LA Weekly

THURSDAY, September 21

Phoenix, La Rocca at the Wiltern

Phoenix come from France, that great collector of culture from afar. Phoenix, that is to say, are French but make state-of-the-art Anglo-American pop music, for the most part better than the English and Americans from whom they dig. Their upbeat, craving-inducing new album, It’s Never Been Like That (Virgin), is chockablock with super-excellent, tight songcraft that doesn’t skimp on the requisite hooky stuff, where the heart-tugging comes via pretty chords that are also subtly complex and the production is forthright and sunny. While there are no huge surprises within a country mile, upon repeated listening the album feels like a classic, given a screw-tightening, a lube job and a wash & wax. Vroom vroom... Also, L.A.’s way-gritty jangly Beatle-y La Rocca perform tracks from their ace new CD, The Truth, on Dangerbird. (John Payne)



Andrew Bird, Cass McCombs at the Henry Fonda Theater

A former part-time Squirrel Nut Zipper, Chicago-based Andrew Bird makes beguiling avant-folk records centered on his violin playing, his whistling, and the sort of surreal storytelling you’d expect from someone who’s spent a considerable amount of time alone on a farm in rural Illinois (which Bird has done). Last year’s The Mysterious Production of Eggs is his most recent album, and probably his best; fans of Sufjan Stevens’ tuneful, bookish material will find much to admire about it. Live, Bird utilizes a digital delay pedal to re-create the album’s delicately intricate sound; he’ll also be accompanied tonight by multi-instrumentalist Martin Dosh, a member of the Anticon indie-rap collective. Opener Cass McCombs plays a more rough-and-tumble indie-folk; like Bird, he sports a sense of humor, but McCombs buries his beneath layers of old-soul weariness. (Mikael Wood)



Emily Haines & the Soft Skeleton at the Viper Room

Anyone who’s suffered through Mick Jagger’s solo albums might wonder why the lead singers of well-known bands would need a separate solo career to express themselves, but Emily Haines makes a convincing case for such a duality on her new CD, Knives Don’t Have Your Back (Last Gang). Haines is best known as the front woman of Metric and is also part of the Toronto music collective Broken Social Scene, but the spare, piano-drenched songs on Knives, such as the haunting “Crowd Surf Off a Cliff,” are more intimate than her previous rockist alter egos, evoking John Lennon’s ballads on the White Album. In “The Maid Needs a Maid,” a clever subversion of fellow Canadian Neil Young’s “A Man Needs a Maid,” she tells a lover, “Your mouth should be working for me, for free . . . You could be a good wife to me/I would love to pay for you.” At first blush, “Doctor Blind” appears to be the latest in Haines’ line of medically themed songs, but her somber delivery, backed by a hazy wash of strings, is more subdued than the rabble-rousing frustration of Metric’s “Monster Hospital” — it’s quietly chilling. Tonight, backed by her Soft Skeleton (bassist Paul Dillon and Sparklehorse drummer Scott Minor), she performs two sets, at 8:30 & 10 p.m. (Falling James)



FRIDAY, September 22


Mission of Burma at the Troubadour

“Don’t make me say the same thing twice,” bassist Clint Conley implores on “2wice,” from Mission of Burma’s The Obliterati (Matador), the second impressive comeback album since the Boston post-punk art-rockers reunited a few years ago after an absence of nearly two decades. And while it’s undeniably thrilling to hear them perform live again and break out such early classics as “Dead Pool,” “This Is Not a Photograph” and “Academy Fight Song” — brainy, propulsive songs that have been covered by Moby and R.E.M. and which still don’t sound dated — it’s even more exciting that MOB aren’t repeating themselves. The Obliterati is crammed with 14 all-new tunes from the band’s triumvirate of singers, ranging from the mountainous, Pink Floydian grandeur of guitarist Roger Miller’s “Donna Sumeria” and the pounding hypnosis of “1,001 Pleasant Dreams” to the stuttering riffs of drummer Peter Prescott’s “Let Yourself Go” and the rainy-day Hendrixy swirl of “The Mute Speaks Out.” Conley, meanwhile, chimes in with melodically arcing vocals over a stormy sea of Urinals-style chords on “Man in Decline.” After all these decades and the messy entrails of their imitators, it’s nice to see that MOB are still, as Miller says, “Careening With Conviction.” (Falling James)


Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings at the Henry Fonda Theater

The most visible member of a sprawling Brooklyn-based crew of meticulous classic-funk revivalists, Sharon Jones is uninterested in the unruffled equipoise proffered by our current generation of female R&B singers. Driven to intensity by her crack backup band, the Dap-Kings, Jones embodies the jangled nerves and overworked emotions endemic to romantic turmoil; she’s a strong woman by anyone’s standards, but she’s not afraid to reveal her weaknesses with the sweat and tears contained in tunes like “My Man Is a Mean Man” and “How Long Do I Have to Wait for You?” This is true on record — check Jones’ latest, 2005’s Naturally, for proof — but it’s especially evident in the lady’s high-octane live shows, where you can probably ask for your money back if real-life sweat and tears don’t appear. (Mikael Wood)


Ben Kweller, The Sam Roberts Band at Avalon

As front boy of the heavily hyped teen-grunge act Radish, Ben Kweller spent the earliest years of his career feeling like a pawn, taking direction from record execs three times his age. So it’s something like karmic payback that he plays all the instruments on his new self-titled solo album, the follow-up to 2004’s scruffy, live-in-the-studio On My Way. Brooklyn-based Kweller (who became a father earlier this year) says he modeled the disc on ’80s fare like Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever and Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A., something you can hear more in the (relatively) shiny production than in the tunes, which are much sweeter and more appealingly awkward than anything by those old hands. Montreal’s Sam Roberts plays slightly arty roots-rock that shares a bit with Ryan Adams’ early solo stuff. (Mikael Wood)