(Neumos) Lots of hyperbole keeps flying around Kettering, UK contemporary psychedelic band Temples. In fact, it's not rare to see/hear people dropping Beatles references. While that may be too generous an association, the band does craft some fetching compositions and execute them with articulate skill. Perennial wet blankets Pitchfork gave Sun Structures, the band's debut full-length, a 5.5, along with the caveat "but Sun Structures is not a bad album." (Then why did you give it an F?) While theirs may be too harsh an assessment, you could be forgiven for thinking Structures is a new, somewhat predictable Tame Impala record. New Yorkers Drowners apparently just fell out of a time machine that came straight from the height of Strokes/Franz Ferdinand fanaticism. GRANT BRISSEY
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Synth duos still proliferate across the globe 30-plus years after the initial cold-blooded wave of synth duos surfaced—37 years if you go back to Suicide, 43 years if you go back to Tonto’s Expanding Head Band. (I recommend that you go back to the latter two artists, often.) One of the Northwest’s most accomplished synth duos, Portland’s Soft Metals, unveil classy, eloquent arpeggios and smoothly danceable beats beneath Patricia Hall’s wistful, frosty vocals. There’s a good chance Soft Metals will sweep you away. With Litanic Mask and Butchers. Barboza, 8 pm, $12 adv, 21+. DAVE SEGAL
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If you listen to Le Femme and it sounds like a familiar place or somewhere you’ve been before, please take me with you on your next visit. The many voices of La Femme sing almost exclusively in French, a language I studied for six weeks in high school, so I can’t tell you exactly what their songs are about—and maybe that lyrical ambiguity makes their music even more enjoyable to me. Their songs are shape-shifters, like characters running through Scooby-Doo doors in a haunted hotel, stretching out, gaining momentum, picking up and discarding genres as they go along. For English speakers, the title of La Femme’s debut album, Psycho Tropical Berlin, can give you a few clues about the group’s musical conjuring: among the most prominent sounds, you will often hear something resembling sci-fi B-movie soundtracks, space-age surfing competitions, and post-psychedelic kraut rock, along with some playful French yé-yé music spiked into the mix. Brian Jonestown Massacre and Stereolab have treaded in some of these heady waters before, but those bands can sound practically monolithic compared to the nimble work of La Femme. Come early to see Seattle’s Youryoungbody, whose electronic cooing and propulsive beats are quickly making this city a better place to flail our bodies. Vera Project, 7:30 pm, $10. With Low Hums. JACKSON HATHORN
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