Autumn’s annual Murder Ballads night is always an intensely atmospheric gasser, and this fifth edition, touted as “A Tribute to True Crimes of Passion,” guarantees a stimulatingly sinister earful. Featuring contributions from psychedelic Westerners Spindrift, the unhinged psych-­pop provocateurs Bloody Death Skull (who’ve been aptly and admirably pigeonholed as “Tin Pan Dali”), shaggy harmony specialists The Zmed Brothers, Blank Tapes’ Pearl Charles and her Pipes Canyon Band, along with a horde of others (Joel Jerome, Z Berg, Skin & Bones, Rachel Fannan, Honey Child and Jenny Luna among them), it’s a formidable round­up of local talent. And with a tall stack of songs fueled by such appetizing motivations as jealousy, rage and revenge, it’s an unparalleled celebration of irresistible impulse and good old-­fashioned blood lust — the ideal pre­Halloween mood enabler.

Tue., Oct. 28, 7 p.m., 2014
(Expired: 10/28/14)

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