The Charlatans @ Turner Hall, Nov. 9
Thursday, Nov. 5
Yonder Mountain String Band @ Potawatomi Hotel & Casino, 8 p.m.
The seed was planted for Yonder Mountain String Band when banjoist Dave Johnston told college buddy Jeff Austin to bring his mandolin to his band’s performance and “play anything fast and loud.” That band, The Bluegrassholes, soon collapsed, but Johnston and Austin’s penchant for playing loose, carefree jams lived on in Yonder Mountain String Band, a progressive bluegrass quartet that has produced three consecutive No. 1 albums on the U.S. Bluegrass charts (yes, there really is such a thing), including 2009’s The Show. Last year the band experienced a rare shakeup when Austin split from the group, citing creative differences, but the band hasn’t lost a step on their latest record, this summer’s Black Sheep.
Friday, Nov. 6
Nels Cline Stained Radiance with Norton Wisdom w/ Sam Amidon @ The Back Room at Colectivo Coffee, 8 p.m.
Since joining Wilco in the mid-’00s, guitarist Nels Cline has helped flesh out the band’s sound. He’s also become a model of proficiency at his instrument, so much so that on last year’s Sun Kil Moon album, Benji, singer Mark Kozelek quipped about his own guitar skills, “I can play just fine / I still practice a lot but not as much as Nels Cline.” Cline hasn’t let his Wilco obligations stop him from leading a host of other projects, many of them experimental and jazzy. He brings one of them to Colectivo Coffee’s intimate Back Room space at the roaster’s Prospect Avenue location: Stained Radiance, in which he plays guitar in conjunction with the brush strokes of painter Norton Wisdom.
Saturday, Nov. 7
Miltown Beat Down @ Miramar Theatre, 10 p.m.
After 10 years, one of Milwaukee’s longest-lived hip-hop traditions is coming to an end. The Miltown Beat Down, a novel producer battle series started by DJ Jordan Lee, will end with one last Battle Royale featuring each of the events’ past champions. Beat makers will compete against each other in hopes of winning the loudest crowd response. Returning champions include Mike Regal, Reason, Bubba, CameOne, Da Ricanstrukta, Jihad Baracus, J Todd, Lex Luther, Magic Fingaz, Major On Da Beatz and Ad Lib, as well as perennial contender 40 Mil.
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The Polyphonic Spree w/ The Sharp Things @ Shank Hall, 8 p.m.
Founded by former Tripping Daisy frontman Tim DeLaughter after the death of guitarist Wes Berggren brought that group to a premature end, The Polyphonic Spree was conceived to deliver a sheer, joyous spectacle, offering a whole chorus and symphony of musicians playing in unison, wearing matching colored robes. Plenty of critics noted the eerily cult-like undertones to the group’s act, and on recent albums the band has run with that idea, pushing their chipper psychedelic pop into slightly darker directions. They traded their colorful gospel-choir robes for more menacing militia uniforms while promoting their 2007 album The Fragile Army, and their latest record, 2013’s Yes, It’s True, offers some of their heaviest, most percussive sounds yet, without abandoning the radiant pop that will always be their calling card.
Monday, Nov. 9
The Charlatans w/ Eyelids @ Turner Hall Ballroom, 8 p.m.
Early in their career The Charlatans embodied the Madchester sound—that decidedly British fusion of rock, psychedelia and dance music that was briefly the definition of cool in the late ’80s and early ’90s. But the band has shown a gift for adapting, embracing fresher alternative sounds as the ’90s progressed and then dabbling in classic rock on recent releases. The band’s latest is a bittersweet one: Modern Nature is their first since the death of co-founding drummer Jon Brookes, who succumbed to brain cancer during its recording. Inevitably, a sadness hangs over the record, but it’s buoyed by some of the lightest, most soulful songs of their career. A quarter century removed from their first album, they still haven’t lost their touch.
Tuesday, Nov. 10
Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey @ The Pabst Theater, 8 p.m.
As two thirds of the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey performed some of the most iconic songs of the ’60s, including many that are indelibly associated with that decade’s anti-war movement. Their peaceful sounds helped calm listeners at a time when tensions could hardly be higher. The trio broke up in 1970, but reunited and recorded together regularly until Mary Travers’ death in 2009. Now Yarrow and Stookey perform as a duo and they continue to share their progressive worldview in concert.
Welcome to Night Vale: Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor @ Turner Hall Ballroom, 7 p.m.
A homage to the late-night radio thrillers of the ’30s and ’40s, the podcast “Welcome to Night Vale” was destined to find a cult audience from the moment it was conceived. Structured as a dry community radio broadcast from a remote desert town where the locals don’t seem to make much of all the ominous supernatural occurrences that pepper daily life, within a year of its 2012 launch the creepy program was one of iTunes’ most downloaded podcasts, and has developed an eerily devoted online following. This year creators Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor spun off the podcast into Welcome to Night Vale, A Novel. They’ll discuss the book and the podcast at this live conversation moderated by Patrick Rothfuss. Admission includes an autographed copy of the book.
Wednesday, Nov. 11
The Subdudes @ Turner Hall Ballroom, 8 p.m.
The Subdudes haven’t released an album since 2009’s Flower Petals, which found the New Orleans R&B-tinged roots-rockers continuing to explore their usual working class-friendly, minimal pop take on their city’s traditional sounds. The group took some time off after that record to return to their roots: In 2014 they announced a full reunion of the band’s original lineup, including bassist Johnny Ray Allen. Tragically, however, that reunion was cut short when Allen died later that year.
Sublime with Rome w/ The Expendables @ The Rave, 8 p.m.
Sublime with Rome look even less like Sublime than they did in 2009, when Sublime’s surviving rhythm recruited singer/guitarist Rome Ramirez to fill in for the late Bradley Nowell. Some fans felt the band was in bad taste, and apparently drummer Bud Gaugh agreed, because he left the group in 2011, apologizing for his involvement. That didn’t slow the band any, though. They recruited veteran studio drummer Josh Freese to join them on the road, as well as on their latest album, Sirens, a 33-minute serving of hip-hop-flavored ska and rock that stays true to the sound Nowell helped pioneer.
We Were Promised Jetpacks w/ Seoul @ Shank Hall, 8 p.m.
Scottish indie-rockers We Were Promised Jetpacks share more than a little bit of the same DNA as their Fat Cat label mates Frightened Rabbit and The Twilight Sad, two other UK bands with a penchant for post-punk-inspired brooding. But even more so than those groups, Jetpacks aren’t afraid to go loud. Building on the churning songs of their 2009 debut These Four Walls, their 2011 follow-up In The Pit Of The Stomach trafficked in grand, cascading sounds, often capturing the fire of early U2. That same passion carries through their latest release, Unravelling, which they recorded with producer Paul Savage in Glasgow.
