Music Picks: FYF Festival, Jillinda Palmer, Gaslamp Killer

mon 9/3

Kitten

PHOTO BY HANA ARDELEAN & JENNIFER SZILVAGYI

Kitten: See Monday.

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• Ben Reddell
• Lera Lynn
• The Gaslamp Killer
• Punk Rock
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BOOTLEG BAR

Local band Kitten are signed to a major label (Atlantic Records), have released a blog-hoggin' EP (Cut It Out), and have booked a monthlong residency at the Bootleg — and frontgal Chloe Chaidez is still only 17 years old. But much of the band's sonic stimuli way predate the glacially voiced Chaidez: Cut It Out's title track is Cocteau Twins gone Cranberries; "Sugar" is more like Sugarcubes than Ultravox; "Chinatown" could be Joy Division's rhythm section backing Dale Bozzio's yelpy star student. Yet Kitten, who must be channeling the 1980s (including a pretty faithful cover of The Smiths' "Panic") almost as they discover them, are blissfully free of revivalism mustiness, and though using a musical language of their parents' generation, speak frankly to their peers. Electro-flecked guitar rock, just like the first time. —Paul Rogers

King Conquer

COBALT CAFE

Though these Floridians are almost comically extreme in every facet of their music-making — absurdly blurred beats, guitars like poltergeist-possessed machinery, vocals that make Cookie Monster sound like an elocution instructor — there's nuance in their nastiness. Songs like "6 Gallon Gasoline Stomach" (from 2010 debut America's Most Haunted) and "Tyranny" (from imminent follow-up 1776), while blistered with kick drums and drowned in James Mislow's indecipherable retching, also embrace attention-holding shifts in groove and welcome moments of relative lyrical clarity (courtesy of drummer Chris Whited's yelled interjections). King Conquer find chinks of musicality within even their densest deathcore passages and, like all the best metal bands, refuse to see art and brute anger as mutually exclusive. —Paul Rogers

tue 9/4

Gotye

GREEK THEATRE

Totally over "Somebody That I Used to Know"? Check out the brilliant Internet mash-up that crosses Gotye's inescapable quirk-pop hit with Aaliyah's groundbreaking late-'90s R&B jam "Are You That Somebody?"; it's as well done (and as revealing) as such early-bootleg specimens as "A Stroke of Genie-us" and "Smells Like Booty." Then give a listen to the rest of Gotye's album, Making Mirrors, on which the Belgian-Australian studio hound exercises a stylistic palette far more expansive than his signature smash might suggest. Who knew this guy could do a pretty convincing blues number? The show also features Chairlift, a similarly adventurous Brooklyn duo best known for a single hook bomb — in its case "Bruises," which was featured a couple of years ago in an iPod spot. —Mikael Wood

Krzysztof Urbanski conducts "Three Russian Masters"

HOLLYWOOD BOWL

The classical canon today is both questioned for its relevance and pounced upon eagerly by a new generation of composers, performers and conductors of prodigious technical and scholarly gifts. The young firebrands are bringing deeply informed, interesting new insights to historical works, not to mention crowd-pleasing rock-star charisma. Nothing wrong with that! Such is the case with young Polish conductor Krzysztof Urbanski (now heading the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra) and Russian piano wiz Denis Matsuev. Together these creative upstarts will probe and prod the works of three Russian greats: Prokofiev's thrillingly athletic Piano Concerto No. 1; Stravinsky's Selections from Petrushka, performed as solo piano; and Shostakovich's insinuating stab at Stalin, the gargantuan Symphony No. 10. —John Payne

wed 9/5

Jillinda Palmer

THE SATELLITE

Like Woody Allen's Zelig, singer-keyboardist Jillinda Palmer is everywhere. The Texas native has played with, or been a member of, practically every indie-rock band in Echo Park and Silver Lake, including sugary girl-group revivalists The Damselles & The TC4 and whimsical garage-pop rockers Monolators, as well as The Breakups, Hi Ho Silver Oh, The Henry Clay People, SpongeBob & the Hi-Seas, Le Switch, Correatown and many others. Palmer finally comes into her own with her new debut EP, Lazy Sun, and her recent album, Black El Camino. Her endearing vocals soar over a variety of styles, from the languidly dreamy country-pop of the album's title track to the sly and swanky, horn-laden New Orleans jazz of "Song for Kermit," where she could be describing her own music when she declares, "Can't shake this feeling I get from a catchy melody." —Falling James

The Vibrators

LOS GLOBOS

British punk band The Vibrators were one of those punk bands that were never quite standard-issue P-U-N-K — you know, with the 'hawks and the leathers and the bondage pants and the sneer — and that's one of the best reasons to love them. They came out in that golden year of 1976, rising from the wreckage of glam and pub rock with a debut single bristling with wit and even charm. S&M never sounded as romantic as in their classic "Whips and Furs," and songs like "Into the Future" and "Judy Says" are short, sweet shocks that fit perfectly between, say, 999 and The Buzzcocks. Put it this way: Some bands just wanna stab something with a safety pin, but The Vibrators clearly prefer a catchy hook. —Chris Ziegler

Gaslamp Killer

THE AIRLINER

As resident DJ and co-founder of the crucial Low End Theory club in downtown L.A., Gaslamp Killer has earned respect. And while he's a turntablist/sound theorist/producer of wicked and tasty skills, GK always gives you something exciting to look at, too: Dude is larger than life. He puts a lot of everything into his sound, which his imminent world-music/Cali psych-mutating full-length Breakthrough (on Flying Lotus' Brainfeeder label) proves with a vengeance. The album includes the heavy-duty likes of Gonjasufi, Dimlite, Daedelus, Samiyam and Computer Jay. Gaslamp Killer also applies electronic darkness to his just-out "Flange Face/Seven Years of Bad Luck" single, a scary new monster movie to further melt your little mind. His music is beautiful: vast in scope and unsettling — exactly what we need right now. —John Payne