Thursday 9/23

Decibel Festival

(Various venues) See preview, and Data Breaker.

Flying Lotus, Eskmo, Lorn, Samiyam, Truckasauras

(Neumos) L.A. beat scientist/sonic shaman/rampant self-mythologizer Flying Lotus specializes in glitchy, jazz-drunk soundscapes seemingly recorded in Cinemascope, and his latest, Cosmogramma, is his most satisfying full-length yet—an insular but expansive, fully immersive, start-to-finish mindblower. At tonight's "Flylo and Friends" Decibel showcase, the man lets loose with one of his freewheeling live sets, with San Francisco's Eskmo, Seattle's Truckasauras, and Flying Lotus's Brainfeeder labelmates Lorn and Samiyam rounding out the bill. DAVID SCHMADER

Vampire Weekend, the Head and the Heart

(Paramount) Let's examine one of the many fine songs on Vampire Weekend's excellent sophomore album, Contra—say, "Run." Not the flashiest song on the album, but still a lot to recommend it. "Run" begins with a bright, slurring-to-life guitar riff; it picks up a rolling floor-tom rhythm; Rostam Batmanglij adds soft synth chords, then a bubble-popping arpeggio; the chorus erupts with sliced-up hi-hats and snares underpinning a sunny, far-off horn motif. Over it all, Ezra Koenig sighs, a gently weary counterpoint to the rising brass, and dreams of romantic escape from the workaday world even though "there's nowhere else to go" (but, still, maybe...). "Run" is one chapter; as Contra unfolds, class anxieties and mistrust weigh on the romance, getaways are won and lost, loves flicker and fade, memories come rushing back. Arrive early for up-and-coming locals the Head and the Heart. ERIC GRANDY

Fences, Richie Young, Campfire Ok

(Crocodile) Fences frontman Chris Mansfield looks like a rock star. He wears sleeveless T-shirts and tight short pants. He has face tats, arms covered in ink, big brown eyes, and a coy smile—he's like Tim Armstrong minus a decade of hard drugs and the speech impediment. His songs, like his physical appearance, are a balance of hard and soft. Emotional topics like fucked-up relationships, depression, and daddy issues are set to thoughtfully crafted pop songs and beautiful acoustic ballads. Tonight's show celebrates the long-awaited release of Fences' debut full-length, and soon, with songs this strong, he won't just look like a rock star—he'll actually be one. Girls love a sensitive boy with face tats. MEGAN SELING

Police Teeth, Generalissimo, He Whose Ox Is Gored, Cold Lake

(Comet) Police Teeth describe their sound thusly: "If you're over 25: the Wipers meets Superchunk. If you're under 25: Hot Snakes meets the Thermals." Fair enough, but Les Savy Fav should be in there somewhere, too. With this range of influences, Police Teeth generate biting, high-energy post-punk that doesn't take itself too seriously. The band is currently working on a third record, due out in April on Chicago's Latest Flame label. Opening is Police Teeth frontman James Burns's other, also highly recommended band Cold Lake (where he handles just guitar). Asked about the upcoming record and playing two sets with two different bands in one show, all Burns would talk about were billmates Generalissimo from Oakland, whom he described as "left-wing fascists. Devo meets the Melvins. So awesome." GRANT BRISSEY

Deakin, Prince Rama

(Vera) How can you lose when you record your album in Kurt Vonnegut's grandson's cabin and a 135-year-old haunted church, with Animal Collective's Avey Tare, Deakin, and the Present's Rusty Santos at the controls? We don't even need to mention the Hare Krishna commune upbringing, do we? No. Prince Rama sound like a zeitgeisty culmination of the new American underground's fascination with mysticism—portentous chants, wailing in tongues, and all—come to blazing, bizarre fruition. A ritualistic seriousness, thunderous drums, and cavernous reverb color Prince Rama's Shadow Temple, their new album on AC's Paw Tracks imprint. If while this is playing you don't feel like you're tripping nads in a Far East Asian house of worship, you should have your psychedelic bona fides revoked. Deakin in solo guise so far hasn't impressed much. At his April Neumos gig, playing guitar and singing, he seemed too tentative and his material too amorphous, trying to merge experimental-noise tendencies with singer-songwriter conventions. Let's hope Deakin has sorted out his problems and discovered where his strengths lie. DAVE SEGAL

Friday 9/24

Decibel Festival

(Various venues) See Stranger Suggests, preview, and Data Breaker.

Cobirds Unite, the Young Evils, Numbers and Letters

(Columbia City Theater) At first, Cobirds Unite was merely the name of Rusty Willoughby's newest collection of beautifully melodic pop, featuring harmonies and musical support from Visqueen's Rachel Flotard. But tonight, Cobirds Unite are a band, featuring Willoughby and Flotard along with guitarist Johnny Sangster, cellist Barbara Hunter, and drummer/ former Screaming Tree Barrett Martin, who'll bring Willoughby's lush new songs to life onstage. Opening the show: Seattle indie-poppers the Young Evils and Brooklyn art-folkers Numbers and Letters (7 pm show all ages, 10 pm show 21+). DAVID SCHMADER

Lou-Lou, Portable Morla, phase3, Megabats

(Rendezvous) Megabats describe themselves as "dronestep," claim they hail from "Bliss Village, Washington," and list influences like Sunroof!, Neu!, Astral Social Club, and Black Dice, so there's no fucking way I'm not going to love 'em to pieces. Now that I've sampled a handful of their tracks, I'm happy to report that the local duo of Samuel Melancon and Riley Scott have figured out the secret to manifesting shiver-inducing drones. Like Fuck Buttons', Megabats' songs combine a sort of motorized mesmerism and a keening metallic glaze, lending their sound a prismatic dynamism that keeps stasis at bay. For variety, "Tang Sludge" buries a disco beat under a supercharged, corroded-automaton throb. It's crazymaking in the best way possible. Fellow Seattle duo phase3 tap into a more disjunctive anticompositional style, and are head-wrecking in a slightly less overwhelming manner. Fear for your equilibrium. DAVE SEGAL

Nevermore, Warbringer, Hatesphere, Deathmocracy, After the Fallout

(El Corazón) Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of Stranger lore—while I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door—only this, and nothing more." 'Tis my friend Raven, dressed in black, wandering in from nightly shore! She spoke only one word, as if her soul in that one word she did outpour. Nothing further then she uttered—not a feather then she fluttered—till I scarcely more than muttered, "We need a taxi to El Corazón—on the minute we will leave, for heaviest of metal we both adore." Then quoth the Raven, "Nevermore!" KELLY ALLAN O

Saturday 9/25

Decibel Festival

(Various venues) See preview, and Data Breaker.

The xx, Warpaint, Zola Jesus

(Paramount) Consider tonight's lineup a testament to the power of restraint. British trio the xx make a massive impact with their language of small, self-contained sounds—a soft-knocking MPC drum beat; spare synth echoes; intertwining, monophonic guitar and bass lines; close-quartered male/female vocal duets. Warpaint are similarly understated. The muted guitar, bass, and drums on the seductive "Undertow" don't function as propulsion so much as, appropriately, undercurrent, invisibly moving the band's floated female vocals. They do an icy-cool cover of David Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes," they do fey, sedated folk on "Billie Holiday," they do a frayed, raplike cadence over slow-dredged guitar, subtly popping bass, and muffled backbeat on "Beetles." Zola Jesus sings haunted songs in a low, reverberating mezzo-soprano—like the sonic and spiritual kin of Seattle's Tiny Vipers—over dark, pooling synth atmospheres and simple patterns of kick-drum thud. Get killed, softly. ERIC GRANDY

Melvins, Totimoshi

(Crocodile) The Melvins do what they want. Say Buzz Osbourne and Dale Crover want to release an album full of nothing but amp feedback and truck noises. Chances are they'd have it done in three weeks, with fanboys holding copies of it in four. Many consider the Melvins to be the "godfathers of grunge," as Crover and Osbourne were the older dudes of Aberdeen that a young Kurt Cobain looked up to—but, truthfully, they're so much more. Almost 30 years later, the band is still relevant and releasing captivating music full of crushing riffs and Osbourne's signature howl. Rounding out the Melvins' lineup these days are two notable Northwest noisemakers, Jared Warren and Coady Willis of Big Business. KEVIN DIERS

Sunday 9/26

Decibel Festival

(Various venues) See preview.

Monday 9/27

The Flaming Lips, Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti

(Paramount) Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti have ascended to absurdly high levels in the music-biz hierarchy this year, and good for them. Even with their newly streamlined, glossier take on netherzoned AM-radio pop, these L.A. dudes bring a winning nonchalance and cheeky quirkiness to the big folks' table. It'll be interesting to see how the Flaming Lips' audience responds to their loopy ditties. The Lips are still supporting 2009's Embryonic (and maybe their remake of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon?), which brought a welcome return to rawness and weirdness after several albums of oft-saccharine, stadium-sized space rock. (Full disclosure: I think the Lips peaked with 1990's In a Priest Driven Ambulance and 1997's Zaireeka.) Whatever the case, Lips shows are always audiovisually spectacular and they reportedly killed it at the Isle of Wight's Bestival earlier this month, so expect a wow-intensive experience. DAVE SEGAL

Neon Indian, Prefuse 73, Miniature Tigers

(Showbox at the Market) Alan Palomo is an envy-inspiring figure. As a member of short-lived Texan 'tronic act Ghosthustler, he had a hand in "Parking Lot Nights," a track whose elastic synth line remains indelible and unfuckwithable almost six years later. After further honing his chops in VEGA, he casually dropped Psychic Chasms as Neon Indian in 2009, a terse (33 minute!) sonic statement that altered the terrain of the blogworld like a Khan-grade 24th-century terraforming device. Palomo's gone from sampling rock stars (Rundgren) to being one in his own right, and if you've seen him live before, you know his backing band is no joke, either. Here's a generational comparison Palomo might appreciate: He is to analog synths and FX pedals what Johnny Utah is to surfing. He's young, but he gets it, man. JASON BAXTER

School of Seven Bells, Active Child

(Neumos) The songs and sounds of School of Seven Bells speak from dreams. The Brooklyn trio's recent Ghostly International/Vagrant Records release, Disconnect from Desire, sees a honed band on a continual rise. Identical twin sisters Claudia and Alejandra Deheza sing in omnisymmetrical harmony, casting pristine vocal lines in thirds, fifths, and octaves. Guitarist Benjamin Curtis runs phased, chorused, and modulating rhythms underneath, charming snakes out of the compositions. A drummer anchors their sound for live shows. In the School of Seven Bells' dream, you are the Black Sea. A fisherman from Istanbul casts his rod into your waters and pulls up a small wooden chest. He opens it and sees seven canisters. They are portals to lives he will live: a tightrope walker, an ant, a blimp pilot, a drop of water, an ocean, a brain surgeon, and lastly, a blade of grass. Listening is seeing. TRENT MOORMAN

Tuesday 9/28

Joe Boyd and Robyn Hitchcock

(Triple Door) See Stranger Suggests.

Dead Prez, Suntonio Bandanaz, Orbitron, Graves 33, Nathan Wolfe, DJ Gumbeaux

(Chop Suey) When it came out a decade ago, a friend dubbed me a tape of Dead Prez's debut, Let's Get Free. The album was, and still is, amazing, but my 14-year-old brain couldn't really pick up what M-1 and stic.man were putting down. Tracks like "Mind Sex" and "Be Healthy" addressed issues—treating women as intellectual equals, eating right—that hadn't been touched on by the rappers I'd had in heavy rotation (mostly Big Pun, the LOX, and pre–Marshall Mathers Eminem). In a way, Dead Prez were a gateway to more (hate to say it) "conscious" hiphop. That's my memory of DP, but you might remember them better as the catalysts for a student riot at Evergreen State College. Blasting some positive hiphop or flipping a cop car, Dead Prez have you covered. KALEB GUBERNICK See also My Philosophy.

Wednesday 9/29

Arcade Fire, Calexico

(KeyArena) See Stranger Suggests.

The Futureheads

(Crocodile) The Futureheads arrived as part of a wave of smart, stylish rock coming out of the UK in the mid-'00s (see also: Franz Ferdinand, Maxïmo Park), but their self-titled 2004 debut was even then an unexpected blast: edged-up, agitated punk rock with... Mackem-accented barbershop harmonies? It worked, though. The songs were bopping and sharp, and the best of them—"Decent Days and Nights," "Meantime," "Stupid and Shallow"—hit with a rush that hasn't worn off with time. Like their contemporaries, they've released a couple of less energetic, more leaden albums since (although News and Tributes at least spun off a fun, typically twitchy Switch remix of "Worry About It Later"), but their new album, The Chaos, is an encouraging return to form. The verses swerve, the choruses surge, the accents still seal it. Just try not to think about the meantime. ERIC GRANDY

Audiwasska Travelers, Git Some, Countdown to Armageddon, Smooth Sailing

(Funhouse) Git Some are a mess—a glorious, sweaty, drunken, howling mess. Theirs is the kind of orchestrated cacophony that would deteriorate into a dissonant, squelching murk in lesser hands. These Denver punks excel at recalling the nasty distorted bass, foul guitar riffs, and petulant tirades of the '90s DIY hardcore greats—a little Born Against here, a little Monorchid there. You know, all the good shit that got ruined in the last decade by cocaine, professionalism, or ironic pop-cultural pillaging. The members of Git Some powered through the Bush Jr. years and came out with tighter chops, worsened tempers, and a greater appetite for destruction. You have to be a little dead inside—or just kind of an asshole—not to get swept up in their frenzied squall. BRIAN COOK