAD JACKS at the Troubadour; ELECTRA at Whisky A Go-Go; FUNK SHUI at Bar One.
SATURDAY/MARCH/27
TED LEO & THE PHARMACISTS AT THE TROUBADOUR
There was a time when early punk bands like the Clash and the Avengers served as virtual journalists, spreading news and information that you couldn't find in the mainstream media. Though we're living in an uncertain and troubled economic era, most modern punk groups prefer to be escapist, singing insipidly goofy songs and going for a dimwit party vibe, even as the ship continues to sink. While the D.C.-area group Ted Leo & the Pharmacists have a chirpy pop giddiness like Blink-182 and Green Day, they also reveal occasional hints of thoughtfulness on their latest album, The Brutalist Bricks (Matador). Leo croons like a punk Jackson Browne, with an easygoing good-guy persona on poppy tunes like "The Sons of Cain," but he sometimes shows a little more lyrical bite, on such songs as "Mourning in America" and "Even Heroes Have to Die." Even still, one wishes that he showed more urgency and passion. "Everybody's happy nowadays," as the Buzzcocks once sang, but the question is, why? (Falling James)
THE LIKE AT THE SMELL
There's always been the temptation to be a patronizing poophead about these three white gurls called the Like and their audacious claims that they are indeed a real rocking band, but look, that's obviously 'cause they were like 15 or 16 years old when they formed and, most damningly, their dads were famous rockers and producers (drummer Tennessee Thomas' dad is Elvis Costello drummer Pete Thomas; ex-member Charlotte Froom's pop is Mitchell Froom; original singer Z. Berg issued forth from A&R bigwig Tony Berg). Fact is, this particular band could from the get-go thrash and bash with the best of 'em, and if truth be told, the Like have become a really ace pop proposition boasting inspired song craft, a stunning heaviosity in their playing prowess and a strangely wise intelligence and humor about it all. Not incredibly prolific over the years, their crowning achievement thus far has been 2005's Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking? (Geffen). At long last, though, a new album, produced by the estimable Mark Ronson, is promised for 2010. (John Payne)
