The Maine w/ The Mowgli’s and Beach Weather @ The Rave/Eagles Club, Sunday, May 7 at 7:30 p.m.
Thursday, May 4
Express Yourself Milwaukee Presents: SOUL @ Milwaukee Theatre, 6:30 p.m.
Dance, music, spoken word and visual arts come together under one roof for this presentation from Express Yourself Milwaukee, a non-profit that offers creative outlets for the city’s low-income and at-risk youth. With a cast that includes 120 young people and 30 artists and musicians, it promises to be quite a spectacle. “Our hope is that the work will inspire, touch and deepen everyone’s commitment to the youth in our city and the changes we need to make together,” said Express Yourself Milwaukee’s Executive Director Lori Vance.
White Reaper w/ No Parents @ The Rave, 8 p.m.
If you can forgive the audacity of them naming their latest album The World’s Best American Band, there’s a ton to love about the Louisville rock ’n’ roll band—particularly their new album. Indebted to acts like Big Star and Cheap Trick, it’s a set of bubblegum rock that sounds like something the cast of “That ’70s Show” might have cruised around Point Place listening to. It even opens with fake crowd cheers to fully hit home that At Budokan feel. All 2017 rock records should be this fun.
Todd Rundgren @ The Pabst Theater, 8 p.m.
To the masses, Todd Rundgren is best known for his catchy, irresistibly silly novelty hit “Bang the Drum All Day,” a song that in no way captures the depth and diversity of his body of work. He’s worked with artists as diverse as Janis Joplin, Badfinger, The Band, Hall & Oates, XTC, Patti Smith, The New York Dolls and The Cars—whom he briefly fronted during a reunion tour—but never let those outside projects get in the way of his own solo career. On his recent albums like 2013’s State, Rundgren has continued to explore the electronic sonic textures that have been his hallmark since his 1972 breakthrough work, Something/Anything?, but his upcoming record, White Knight, looks to be one of his most high-profile in years. It features a star-studded cast that includes Trent Reznor, Donald Fagen of Steely Dan, Joe Walsh of The Eagles, Daryl Hall, Joe Satriani, Dam Funk and the Swedish pop star Robyn.
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Amanda Huff @ The Jazz Estate, 9 p.m.
With her malleable, acrobatic voice, singer Amanda Huff has emerged as one of the Milwaukee jazz scene’s most valuable utility players over the last year or two, lending her vocals to guitarist Steve Peplin’s worldly Strangelander project and stealing the spotlight at last month’s “Wonder Uncovered” Stevie Wonder tribute concert. For this show, she’ll lead a quartet that includes Peplin, bassist Clay Schaub and Strangelander drummer Jeremy Kuzniar.
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Friday, May 5
The Soulful Sounds of the East & West @ Kenwood Church, 7 p.m.
Warren Garstecki, a meditation lecturer at UW-Milwaukee, arranged this benefit concert aiding a vocational school for poor women and children of Malethi, India. The lineup, featuring British Columbian sitar player Pandit Tejomaya and Milwaukee blues staple Steve “Airmaster” Cohen, promises a mix of sounds from across the globe. Tickets are $10 or $7 for UWM students.
Joe Ely w/ Jason Eady @ The Back Room at Colectivo, 8 p.m.
Along with Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock, Joe Ely was one of the founding members of the Texas country band The Flatlanders, a group that didn’t attract much attention during its original run together but whose stature has grown as its members went on to distinguished solo careers. Ely’s career may be the most wide-ranging of the three: He’s played with Bruce Springsteen, The Chieftains and Uncle Tupelo and sang backing vocals on The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” In 2015, Ely released his latest album, Panhandle Rambler, a record rich with the sounds of his native Texas.
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Sunday, May 7
The Maine w/ The Mowgli’s and Beach Weather @ The Rave/Eagles Ballroom, 7:30 p.m.
Like so many rock bands with a bright, teen-friendly sound, the Arizona quintet landed a major label shortly into their tenure. Warner Bros. released their sophomore album, Black & White, a snappy pop-rock album with a wistful edge. Creative differences with the label led them to part ways before their 2011 album, Pioneer, though it’s difficult to guess what those creative differences might have been: All the records they’ve released since, including their just-released sixth LP Lovely Little Lonely, sound like the kind of radio-friendly alternative rock that no label A&R rep could possibly disagree with.
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Tuesday, May 9
Catfish and the Bottlemen w/ The Worn Flints @ The Rave,8 p.m.
Their band name and the periodic post-punk undertones that creep into their sound suggest that the British alt-rock group Catfish and the Bottlemen have a clear affinity for the moody British rock of the ’80s, but their real allegiances lie with the straightforward rock revival sounds of bands like The Strokes and The Killers. Their 2016 album, The Ride, cemented them as rising stars, peaking at number one on the U.K. albums chart and a respectable number two on America’s alternative albums chart.
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Wednesday, May 10
Pile w/ Gnarlwhal @ Cactus Club, 9 p.m.
Not to be confused with Milwaukee’s own Piles (though fans of either band would probably do very well for themselves to check the other out) the Boston noise rock band Pile has been on a hot streak lately, releasing one fantastically vital record after the next. Their latest may be their finest. Released on the label Exploding in Sound, A Hairshirt of Purpose revitalizes the edgier sounds of ’80s indie rock. If The Fall’s Mark E. Smith recorded a record with Sonic Youth during their prime, it might have sounded something like this. Pile is joined on this bill by Gnarlwhal, an awesome Nashville duo that imagines Les Savy Fav on bath salts and Sex Scenes, the Milwaukee rock band featuring members of NO/NO and Bad Wig.
James Lee Stanley @ Shank Hall, 8 p.m.
Folk and soft-rock songwriter James Lee Stanley has been putting out solo albums steadily since the early 1970s, when he was signed to RCA records. But he found a new audience in the ’90s when he began recording and touring with former Monkee Peter Tork. In recent years, Stanley has recorded at a steady pace, both in collaboration with fellow songwriters like John Batdorf and Cliff Eberhardt and on his own. In 2014, he released the understated, largely acoustic Apocaloptimist, which he followed up with one of his most ambitious projects yet, Straight From the Heart, an original musical he spent nearly two decades working on. Continuing his recent prolific streak, last year he released a spirited soundtrack to M.H. Salter’s novel, Dove.
