Music Picks: Rome, The xx, Aretha Franklin

Also playing:

SHERYL CROW at Pacific Amphitheatre; VOXHAUL BROADCAST, MINI MANSIONS at Troubadour; REEL BIG FISH, SUBURBAN LEGENDS at House of Blues.

PHOTO BY MARY ANN HALPIN

Jennifer Leitham: See Thursday.

PHOTO BY ANGEL CEBALLOS

Foxygen: See Monday.

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More About

• The xx (Band)
• John Leitham
• Smokey Robinson
• Theater
• Off-Broadway

thu 7/26

Nosaj Thing

LEVITT PAVILLION

The last we really heard of Nosaj Thing was in 2009. As the burgeoning buzz was rightly reaching a fever pitch around L.A.'s bass-bumping Low End Theory club, the man born Jason Chung dropped Drift and, alongside scene heavyweight Flying Lotus, racked up a ton of attention for his idiosyncratic electronic works. While FlyLo is famous for blending jazz and soul-inspired organic matter into his gritty sonic tapestries, Nosaj takes a very clean, multidimensional approach to sound design, weaving melodic contrails through a celestial scene of sparkling beatwork and swirling effects. He's long overdue for a new album — word is it's in the works, and with a Blonde Redhead feature, no less — but credit where credit's due: He's also been perfecting his live show, which employs two-tone projections that follow his every move, swelling and shrinking in time with the tunes. —Chris Martins

The Intelligence

SATELLITE

It's nice to think about the world the Intelligence comes from — a place where Devo's big hit was "A Plan for U," a place where people automatically think of Australia when they think about the punk band called X, and a place where Mark E. Smith got Morrissey's place in pop culture and hard-core fans trek to Salford Docks instead of Salford Lad's Club for photos. This is beautiful music for slightly bent people, built around a bombsight-precise rhythm section (which includes a member of L.A. mind-grinders Zig Zags) and Intelligence founder Lars Finberg's capacity for limitless experimentation. On their new album Everybody's Got It Easy but Me, that capacity stretches between countdown-to-liftoff intro "I Like L.A." and an adorably faithful duet with Shannon of The Clams on Del Shannon's "Little Town Flirt." —Chris Ziegler

Jennifer Leitham

WESTFIELD CENTURY CITY

For all of jazz's vaunted free-spiritedness and openness to improvisation, it still remains a closed shop and something of a boys' club in many ways. In the early '80s, John Leitham was a respected bassist working steadily with Doc Severinsen's orchestra on The Tonight Show and gigging with stellar folks like Mel Torme and Woody Herman. Feeling trapped in a male body, Leitham began living as a woman, changing her name to Jennifer and eventually undergoing gender-reassignment surgery. "My heart was female," she explains in the new documentary I Stand Corrected. "Music is the thing that definitely saved me when I was going through the worst crisis of my life." Not surprisingly, much of the jazz community couldn't keep up with this tempo change, and it took a painfully long time before Leitham was accepted again for her playing. She has a strong yet nimble style, rambling easily up and down the neck of her upright bass, and remains one of straight-ahead jazz's most intuitive bassists — regardless of which clothing she wears or the name she chooses. —Falling James

Also playing:

HOT CHELLE RAE at Pacific Amphitheatre; GUANTANAMO BAYWATCH at Bootleg Bar; SPOEK MATHAMBO, GOTHIC TROPIC at Echoplex.