Music Picks: Dum Dum Girls, Tricky, Leon Russell, OFF!

FRIDAY/DECEMBER/17

PHOTO BY TYSON WIRTZFIELD

Dum Dum Girls. See Tuesday.

Tricky. See Wednesday.

Location Info

Map

The Orpheum Theatre

842 S. Broadway
Los Angeles, CA 90014

Category: Music Venues

Region: Downtown

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The Troubadour

9081 Santa Monica Blvd.
West Hollywood, CA 90069

Category: Bars/Clubs

Region: West Hollywood

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More About

• Chris Martins
• Guy Blakeslee
• Keith Morris
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
• Punk Rock

OFF!, THEE OH SEES, NOBUNNY, WHITE SHIT AT THESEX

Funny that two Black Flag alumni — Raymond Pettibon, visuals, and Keith Morris, vocals — would get together and name their band OFF! (What's next — Raid?) The L.A. hardcore supergroup — Morris, Dimitri Coats of Burning Brides, Steven McDonald of Redd Kross, Mario Rubalcaba of Rocket From the Crypt — celebrate their First Four EPs (Vice Records) box set release. It's Morris doing what he does best: wailing and spitting lyrics for the minute or two it takes their phosphorescent music to explode, ironically — for all of punk's issues with authority — sounding like a cop yelling at you through a megaphone. Oakland's Mr. Rogers-meets–The Ramones revue Nobunny contribute their bit to rock legend — let's just say that if you throw feces at singer Justin Champlin, he will immediately chase you down, break your jaw and rub your own feces in it. San Francisco garage rock merchants Thee Oh Sees (or however they're spelling it this week) play songs from Warm Slime, their latest on local label In the Red [Music ed.'s note: Get this album — it's great!], while White Shit play even more hardcore, harkening back to those golden days when shit was in fact white. (David Cotner)

PEACHES AT THE ORPHEUM

A decade after she helped break the once-hot electroclash scene, the teaches of Peaches have grown a little stale. (Last year's I Feel Cream might have been more accurately titled I Feel a Little Sleepy — Can We Sit Down on This Nice Bench for a Minute?) So it comes as something of a relief to find that for her current tour, the Berlin-based provocateur is leaving behind her usual repertoire in order to present Peaches Christ Superstar, a typically audacious one-woman interpretation of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's Jesus Christ Superstar in which she sings all of the rock opera's roles herself. If nothing else, her endurance should be a sight to behold. At the Orpheum, Peaches will be accompanied on piano by her longtime collaborator Chilly Gonzales, who similarly has found life after electroclash as a kind of postmodern cabaret act. Even in the world of indie, it seems, it's Glee's world — we just live in it. (Mikael Wood)

LEON RUSSELL AT THE CANYON

On The Union, his recent collaboration with Elton John, the Oklahoma singer-pianist Leon Russell credits his new partner for "giving me new air for my lungs and a reason to use them a little longer." On the other hand, John insists that his own music wouldn't exist without the inspiration of Russell, and the album's unexpected success has reinvigorated the careers of both pianists. Russell, who confesses that he's "massively bipolar and ... in constantly unexpected shape," underwent an intense round of surgery and nearly died during the recording of The Union, but now seems to be revitalized creatively as well as physically. Tonight he's back on the road and back on his own, but perhaps Russell finally will get attention for his ongoing vitality and prolific songwriting, which extends far beyond his circus-y 1970s pop hits "Tight Rope" and "Delta Lady." One of his best recent songs is the mesmerizing blues-gospel dirge "There's No Tomorrow" (co-written with Elton John, T Bone Burnett and James Timothy Shaw), which convincingly conjures the kind of funereally eerie doom that Nick Cave is always trying to approximate. As Russell murmurs ruefully, "Is this the final curtain? ... We end up no question/Outside of death's door." (Falling James)

AS TALL AS LIONS, DIAMOND LIGHT AT THE TROUBADOUR

Long Island's As Tall As Lions emerged in 2003 as an answer to all of the melodic MOR indie-ish rock (e.g., Coldplay, Snow Patrol) that was coasting through the airwaves at the time. Their debut album, Lafcadio, didn't do much to break rank, other than infuse the sound with a little folksy jangle in parts. It came as no surprise, then, when the group covered Counting Crows' "Children in Bloom" for a compilation a year later. But singer Dan Nigro has a soaring voice that always deserved a bit of instrumental chutzpah, and the quartet's self-titled 2006 follow-up delivered on that by weaving harder, emo-influenced guitar work and drumming into the mix. A tour with Sparta followed, and last year's You Can't Take It With You was ATAL's strongest and widest-ranging effort to date. The album incorporated strains of drum 'n' bass and a Muse-like heaviness, but it simply came too late, sounding dated amidst the cream of the blogosphere crop. This is the band's final tour — send 'em off in style. (Chris Martins)

THE ZEROS AT REDWOOD BAR

When class of '77 punk-rock spearheads The Zeros re-formed (on the day Sky Saxon died) last summer, few imagined they would function beyond a handful of shows. Despite years of the groups' individual members trying to defy their past, the inescapable truth of the band's sheer artistic value triumphed, thank goodness, over latter-day reticence. Banging, glitter-tinged, thunderous and, above all else, emotionally charged, The Zeros' songs always exhibited an unusual depth. The perplexed adolescent frustration that spawned them assumes a deeper relevance when projected upon today's confusing and vexatious reality — check the lyrics to "You, Me, Us," "Talkin' " and "Getting Nowhere Fast." Any Zeros set list displays an empathic, universal reach that, combined with the elegant ferocity these cats bring to the bandstand, qualifies them as one of the single most exciting forces in rock & roll. Ever. (Jonny Whiteside)