Jimmy Cliff, Liars, Jesse Sykes

fri 6/22

PHOTO BY ZEN SEKIZAWA

Liars: See Friday.

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More About

• The Coup (Band)
• Amy LaVere
• Steve Earle
• Rahsaan Patterson
• Indie Rock and Indie Pop

Amy LaVere

THE HOTEL CAFÉ

Acting like a country-rock icon is nothing new to Amy LaVere, who had a small role portraying Wanda Jackson in the 2005 film Walk the Line. But the Memphis singer–upright bassist is garnering increasing attention for her own music, which twines folk, pop and restless strains of Americana with a soulfully jazzy delivery. "I'm stomping out of here/I hope the dishes rattle down off your shelf," she declares with a spirited defiance on her 2011 full-length, Stranger Me, which was produced by Arcade Fire engineer Craig Silvey. The album artfully captures LaVere's bittersweet ambivalence in the wake of her breakup with Hold Steady drummer and onetime bandmate Paul Taylor, as well as her sadness following the death of her beloved former mentor-producer, Jim Dickinson (Big Star, The Replacements, Green on Red, Rolling Stones). —Falling James

Liars

HENRY FONDA

Over the past decade or so, the confounding Liars have released several volumes of resolutely avant-garde thump/screech/howl whose chief curiosities are their nebulous standing within the numbingly literal-minded world of rock music. The L.A.-based trio now proffers WIXIW, a startlingly harmonious work whose tracks veer from the outwardly abstruse collages and concepts of previous records to electronic pop that's full of accessible beats and hummable melodies yet whose intent remains thrillingly woolly. There's a Liars-only symmetry to all these brooding mazes of sonic and lyrical ambiguity, imparting the sense that something's happening — though what that might be is anyone's guess. Rejoice. Far from the coldly calculated horse poo the above verbosity implies, as a live unit Liars' barrage of sound art garage-stomps like a champ. —John Payne

Japanther, The Coup

THE SMELL

Simple as their two-man setup is, there are many layers to the hook-y Brooklyn noise-punk project known as Japanther. Despite their slowly growing profile, singer-bassist Matt Reilly and drummer–effects man Ian Vanek formed the band more than a decade ago as a college art experiment at the Pratt Institute. Their spare configuration — which incidentally finds them singing through neon pay-phone handsets — allows them a great deal of flexibility live, where they've performed in consort with synchronized swimmers and marionettes, on the Williamsburg Bridge and on the back of a moving truck. But they're also seasoned at thrashing basement parties, an environment the Smell duplicates with impressive accuracy. Plus, they recorded their last LP, Beets, Limes and Rice, in L.A., so they know the terrain. Oakland agit-prop rap grandaddies The Coup open, and don't be surprised if the two groups combine forces to subvert the man proper. —Chris Martins

Def Leppard, Poison

VERIZON WIRELESS AMPHITHEATER

These once outlandishly coiffed acts have far outlived their hair-metal heydays because, for all their masturbatory guitar solos and pyro-laden stage shows, both have always been, at heart, timeless pop bands. However riffy and bombastic the Lepps got with their impossibly successful Pyromania and Hysteria albums in the 1980s, songs like "Photograph" and "Animal" are essentially sing-along-ready ditties made massive by Mutt Lange's miles-deep production. Poison's poppiness is much closer to the surface on both their hastily recorded 1986 debut, Look What the Cat Dragged in, and their chart-topping 1988 power ballad, "Every Rose Has Its Thorn." Though simplistic, Poison's early hits have proven strong enough to keep the band popular despite singer Brett Michaels' stunningly distasteful star turn in the recent Rock of Love reality TV series. —Paul Rogers

Also playing:

IT'S CASUAL at Alex's Bar; SCORPIONS, TESLA at Staples Center.

sat 6/23

Milo Greene

TROUBADOUR

They've opened on tour for Grouplove and The Civil Wars, but now L.A.'s Milo Greene are slipping into a summer of headlining shows in support of their self-titled debut, which comes out July 17. (They'll jump back off the main stage for a stop at Lollapalooza in August.) As their affiliation with Chop Shop Records suggests, Milo Greene play a tenderly atmospheric brand of harmony-drenched folk-pop seemingly designed for emotional scenes on primetime television shows; Chop Shop founder Alexandra Patsavas (who oversees music supervision on Grey's Anatomy and the Twilight films) probably lost her shit when she heard the band's lovely, and exceedingly licensable, "Don't You Give Up on Me." With San Diego's blues-punky Little Hurricane and local indie-rock dudes Harriet. —Mikael Wood

Abigails, Tomorrow's Tulips, Sweet Sweet Things

SATELLITE

This isn't quite an Orange County night, but this show at the Satellite is all comradely bands from the satellite cities — the stars from the bars like the Prospector and Avalon, where a Tuesday night can last forever. (In the nice way, not the kill-me way.) Newest act on this nicely curated rock & roll bill are The Abigails, led by ex-Growler Warren Thomas, the guy with the teardrop tattoo and the heart o' gold and the voice (and sense for misadventure) of Lee Hazlewood. New LP (co-released on Mono and Burger) sounds like it came out of a jail cell or the bottom of a well — what those in the biz like to call "atmosphere," usually before stubbing out a cigarette. These are songs for the small towns in Jim Thompson novels. Like the man drunk in the hotel room says, "It's always lightest just before the dark." —Chris Ziegler