Music Picks: Too $hort, Best Coast, Brad Mehldau Trio

Toadies

THE ROXY

PHOTO BY LAUREN DUKOFF

Dum Dum Girls: See Friday.

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Though best known for uniquely creepy 1994 single "Possum Kingdom," Toadies' consistently distinct sonic statement is perhaps personified by their much-delayed 2001 sophomore full-length, Hell Below/Stars Above (poor sales of which hastened the band's breakup shortly after its release). The stop-start male angst of "Push the Hand," the bass-propelled bounce of "Motivational" and the epic struggle in "Doll Skin" are all high points of an album without a weak song. Though today's re-formed Toadies lack the eccentric lilt of original bassist Lisa Umbarger, they continue to push great banks of emotional buttons through disquieting use of space and pace; burbling basslines behind sneering, strangulated guitars; and, above all, Todd Lewis' fixed-stare confessional croon and irreparably wounded wail. —Paul Rogers

Betty Blowtorch

EL CID

Much like their heroes the Runaways and AC/DC, the late-'90s hard-rock quartet Betty Blowtorch had the unique ability to appeal to both punks and metal-heads with no-nonsense headbangers like "I Wanna Be Your Sucker" and the succinctly eloquent "Shut Up & Fuck." The local band appeared to be well on its way to national success, when lead singer/bassist Bianca Halstead was killed in a car accident in New Orleans in 2001, a tragedy that was ruefully examined in an unusually insightful and ultimately heartbreaking documentary film, Betty Blowtorch & Her Amazing True Life Adventures. At tonight's tribute show, the surviving members of the group — lead guitarist Blare N. Bitch, rhythm guitarist Sharon Needles and drummer Judy Molish — will reunite and back an array of guest vocalists sitting in for Halstead, including Faster Pussycat's Taime Down and Lit's Kevin Baldes. —Falling James

Also playing:

CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH at El Rey Theatre; ERIC HUTCHINSON, GRAFFITI6 at Troubadour; IGAF SEQUOIA at Cobalt Café; PLANTS AND ANIMALS at the Satellite; BUYEPONGO at the Del Monte Speakeasy; TINA RAYMOND at Vibrato.

sun 5/20

UK

EL REY THEATRE

If you're an aficionado [sniff!] of the great progressive rock bands that found their fullest flowering in the '70s, you'll have already bought your tix for this performance by perhaps the best of them all, UK. The band's original lineup was a sterling super-grouping that featured King Crimson/Yes drum god Bill Bruford, Crimson (and later, uh, Asia) bassist-singer John Wetton, jazz-rock guitar deity Alan Holdsworth and Roxy Music violinist-keyboardist Eddie Jobson. Well, now here's Jobson and Wetton joined by ex-Zappa drumming ace Terry Bozzio (who'd replaced Bruford in the UK lineup after the band's first album) in a one-off world tour. As this is their first time playing together in more than three decades, tonight's show is, of course, touted as a rare event. Hopefully, it'll be well done, too. —John Payne

Also playing:

THE HOLMES BROS. at McCabe's; REBECCA GATES at Townhouse; ANGELA MCCLUSKEY at Hotel Café; BRIGHT BEAST at Origami Vinyl; MONICA LIONHEART, DANIEL AHEARN at Bootleg Bar.

mon 5/21

Brad Mehldau Trio

BROAD STAGE

At this point in his career, is it too soon to credit the visionary pianist-composer with becoming the most influential jazz artist of the past two decades? He has inspired an entire generation of players, and it's hard to find a young pianist who hasn't borrowed something from him, a copycat reverence heretofore applied to such hallowed figures as Parker, Coltrane and Hancock. Still, there's no improving on the original, and Mehldau's new album, Ode, presents an artist firmly in flux to maturation — he found his voice long ago but is becoming ever more comfortable with it. His pianistic and harmonic innovations were once a tad expository, but he now delves deeper into them, finding freedom within his ideas, untethered from self-consciousness. Go, witness a sage climbing toward a lofty place in jazz history. —Gary Fukushima

Also playing:

JOSH NELSON at Vitello's.

tue 5/22

Spiritualized

THE WILTERN

There's something inexorably magical about rock & roll odes to girls named Jane. "Queen Jane Approximately" was one of Bob Dylan's most mysteriously beguiling songs of the mid-'60s, while "Sweet Jane" was just about as close as Lou Reed ever got to a feel-good classic rock anthem. Garage-rock howlers Dead Moon revealed a previously unknown pop reverence on their obscure gem "Jane," and even Slade's glitter-rock stomper "Gudbye T' Jane" had a certain compulsive allure. (Jane's Addiction's dopey and sentimentally obvious ballad "Jane Says" remains one of the few exceptions to this rule.) On the 10-minute-plus epic "Hey Jane," from Spiritualized's new album, Sweet Heart Sweet Light (whose very title evokes Reed's Velvet Underground), Jason Pierce sings the praises of a transvestite prostitute. Like many of Spiritualized's best tracks, "Hey Jane" starts out as a fuzzy, bouncy ramble before gathering gradual momentum and tripping out in a spacey swirl of psychedelic sound effects and angelic harmonies. —Falling James

Lianne La Havas

BOOTLEG

This young English singer — one of several in recent months to be tagged as the next Adele — has a debut coming out in August on Nonesuch, Is Your Love Big Enough?, parts of which she recorded here in Los Angeles with Matt Hales of the U.K. pop act Aqualung. Hales is just one of La Havas' high-profile benefactors; last year Bon Iver took her out on the road as an opener after they met on Later ... With Jools Holland. These fellows' admiration is well founded. On her five-song Lost & Found EP, La Havas flexes her timeless, old-soul vocals over handsome arrangements that aren't afraid of a little new-school shine. She plays here before heading to Europe for a string of festival dates. With Ferraby Lionheart. —Mikael Wood