Thursday5
Druid PerfumeNight GalleryPhosphorescentA Woman Beyond Time: Mary Lou Williams at 100
Friday6
J. ColeNight Gallery
Sunday8
Gary Allan
Monday9
Cephalic Carnage, Decrepit BirthVictoire
Tuesday10
Gaida
Wednesday4
Ken CamdenGaidaVox Arcana
NIGHT GALLERY Half-local duo Night Gallery (aka Aaron David Ross of Gatekeeper, who recently left for Brooklyn, and Adam Griffin of Golden Birthday) say they met at a starry-night outdoor screening of The Neverending Story, and if that isn’t the perfect way to start a questionably sincere New Romantic band then my name ain’t Atreyu. True to the genre, the slow-motion dance music on their imminent debut LP, Constant Struggle (Rainbow Body), flaunts some impressively trashy synth prowess and lots of overblown, overemotional lyrics bemoaning the pain of loving a self-absorbed woman, the pain of having a sense of dignity, the pain of falling asleep . . . the pain of anything, really. Ross and Griffin flavor all the entertaining OMD-style moping and frippery with different varieties of excess: “Real Normal,” for instance, is slimy Grace Jones-tinged slink-funk, while “Wild Palms” is a pert and tangy little tropical ditty that 25 years ago could’ve accompanied a TV commercial by an optimistic Caribbean tourism board. Now somebody needs to slap together a steamy 80s-noir crime movie with a detective and a femme fatale and a pre-lovemaking scene featuring a glimpse of garter belt and a suggestive shot of miniblinds crumpled by a groping hand—I know exactly who can do the soundtrack. The Big Pink headlines; White Car and Night Gallery open. See also Friday; these shows are record-release parties. 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, 773-525-2501, $20, 18+. —Liz Armstrong
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PHOSPHORESCENT Last year Phosphorescent‘s Matthew Houck tipped his hat to Willie Nelson with To Willie, an album of tunes by the pigtailed Texas legend. The group’s new full-length, Here’s to Taking It Easy (Dead Oceans), makes it clear that the previous record was the gateway to a new path for Houck. The opening track, “It’s Hard to Be Humble (When You’re From Alabama),” is a horn-stoked boogie with a general good-timey feel, and the closer, “Los Angeles,” channels Neil Young’s droning guitar intensity, but in between the Brooklyn-based Alabama native seems to put himself in a southern state of mind circa 1973, accenting his slack-jawed drawl with a twangy folk-rock sound. Most of the songs essay romance blooming and disintegrating in a cycle fueled by extended time on the road. The dolorous ballad “We’ll Be Here Soon” does its best to embrace the promise of reunion (“So get yourself and bring her here / And fix yourself up in the mirror”), while the narrator in “The Mermaid Parade” sadly accepts that both parties in the relationship have moved on to other affairs. The sound of the record is hardly original, but the mix of weepy steel guitars, lazily swinging rhythms, and melancholy organ swells fits the sodden self-indulgence of Houck’s characters perfectly. J. Tillman and Ceiling Stars open. 9:30 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 773-276-3600 or 866-468-3401, $12. —Peter Margasak
CEPHALIC CARNAGE, DECREPIT BIRTH Denver’s Cephalic Carnage have been messing with metalheads’ minds since their 1998 full-length debut, Conforming to Abnormality, whether by subverting the musical tropes their audience is used to or by using significantly less subtle psych-out tactics like encouraging their fans to think about how, like, fucked-up aliens are (see the cover of 2007’s Xenosapien). Their upcoming Misled by Certainty (Relapse) continues the band’s frontal assault on metal’s stylistic boundaries, erasing the relatively minor distinctions between closely related subgenres like grindcore and death metal on “Raped by an Orb” and the much bigger ones that normally separate metal from things like jazz fusion on “Abraxas of Filth.”
