Spring starts this week, and we think you should celebrate by heading out to one of the many live music shows our critics recommend. We've got everything from Seattle's "golden child" sharing new tracks (Porter Ray), to the global electronica of the future (Superorganism), to a perennial college radio darling exploring some abstract territory (Titus Andronicus). Follow the links below for ticket links and music clips for all of our critics' picks, and find even more shows on our complete music calendar.

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MONDAY

Fatai
Melbourne YouTube star Fatai will share her widely viewed pop covers and soulful originals for a sold-out crowd on her Blank Canvas tour.

L.A. Salami, Cat Clyde, Guests
L.A. Salami, or Lookman Adekunle Salami, is a fiery, mid-'60s-Dylan-esque singer-songwriter known for his critically acclaimed debut album, Dancing With Bad Grammar. He'll be joined tonight by Cat Clyde and additional guests.

Udo Dirkschneider, Elm Street, Zero Down
Just over a year ago, German heavy-metal singer Udo Dirkschneider was forced to cancel the Seattle date of his Farewell to Accept tour due to inclement weather, preventing him from running through the highlights of his tenure as the singer of one of Germany's best hard-rock acts. Though Accept never caught on in the US the way they did in Europe—thanks perhaps in part to Dirkschneider's unusual appearance and even more unusual voice—they boasted excellent songwriting with unconventional and progressive song topics, such as gay rights and workers’ rights songs—for the latter, see their lone mega-hit, "Balls to the Wall." Dirkschneider will surely play that song on this makeup date—maybe for the last time. JOSEPH SCHAFER

TUESDAY-WEDNESDAY

Fred Hersch and Anat Cohen Duo
Jazz pianist Fred Hersch continues to insist, through performance, that you have to leave spaces between the notes and that such spaces might be more important that those actual notes. Anat Cohen, much younger, stands next to Hersch, waits for her own spaces, waits for Hersch to drop back so she can push to the fore on her clarinet, as she loops ideas and variations before dying down into silences. I say silences, because Hersch always starts up again. Let the games begin. ANDREW HAMLIN

WEDNESDAY

Andy Grammer
Andy Grammer became the first male pop star in a decade to reach the Top 10 at Adult Pop Radio with his songs "Keep Your Head Up" and "Fine By Me," from his 2011 debut album. Hear his stuff on his Good Parts tour.

Dana Buoy, Cy Dune, Guests
If you dig the experimental weirdness of Akron/Family—which dissolved in 2013, but kept the permanence of their breakup undecided—this bill is for you. It features that band’s former drummer/singer-songwriter Dana Janssen, aka Dana Buoy, on tour behind his second solo LP, Ice Glitter Gold, a synth-pop work that varies from bouncy to fuzzy to groovy; and Cy Dune, the current project of former Akron singer-songwriter/guitarist Seth Olinsky, whose unhinged rock sound is headier, heavier, and, dare I say, more potent than the solo output of his ex-bandmate/current tourmate. LEILANI POLK

Obscenely Obscure
Alright, this one's for the capital-n Nerds of the music world. DJs Average Rooms (Norm Chambers), Dad (Eli Anderson), and Veins (the Stranger's own Dave Segal) have dug real deep into the wild world of library music (a.k.a. production music) to present for y'all an evening of the "scariest, funkiest, catchiest, and craziest tracks you’ve never heard before... until now." Aubrey Nehring will be providing the surrealistic visuals to cap it all off.

Rhett Miller, Matthew Ryan
Don't hate Rhett Miller because he has amazing hair. The Texas troubadour's rep as one of the nicest guys in rock makes it hard to hold a grudge against those beautiful locks. Just as he's taken style cues from Gram Parsons, his career has followed a parallel path. Parsons made his name with the Flying Burrito Brothers, Miller made his with the Old 97’s. Parsons, however, never covered the Cramps' "TV Set." For his sixth studio recording The Traveler, Miller recorded in Portland with Black Prairie, including Alaska-born fiddle player Annalisa Tornfelt. Wistful nostalgia reigns, as he paints pictures of powder-blue pickups in the summer and youthful indiscretions in the city. If charm is your Kryptonite, steer clear of this show. KATHY FENNESSY

Smooky MarGielaa, Guests
Teenage wunderkind Smooky MarGielaa will set out from his Bronx haunts for a cross-country tour in promotion of his latest release, The Jelly Tape.

"When Words Dance": An Evening with Porter Ray
Once dubbed “the golden child” by Shabazz Palaces’ Ishmael Butler, the kid Porter Ray Sullivan is grown, and, as a matter of fact, has been older in spirit than his youthful face and shimmering soprano have let on all along. The late-20s Seattle MC compounds nocturnal ruminations on past traumas and altered toasts to the high life’s seductive mirage. “MLK, Rainier, shit just ain’t the same here/I fantasize of foreign flights, foreign women snortin’ white,” he raps on “Bless Me”—“may all my pain be champagne.” Ray has a lot to say, and a million ways to say it, and each verse he writes only lifts him toward the heights he dreams of. TODD HAMM

THURSDAY

Astrol Waters, Nauticult, Astro King Phoenix
Astrol Waters is a psych-jazz collective that never performs the same music twice. They'll seek to pull you into their orbit with additional hiphop guests Nauticult and Astro King Phoenix.

Dick Stusso, Jo Passed
It’s been three years since Oakland’s alt-bluesman of fuzz, Dick Stusso, graced us with his dusty and lo-fi Nashville Dreams / Sings the Blues. Fret not, though. His sophomore full-length In Heaven (Hardly Art) dropped earlier this month and he’s back with a refined, devilish drawl and his smoking-guitar guns drawn as featured on his first single “Modern Music.” He’s a country ranger of entertainment whose twang is easy to hang with night after night. Supporting Stusso is Vancouver’s neo-psych project, Jo Passed, helmed by multi-talented savant Joseph Hirabayashi. It’s sure to be a show lush with imaginatively trippy sights and sounds. ZACH FRIMMEL

Parisalexa, Mista DC
At only 18, Parisalexa already has the sophisticated voice and performance chops of many musicians twice her age. Her setup is simple—keyboards, vocal loops, maybe a guitar—but the effect is striking and worth listening to every spellbinding word (some of which she makes up on the spot). AMBER CORTES

This Will Destroy You, Brin
Do you ever have those dreams where your legs stop working? You’re taking a stroll past your childhood home or you’re walking a strangely unfamiliar route through your once-familiar neighborhood and suddenly each step seems insurmountable. Have you ever suffered from sleep apnea? Have you ever slipped so far into a dream that you wake up in an out-of-breath panic? These are probably the closest approximations to This Will Destroy You’s nitrous-headed instrumentals. Auras of nostalgic melancholia, encroaching doom, bittersweet triumph, and repressed pain are interwoven throughout the Texas quartet’s airy and nebulous arrangements. In keeping with their sleepy vibes, the band is known for demanding a quiet audience, so keep your drunken conversations in the bar. BRIAN COOK

The True Loves, Whitney Mongé, DoNormaal
Eight-piece instrumental soul group the True Loves, often seen backing singer Grace Love, focus on tight grooves and modern soul motions influenced by the generations of the genre before them. They'll be joined by Whitney Mongé and DoNormaal at their EP release show.

THURSDAY-FRIDAY

Joseph, Becca Mancari
Once upon a time, a band of three sisters blessed the land with voices as sweet as ambrosia. It sounds like a fairy tale, complete with dense, melodic ballads calling forth the spirit of the Pacific Northwest with lush, honeyed harmonies. Joseph are at their natural, earthy best when inclined to the folky side of the pop-folk spectrum, so let’s hope that facet will shine through in their set. AMBER CORTES

THURSDAY-SUNDAY

Burt Bacharach
Legendary composer, performer, and godfather of pop Burt Bacharach will share his decades of chart-topping experience with a four-day residency of jazz and classic chamber pop.

Sibelius Symphony No. 2
The three pieces Seattle Symphony Music Director Ludovic Morlot selected for this evening brilliantly showcase the many facets of the ocean—its turbulence and its serenity, its warm shallows and its icy depths. The program starts with Sibelius's serene tone poem, The Oceanides. The room will then sparkle and effervesce when the orchestra dives into Britten's Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes before completely freezing over when arctic blasts from Sibelius's Second Symphony start hitting everybody. You'll want to bring a wet suit. RICH SMITH

FRIDAY

A$AP Ferg, Denzel Curry, IDK
Ever since dropping his 2013 debut full-length, Trap Lord, A$AP Ferg has become something of the rap-game utility player—dexterous in a variety of regional flows while deploying the type of lyrical flourishes that have long been a hallmark of New York rap. His 2016 sophomore release, Always Strive and Prosper, saw the MC overly indulging in the rap-history pastiche, perhaps exemplified by his horrendous single, "Plain Jane," which is just a cover of a Three 6 Mafia song. That song appeared on his much-better mixtape, which otherwise saw Ferg returning to the referential but not overly reverential post-modern stylings at which he excels. He'll be supported by the acid-rap stylings of the increasingly vital Denzel Curry. NICK ZURKO

Aubrey Logan
High-powered jazz vocalist Aubrey Logan peppers her songs with bits of pop, rock, R&B, and soul for a bombastic Broadway vibe perfect for an evening of cabaret and cocktails.

Daniel Corral: Polytope
Polytope, says Daniel Corral, “is a multimedia microtonal performance for MIDI quartet.” Go to Corral's site, spinalfrog.com, for an example of what he's talking about. After five minutes of this silvery, undulant tintinnabulation, I was ready to evaporate into another more sparkly and stimulating dimension than the one in which we currently suffer. This piece sounds like gamelan from Pluto—or maybe '70s Philip Glass as interpreted by Harry Partch on his Cloud-Chamber Bowls. Erin Barnes, Andrew Lessman, and Cory Beers join Corral tonight in manifesting this chakra-fluffing music. DAVE SEGAL

Galactic, Butcher Brown
New Orleans instrumental ensemble Galactic have been pushing out jazz and funk infused with the sonic flavors of their hometown for over two decades, as fueled by the skins-pounding prowess of Stanton Moore and the sax-and-harmonica-howling of Ben Ellman. The trick to their longevity seems to be inviting guests to help them execute a particular vision: 2007’s From the Corner to the Block found them collabing with alt-hiphop artists Boots Riley and Chali 2na; in Ya-Ka-May, they paid tribute to their city’s diverse influences, from bounce to R&B, with Big Freedia and Trombone Shorty, among others; Carnivale Electricos continued this idea, but with a full conceptual Mardi Gras rendering and guest appearances by Ivan Neville, Mystikal, and David Shaw; and 2015’s Into the Deep featured artists they’ve made connections with over the past 20 years, ranging from soul queen Mavis Staples to greasy Southern backwoods rocker, JJ Grey. LEILANI POLK

The Oh Hellos, Wildermiss
The Oh Hellos began as a quirky south Texas sibling duo making bedroom folk-pop, and have since morphed into a full-fledged band making stadium folk-pop. They'll be joined tonight by Wildermiss.

Ought, Flasher
Montreal band Ought writes songs about the beauty and absurdity inherent to living in modernity—the tiny revelations that emerge from the mundane clatter of everyday life. That’s ambitious stuff for a punk band, even one with Ought’s fractious stop/start dynamism, but singer/guitarist Tim Darcy has a knack for cutting observations and hard-won epiphanies. On third album Room Inside the World, the slower tempos and heavier textures push his theatrical vocal stylings to the fore; he’s a little Scott Walker, a little Patti Smith, probing the expressive possibilities of each syllable. Ought are, in other words, an endangered species—a rock band with lots to say and novel ways of saying it. ANDREW GOSPE

Roselit Bone, Hillside '77, Guests
Southern Gothic-style country-gaze band Roselit Bone describe themselves as “Like Marty Robbins meets the Cramps, or a Goblin soundtrack to a spaghetti western, ranchero fantasy meets greased up country in a magical reality." They'll be joined by Hillside '77 and additional guests.

Sarah Elizabeth Charles Group
Passionate and nuanced vocalist Sarah Elizabeth Charles will flow between jazz, soul, R&B, and world music in this performance with her backing band that will pull work from her last two critically acclaimed albums.

Superorganism, Helena Deland
With some artists, you can tell from the first 10 seconds of listening to them that they’re going to be popular, critically lauded, and zeitgeisty. Case in point: Superorganism, an octet with members from the UK, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia. Fronted by affectless, dulcet-voiced Japanese teen Orono, Superorganism have earned positive reviews in several major media outlets for their self-titled 2018 debut album. Its 10 tracks fuse garrulous global electronic tropes with DayGlo™ melodiousness in the vein of fun-loving, sampladelic units like the Avalanches, Gorillaz, and the Go! Team. Surely, Superorganism will be playing a much bigger venue next time through town. DAVE SEGAL

Titus Andronicus, Rick Maguire
Okay, the new album is called A Productive Cough. Be sure to mention the article in front. Pretty good for a bunch of guys in beards and cool shades, standing around emoting. Leadoff single is “Number One (In New York),” and I’m all for making it the new national anthem. We don’t need a new anthem to stick something sharp up Trump’s meatus, specifically. But since we’re so damaged, so changed, and since everyone seems to hate something about every version of our current anthem, I say, give these wordy, passionate beards the shot. ANDREW HAMLIN

Vendetta Red, SOR Issaquah, Ida Bay
Vendetta Red were Seattle’s entry to the post-At the Drive-In screamo scene; bands that took their frenetic, kicking-and-screaming live show and gave it a studio buffing, imbued with enough emotion and melody for radio appeal. They did indeed have a minor national hit, “Shatterday,” from 2003’s Between the Never and the Now, and they were definitely entertaining live. I recall singer (and only remaining original member) Zach Davidson yelling non sequiturs like “this song’s about huffing glue with god!” between each song at 2005’s Endfest. Periodic reunions with shuffled lineups have yielded little new music, but the “Record Release” billing of this show should pique the curiosity of fans. TODD HAMM

SATURDAY

Baltic Centennial: 100 Years of Statehood
The Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia) will celebrate their centennial anniversaries of statehood and independence this spring, so, in faithful Baltic tradition, a program of classical folk songs and choral music will be performed by the Seattle Choral Company in partnership with the Mägi Baltic Ensemble, directed by Heather MacLaughlin Garbes, and the University of Washington Baltic Studies Program, chaired by Professor Guntis Šmidchens.

Culture Fest Vol. 3
Seattle FAM and the Blow Up will join forces for a music, art, and community blow-out that will blend live performances of music and spoken word, lectures and conversations with an expert panel of advocates and activists, fashion by local designers, and vendors of every kind. Jarv Dee, Marshall Law, Koga Shabazz, and TA7J will headline.

George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic, Miss Velvet & the Blue Wolf, Future Shock
Do you like funk? (This is akin to asking if you like sex, for those of you who were born yesterday.) If so, you owe it to yourself to catch one of the original architects of the genre at least once in your doggone life. George Clinton is still a touring machine at age 76, still getting up for the downstroke, still giving you more of what you're funking for, still tearing the roof off the sucker. His vast and deep catalog of filthy jams from Funkadelic, Parliament, and myriad solo releases ensures that you'll get a history lesson in libidinous rhythm & ooze. DAVE SEGAL

Lindi Ortega, Hugh Masterson, Lydia Ramsey
Country chanteuse Lindi Ortega will shake out the dark cobwebs of her lowered vocal tones with opening support from alt-country and Americana artists Hugh Masterson and Lydia Ramsey.

OMD, Guests
If you’re going to trek downtown, do so for British synth-pop royalty Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), whose precious, immaculate compositions have influenced hundreds since their early-’80s heyday. Their self-titled 1980 debut LP remains a masterpiece of enchanting melodies, fascinating rhythms, and cherubic vocals. At their best, core members Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys recast Kraftwerk’s elegant electro-pop gestalt to a Northern English sensibility. OMD’s tunes have weathered the decades better than most in the genre and soundly refute the misconception that synth-based music lacks emotion. DAVE SEGAL

Shopping, Lithics
London trio Shopping haven’t been around very long, but they’ve got their sound down to a science, possibly because the members logged time in other bands, like Wet Dog (whose Frauhaus was one of the highlights of 2010). Shopping’s record, Why Choose, is spare and spiky; if some bands evoke the girl groups of the 1960s, this one evokes a different kind of girl group, particularly post-punk outfits like LiliPUT. KATHY FENNESSY

Verdi's Requiem
Considered Verdi's ultimate masterpiece, Messa di Requiem will be performed by a joint force of the Kirkland Choral Society and Philharmonia Northwest in a dramatic recall of traditional Latin Mass with a 100-voice chorus, full orchestra, and guest soloists.

SUNDAY

James Bay
James Bay aims to seduce everyone in the Seattle metro area with his aw-shucks blue-eyed-soul vibes, tracks off his latest album, and new short haircut.

Messiaen’s "Quartet for the End of Time"
Olivier Messiaen composed his masterpiece, the aptly titled "Quartet for the End of Time," while captive in a Nazi POW camp in 1941. The staunchly spiritual piece takes into consideration acts of faith and the depth of love in the face of universal time.

Mint Field, Guests
Mexican shoegaze duo Mint Field engage with the concept of post-genre music, blending angelic vocals in classical and dream pop styles with fuzzed out post-rock and post-punk instrumentation in an effort to project sentiments of sorrow, nostalgia, and beauty.

Taylor Bennett
Chicago native Taylor Bennett steps out from his big brother Chance the Rapper's shadow for a solo all-ages set of hiphop with a positive bent.

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