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mon 10/8
PHOTO BY JUSTIN BROADBENT
Metric: See Tuesday.
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EL REY THEATRE
Danish pop duo The Raveonettes might not have the most original sound, but there's something charming about the way Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo blend their influences. Like so many bands, they started out by drowning their enigmatic love songs in a Jesus & Mary Chain–style sea of reverb, but on their new CD, Observator, they move into a sunnier and less derivative (if also less distinctive) brand of pop. Wagner reportedly found inspiration for the album while on a three-day bender in our very own Venice, and chose to record at the legendary Sunset Sound Recorders in Hollywood, hoping to get a contact high from his heroes The Doors by nostalgic osmosis. Despite that background, the music is generally light instead of heavy. As usual, the best songs are sung by Foo, whose honeyed voice elevates The Raveonettes' California dreaming. —Falling James
Superhumanoids
THE ECHO
L.A.'s Superhumanoids make pop songs out of star parts — like the glow, the heat, the empty space and of course the wisps of fire that make NASA scientists curse every time a space probe gets singed by the stuff. This is heavenly stuff, with singer Sarah Chernoff's vocals adrift in the darkness between reverb and synth-strings and digital drums, making for a sound somewhere in the territory left unexplored by the much-missed Rentals (especially on a song like "Geri," which is Superhumanoids at their most riled-up) and a cover of The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" that is itself a calmative of the highest order. 2010's "Hey Big Bang" was their big hit so far, but new songs like "Too Young for Love" reveal exactly the depth and sophistication you'd hope for from a band like this. Destined for stardom, in the most beautiful sense of the word. —Chris Ziegler
tue 10/9
JEFF The Brotherhood
TROUBADOUR
Don't worry: They really are brothers! And now that you've officially met Jake and Jamin Orrall, you won't feel awkward as their band happily tramples you flat. Originally debuting on their own Infinity Cat label, run in conjunction with their dad, the two-piece punk-and-then-some JEFF The Brotherhood spent years doing can't-say-no-to-a-killer-show tours and putting out records on gatekeeper labels like Jack White's Third Man (where they backed Insane Clown Posse!) and OC's Burger. Now officially on a major, their new Hypnotic Nights (produced with surprising amounts of sitar and synth by Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys) finds these crazy kids smashing Pinkerton-era Weezer into The Wipers and Dinosaur Jr. on deadpan stoner-punk songs that admit, "Sometimes I wish that someone might punch me in the throat." Aww ... you had me at "punch," guys. —Chris Ziegler
Tav Falco & the Unapproachable Panther Burns
THE SATELLITE
There are legends, and then there's Tav Falco. The Arkansas native is so much more than just the righteously revered missing link between rockabilly pioneers like Charlie Feathers and the messier garage-punk ravings of The Cramps. The singer-guitarist's ever-evolving band Panther Burns once included the late Memphis power-pop savant Alex Chilton, and Falco's strangely intoxicating blur of blues, country, garage and punk has directly influenced such disparate musicians as Jon Spencer, Southern Culture on the Skids, the Gories, Spaceman 3, Jack Oblivion and Cuban Rebel Girls. Among many other things, he's a tango dancer and a respected actor who's appeared in Great Balls of Fire, Downtown 81 and Dans le Rouge du Couchant. As a writer, he cobbled together a fascinating, nontraditional and multilayered history of Memphis, Ghosts Behind the Sun: Splendor, Enigma & Death. Ironically, this master of American music lives now in Europe, where he's vastly more popular. —Falling James
Metric
GREEK THEATRE
Not so many years ago, Metric were playing tiny clubs like the Silverlake Lounge. Now the Canadian alt-rock band take the stage at their largest L.A. venue yet, and deservedly so. It isn't surprising that singer-keyboardist Emily Haines is a good lyricist (her late father, Paul Haines, was a respected poet), but it's the contributions of bassist Joshua Winstead, guitarist James Shaw and drummer Joules Scott-Key that turn Haines' incisive words into supersonic rushes of musical delirium. Despite its title, Metric's new album, Synthetica, feels more organic than synthetic, with Winstead's buoyantly propulsive bass and Shaw's surging guitars illuminating such tracks as "Youth Without Youth" and "Artificial Nocturne." On "Speed the Collapse," Haines coos, "We auctioned off our memories in the absence of a breeze/Scatter what remains," as icy sheets of synthesizer wash over her. Metric even manage to pull off the neat trick of getting the reclusive Lou Reed to guest star on "The Wanderlust." —Falling James
Grimes
EL REY THEATRE
Seemingly laboratory-created for the Coachella crowd, Claire Boucher (aka Grimes) gently inflates an enveloping, carefully curated cloud of various in-vogue sounds: quirky, elusive and lyrically vague voices; spartan, floor-fillin' beat-box grooves; textured electronic basslines; and squelchy, rave-recalling synths. The stare-out-the-window-on-a-rainy-day, Liz Fraser–y introspection of her main melodies largely (and mercifully) trumps the Starbucks-ready, Enya-esque oohs and aahs with which these often overlap and intertwine. But what keeps this Canadian credible is the sense that all of her stylistic hipster-hopping is in fact unconscious, almost fated. If you go to only this one gig this year, you'll save yourself 12 trips to the Bootleg to see bands tackling just one facet of Grimes' kaleidoscopic sound, and with just an ounce of her honesty. —Paul Rogers
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