THE HELLACOPTERS, GAZA STRIPPERS, THE MIDNIGHT THUNDER EXPRESS
(Graceland) The Hellacopters rawk, in a full-on, balls-to-the-wall, "rev up the '70s, baby" kinda way. If you've got your car stereo's default station tuned to classic rock, you know what I mean. If you love singing along to Lynyrd Skynyrd, you know what I mean. If your mind is starting to drift toward tracks by REO Speedwagon, get the fuck outta here. The Hellacopters are serious business with no trace of ironic indie rock pretensions or girlie-man balladry. They generously employ guitar solos. They are less generous with, but still employ, a couple drum solos (on a part-time basis) and they sound like a smoke-out between Bad Company and Thin Lizzy. The only time I saw these Swedes in action was in a crowded club in Copenhagen, where the Danes went apeshit for these scrawny, hairy, mustached dudes. They lay everything on thick, from the sweat to the geetars (while other members of the band are simply listed as playing the drums or bass, member Boba Fett is listed as playing "Fender Rhodes"). Now I know sometimes the Scandinavian rockers can be kinda hit or miss, but dude--their new record, High Visibility, is it. They're back to giving Scandinavian rock a good name. Hear it, love it, live it. Or not. Like I fucking care. JENNIFER MAERZ

KAHIL EL' ZABAR'S TRI-FACTOR
(Tractor Tavern) Amid the heat of black activism in the '60s, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) dedicated itself to both teaching jazz and experimenting with other African rhythms and instruments. The idea was to celebrate the rich culture of black music throughout the world, promoting the traditional and the cutting edge. Back in Zabar's day that meant donning costumes and masks and having the music express the experiences of blacks in the U.S. and Africa. Drummer Kahil El' Zabar is a graduate from the AACM school, and his work is a fusion of the ancient and the avant-garde. A propulsive percussionist, Zabar has a deep sense of polyrhythms and uses both a traditional kit and a set of African drums. Zabar's Tri-Factor project brings in Billy Bang on violin, and the great Hamiet Bluiett (also of the World Saxophone Quartet) on bass and contra-bass saxophones. Together, Tri-Factor holds true to the tenets of AACM music, expanding the realms of world music and experimental jazz in one lineup. KREG HASEGAWA

ROBIN HOLCOMB, AIKO SHIMADA & DAVE CARTER
(Seattle Asian Art Museum) Robin Holcomb's performances will stop you in your tracks. Her songs are written with a poetic conceit that is far beyond the usual introspective singer/songwriter, but her melodies are simple, as if to leave plenty of space for her lyrical ambition. Shimada's compositions are also captivating--especially when she sings in Japanese and her language becomes a mix of sounds and textures, not something to understand as much as simply absorb. (Unless you speak Japanese, of course. Then the magic is gone. Sorry.) In a recent Stranger article Shimada mentions liking Eric Satie, and the resemblance of her songs (especially last year's Blue Marble) to Satie's spacey, atmospheric piano compositions is strong: Both Satie and Shimada can be lovely and chilling in a single phrase. BRIAN GOEDDE

ELENI MANDELL, CARRIE BIELL, OUT BRIEF CANDLE
(Sit & Spin) On Eleni Mandell's third album, Snakebite, the husky-voiced songstress spins tales of double crossings and moonlit nights, dangerous secrets and a mysterious man in a paper hat. It's not hard to imagine her stepping directly out of an old Humphrey Bogart movie and right onto the stage--a feeling that's amplified by music that wraps around her tales like a mink stole. Like Polly Jean Harvey, Mandell is the real deal, a genuine artiste with a voice that's as visceral as it is musical. When she growls, "I'll bury your broken hands that you strangled me with" (in "Pirate Song"), the shivers start in your toes and go straight up the spine. "I'll always wonder how lucky I am, and you'll always do the same," she sighs on "Silverlake Babies," and whether Mandell's characters ever shake free of their pasts to find love and happiness, you'll be thanking your lucky stars that she crossed your path. BARBARA MITCHELL

MOTHER HIPS, THE BENDS
(Crocodile) The latest album by the Bay Area band Mother Hips, Green Hills of Earth, opens with "Given for You," a short blast of gentle, lightly sugared pop, featuring Beach Boy-esque backing vocals that thread throughout the disc's dozen songs. Singer-guitarists Tim Bluhm and Greg Loiacono perfectly complement each other's harmonies. Their voices twine and separate beautifully, creating a skewed Everly Brothers sound. Bluhm and Loiacono each take turns at the front but it's the interplay of their voices that makes the band's sound special. Mother Hips is definitely more than a compendium of its influences (which sound like they include the Byrds, the Kinks, and Fairport Convention) but the band's music creates its own points of departure and eventual arrival, as Buhm and Loiacono prove on "Singing Seems to Ease Me." NATE LIPPENS

PRINCESS SUPERSTAR, ONRY OZZBORN
(I-Spy) See Stranger Suggests.

EELS
(Crocodile) While it may or may not describe his personality, Eels mastermind E is certainly a spaz when it comes to crafting music. On his latest release, Souljacker, wonky '70s fuzzbombs explode in ironic flourishes on one track, while the next floats on orchestral clouds that would make fans of both Elton John and those charlatans Beck and Jon Spencer take note. (Furthermore, if you weren't yet convinced Beck and Spencer were charlatans, Souljacker will make it undeniable.) KATHLEEN WILSON

NEW PORNOGRAPHERS, VISQUEEN, THE GAY
(Crocodile) See Stranger Suggests.

FLOWER KINGS
(King Cat Theater) These fellas are FOR REAL prog-stars, um... like Yes and King Crimson!?! And I do mean P-R-O-G, not contemporary "emo/math," unwashed "We (heart) the Melvins!! We (heart) Slint!!" but prog which remains true to circa '73! Nice... and they get it on without any EmersonLakeandPalmer affection... like, they ain't mindlessly wanky or too fugue-y. So without THEM prog "can be suck points," they get it good with super-sized arrangements, sweet Floyd harmonies, and overblown, in ALL the right ways, songwriting--which, in the Kings' case, means their songs ain't so dense that they ain't understood. Oh, as for their recordings, they actually have the "right" touches in their production. I was shocked when I DID NOT hear sterile "digital" separation. And, thank GOD... there ain't nods to "new" flourishes of kitschy "electronica/New Age," metal... or worse... "DJs." So ATTENTION... alla you math rock dorks and emo hipsters, me thinks y'all may wanna make this... you might learn something. MIKE NIPPER

CARLA BOZULICH AND NELS CLINE, NELS CLINE SINGERS, JON AUER
(I-Spy) Carla Bozulich has a voice that can purr huskily one moment and turn into a throat-shredding virago holler the next, often within the same song. As the singer for country-punk-prog hybrid the Geraldine Fibbers, she put that voice to great effect. Over music that shuffled like a drunken Hank Williams or exploded with furious squalling noise, Bozulich cooed and howled with equal conviction. A hardscrabble background of heroin addiction and teenage prostitution infused her lyrics and performances with harrowing authenticity and lent a cover of Bobbie Gentry's "Fancy" a bad wisdom that should make Reba McEntire pray for forgiveness for even touching that song. After original Fibbers guitarist Daniel Keenan departed with tendonitis in 1996, avant-jazz axman Nels Cline joined the band's ranks for Butch, delivering a skewed collection of sidelong brilliance before the band dissolved. With this show, Bozulich and Cline are performing songs from Willie Nelson's classic album Redhaired Stranger in their own brilliant style. NATE LIPPENS

DROWNING POOL, ILL NINO, COAL CHAMBER (EARLY); REMEDY: JOSH WINK (LATE)
(Showbox) The ascendance of Drowning Pool, the self-proclaimed "jackasses" from Dallas, Texas, either signals the beginning of the end for the nu-metal scene or demonstrates that the current appetite for heavy, dumbed-down rock is insatiable. Even though L.A. alt-metal outfit Coal Chamber shares the same producer as DP in Jay Baumgardner, its gothic, gloomy aesthetic and punk-fueled guitars add a textured dimension to its otherwise Korn-influenced metal formula. I do have to admit a guilty affection for the band's hardcore version of Peter Gabriel's "Shock the Monkey," though, with Ozzy Osbourne on vocals. New Jersey-based Latin metal sextet Ill Nino opens up this nü-metal showcase, but after the testosterone-overdosed skater punks file out, the over-21 set can line up to gawk at Josh Wink, the cerebral superstar house/techno/d&b DJ with the golden dreads and ruddy good looks. Anyone daring enough to attend both of these shows in sequence should be treated for post-traumatic stress disorder at the end of the evening. DAVID SLATTON

ONE MAN ARMY, BOOM BAP PROJECT, COOL NUTZ, DJ SCENE, QWAZAAR
(Paradox) Titled "The Big Payback Tour," this lineup has traveled the western half of the United States over the last month (with the exception of Portlander Cool Nutz, who jumped on the Northwest leg of the tour). As this is the last show of their tour, they're all set to attack the stage. So watch out: As One Man Army phrased it in a song on Binary Star's Masters of the Universe, he's on a "literary military top secret mission" when on the mic. This show will also be the homecoming for the Boom Bap Project (which played Salt Lake City during the Olympics, and returns as the fifth-fastest speed-skating relay team in the entire world), so expect heaps of enthusiasm from the Oldominion crew, of which the members of Boom Bap are the only Olympians. BRIAN GOEDDE

THE SUPERSUCKERS, JESSE DAYTON
(Tractor Tavern) I don't know the Supersuckers personally, even though I've blathered on drunkenly to Eddie Spaghetti after plenty of shows. I even got to see Mini Spaghetti bouncing around at a recent gig in Austin, so although I may not be family or even close to family or even close to friends of acquaintances of family, I still feel a fondness for this band. They've got whip-smart sarcasm, catchy cowpunk songs, and a way of making fans show up to all their live gigs, even though it's been god knows how many years since they wrote some new shit (that recent album doesn't count--it's all live). The only bunk Supersuckers gig I've been to was when they pulled out all the country tracks, but even the country stuff sounds good when mixed with the right kinda booze. JENNIFER MAERZ

NU PATTERNS: WALDECK, NASIR
(Baltic Room) Waldeck is an excellent electronica artist from Austria who works with a variety of beats, from dancehall to breakbeats to house. He doesn't do anything extraordinarily experimental with the genres, but somehow all of his musical ideas come off as more interesting than what you hear elsewhere. It's that je ne sais quoi that basically amounts to "talent." When he now-famously looped Chet Baker's singing in "This Isn't Maybe," it wasn't used as a snappy jazz sample; it brought the track to new depths of sentimentality. That said, I'm not sure what this show will be like. For this tour, Waldeck has formed a live band. Engineering great electronica in the studio certainly takes a different skill than engineering a band, but I believe in good artists like I believe in the sun: This show will be brilliant. BRIAN GOEDDE

GET DOWN SYNDROME, THE CRIPPLES, DJ LIL' OZZY
(Graceland) I'm skeptical of bands that allegedly play garage rock from cities without garages. New York City? I don't think so. If your practice space is a meat storage locker then you play meat storage locker rock. I know it's flimsy logic, but I have to follow my gut on this. After all, that's what garage is all about: gut response. With its spirited, punked-out, don't-give-a-fuck vibe, Seattle's Get Down Syndrome is the essence of garage--or maybe even alley--rock. Drummer Rachel Rudnick plays a makeshift kit standing with the cool insolence of Moe Tucker and the ass-shaking carnality that Meg White dreams about. The band just returned from recording in Detroit, which makes sense since Get Down Syndrome worships at the temple of Motor City raunch and rollers like the Dirtbombs, who definitely have to practice in a garage, probably with a car on blocks in it. NATE LIPPENS

PHIL OCHS TRIBUTE
(Tractor Tavern) See Stranger Suggests.

JOHN MAYER, NORAH JONES
(Moore Theater) When critics bill Norah Jones as "the new Cassandra Wilson" when Wilson is herself at the height of her artistry, it does a weird disservice to newcomer Jones. It may just be lazy shorthand for saying that she blurs genres like Wilson, but Jones' debut, Come Away with Me, has a different set of reference points and her voice isn't as elemental as Wilson's. It's a gorgeous drift that takes its time to spread out across the 14 songs on her album. Jones mixes accents of torch and blues to her jazz-folk. The lean production and spare sound give her plenty of room to stretch out and luxuriate in the atmosphere of her sound. Her cover of Hank Williams' "Cold Cold Heart" is transformed into a piano-centered slow jazz burn and she makes it her own. Jones' self-penned tunes only offer further evidence that this is a gifted songwriter in the making. NATE LIPPENS

THRONES, PINK & BROWN, CRICTOR
(Graceland) See preview this issue.

GREG DAVIS, HRVATSKI, E*ROCK, LAMPLIGHTER
(Crocodile) See preview this issue.

THE GLORYHOLES, THE AUTHORITIES, MEA CULPA, POPULAR SHAPES
(Tractor Tavern) For over a year, local skateboarders have been trying to build a skate park in Ballard, in the parking lot of a closed Safeway. The project has run into a few snags--first, getting city permission to build a large concrete "bowl" in the center, and now raising money to buy the materials. Now you can help--at Ballard's Tractor Tavern tonight, your $7.50 not only gets you a smash-bang good-time punk-rock show, but also helps the skate park organizers raise the $19,000 they need to open the bowl by May. AMY JENNIGES