Music Picks: Amanda Palmer & Jason Webley, Tinariwen, Mastodon

The Stepkids

THE ECHO

PHOTO BY SCOTT GROLLER

Wadada Leo Smith: See Friday.

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• Glenn Danzig
• Lydia Loveless
• Toody Cole
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
• Metal and Hardcore

It's an old story about the kinda touching reverence paleface kids have for black music, and how their attempts to copy it are so rarely authentic that a new kind of music gets born. (Take Led Zeppelin or the Stones aping the blues — please.) That in a nutshell is the Stepkids' story: Three wee Connecticut shavers with a probably encyclopedic affection for the Curtis Mayfield/blaxploitation variety, overlayed with heavy doses of the Temps' psychedelic period stuff, then it's all nite-timey "urban" kitsch-soul hypergalacticized with synths, whirring FX and, to their credit, some very fine rips of falsettoing Bee Gees. Their eponymous first record, just out on Stones Throw, comes off nicely uncampy owing to ace songwriting. —John Payne

Also playing:

KCRW's MASQUERADE BALL at Historic Park Plaza; COLLIE BUDDZ at the Roxy; MALE BONDING at the Satellite; TOM PETTY at CSU Northridge; PINK, LMFAO at Hollywood Palladium; VOLTO! at the Baked Potato.

sun 10/30

Everyone Dies in Utah

COBALT CAFÉ

With a limited pool of musicians to draw from, small-town bands sometimes bring together unlikely combinations of talents that create head-tilting takes on saturated genres. Hailing from little Temple, Texas, the boys of Everyone Dies in Utah graft a squelchy, synthy sheen onto their metalcore-mandated clean-versus–Cookie Monster singing, pseudo-orchestral guitar "djents" and kick-spattered beats. Disco-era vocoder vocals only emphasize the instrumental wrath of "1, 2, 3, 4, I Declare Dance War"; Gary Numan–worthy keys hover and swarm around the pensive/punishing adolescent outpouring that is "Bed, Bath & Beyoncé." EDIU are no revolution but do enough to make screamo as orgasmic as the first time all over again. —Paul Rogers

Also playing:

THE DAMNED at House of Blues; ARTO TUNCBOYACIAN at Blue Whale.

mon 10/31

Danzig

GIBSON AMPHITHEATRE

Glenn Danzig refers to his current U.S. tour as "Danzig Legacy," meaning he's performing songs he wrote while fronting the Misfits, Samhain and Danzig, three highly influential outfits that justify his use of such a loaded word. (The singer is on the road with guitarist Doyle, who along with his brother Jerry Only completed the classic Misfits lineup. Only currently records and tours under the band's name and indeed played House of Blues in West Hollywood earlier this month.) As big a fan of theater as he is of punk rock, Danzig can always be counted on to deliver a memorable show. But the fact that tonight's gig falls on Halloween seems like reason to expect something more. With fellow old-timers Corrosion of Conformity. —Mikael Wood

Shoestring Trio (formerly Robby Marshall Group)

SEVEN GRAND

Woodwind player Robby Marshall has accomplished a lot for being just 27, including playing at the Hollywood Bowl, touring with Michael Bublé, recording for film and TV and working on his own innovative band, RootSystem. Then he starts another group with bassist Michael Papillo and guitarist Antoine Salem, inspired by Django, Piazzolla, Gaga and other greats. Fresh off their tour of Switzerland, Spain and France (it takes balls to play Gypsy swing in the land of Jazz manouche), the Shoestring Trio is fun and cute. And on Halloween of all days. Talk about balls. —Gary Fukushima

Also playing:

THROWDOWN at Cobalt Café; ZOLA JESUS at Echoplex; SWAHILI BLONDE at Echo; MINUS THE BEAR at the Satellite.

tue 11/1

Mastodon

THE WILTERN

In the weeks after the 2009 release of these Georgia thrashers' ambitious LP Crack the Skye, indie kids were name-dropping these four shank-you-in-the-esophagus metal dudes as the new "it" band. Weird? Yes. Surprising? Hardly. With a knack for experimentation — for instance, their dramatic 11-minute opus "The Czar" — Mastodon have taken thrash metal and slathered on elements of '70s prog that would make even Phil Collins smile. Their newest, The Hunter, is noticeably more straightforward: less of the concerto-length tunes and no Moby Dick references (see 2004's Leviathan). Instead, they churn out guts-on-the-pavement rock that will garner them even more fans but may also make their longtime fans squirm a wee bit. —Dan Hyman

Also playing:

UH HUH HER at House of Blues; HILARY HAHN at Walt Disney Concert Hall; DEER TICK at Echoplex; SHONEN KNIFE at Echo; MINUS THE BEAR at Troubadour; SKYLAR GREY at the Roxy.

wed 11/2

Lydia Loveless, Olentangy John, Last American Buffalo

BOOTLEG BAR

Loveless. Is there a more appropriate name for a country singer? This Ohio native's unruly tunes certainly live up to her name, as they're full of heartache, along with drinkin', cursin' and other fun vices. On her captivating debut, Indestructible Machine, she walks the jagged line between country and punk, swerving between old-school honky-tonk and revved-up rock & roll. Although she's barely legal drinking age, Loveless all too convincingly tosses off lines like, "The more I try to dry out, the more I get soaked" with her full-bodied, twangy voice. The disc's most attention-grabbing track, however, is "Steve Earle," where she hilariously imagines being stalked by the infamous Americana singer-songwriter. It's a long way from Taylor Swift's "Tim McGraw." In fact, the untamed 21-year-old stands out as an anti-Swift. —Michael Berick

Mr. Gnome

SILVERLAKE LOUNGE

Mr. Gnome's new album is aptly titled Madness in Miniature. The deceptively compact disc (also on vinyl) bursts with a wide range of sonic dynamics, as drummer Sam Meister bashes out propulsive rhythms with majestic force, before toning things down with a subtle throb of rolling tom-toms. At the center of all that sound and fury is singer-guitarist Nicole Barille, whose breathy entreaties can be quite lulling even as they raise chills up the spine. When her guitar segues into jagged melodies shaped like the serrated spine of looming mountains, her whispers turn to screams, and her riffs take on a tangled power evoking Black Sabbath. But Ozzy Osbourne never had the power to raise the dead like Barille can with her mystery-shrouded lyrics and wraithlike keening. —Falling James