Gimme 5: Must-see shows this week

Happy Monday, kids! If you’re feeling the comedown from a solid week of shows celebrating the Rickshaw Stop’s 10th anniversary (read our feature on it here), quit yer whining. Here are a handful of rad upcoming shows to get you out of the house. It’s winter, you’re pale, you need to. 

Tues/14
Black Cobra Vipers

Black Cobra Vipers are an SF-based art-rock trio in which two of three members were jazz majors (bassist Julian Borrego and drummer Rob Mills), a fact which announces itself both through the band’s technical abilities, and through its (mostly) controlled chaos. There are slowed-down funk numbers here; there are nods to ’70s psyche masters; there’s hard-driving, danceable rock and roll, with singer/guitarist Gregory DeMartino’s howls at the helm. Weird enough to keep you guessing, but just poppy enough to get their riffs stuck in  your head, the guys are a quarter of the way through a monthlong residency at the Chapel, so you have three more chances to become a fan.
With French Cassettes, The Netherfriends
The Chapel
777 Valencia, SF
www.thechapelsf.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGhgtaW2U

Wed/15

Connan Mockasin
Listening to Connan Mockasin’s “Forever Dolphin Love” (in particular the post-climax/comedown attuned “Rework” by Erol Alkan) for the first time gave me a strange sense of primed nostalgia: it wasn’t that I’d heard the song a hundred times in the past, but the instant recognition that I would be listening to it for the inevitable future. A couple of years later I certainly have, along with the album it came off of and Mockasin’s latest platter of psych pop, Caramel, a Moebius strip of a concept album (based around the concept of what an album entitled “Caramel” would sound like.) But the New Zealand weirdo musician/Ariel Pink doppelganger is only now popping up on a US tour, seemingly having been on an extended European engagement supporting Charlotte Gainsbourg following his underrated guitar work on her Stage Whisper album.   (Ryan Prendiville)
With Disappearing People, Faux Canada
9pm, $10-12
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St, SF
www.bottomofthehill.com

Thurs/16

Parquet Courts
Though the band may reside in NYC, the lyric “there’s billionaire buses on my unlit street” should hit close enough to home (if not right on the nose) to remind that Brooklyn isn’t that far away. Full of riffs both frenetically punk and spaciously melodic, Parquet Courts’s Light Up Gold is one of last year’s best. A deceptively effortless mix of slacked out rock songs, it’s a witty blend, with thankfully enough cleverness to know when to be dumb (while doing the inevitable references to Messrs. Reed, Richman, and Malkmus justice.) “Stoned and Starving” has got all the necessary hooks to deliver on a subject that needs no further explanation, but it’s “N. Dakota,” a probably unnecessary but totally enjoyable state-wide diss (with lines like “in Manitoba they call it boring / at night we hum to Canada snoring”) that’s still on replay. (Ryan Prendiville)
With White Fence (co-headliner), CCR Headcleaner
8pm, $16
Great American Music Hall
859 O’Farrell, SF
www.slimspresents.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWAdh4YIpd8