WEDNESDAY 23
Ash Reiter
Looking for a sound to kick off that summer breeze? Ash Reiter’s band is ideal listening on a sunny day at the beach, or even while braving the San Francisco fog. Lead singer and songwriter Ash Reiter is a crooner with a voice that critics compare to Cat Power, and a sound that is influenced by Grizzly Bear, the Kinks, and the Strokes. She lives in the Berkeley hills with her band’s drummer (boyfriend Will Halsey). Their latest EP Heatwave is a perfect warm up for this springtime performance, to keep us tied over until their upcoming summer full-length release, Hola. Idea the Artist and Jeremy Rourke support, with their inventive opera and stop-motion art takes on performance, respectively. (Shauna C. Keddy)
With Idea the Artist and Jeremy Rourke
9pm, $10
Cafe Du Nord
2170 Market, SF
(415) 861-5016
Mark Lanegan
With his gravelly and growling, yet still tenderly emotive voice, Mark Lanegan has lent his hauntingly striking talents to a variety of projects over the past 25-plus years. First as the lead singer of grunge favorites Screaming Trees, then as a solo artist, and now continuing with a string of superb collaborations with artists such as Mad Season, Queens of The Stone Age, the Twilight Singers, the Gutter Twins, and Isobell Campbell. Lanegan remains one of the best rock vocalists out there today. His latest effort, this year’s Blues Funeral is another superb release, featuring standout tracks “The Gravedigger’s Song” and “Harborview Hospital.” (Sean McCourt)
9pm, $25
Great American Music Hall
859 O’Farrell, SF
(415) 885-0750
THURSDAY 24
I Break Horses
Listen to “Winter Beats” and the title song from 2011’s Hearts, and you’ll probably have Stockholm, Sweden’s I Break Horses figured as a purely dreamy, slightly cold shoegazing act. Just listen to those mesmerizing synth arpeggios and slow, distantly winsome vocals. But as soon as the snares start cracking on “Wired” and build into a beat that a person could actually bounce around a bit too, some of the ice starts melting away, as the sun comes out a little bit. Or maybe your body is heating up, revealing an exciting range to the duo of Maria Lindén and Fredrik Balck, who opened for M83 on the most recent tour. (Ryan Prendiville)
With Silver Swans, DJs Omar and Aaron
9:30 p.m., $14 Advance
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
(415) 861-2011
Midnight
As anyone who has ever used the internet can tell you, anonymity breeds misanthropy. Midnight is a Cleveland quartet whose members don executioner’s hoods onstage, and their blank faces combine perfectly with band’s brand of filthy, antagonistic thrash. The primary musical influences are obviously Venom and Motorhead, in all their sleazy glory, and Midnight churns out fuzzy carnage on songs like “You Can’t Stop Steel,” “Lust, Filth, and Sleaze,” and “Endless Sluts.” For a return to the satanic chaos that launched black metal in the ’80s, just wait until Midnight. (Ben Richardson)
With Toxic Holocaust, Zombie Holocaust, Crypt Keeper 9pm, $12 Thee Parkside 1600 17th St., SF (415)-252-1530 www.theeparkside.com
FRIDAY 25
The Twelves
Perhaps it was destiny that Rio de Janiero duo João Miguel and Luciano Oliveira would produce music together, since they happen to share the same birth date of July 12. The Twelves have been dubbed the Brazilian Daft Punk because of an affinity for dance-electro-house music. While Daft Punk may lean toward producing original work, the Twelves are best known for their string of party remixes on tracks rooted in different genres, including MIA, Asobi Seksu, and Two Door Cinema Club. And they have a welcome unabashedness when it comes to remixing and mashing up on the fly during live sets. (Kevin Lee)
With Volta Bureau, Girls N Boomboxes
9pm, $18.50
Mezzanine
444 Jessie, SF
(415) 625-8880
SATURDAY 26
“Harlem’s Poetic Rebellion: A Salon for the People”
“The world is before you and you need not leave it as it was when you entered.” Kali Boyce and Celeste Chan, founders of the lively Queer Rebels performance organization take James Baldwin’s immortal words to heart, using the legacies of the past to reinvigorate the present. Taking inspiration from the genius flurry of artistic and social developments that was the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and ’30s, they present a night of music, poetry, and stage entertainment by nine queer African American performers. Dancer and punk stalwart Brontez Purnell, filmmaker and LunaSea founder Crystal Mason, Youth Speaks champion Joshua Merchant, “Drag King of the Blues” TuffnStuff, and “big, bold and beautiful treasure” The Lady Ms. Vagina Jenkins, among others, will contribute to keeping the light of black culture flaming. (Marke B.)
7pm, $12–<\d>$15
La Peña Cultural Center
3105 Shattuck Av, Berk.
It Came From Beneath The Sea
While there are a host of special events taking place across the Bay Area this weekend marking the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge being built, only one celebrates its destruction! As part of a series of film screenings of movies that feature the iconic landmark, The Presidio Trust and Walt Disney Family Museum are presenting a free outdoor showing of the 1955 sci-fi classic It Came From Beneath The Sea, which features a giant mutant octopus — brought to life by the legendary Ray Harryhausen — that terrorizes San Francisco and pulls the bridge apart in glorious fashion. (McCourt)
6-10pm, free
Presidio, Main Post Green, SF
SUNDAY 27
San Francisco Carnaval Parade
Carnavalescos, let’s go! Limber up that bodystocking and get ready to shake your all-over tailfeathers, that glorious festival of SF-style Latin-Carribean-Brazilian exuberance is at (maraca-shaking) hand. Join thousands of brightly clad revelers as they fill the Mission streets with joyful noise and colorful sites — provided by some of the Bay’s favorite performance groups, like the Loco Bloco drum troupe, Ballet Folklorico Nicaragua Viva, Xiuhcoatl Danza Azteca, Grupo Samba Rio, Our Boys Steel Orchestra, and dozens more. And chow down on the cultural treats of the super-festive, possibly Cachaça-soaked Carnaval street festival, going on all weekend. SF Carnaval dates back to 1979 and featured some of the first samba schools in California, so your shimmy-and-shake and bang-on-the-drum is historical, too. (Marke B.)
9:30am-noon, free. Street festival, 10am-6pm (festival also Sat/26)
Parade begins at 24th Street and Bryant. Street festival located at 23rd Street and Harrison, SF
Danzig with Doyle
Over the course of the past 35 years, Glenn Danzig has spawned a cult following with his dark and brooding voice, and the sinisterly seductive imagery of his lyrics. From the early days as front man for horror punk icons the Misfits, to metal-infused Samhain, and finally to the eponymous Danzig, where he achieved a degree of mainstream success, he has taken haunting and macabre themes, blasted them with an obsessive sheen, and come up with some of the most evil sounding, yet memorable songs this side of hell. Tonight’s show promises to feature special guest Misfits guitarist Doyle, to run through a set of classic tunes with his old bandmate. (McCourt)
8pm, $38
Warfield
982 Market, SF
MONDAY 28
“Wanted Man: Johnny Cash at San Quentin”
We all know there was only one Johnny Cash, but leave it to Anton Patzner (of the Bay Area string metal duo Judgement Day), Laura Weinbach (Foxtails Brigade), Joe Lewis, and Josh Pollock to tackle a reinterpretation of Johnny Cash’s legendary prison performance for one night only, on Memorial Day. Patzner, Lewis, and Weinbach are going by the name the East Bay Three for this show, and one can only guess how Patzner will bring in his infamous violin skills to this inventive concept. The band challenges the audience to act like a “house full of roaring inmates” as Cash was graciously greeted with during his performance, and they ask us, “Been out of your cell lately?” (Keddy)
8pm, $15
Ashby Stage
1901 Ashby, Berk.
(510) 841-6500
TUESDAY 29
Active Child
Pat Grossi lobbied his mom to tryout for the Philadelphia’s Boys Choir when he was a kid, which likely influenced the soaring sound he now projects as Los Angeles-based Active Child. AC combines his ethereal vocals and harmonious harp chords with reverbs and electronic drum samples to produce music with an almost hymnal quality to it. Think if the pastoral sensibilities of Bon Iver merged with the synth-pop of M83 or Washed Out and you’ll have the general idea. 2011’s You Are All I See engrosses and haunts listeners with its intimate visceral sermons on identity. (Lee)
With Lord Huron
8:30pm, $15
Independent
628 Divisadero, SF
(415) 771-1421
The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 487-2506; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no text attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.