Music Picks: Bloc Party, Metric, KROQ Acoustic Xmas

KROQ Almost Acoustic Xmas with Jack White, the Killers, Passion Pit, et al.

GIBSON AMPHITHEATRE

PHOTO BY MARLEY KATE

Bloc Party: See Friday.

PHOTO BY VALERIE DOMINGUEZ

The Shag Rats: See Saturday.

Related Content

• The Five Best Concerts in L.A. This Week
  December 10, 2012
• Music Picks: Coachella, Merle Haggard, Spiritualized
  April 11, 2013
• The Five Best Concerts in L.A. This Weekend
  December 7, 2012
• Music Picks: Lloyd Price, Leni Stern, Amon Tobin and The Residents
  February 21, 2013
• The Best Concerts in L.A. This Week
  February 25, 2013

More About

• Lionel Loueke
• Ferenc Nemeth
• Bloc Party
• Hip-Hop and Rap
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

Say what you will about the "artistic merits" of these Christmas blowouts, but you've got to admit that their hearts are in the right place: This 23rd edition of the annual event benefits worthy local charities Para Los Niños and the Al Wooten Jr. Heritage Center. So don't be a drag. Participate. Come on down to these two — yes, two — nights of an insanely varied musical grab bag: The Saturday show includes Linkin Park, Rise Against, Bush, Garbage, Slightly Stoopid, AWOLNATION, The Lumineers, Walk the Moon, the Gaslight Anthem, Two Door Cinema Club and Youngblood Hawke. The Sunday, Dec. 9, bill throws down The Killers, Jack White, M83, Neon Trees, Of Monsters and Men, Alex Clare, Imagine Dragons and most likely many, many more. —John Payne

sun 12/9

Metric

FOX THEATER (POMONA)

"They were right when they said we should never meet our heroes," Emily Haines admits on "Breathing Underwater," from Metric's new album, Synthetica. Her vocals exude a wide-eyed wonder as James Shaw surrounds her with spinning synthesizer figures and swirling guitars, creating a magically cheery maze of sounds that masks Haines' hero-worshiping disappointment. Over the past decade, Metric have gone from looking up at the stars in such tales of fannish adoration as "Poster of a Girl" to becoming arena-filling stars in their own right. Perhaps we shouldn't meet our heroes, but Metric's fans in Pomona likely will realize tonight that, for all the group's growing popularity, the Canadian alt-rock quartet hasn't let fame go to its collective head. Haines still spins her poetic reveries with curiosity and invention rather than giving in to cynicism and musical repetition. —Falling James

Dirt Dress

THE SMELL

Dirt Dress have been soldiering through L.A.'s DIY scene for some years now, but their new record — Donde la Vida No Vale Nada, out on Recess and Burger — is a helluva leap upward and forward, and who knows what other unexpected directions? Like The Fall's Mark E. Smith famously said, "If you're gonna play it out of tune, play it out of tune properly." And so Dirt Dress deliver ferociously discordant post-punk-pounders, somewhat like The Fall, Swell Maps, The Adverts or the mighty Australian X. You'll even hear a bit of The Minutemen rattling around in here. ("Shit From an Old Notebook" spirit; "Political Song" intensity.) This is a band cut to its barest roots: guitar, drums, bass and a lot of sharp points. Would it be too much if we told you to dig it? —Chris Ziegler

mon 12/10

Lamps

PEHRSPACE

Lamps are punk (like Chrome? Or Suicide?). They're from space (like Hawkwind?) but also from hell (like Electric Eels!), where everything melts together into a big hot white ball of confusion that's bright enough to give off some sick kind of light but which will turn you to ash in a second if you touch it. (Are the guitars on here being murdered? Or are they murdering something else?) Anybody who ever gritted their teeth in a traffic jam with one of the nastier Oh Sees albums jammed in the tape deck needs to buy Lamps' newest, Under the Water Under the Ground, and then break it into pieces and eat it to correctly absorb its primal power. Or, yes, you could listen to it in its entirety, but that's gonna do far stranger things to your system. A great band in a crazy way. —Chris Ziegler

tue 12/11

John Cale

EL REY THEATRE

It would be convenient to place John Cale into some nostalgic little box, given the massive impact he's had on underground and (once the rest of the world caught up with him) mainstream music during the past 50 years. He's most celebrated for his crucial contributions to the Velvet Underground, anointing Lou Reed's druggy tales of sin and no redemption with a classical veneer that made already strange songs like "Venus in Furs" and "Sister Ray" sound even more hazily exotic. He would be a legendary figure if only for the many important musicians he's discovered and championed, producing, arranging and collaborating on classic works by The Stooges, Patti Smith, The Modern Lovers, Nico and Nick Drake. Cale is so avant-garde, he's held his own with the visionary likes of Terry Riley, John Cage and La Monte Young. His solo albums in the 1970s were impressively dark and literary but, with a creative mind this restless, he has continued to make interesting and unpredictable music all the way through this year's release, Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood, where he even collaborated with Danger Mouse. —Falling James

thu 12/13

Public Enemy, X-Clan, Schooly D, Monie Love

CLUB NOKIA

Characterized by Chuck D's penetrating delivery and unapologetic social commentary, Public Enemy are one of hip-hop's most important acts. Their avant-garde sonic milieu, saturated with black militancy and noise, took the world by storm in the late '80s and early '90s with the legendary releases Yo! Bum Rush the Show, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Fear of a Black Planet. In 2012, Public Enemy released two thematically related LPs: Most of My Heroes Still Don't Appear on No Stamp and The Evil Empire of Everything. The group has since embarked on a tour with the father of gangsta rap, Schooly D. This quasi–Native Tongues reunion also features X Clan and Monie Love. —Jacqueline Michael Whatley