Music Picks: Chino XL, Marissa Nadler, As Blood Runs Black

thu 12/27

Riot Grrrl Xmas Carnival

PHOTO COURTESY OF BIGHASSLE.COM

Marissa Nadler: See Saturday.

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THE SMELL

It's four years in a row and counting for the annual Riot Grrrl Xmas Carnival at downtown's DIY show space the Smell, where local-ish bands sign on to raise money for the Downtown Women's Center. It's both a good cause and a fearlessly curated collection of bands: This year's lineup stretches from San Diego band Mermaid's no-waved noise-punk to The Anus Kings' starked-out folkisms, which are part of an album finished last year with help from Fidlar's Elvis Kuehn. (Also an album closing with a memorably solemn cover of Dead Milkmen's "Punk Rock Girl.") In between are the no-BS rockers Spare Parts for Broken Hearts, with members who served with distinction in corridor-cities stalwarts like Relish and The Randies, and brand-new band Smelveteen. All ages, of course, so there are mathematically zero reasons not to go out and support. —Chris Ziegler

Tijuana Panthers

HENRY FONDA THEATRE

Tijuana Panthers occupy a crucial niche in the local musical ecosystem: They're a little too pop to be a punk band but definitely too punk to be a pop band. That puts them in the same milieu as The Crowd and The Simpletones and the other bands that populated landmark compilation records like Beach Blvd. back in the day. And we need bands like that. In fact, without somebody out there to knock out teenage harmonies over 4/4 beats and perfectly reverbed guitar, California might be at risk of losing statehood, as per legislation dating back to the Brian Wilson era. They've got a new album due soonish, but their sound is as timeless as it is welcome — the amplified-just-enough soundtrack to growing up in the suburbs and on the surface streets. —Chris Ziegler

Diva

THE SATELLITE

What never-made cult movie did Diva fall out of? Probably one starring Annette Peacock and David Bowie just before he got huge, produced by Roger Corman and directed by Kenneth Anger, with Iggy Pop mooching around the craft-services table. This is cinematic music, yes, but from a film that's dissolving at the edges, or pop from ultra-chic import albums that David Lynch would loved, had they ever existed. Want this to be a little more concrete? That's not the Diva deal. "Dreamlike" is a term that gets used a little too casually, but this is the thing itself, asleep but walking nonetheless. Diva has shared stages with fellow astral explorers Sun Araw and Matthewdavid, but her recent Moon Moods reflects something else — that strange moment between psychedelia and punk, when music came from a slightly different world. —Chris Ziegler