Music Picks: Woody Allen & His New Orleans Jazz Band, Jane Monheit, Manhattan Murder Mystery

Also playing:

NEVEREVER at the Echo; SPACESHIPS at Silverlake Lounge; JACQUES LESURE JAM SESSION at Nola's.

PHOTO BY FARLEY MAGADIA

Naama Kates: See Tuesday.

Location Info

Map

House of Blues Sunset Strip

8430 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90069

Category: Bars/Clubs

Region: Out of Town

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• Naama Kates
• Woody Allen
• Tom Ranier
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
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tue 12/27

No Bragging Rights

COBALT CAFÉ

These Riverside lads explore a nuanced take on melodic hardcore, which lets in chinks of sunny SoCal pop-punk and epic emo optimism. Bruising but never truly brutal, even their most screech-capped passages are swiftly offset with wafts of borderline breezy melody and wholesome sentiment. Though they cover a lot of stylistic ground, even within the same song, No Bragging Rights tackle each genre dalliance with sufficient commitment and authenticity to prevent a descent into lowest-common-denominator dross. Personified by twinkly guitar licks, frequent changes of pace and weight, and Mike Perez's unusually proficient split-personality vocals, NBR are proof that hardcore can be a positive action, not just a convulsive reaction. —Paul Rogers

Naama Kates

ROOM 5

Singer-composer-actress Naama Kates' songs are like minifilms, experiences in sound, word and energy that stop and start again, accelerate and explode and collapse and fall to the floor to catch their breath and reassess. When she's playing solo, just her and a piano, she's a bit wistful and introspective, delivering her material in a soulful yet refreshingly unmannered vocal style. With her small ensemble she lays into complexly structured pieces whose violin, cello and trombone ornaments bring a cabaretlike mystique to the proceedings. —John Payne

Jane Monheit

CATALINA BAR & GRILL

It was this time last year that Jane Monheit welcomed the New Year with a six-night stand at this very club. A lot has changed in the world since but, then again, a lot hasn't. The New York chanteuse still knows how to render venerable jazz standards with immediacy and intimacy, using her rich, melodious voice for achingly romantic impact. If anything, recent motherhood has only deepened her range on her latest album, Home. Key guests like John Pizzarelli, Larry Goldings and Mark O'Connor help Monheit put a smart spin on such classics as "While We're Young" and a delicate and affectingly spare "I'll Be Around," but the album's one new song, Goldings and Cliff Goldmacher's "It's Only Smoke," is a poetic revelation. "Like a ghost that dances from the tip of a lit cigarette, I know what romance is," Monheit allows mournfully, almost making you believe her when she concludes, "but it hasn't happened yet." Through Sun., Jan. 1. —Falling James

Moondog Orchestra

REDWOOD BAR & GRILL

As their name implies, part of Moondog Orchestra are looking up at the stars while the other half just want to jump on your sofa and chew it to bits. There's a boundless, puppy-dog energy as the East L.A. band tear into the alt-rock instrumental "High Hopes" with scattershot drums and ricochet guitars. But there's also the soaring, euphoric way the chords rise through their own murk and the guitars, bass and drums fuse into a glowing celestial lava. Far from being a typically rootsy rehash, "Chicken Leather" combines bluesy guitars with droning post-punk chords and yearning vocals to weirdly dreamy (and yet fully rocking) effect. Meanwhile, "Daniel & the White Lions," with its trudging blues tempo and fat and pulverizing slide guitar, effectively splits the difference between the old Rolling Stones and the early White Stripes. —Falling James

Also playing:

THE AGGROLITES at Saint Rocke; HANIN ELIAS, VIOLENT VICKIE, MIATA at Pehrspace.

wed 12/28

Eprom, Mux Mool, Jonwayne

LOW END THEORY

San Francisco beat scientist Eprom understands the yin and yang of bass music. Those gritty, gut-rattling lows are nothing without some splashy, ear-piercing highs, and he arranges both with nuance and aplomb. Best of all, the synthesizer is at the heart of his compositions, meaning his flair for thick texture and spare melody makes him a closer cousin to dubstep pioneers across the pond (Joker, Skream) than to the oft-maligned stateside progenitors of so-called frat-step. Meanwhile, Brooklyn-based producer Mux Mool specializes in a lush and playful sound, as laid-back as anything the West Coast has birthed, owing to the hazy bounce of early-'90s hip-hop, the crystalline keys of Boards of Canada and the goopy ebullience of chillwave. And don't miss Jonwayne, a rugged L.A. rapper-producer to watch in 2012. —Chris Martins

The Kill Pills

REDWOOD BAR & GRILL

If the gleeful surfeit of sticky holiday music hasn't already made you decide to end it all, the Kill Pills offer the first chance of the pre–New Year to blow that cotton candy from your ears. Guitarist Jesse's and bassist Aaron's thunderous, Sabbath-y riffs tumble downhill over the finely assembled wreckage of Adolfo's drums, while lead singer Shantel wails about "The Leaker" and other things that don't make much sense (or need to) at maximum volume. The L.A. band shifts dynamically from bluesy introspection to monumental stoner-rock passages, with the sinuous artiness of Shantel layered on top for another level of unpredictability. —Falling James

Bob Seger

STAPLES CENTER

In tough economic times, record labels turn to sure things. Which, in an age where Baby Boomers remain among the select few who still buy music, often comes in the form of deluxe reissues from seminal rock acts. Bob Seger is the most recent to get such treatment. To celebrate his 50th year as a recording artist, the Motown rocker rereleased touched-up versions of his live classics: 1976's Live Bullet and 1981's Nine Tonight. He's also hit the road to re-create some of these live nuggets and, well, to make some more moolah. Expect the classics — "Turn the Page," "Night Moves," "Hollywood Nights," et al. — as well as a new tune or two; Seger is hitting the studio to finish up his first new studio release since 2006's Face the Promise. —Dan Hyman