LA Weekly

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11

Nina Nastasia & Jim White at the Knitting Factory

On their new duo album, You Follow Me, New York–based singer-songwriter Nina Nastasia and drummer Jim White (a member of Australia’s Dirty Three, as well as a prolific session man who’s played with PJ Harvey, Cat Power and Nick Cave, among many others) make a dark folk-blues racket that lends physical weight to Nastasia’s unblinking accounts of emotional upheaval. (Instructive song titles include “How Will You Love Me,” “Late Night” and “The Day I Would Bury You.”) The instrumentation on Follow is purposely pared down to Nastasia’s vocals and guitar and White’s drums (as it will be tonight). Yet because her singing is so full of unexpected swoops and growls and his drumming frequently ventures off into seemingly improvised semi-solos, the music never feels incomplete. In fact, it’s hard to hear how they’d cram anything else into these songs. (Mikael Wood)


The Avengers, Pansy Division at Spaceland

Great moments in presidential speeches rewritten: “Ask not what you can do for your country/What’s your country been doing to you?” as the Avengers’ Penelope Houston railed back in 1979 on the Steve Jones–produced “The American in Me,” an anthemic look at the first Kennedy assassination that still raises chills today. “It’s the American in me that makes me watch the blood running out of the bullet hole in his head... It’s the American in me that says it’s an honor to die in a war that’s just a politician’s lie.” What a shame that we don’t live in wartime or an era when politicians are routinely deceitful — otherwise you could argue that the Avengers, one of the earliest and most thrilling San Francisco punk bands and a direct influence on an entire generation of riot grrls, are still relevant today. After the Avengers broke up, Houston worked for a spell with Magazine’s Howard Devoto, then morphed into a contrastingly laid-back folk-pop persona before reuniting her old band a few years ago with original guitarist Greg Ingraham. They’re backed by drummer Luis Illades and bassist Joel Reader, who’ll do double duty with the reconstituted queercore parodists Pansy Division. (Falling James)


FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12

Aesop Rock, Blockhead at Henry Fonda Theater

Brains and beats, two great flavors that are taking hip-hop into this still-new millennium with relevance. While lesser talents manufacture beefs or boasts, Aesop Rock is busy mashing Monty Python, astronomy, capitalism and shitloads more on his new effort None Shall Pass, a stone-cold tome delivered in his acrobatic baritone. Meanwhile, Blockhead has gone from being an esoteric producer touch-padding MacBook Pros in concert to a sought-after soundtracker and solo mogul, self-releasing his latest stack of instrumentals, Uncle Tony’s Coloring Book, and laying down tracks for Aesop Rock, among others. With Block’s head-bobbing tracks propelling Rock’s intertextual talents into the PA of the Fonda for a few hours, one can expect fired and fried neurons, as well as a few ciphers fronting new-school break-dancers. Hands will be thrown in the air, but everyone will wave them like they do, in fact, care. Because they do. There’s no school like the new school. (Scott Thill)


Akron/Family, Greg Davis, Megafaun, The Dodos at the Troubadour

Over the course of three albums, the Akron/Family of Brooklyn (via rural Pennsylvania) have carved a beautifully ornate heart on the aged stump of American music. Using traditional instruments — guitar, banjo, violin, bass, drums — augmented with pretty bells, keyboards, and what seems like a one-room congregation of voices, the four men create exuberant songs that seem both immediate and inevitable. Their remarkable new CD, Love Is Simple, is the band’s best. The centerpiece, “Lake Song/New Ceremonial Music for Moms,” begins with a standard structure before collapsing into a rhythmic breakdown that recalls the Balinese monkey chant, and, like much of the album, is infused with a kind of cosmic tribal fervor. For this tour, the band have expanded to seven members, including the brilliant guitarist/electronics composer Greg Davis and recent Table of the Elements records signees Megafaun. Combined with openers the Dodos, an equally inspired S.F. guitar/drum two-piece, the show has the markings of an instant classic. (Randall Roberts)


Nellie McKay at Largo

It took a village to record Nellie McKay’s third CD, Obligatory Villagers (Hungry Mouse/Vanguard), which features enough ace accompanists to stock a musicians’ institute, including alto saxist Phil Woods and former Miles Davis singer/Schoolhouse Rock composer Bob Dorough, who lends his craggily burnished vocals to the dreamy Spanish idyll “Politan” and the jazzy swing of “Oversure.” Even with the participation of such heavy hitters, Obligatory Villagers is McKay’s show; the multi-talented Harlem wunderkind wrote all the songs, produced the album, and worked out the elaborately sophisticated arrangements and orchestrations. “Wake up in a small café,” she coos on the ruminative cool of “Gin Rummy,” contrasting the tune’s breezy pop mood with a typically sly follow-up, “sweatshop in the sunshine.” Her self-described “schizophrenic voodoo” encompasses the rapid-fire calypso-ska lilt of “Identity Theft” (where she finds herself “runnin’ from the thought police” and insists that “Pluto’s still a planet”) and the swank-and-swampy blues of “Zombie.” Most inspiring of all is “Testify,” where she ties up her social activism, leftist idealism and nimbly clever wordplay into one big package that’s crowned by celebratory Sly & the Family Stone–style horns and a rousing chorus of backing voices that circle mesmerizingly during the song’s wonderfully busy fadeout. Also Thurs., Oct. 11. (Falling James)


Genesis at the Hollywood Bowl

For this much-touted reunion tour, the news is both good and bad for Genesis fans. (Well, it’s strictly all bad if you consider that Peter Gabriel isn’t onboard.) The bad news is that the set list dredges up too much of their latter-day dreck, such as the awful, pansy-lite rockers “Throwing It All Away,” “I Can’t Dance” and — I am gonna puke!! — “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight.” Mercifully, they decided to eschew “Abacab.” For the good news, the show is an exceedingly rare chance to hear prog-rock genius, including a medley, “In the Cage”/“The Cinema Show”/“Duke’s Travels”/“Afterglow,” that should appease us old-timers and even make up for Phil “Stumpy” Collins’ overblown heavenly pleas. Worth the ticket: “Firth of Fifth/I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)” — a medley of two songs from Selling England By the Pound — and the stunning “The Carpet Crawlers,” one of the most chilling songs ever written. What I’m trying to say here is take plenty of beer and bathroom breaks. Also Sat. (Libby Molyneaux)