Thursday, April 16
Roman Candle @ Shank Hall, 8 p.m. A love of early alt-country isn't the only thing that the Chapel Hill, N.C., quartet Roman Candle shares with Wilco; both have record-label horror stories. After Roman Candle finished recording their second album, The Wee Hours Revue, their label, Hollywood Records, playing the archetypal evil record company, refused to release their work, mirroring Wilco's infamous battle with Reprise over the fate of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. V2 Records stepped in and bought the rights to the long-dormant album, giving Wee Hours a release in 2006. Though the album, which the band recorded with Chris Stamey, lacks Yankee Hotel's ambitions, it charmingly captures the twangy pep of mid- '90s era Wilco and Whiskeytown. Roman Candle's next album, Oh Tall Tree in the Ear, is slated for release in May.
Friday, April 17
Fresh Cut Collective w/ Adi @ Stonefly Brewery, 10 p.m. Fresh Cut Collective's leading man, Adebisi, heralded the group's audience interaction at a December show on his blog. "What I really love about performing is the essence of call and response!" he wrote. "I know that if I can get the crowd involved, then I'm winning!" With a soulful live sound that evokes The Roots and early Black Eyed Peas (pre-Fergie, of course), this Milwaukee hip-hop ensemble's suave self-assurance has already helped them win over crowds at the Stonefly Brewery. They don't even have an album out yet, but in another sign of their early confidence, they're planning to film tonight's performance.
Chris Cornell @ The Pabst Theater, 8 p.m. Already on track to be 2009's most notorious train wreck, Chris Cornell's latest album, Scream, pairs the onetime Soundgarden wailer with Top 40 hit-maker (and rockist lightning rod) Timbaland. It quickly earned the expected derision from bloggers and cries of blasphemy from fans, as well as some unexpectedly amusing ridicule from Trent Reznor, with whom Cornell is now locked in an ever-escalading battle of words. To be sure, though, the album isn't a failure because of its attempts at pop-if anything, Timbaland's funky production is a vast improvement over the "American Idol" showboating of Cornell's pandering previous record-but rather because of Cornell himself, a humorless, one-note figure who, despite his powerhouse voice, weighs down ostensibly fun songs with his pained grunts and cries.
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Saturday, April 18
Louis C.K. @ The Pabst Theater, 8 and 10:30 p.m. Some comedians build their careers on their successes, others their failures. Louis C.K. belongs to the latter camp, having piloted two notorious flops that only further endeared him to a growing cult audience: He wrote and directed 2001's Pootie Tang, which Roger Ebert in a half-star review likened to "one of those lab experiments where the room smells like swamp gas and all the mice are dead," and he conceived HBO's "Lucky Louie," an homage to workingclass sitcoms so critically reviled that, despite passable ratings, the network canceled it to save its image. Instead of halting his career, however, these projects have only enhanced C.K.'s reputation as one of today's most uncompromising-even visionary-stand-ups.
Tonight the comic, who peppers his low-key observational humor and ruminations of middle age with bawdy tangents, will be filmed for an upcoming special, "Louis C.K.: Hilarious."
Andrew Dice Clay @ Jokerz Comedy Club, 8 and 10:30 p.m. Like another milestone of late-'80s blue humor, "Married with Children," Andrew Dice Clay was buoyed by controversy, which elevated him from just another crass comedian into a national sensation. With no ambitions of commentary or satire, Clay prided himself on being as offensive as possible, spewing racist, homophobic and misogynistic vitriol and subverting nursery rhymes with references to genitals and sex acts. By 1990 he had been banned from MTV and incited a mutiny on the "Saturday Night Live" set. Like so many icons of his era, Clay now makes the rounds on reality shows, dealing with his divorce while plotting a career comeback on VH1's "Dice Undisputed," and squaring off against another towering figure from the George H.W. Bush years, Donald Trump, on "Celebrity Apprentice."
Rachid Taha @ Alverno College's Pitman Theatre, 8 p.m. When the Clash recorded "Rock the Casbah," they probably didn't think their call to upend the Middle East status quo would be covered by a singer with ties to an actual casbah. An Algerianborn singer living in Paris, Rachid Taha gained attention far beyond world music circles with his "Rock el Casbah," especially after its inclusion in the Joe Strummer documentary The Future Is Unwritten. Taha draws from rock, techno and the funky pop music of his homeland, Rai.
Sunday, April 19
Death Cab for Cutie w/ Cold War Kids and Ra Ra Riot @ Carroll University, 8 p.m. Death Cab For Cutie's 1998 studio debut, Something About Airplanes, reissued last fall for its 10th anniversary, introduced yet another charming little Pacific Northwest band infinitely indebted to Built to Spill's wobbly, heartsick guitar-pop. With its nasally cries, clumsy guitars and careening stabs of cello, the album seldom deviated from There's Nothing Wrong With Love's reliable playbook, but on future releases this once-modest band would begin to distinguish themselves from their regional peers, crafting a tightly woven, achingly romantic strain of indie-rock that's made them the darlings of both college- and alternative-radio stations. This beguiling bill pairs the band with Cold War Kids, a California piano-rock quartet that draws unusual inspiration from old blues music and Fiona Apple, and New York chamber-pop charmers Ra Ra Riot.
Extra Golden w/ The Chain @ The Cactus Club, 9 p.m. Compared to the typical music scenes that Thrill Jockey Records usually draws its artists from, Nairobi, Kenya stands out as a curiously unique starting point for Extra Golden, a quartet that, speaking to indie-rock's newfound transnational open-mindedness, owes as much stylistically to classic American rock aesthetics as traditional Kenyan Benga music.
Initial comparisons to fellow African harmonic acts like Ladysmith Black Mambazo are inevitable, but not entirely accurate. Extra Golden can rip off sharp, pronounced blues riffs, but shine most while exploring earthy African rhythms or tropically tinged funk.
Tuesday, April 21
Ray LaMontagne @ The Riverside Theater, 8 p.m. Ray LaMontagne is perhaps the most devoted Stephen Stills fan on the planet, claiming to have quit his job to pursue music after hearing a Stills song, then collaborating with Stills' daughter on his debut album. Stills is an appropriately ego-free inspiration for LaMontagne, who unlike, say, John Mayer, keeps his profile consciously low, rarely publicizing himself or scarcely interacting with his audiences (he's occasionally played in the dark to keep the attention off himself). Pensive but refreshingly devoid of histrionics, his music mirrors his quiet personality, at times evoking Nick Drake at his most balanced, or Van Morrison at his most meditative.
Wednesday, April 22
Peter Bjorn and John @ The Pabst Theater, 8 p.m. Swedish trio Peter Bjorn and John's "Young Folks"-a whistled ditty that suggests a doe-eyed, indie-pop version of Carl Douglas' "Kung Fu Fighting"-captured the hearts of the masses two summers ago, bringing an audience to an album that critics nearly unanimously agreed deserved the success, 2006's Writer's Block. It's hard not to see the trio's latest record, Living Thing, as an attempt to distance themselves from that inescapable hit, though. There's no whistling this time around, and the cutesy, Beatlesque sheen of their breakthrough record has been replaced by the chilly, funereal synths of '80s bands like Tears for Fears and New Order, two groups that used the conventions of pop music to convey deeper, darker emotions than the Top 40 charts typically represent.
Alkaline Trio w/ Saves The Day @ The Rave, 7:30 p.m. Punk fans are notoriously fickle about bands selling out, but Alkaline Trio's ascension from small-time macabre punk band to Killers-sized modern-rock band was so gradual and so natural that many fans might not even have noticed that their favorite group is now appearing on "The Hills." The group's latest album, Agony & Irony-its title not only a riff on "Ebony and Ivory" but also a reference to a fleeting lyric from Harvey Danger's "Flagpole Sitta"-is the first that seems to acknowledge the band's rising fortunes, drawing from the slick, arena-filling sounds of '80s rockers like Pat Benatar.
