THE DUTCH FLAT, PLUG SPARK SANJAY, THE MINES, THE BUILDING PRESS
(I-Spy) While some members of Dutch Flat recently moved to Portland and others stayed behind and carried on as the Mines, tonight's bill features both bands, so expect to see some innovative sets. These are cerebral, experimental acts that don't require a music degree to be appreciated. KATHLEEN WILSON

UNWOUND, BANGS, NECKTIE PARTY
(Theater Off Jackson) Olympia band Unwound has been playing together since its members were teenagers. Now they're going on an indefinite hiatus so bass player Vern Rumsey can spend time with his family. Their angry, distorted rock sound has progressed over the last 10 years into a dark, booming symphony of organ, slide guitar, piano, cello, harpsichord, keyboards, plus the usual drums, bass, and guitar that you'd be just plain stupid to miss. KATIE SHIMER

CLEM SNIDE, DEAR JOHN LETTERS, NO. 266
(Crocodile Cafe) The band of importance here chose the name Dear John Letters, and as far as bands go, it tops all the charts, as far as charts go. Born from the most hideous of circumstances--the union of an indie-rocker he and a lithe poet she--DJL nevertheless soars over the expected mushy muck and lands, feet first and running, with a blend of McCartney-colored Beatles singsong, They Might Be Giants geniality, and Jeff Tweedy alt-country earnestness. The singer/song-sire of the group is Robb Benson, an unfairly talented fellow, who has been doing the band thing for 10 years, most recently releasing the beautiful solo EP Songs about Songs. This show will top all others and will be replayed on MiniDAT player/recorders, in zero-cross distortion digital playback, all summer long. JOSH UHLIR

BLACK ROB, G-DEP
(Catwalk) Black Rob and G-Dep are two rappers from Harlem that were picked up by P-Diddy, and arguably they're the most full-frontal-attack rappers in the Bad Boy camp if not all of hiphop. Their albums--Life Story from Black Rob and Child of the Ghetto from G-Dep--are straight-no-chaser visions of urban blight. Remember what Black Rob said: "When you see something ill, that shit is WHOA." BRIAN GOEDDE

HERZOG, CLIMAX GOLDEN TWINS, WALLY SHOUP TRIO
(Sit & Spin) A few weeks ago, anticipating the noisy rock-anthology of Acid Mothers Temple (a style which includes, yes, psychedelia), I witnessed Kinski's gradual swell of melodies. I'd forgotten what a solid band it is. Talking with Chris Martin and Lucy Atkinson after the show, I learned that Kinski is losing its drummer, David Weeks, and tonight it'll be playing without one as Herzog. Also performing will be Climax Golden Twins, a duo that works in the realm of musique concrete, a form founded by Frenchman Pierre Schaeffer in 1948. This music is made from found sounds and field recordings that are manipulated live, which is like watching a mechanic work on your car--but no one else in Seattle does this as well as these guys. Rounding out the bill is the Wally Shoup Trio, and I'll say it again: This the best jazz band in Seattle. KREG HASEGAWA

E4 w/X-ECUTIONERS, CUSTOM, ALIEN CRIME SYNDICATE
(Stadium Exhibition Center) Custom and Alien Crime Syndicate are fun rock bands, and I would definitely recommend seeing the X-Ecutioners, the New York turntablist crew (Mista Sinista, Rob Swift, Total Eclipse, and Roc Raida) that has been on the forefront of the cause to put the DJ in the pop spotlight. But the event is radio station 107.7 The End's E4, which stands for "End Music," "Entertainment" (video games and other toys), "Extreme Sports" (bikes and skateboards), and "Electronics" (the Xbox and other toys). If you're into that sort of thing, it only costs $10.77 to get in, but if you're resistant to music being the sideshow to an electronics circus event, it will cost your heart and soul. BRIAN GOEDDE

PEDRO THE LION, SARAH SHANNON, SELDOM
(Graceland; early show) For the forthcoming album Control on Jade Tree Records, Pedro the Lion's David Bazan has beefed up his sound. The drums are more insistent, and the hovering keyboards float behind the guitar like a nagging thought on the opening track, "Options." The electric guitar and driving rhythm on "Rapture" heighten the tension in a tale about adultery. In "Please Ten More Minutes," Bazan sings with a bitter mix of longing and regret. The lyrical acuity is at a prime throughout the album and the added sonic layer doesn't obscure so much as reveal. Bazan's voice is a sepia-steeped moan that mixes its pleasures and pains abandon. He plays solo tonight, which will allow him to bewitch us with just his voice and guitar and to preview his tough new songs. Sarah Shannon, the sweet-voiced former singer of Velocity girl, recently released a solo album that is a departure from the sugary rush she is known for, replacing it with a lean soulfulness. Local band Seldom, which includes Pedro the Lion's Dave Bazan on bass, plays melancholic piano-driven pop. Frontman Yuuki Matthews has a resonant deep voice that has garnered comparisons to Magnteic Fields' Stephin Merritt. NATE LIPPENS

THE NEW YEAR, PEDRO THE LION, SEAWORTHY
(Graceland; late show) My love for the band Bedhead continues undiminished, despite its demise. Many of the bands that emerged into this century, including our own Death Cab for Cutie and Athens, GA's MACHA, are tributaries of Bedhead's slowly streaming sadness and grandeur. The Kadane brothers, who fronted Bedhead, elected to kill that band, but they have emerged with the New Year. On record, the New Year is a study in private wounds; if it is anything like Bedhead was, the live show will transform those quiet self-defeats into stunning slo-mo fireworks of self-destruction. The aforementioned MACHA may have learned a lot from Bedhead, but where the latter was possessed of painful clarity, MACHA added a layer of dense aural and emotional smoke. Seaworthy is the new project by MACHA's Josh McKay, and he brought all those mysterious ambient sounds with him. No telling how this will be achieved live. Luckily, Dave Bazan of Pedro the Lion will provide the evening's solid ground, since he will be performing solo--although, come to think of it, Bazan is one of the Northwest's master practitioners of doubt and troubled faith. A more emotionally complex evening could scarcely be devised. EVAN SULT

HOOD, cLOUDDEAD
(Crocodile) With its sixth and latest record, Cold House, dreamy Brit band Hood demonstrates itself as the band Radiohead and Trembling Blue Stars wish they could be: artistic without sounding detached, emotive without sounding false or grandiose, electronic without sounding hollow or trendy. By blending solemn, lullaby-like vocals, warm, pulsating beats and samples, and thick bass and guitar, Hood creates a balmy, ephemeral headspace, stripped entirely of pretense. cLOUDDEAD emcees Dose One and why? assisted on Cold House by adding tracks of their stream-of-consciousness, weirdly musical rhyming style. Members of Oakland's incredible hiphop crew Anticon, cLOUDDEAD (which also includes Odd Nosdam) makes its quirky samples by using spliced four-track tapes; the result, when compiled with Dose and why?'s arty and often funny way of rhyming, is slippery, kaleidoscopic, and certainly the future of hiphop... or the future of something, anyway. JULIANNE SHEPHERD

MIGUEL MIGS w/LISA SHAW
(Showbox) Miguel Migs' music is supposed to be sexy. The upcoming release is titled Nude Tempo One, it will be released by Naked Music (with Astralwerks), and the cover art smacks of '70s sleaze aesthetics (can you see her nipple?) with a digital touch. But Migs' brand of smooth, mellow house is not lurid at all--its melodies and grooves are more in the direction of Stevie Wonder (soulful) rather than John Holmes (lurid). Lisa Shaw, a vocalist whose work has been on all kinds of electronica for the last decade, will sing a couple live sets. BRIAN GOEDDE

CASSANDRA WILSON
(Moore) Since 1993's Blue Light 'Til Dawn, Cassandra Wilson has been applying her sultry voice and molasses phrasing to a varied array of songs, covering Hoagy Carmichael, Neil Young, Hank Williams, and Delta bluesman Son House. She mixes folk and country-blues to create dusky-paletted jazz-based songs, which may upset jazz purists (and country purists, and folk purists), but it makes for beautiful, earthy music. Her self-produced 1999 album, Traveling Miles, paid homage to Miles Davis by applying her chops to his music and coming up with something wholly original. For her upcoming album, Belly of the Sun, Wilson returned to her homeland, Mississippi, to create the texturally rich sound she wanted. Recorded in an abandoned train station, the album soaks up the humid atmosphere and lets Wilson cast her spell on the listener with ease. She moves from remorse and memory to unhurried carnality and back again. NATE LIPPENS

CHRISTY McWILSON CD RELEASE w/DAVE ALVIN, SCOTT McCAUGHEY, BOBB LLOYD HICKS, JOE TERRY
(Tractor) As half of the songwriting team with Blackie Sleep of the criminally underrated Picketts, Christy McWilson wrote and sang a Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris-influenced country-rock amalgam in the era of grunge, long before the popular imagination opened its ears up to the beauty and influence in a Burrito Brothers resurgence. McWilson has since gone solo, though Blackie Sleep backs her on drums onstage and she's joined by former Blasters great Dave Alvin and her husband the ubiquitous Scott McCaughey on record. Her new album is perhaps her best. Bed of Roses shows her sinewy no-nonsense voice and open-hearted songwriting with a flinty perspective that packs a subtle punch. Her cover of Jesse Colin Young's "Darkness, Darkness" is haunting and gorgeous. This show is an album release party with a stellar cast of guest players, including McCaughey, Alvin, Rico Bell, and the Picketts, paying their respects to a local treasure. NATE LIPPENS

VIXENS OF VINYL w/BREAKDANCERS
(Noc Noc) See Stranger Suggests.

THE GAULT, THE JEFF TOBIN, THE SICKNESS
(Industrial Coffee) A three-piece noise unit, Sleep Capsule banged out loud, fucked-up, post-rock ditties that baffled many and delighted a few in Seattle a decade ago. Though guitarist Russ sang the majority of the songs (he's still doing his snide, sardonic thing with Totfinder) it was bassist Jeff Tobin's songs that provided some measure of comic and emotional relief. You always left a Sleep Capsule show thinking, "Damn, I wish the bassist had sung more." Though Sleep Capsule's death certificate has yet to be officially signed, Tobin has gone on to front his own solo project, brilliantly titled The Jeff Tobin. Using looping technology, The Jeff Tobin layers multiple guitar parts to create dense, murky guitarrorist screeds that straddle the line between psychedelic and psychotic. Though TJT doesn't match the boisterous giddiness Tobin achieved in Sleep Capsule, here is a chance to watch a seasoned performer enjoy the fuck out of himself onstage. You can tell, 'cause he's always smiling. DAN PAULUS

NEIL HALSTEAD, SID HILLMAN
(Graceland) Halstead's last solo acoustic show at the Tractor was a hushed, gorgeous affair with the ghost of Nick Drake circulating the stage. The former band leader for shoegazers Slowdive and current frontman of Mojave 3 turned each song into prayerfully picked sonnets of longing, desire, and damage control. At the heart of the songs was a wound from a failed romance but deft observations and piquant turns of phrase kept the songs expansive and universal. He mixed stripped-down Mojave 3 songs and selections from his solo debut album, Sleeping on Roads, which brings the influences of Neil Young and Bert Jansch. The album features Halstead's gentle but not fragile voice and guitar with piano, organ, and glockenspiel daubs for accent. The translation of those songs in concert to their most elemental parts was one of the most beautifully moving shows that I've seen, all delivered with a shy shrug and a few words between songs. NATE LIPPENS

SPIRITUALIZED, BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB
(Showbox) For some people, the promise of a three-hour live set is a nightmare. Many of us (the spoiled) who attend shows on a regular, weekly basis have better things to do than collect varicose veins as we stand at rapt attention while a band plays its entire new album and most of its back catalog. Others thrill to the thought of hearing all that music in one sitting. As a member of the former legion, I was stunned when I realized, two hours into it, that I was still enthralled with Spiritualzed's experimental, admittedly wanky set. I'm not saying I stuck around for the final hour, but I could have.... Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, however, never plays long enough, and tonight's lineup will certainly cast the club's decadent interiors in a lovely wash of fog machines working overtime. KATHLEEN WILSON

GIANT SAND, JESSIE SYKES TRIO
(Crocodile) Giant Sand's new record of covers, Cover Magazine, is not only aptly titled, it's damn good. I always thought lounged-out versions of heavy-metal classics would be a fabulous concept, and frontman Howe Gelb has done just that. Anyone that has the balls to take Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" and reconfigure it with piano and bongos gets my vote of confidence. That may be the most amusing selection on the disc, but new renderings of PJ Harvey's "Plants and Rags" and X's "Johnny Hit and Run Pauline" are strong as well, and will no doubt be compelling in a live setting. Aside from the fact that the group just released an absolutely stunning record of its own (Reckless Burning, out on the newly formed Burn, Burn, Burn label), the Jesse Sykes Trio is the perfect companion to this bill. When Sykes opened for a Gelb solo show last summer, the reedy-throated singer was so enchanted by her dark country ballads that he began his set by playing her demo CD through the PA and improvising along with the recording. It was one of the most beautiful musical moments I witnessed last year. HANNAH LEVIN

THE CRIPPLES, THE INTELLIGENTS, THE LIGHTS
(I-Spy) A few weeks ago I blubbered excitedly about the Lights, a smart, hideously talented indie-rock three-piece I had just stumbled upon. Tonight, everyone can check them out at I-Spy and tell me oui or non as to whether or not I was right to praise them. But even if they suck (which I'm positive they won't), at least the great Cripples are also on the bill, so attendees will not leave empty-handed. BRADLEY STEINBACHER

FILA BRAZILLIA
(Chop Suey) See Stranger Suggests. I first heard Fila Brazillia on Riz Rollins' KCMU (now KEXP) radio show Expansions. It was a beautiful song called "A Zed and Two L's," which had a heavy hiphop beat and an African chant set against a European harmonic arrangement that rose and fell like a melancholy ocean. I bought the CD, Maim That Tune, and discovered that the eclecticism that defined the song also defined the CD and the band's career. CHARLES MUDEDE