Bottom of the Hill

Too hot

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Turn down the grill, puleeze — last week felt like a little time-traveling trip to Nellyville (Universal), a throwback to ’02, as in "I’m getting too hot / I wanna take my clothes off." That snatch of "Hot in Herre," Country Grammar king Nelly’s collabo with the Neptunes, could have been the recurring refrain throughout the 80-degree-plus Indian summer sizzle engulfing San Francisky. And frankly I prefer Nelly’s get-nekkid vision of toasty times to the heat that seems to be driving the kids on my street to shoot each other up. Nightlife shouldn’t mean a fight for your life, and who can blame the Mission District teens who want to get out of their suffocating family apartments? Still, you wonder drowsily, when roused at 4:45 a.m. to the sound of five gunshots and some murder-minded creep speeding off: why do the shooters have such ready access to firearms?

I say, let’s cut the vengeance-minded, pistol-packing heat and up the glammed-up, sexy swelter instead. We can use a little more ye olde "Hot in Herre" and less hot-under-the-collar shoot-’em-ups. So the timing was perfect to check in with Nelly, a.k.a. Cornell Haynes Jr., about his latest album, Brass Knuckles (Derrty/Universal), on the verge of an intimate national tour alongside his chums St. Lunatics.

The finished product took a great deal of tweaking — hence the multiple delays, says the soft-spoken rapper, fashion impresario, and collaborator with everyone from T.I. (Creatively, "he’s a beast," swears Nelly) to Tim McGraw. Though Nelly’s intent on trying out new sounds, fans seem to prefer the rapper’s smoother R&B side, as exhibited by the popularity of his Suit disc over his hip-hoppier Sweat full-length (both Derrty/Universal, 2004). And the third single off Brass Knuckles, "Body on Me," which brings the St. Louis rapper together with Akon and rumored squeeze Ashanti, has done considerably better than his fun-loving, shout-along foray betwixt crunk and hyphy, "Stepped on My J’z" ("My ode to the joy of the sneaker," he says).

But all that doesn’t mean the Charlotte Bobcats co-owner wants to skew toward safe choices amid industry uncertainty and his own tussles with Universal ("Definitely I was unhappy with the situation," Nelly says of the negotiations that led him to make the 2007 throwaway "Wadsyaname" single. "Sometimes I think the only leverage that entertainers have is the music."): after all, he did try to assemble a vocal threesome with Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson for Brass Knuckles as well as a bro-down with Bruce Springsteen.

"Don’t be afraid of change," he tells me over the phone. "I think that’s the thing that scares people the most. You can’t tell fans what they should buy. You can’t tell fans what they should like. It looks funny! ‘Yo, don’t buy that — buy this. You’re wrong!’<0x2009>" The still-budding thespian within — Nelly will appear in the CSI: NY season opener — rears its head as the rapper imagines a bullied fan. "’But, but, it’s my money!’

"That’s something you don’t want to get into," he continues, reassuming his proper role. "You’re always a student."

This time around, Nelly says, "I wanted to do things a little differently — bring an energy to the album that I maybe haven’t in a while as far as tempos and selection of people that I used." To support that he wants to spend this tour "just explaining the songs and explaining what went into the album."

Apparently there’s more than a little of the down-home Midwesterner in the rapper, who continues to reside in his hometown of St. Louis. There, keeping it real — and cool — means knowing when to lay low. Having finally finished the album a week and a half ago, he’s now in the middle of promotions, marketing, and tour preparations, and his typical day can mean doing interviews at four New York City radio stations in one fell swoop, or "a good nap all day because I’m exhausted," he sighs. "Because I’ve probably been up for four or five days in a row. No exaggeration. It’s something that stays on you." *

NELLY

With St. Lunatics and Avery Storm

Sat/13, 9 p.m. doors, $40–$55

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 820-9669

www.mezzaninesf.com

COME OUT SWINGING

BEATEN BY THEM

The native Australians — and onetime San Franciscans — hammered out a fascinating Signs of Life (Logicpole/Thrill Jockey, 2007) at Tiny Telephone studio. With one f and the Healing Curse. Wed/10, 9 p.m., $6. Hotel Utah, 500 Fourth St., SF. www.hotelutah.com

FLOATING CORPSES, HUNX AND HIS PUNX, AND YOUNGER LOVERS

Wreak havoc with Roxy Monoxide alongside Gravy Train!!!!’s punk poobah and Brontez’s ever-lovin’ latest. With No Gos and Bridez. Sat/13, 8 p.m., $5–$7. 924 Gilman Street Project, Berk. www.924gilman.org

MARY HALVORSON AND JESSICA PAVONE

The Brooklyn chamber-folk experimentalists are on critics’ short lists for On and Off (Skirl). With Xiu Xiu, Evangelista, and Prurient. Sat/13, 9 p.m., $12–$14. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

JANET JACKSON

Jacko may have snubbed his sis at her BMI lifetime achievement ceremony, but she continues to "Rock Witchu" despite turmoil with Island Def Jam. Sat/13, 7:30 p.m., $37.50–$123.25. Oracle Arena, 7000 Coliseum, Oakl. www.livenation.com

TRICKY

The trip-hoppin’ hip-hopper delves into his tough council estate upbringing with Knowle West Boy. (Domino). With Sonny. Sun/14, 9 p.m., $30. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

The grateful undead

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Looking back at Outside Lands and ahead to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and the last lingering Indian summer sighs and huzzahs of the festival express season, I’d say we all have plenty to be grateful for. At Outside Lands, I was thankful for Sharon Jones’ sass, Radiohead’s nu-romantic lyricism (amid two moments when the sound cut out and Thom Yorke’s jesting "OK, who put beer in the plug?"), Beck’s persistent pop groove as fence jumpers leapt the barriers, Regina Spektor’s and Andrew Bird’s old-time songcraft, Los Amigos Invisibles’ and Little Brother’s bounce, and Primus’ pluck. No doubt the bison are grateful for the quiet betwixt gatherings — and we all envy them after those night strolls through the cool, darkened park, passing kids listening to the music echo through the arboreal cathedral.

I could go on about how gratified I am for a somewhat chiller city now that burner getups on Haight Street are discounted and their would-be buyers are happily grilling on the playa. But the most grateful of all has gotta be Sam Adato, who I chatted up last week on the eve of practice with his hard rock band Sticks and Stones. The group has a Sept. 5 show at Slim’s, for which he’s likely grateful, but most of all he’s happy to be alive and not buried beneath some beater. He was on his way to his store, Sam Adato’s Drum Shop, July 31 when, he says, a woman driver running a red light at Ninth Street was hit by another car heading down Folsom. "The impact made her swerve and go directly into my shop," he says. "It had to be quite fast to crash through the storefront." Adato usually gets to the store by 11 a.m. — he missed colliding with the driver by about 15 minutes. "Thank god," he marvels. "I probably would have been dead." His wife rushed over thinking he was in the store when the crash occurred, and their tearful embrace outside was captured by at least one photo-blogger. "Thank god no one was hurt," Adato adds. "Walking on the sidewalk or in the shop — it could have been a bloodbath. Things can be replaced — people can’t."

Adato’s alive, but half the storefront was wiped out, and he estimates that about $10,000 in inventory was destroyed. Now everything is in storage, the store is boarded up, and repairs have begun. Meanwhile he’s been producing a CD for his other band, The Bridge, which opened for Deep Purple at the Warfield last summer. "That’s been keeping me busy, but the ironic thing is Oct. 12 will be my 15-year anniversary — it just might be the grand reopening, 15 years after I first opened," he says wryly. At that time he was at a crossroads. "Rather than audition for touring bands, which is great but it’s hard to make a living and more often than not you’re just a hired gun, I decided to open a drum shop. I had no doubt in my mind it would succeed," he says firmly. "There are no drum shops like it anywhere. A drummer can come in and say they need their drum fixed, and I’ll fix it right there and then."

Until a certain car crash, he was living the drummer’s dream. Though Adato now throws down his sticks in South San Francisco, he actually resided in his SF shop for its first two years. "It was great," he recalls. "Stay up late, get up, take a shower, turn on the lights, open the door, and you’re ready for business, surrounded by drums day and night. Thank god for giving me this life." *

STICKS AND STONES

Fri/5, 9 p.m., $15

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

www.slims-sf.com


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HOWLS IN THE WILDERNESS

CENTRO-MATIC AND SOUTH SAN GABRIEL


Will Johnson unites his two groups on the release of a two-CD set on Misra. With Sleepercar. Wed/3, 8 p.m., $10–$12. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. www.rickshawstop.com

DESOLATION WILDERNESS


The Olympia, Wash., combo on K Records jangles brightly at the end of a dreamily desolate echo chamber. With Family Trea and Ben Kamen and the Hot New Ringtones. Wed/3, 9 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

MOMMYHEADS


Reunited and it feels like Mommy is home. After the 2007 passing of drummer Jann Kotik, the ‘heads decided to track old and new songs for the revitalized You’re Not a Dream (Bladen County). With Brad Brooks and The Mumlers. Wed/3, 9:30 p.m., $12. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

DAEDELUS


Taz Arnold of Sa-Ra and rapper Paperboy make it onto the LA beat-R&D specialist’s new Love to Make Music To (Ninja Tune). Thurs/3, 7 p.m., free. Apple Store, 1 Stockton, SF. Fri/5, 10 p.m., $5–$10. Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. www.elbo.com

MORTIFIED


You know you like it — the pathos and chuckles of reading oh-so-private love letters and diary entries in public. Fri/5-Sat/6, 8 p.m., $12–$15. Make-Out Room, SF. www.makeoutroom.com

NINE INCH NAILS AND DEERHUNTER


Certainly one of the more unexpected pairings of late: the determinedly independent Trent Reznor meets the persistently raucous Bradford Cox. Fri/5, 7:30 p.m., $39.50–$55. Oracle Arena, Oakl. www.apeconcerts.com

DEATH VESSEL AND DAME SATAN


DV’s heartfelt folk meets its ideal match in SF’s DS, whose Andrew Simmons is planning to drop a haunting solo EP, Tabernacle Word, Pioneer (Ghost Mansion). With Micah Blue Smaldone. Sat/6, 10 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com
ISE LYFE
The über-versatile Oakland MC recently cometh with Prince Cometh (7even89ine). With Bambu and DJ Phatrick, Do D.A.T., Power Struggle, EyeASage, and Emassin. Tues/9, 9:30 p.m., $10–$13. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

Punk pisses off

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PREVIEW I don’t know how you can call yourself punk rock and not love the Urinals. OK, I know, you bought your punk credentials at Hot Topic and had them validated at last year’s Warped Tour ’cause you managed to sit through the baby-faced oldsters of Sum 41. But, hey, you haven’t lived — nor have you ever truly visited a urinal — till you’ve heard the now-30-year-old influential unit’s muy-primitivo "Salmonella" or "You Piss Me Off." This is punk before it got shoved into a uniform.

It’s apt then that the 100 Flowers alter ego project headlines the first annual Your Flesh Invitational. Never you mind that the mag — resurrected three years ago as an online pub — was birthed in 1981 in Minnesota, of all places, by Californians Peter Davis and Ron Clark, Ferret Comix’s Dave Roth, and Hüsker Dü’s Bob Mould, no less. Silly Mouldie decided to dü the music dü instead of the musical journalism dü, and the bristly, bustling, cantankerous rock rag subsequently moved to Chicago in 1999 and ceased regular print production in ’04. Yet why produce a show there when this city is ripe for plundering and rich with like-minded souls. Remember, it’s YOUR Flesh — not the man’s — and hence the presence of stellar local fleshpots like Nothing People and the Traditional Fools, capering and cavorting beside the Northwestern angular-rock scions of Intelligence and the Chicago snot-rockers of Mannequin Men.

YOUR FLESH INVITATIONAL With Urinals, Intelligence, Mannequin Men, Nothing People, and the Traditional Fools. Sun/31, 8 p.m., $12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455, www.bottomofthehill.com

Fated to annihilate

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER To get the grimy lowdown on East Bay hard rock combo Annihilation Time, you don’t have to look very far: try the party-starting band’s Oakland townhouse.

"Yeah, it’s barely standing," says guitarist Graham Clise with a chortle. Apparently the best party had to be New Year’s Eve two years ago, he recalls from San Diego, where the group is taking a break at the beach while on tour with its new third album, Tales of the Ancient Age (Tee Pee). "I wake up in the morning, and the entire place is smashed — like all the drawers are smashed out. I look out the window, and in the backyard the couch is on fire.

"It’s still like that, unfortunately."

How much more rawk fun can you have? Hailing from a speedier, hellbent-for-lather breed of ’70s-era metal à la Priest mixed with the set-to-pulverize tendencies of SoCal hardcore, Tales of the Ancient Age is all about the sloppy good times, rug burns, and all-business dual lead guitars as it stumbles through passes at skinhead chicks on public trans ("Bald Headed Woman") and bouts of lousy hygiene ("Germ Freak [I Ain’t No]"). Could Annihilation Time be the seriously anti-sobriety, hard-rockin’ fun-metalists we’ve been waiting for? Contemplate their comic-book vision of apocalyptic Oaktown rendered by former guitarist Shaun Filley on the cover of Tales, and the band seems to slip right in between the politically tinged rigor of High on Fire and the pagan brooding of Saviours, who once lived in Annihilation Time’s raging HQ. Exhibit one: Annihilation Time’s "Jonestown," far from a righteous wail of despair against groupthink. Instead the band embraces a punkily perverse, Ramones-ish, kicks-first perspective — would Clise partake in the Kool-Aid? "That’s my philosophy," he yelps. "I’d give it a try, sure."

The seven-year-old band moved to O-town from the Ventura, Oxnard, and Ojai area about two and a half years ago because "we all decided we were sick of it down there," Clise says. "It seemed like a pretty cool, happening spot. We wanted to try it out. You can get away with anything, too. That’s the other cool thing. You’re kind of free to do whatever you want, and nobody is going to fuck with you too much. It’s kinda like one of the last free places — where you can be a shithead and get away with it!"

Unfortunately a group also runs the risk of finding their music flying under the radar — into obscurity: Tales comes after two other self-released albums and two 7-inches. So this time the band looked to licenser Tee Pee for help. ("We always have big plans of having our own label and getting our shit out there and working hard at it. But the reality is, it’s a lot of work and we’re kind of sick of having to deal with it. We just want to play music.") The next career move? Annihilation Time may just up and move their party to Pittsburgh, following their relocated vocalist Jimmy Rose. They’ll obviously do anything for a ripping yarn — hence the less-than-nostalgic album title. "We chose the name because it sounds all serious and epic," Clise explains. "But we also chose the name because there’s a whiskey called Ancient Age — really cheap, really awful stuff. But it always makes for a good night, and there’s always a story afterwards." Pittsburgh should watch itself. *

Annihilation Time’s Aug. 16 show at Thee Parkside has been canceled. For future dates go to ww.myspace.com/annihilationtime.

OUT OF THIS WORLD: 12 GALAXIES DEPARTS

Last week brought more than one hit of sad news, along with the sorrowful tidings of Isaac Hayes’ passing. 12 Galaxies owner Robert Levy phoned to tell me that his Mission District venue is closing Aug. 28: "Financially we’re no longer able to sustain the business. It’s a very competitive city as far as booking live music is concerned." The 500-capacity venue — which spent about $60,000 on soundproofing when it was hit with neighbor complaints a few years ago — will be sorely missed for its offbeat events, boffo parties (such as the Guardian‘s Goldies), and memory-searing shows by Lightning Bolt, Black Dice, Comets on Fire, Kelley Stoltz, and many others.

Why now? "Our lease is up at the end of the year," Levy says. "Our landlord wanted more than we could conceive doing." Levy now hopes a new face will buy the business. In the meantime he’s looking forward to the club’s remaining awesome-sounding shows, including SF Indie message board’s 10-year anniversary party (Aug. 21) and Parkerpalooza (Aug. 23). "I think," Levy continues, "in a lot of ways we succeeded in what we were trying to do," namely, supporting the local music scene. "We just didn’t succeed financially."

NO REST FOR THE TICKETED

JUANA MOLINA


The ex-TV comedian plies an arrestingly loopy acoustronica with folk elements plucked from her native Argentina. Wed/13, 8 p.m., $18. Yoshi’s, 1330 Fillmore, SF. sf.yoshis.com

PASSENGER


The quivering Britpopsters just might break down Rihanna’s "Umbrella." Wed/13, 7:30 p.m., $15. Swedish American Hall, 2174 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

OCTOPUS PROJECT


Samplers are pitted against guitars, and they’re all winners. With the Hot Toddies, Sassy!!!, and Diagonals. Sat/16, 9 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

JEPPE


Junior Senior’s tall, gay hunk jumps out solo. With Gravy Train!!!! and Hottub. Sun/17, 9 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

EXPO 70


Primo experimento-psycho drone from the Kill Shaman Records founders. With Wooden Shjips and Arp. Tues/19, 9:30 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

Shoot from the hip

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Def Leppard and Nickelback: you know I want my fantasy, and everyone is aware of how those cool, desirable, shocking, or subversive photographs are integral to fanning the flames of so many rock ‘n’ roll clowns’ dreamscapes. But it’s those moments when a picture delivers more than words that have inspired some to pick up a camera and keep shooting. Local noise-punk photog Lars Knudson can verify this, concerning one Arab on Radar show at Bottom of the Hill back at the turn of the millennium. "I saw this band Pink and Brown, and this audience of people who were absolute freaks, ultra-nerd ‘tards, hipsters, scenesters, or whatever you want to call it, and I felt so alive and so at home," Knudson recalls today from his work as a chef in San Carlos. "I tried to describe it to everyone I worked with, and they looked at me like, ‘Huh?’ Then I stumbled on these images that were taken by Virgil Porter [Burn My Eye] and showed them to people, and they said, ‘ooh!’"

As SF photographer Peter Ellenby [Every Day Is Saturday (Chronicle)] testifies, Jim Marshall put the Bay on the map for music photography and shooters like Jay Blakesberg have kept it there. But what about the newbs — armed with the latest digi point-and-shoot and inspired, à la Knudson, to begin capturing a fragment of the sound and the fury? Around the same instant everyone began to believe they could be a DJ, so too did all and sundry start to assume that they could also be an ace lens swinger.


John Vanderslice: Photo by Peter Ellenby

So how does one carve out a name as a music photog when the glut of images on Flickr and assorted photoblogs threatens to overwhelm? I gathered snippets of sage advice from a few area rock photogs: Knudson, Ellenby, and Debra Zeller, who honed her craft focusing on local indie combos via her Playing in Fog online project and concert series, has since expanded into professional wedding photography (originally shooting the nuptials of the Red Thread’s Jason Lakis), and currently books live music at the Make-Out Room.

•Be a music lover, foremost. "That’s why I did photography part-time for so long — it’s really hard to make a living in music photography," says Zeller (www.playinginfog.com, www.dazrocks.com), who has shot Cat Power, among others, at the behest of their labels. "What magazines pay is absolutely ridiculous and getting the work is another challenge." Additionally, Knudson says, "Part of the reason I have good photos is I know when they’re going to rock out. If you’re not prepared to get lost in the moment, you should go home and be an artist, because it isn’t about you and what you got that night, it’s really about what the band did onstage that night." In the spirit of shareware and the scene he has documented, Knudson makes thousands of his images freely available to bands — and really anyone — on a not-for-profit basis at www.pbase.com/pistolswing.

•Show everyone your work. "I showed my photos to as many people as possible," says Ellenby (www.ellenby.com), who photo-edited zines like Snackcake and Devil in the Woods. "All the bands and my friends knew I was for hire, and you have to not be afraid to be take criticism and set goals. When I was starting out my favorite band was Overwhelming Colorfast, and my goal was to shoot them, and Bob Reed would rip on them all the time."


Elliott Smith: Photo by Debra Zeller

•Know the craft, natch. "I think it’s important to shoot in manual and really know how to work your camera," Zeller insists. "That’s how you get the images. If you just rely on program mode, chances are you’ll be lucky to get a couple of good shots."

•"Don’t be afraid to work for a six-pack," advises Ellenby, who cofounded tech company GeoVector and is currently working on a Joe Strummer photo project. "Don’t think it’s your road to riches, either — especially if you like indie music. I would make more money if I wanted to, but I don’t like working for a giant music corporation. I like it better when I’m working one-on-one for a band — when you’re hired by a band you can let the creativity flow."

•"My only other piece of advice is, shut up and push the button," Knudson says. "When you’re shooting live bands, you’re going to miss the shot if you’re busy telling your friend how cool you are."

I CAN GO FOR THAT

SON AMBULANCE


Dulcet Midwestern pop-smiths take on Someone Else’s Déjà Vu (Saddle Creek). Wed/6, 9 p.m., $8. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

FUTURE BLONDES AND C.L.A.W.S.


Malevolent Houston beats call up the ground-control SF bass-meister. With Skozey Fetisch. Thurs/7, 9 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

ME FIRST AND THE GIMME GIMMES


Punk supergroupers grope classic hits anew with Have Another Ball! (Fat Wreck Chords). Sat/9–Sun/10, 8 p.m. $15. Parkside, 1600 17th St., SF. www.theeparkside.com

PROJEKT REVOLUTION


A revolution in rock-hip-hop pairings begins with Linkin Park, Chris Cornell, Bravery, Ashes Divide, Busta Rhymes, Hawthorne Heights, and Street Drum Corps. Sat/9, 2 p.m., $34–$77. Shoreline Amphitheatre, 1 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View. www.ticketmaster.com

DARYL HALL AND JOHN OATES


Private eyes, they’re watching you, watching you, watching you-o-o-o-o-o. Tues/12, 7:30 p.m., $49.50–$78. Mountain Winery, 14831 Pierce, Saratoga. www.ticketmaster.com

Homegirl

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Of the many unsung, possibly fabulous, potentially limitless unexplored combos floating round in the ether — up there with the now-familiar chocolate and peanut butter or pizza flavoring and dog-biscuits-for-humanoids — has to be rock music and housework. Natch, Heloise would probably be in hell contemputf8g the crusty state of most band’s vans or rehearsal spaces. Few jam it home-econo.

Leave it to Dawn McCarthy of Faun Fables — a Bay Area player who has been consistently reimagining old music and traditional folk with an often theatrical, punky sensibility — to rescue the most mundane of tasks, so far from the neggy decadence and glam hysterics of most rock and pop cliché-peddlers, and bring together music, hearth, and home on her new EP, A Table Forgotten (Drag City). Coproduced by Nurse with Wound’s Matt Waldron, Table is a palate-tickling, four-track taste of Faun Fables’ 2009 full-length — roving compactly from the Irish bodhran drum beat and "happy clinks" of spell-casting opener "With Words and Cake" to the spine-tingling, fiddle-swept "Pictures" to the epic "Winter Sleep," cowritten with Björk producer Valgeir Sigurdsson, whom McCarthy worked with on Bonnie "Prince" Billy’s The Letting Go (Drag City, 2006).

The focus on home and family came in part from McCarthy’s residency at Idyllwild Art Academy in the San Jacinto Mountains, where she began to develop some of these songs as part of a student musical theatrical production, although she’s been meaning to undertake this ode to home work for a while. "I’m going to sound like an Amish woman or something," she says with a chuckle by phone from Oakland. "But over the years I found a lot of solace and joy in doing household stuff. It’s kind of one of those hidden arts. And I find that it’s those little day-to-day things that make or break my happiness."

McCarthy’s family is expanding: she’s pregnant and expecting her child around the time of year she herself was born, Oct. 30. "I have pregnancy brain," she says after one inadvertently long pause. And her home is shifting: after living near the Oakland zoo for eight years in an old rustic cottage "that time forgot," as she describes it, and more recently in an artists’ warehouse near Jack London Square, she’s hoping to move to Sonoma. In the meantime she hopes to make edible saleables like vinegar pie for her Café Du Nord merch table. "The singing and performing and shows feel amazing," she says. "I can tell the baby is happy with it."

FROM THE GUT On the bill at Faun Fables’ upcoming Du Nord show: über-productive bicoastal player Bonfire Madigan Shive, who also headlines at the Henry Miller Library Aug. 2. The activist-musician dazzled all and sundry who caught the recent American Conservatory Theater production of John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore where she performed, suspended above the stage and outfitted in angel’s wings, ripping alternately dulcet and dissonant unearthly sounds from her cello and thereby commenting on, counterpointing, or lamenting the gory, incestuous goings-on below.

"Now that it’s wrapped, I’m proud and happy with what I created for that," Shive says of her "duets for hair and gut," as she dubbed the music she composed for ‘Tis Pity. "For me, it was a lot of surrender, getting out of the way of preconceived notions and focusing on the style and time and being a part of this world, to work on this text that’s 400 years old, and how that world reflects this one."

Up amid the sensuous lines of ‘Tis Pity‘s almost futuristic discotheque set, Shive told me — speaking in the ecstatic, enthusiastic streams of an earthbound angel — she’d often study the audience’s reactions from on high. "I would have moments when I’d zone in on a person and they’d realize, ‘I’m a part of this show.’<0x2009>"

Shive is likewise often pulled into others’ shows: since we last spoke she’s toured or played with the Good, the Bad, and the Queen; Laibach; Carla Bozulich and Silver Mt. Zion members; Kimya Dawson; and St. Vincent’s Annie Clark. Somehow she’s also found a moment to publish an essay in Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction (Seven Stories Press), and she’s looking forward to self-releasing her next album, which includes contributions from Joan Jeanrenaud and Jolie Holland. Apparently it’s just one fastball after another from the onetime member of the Guardian softball team.

"I’ve known Dawn [McCarthy] for a long time now," Shive says. "When she moved from New York to the Bay Area, she came to my apartment and said, ‘I heard you’re a yodeler. Yodel for me!’ Dawn’s one of those kindred spirits. It’s all about community and art."

FAUN FABLES

With Bonfire Madigan

Thurs/31, 9 p.m., $12

Café Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

www.cafedunord.com

LOOK, LISTEN, YEARN

EEF BARZELAY


Clem Snide, we never knew ye. So meet the band’s songwriter, touting a new solo CD, Lose Big (429). Wed/30, 8 p.m., $14. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

THE HERBALISER


Hot on the heels of Same as It Never Was (!K7), London’s Ollie Teeba turns in a DJ set. Fri/1, 10 p.m., $12. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.sunsetpromotions.net

CONOR OBERST AND THE MYSTIC VALLEY BAND


"Sausalito" is the name of one song on the Bright Eyes’ front-guy’s first solo LP in 13 years, Conor Oberst (Merge). Fri/1–Sat/2, 10 p.m., $25. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

TITUS ANDRONICUS


Glen Rock, N.J.’s finest, Titus Andronicus, dust off and spit-shine a rustic punk-pop. Sun/3, 9 p.m., $8. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

NOMO


Haunted by Fela Kuti and Francis Bebey as well as Can and Miles Davis, the new Ghost Rock (Ubiquity) finds the Michigan collective ushering a new post-rocky fusion. Tues/5, 9 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

No Age ways

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER No Age is in dire need of some vulture repellent. The much-acclaimed Los Angeles duo might have been decreed the future of rock by cultural gatekeepers like those yuksters at New Yorker, sailing forth via the freedom-first joys of "Miner" and negativity-bemoaning "Teen Creeps" on their urgent latest, Nouns (Sub Pop), but that doesn’t mean all is peachy keen in No Ageland, says drummer-vocalist Dean Spunt.

"We get e-mails all the time from managers and people who want to make our merch for us — I call them the vultures. Everyone kind of wants a piece of whatever’s going on," explains Spunt, 26, keeping it casual and amiable from LA as he and guitarist Randy Randall, 27, prepare to go on tour. "It’s like, ‘Hey, guys, I can charge you $8 for a shirt.’ I think most bands that aren’t DIY don’t know how much a T-shirt actually costs to make."

No Age happens to print its T’s at a silkscreen shop owned by Spunt’s mother. Making things there — and skate culture — left an impression concerning the hands-on pleasures and tangible economics of doing it yourself. "I really want to keep it fun for us, but it’s also now kind of become our living," Spunt confesses. "I think a lot of the vultures would try to have you not make it so fun. There’s a definite way, a cookie-cutter approach, that people take to music and bands, and I think a lot of people — the vultures I talk about — they just see it as that. It’s, like, ‘Well, hey, this is what bands do.’ But me and Randy don’t really do what bands do."

That goes for everything from taking money from their label to fund tours to renting a bus that costs the same amount a day as a van might per month. "I just like to keep the books clean," Spunt continues. "The whole Minutemen ‘jam econo’ thing — it sort of applies to us, you know."

DIY is far from dead for the band. Spout says he silkscreened No Age’s first seven singles by himself at his mother’s shop, as well as the band’s first "product": a bandanna, which the two ex-Wives members sold along with a DVD-R of art videos during their first tour. As much as any non-self-released album, Nouns reflects those values — born amid punk, fostered by riot grrrl and hardcore, and now nurtured by community at the Smell, in addition to those at like-minded venues like Gilman Project and 21 Grand (the latter is reportedly again under pressure to discontinue regular shows).

"We had an opportunity to record in a nicer studio," Spunt said of Infrasonic in LA and Southern Studios in London. "With Weirdo Rippers [FatCat, 2007] we were limited in terms of what we could do with sound, which is a big part of our band. The reason we’re two people is we kind of like the limitations being put on us so it makes us more creative and stuff, but we wanted to open the sound up a little more with Nouns, and I think we did. The noisier parts got noisier, and the poppier parts got poppier, and it’s a little more direct. The ambient stuff doesn’t run as long, and it just kind of gets you there." Mainly, he adds, they wanted to write songs that were fun to play live.

With Nouns, imagine No Age fingering its predecessors’ punk and post-punk garments longingly when it isn’t generating the larger-than-its-numbers blast of Hüsker Dü or Volcano Suns. The twosome looks directly back to an Alternative Nation for touchstones, while documenting a many-hued spectrum of faces and places in Nouns‘ accompanying booklet, snapping haunts and audiences that look startlingly alike, regardless of whether they were captured in Portland, Ore., or London. You might draw a line from one city, one space, or one gen to the next — from the 60-year-olds Spunt says write them fan e-mails to the 14-year-olds who might materialize at the all-ages shows. "It’s awesome," marvels Spunt. "It sort of goes with the name, I guess."

As for their future as "DIY professionals," as Spunt puts it, the pair simply want to keep making whatever they like. "I’m sure someday that will not be cool," he offers with a chuckle. "I’m waiting for the backlash."

NO AGE

With Mika Miko and Abe Vigoda

Mon/28, 8 p.m., $13

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

www.gamh.com

Also Club Sandwich two-year anniversary

With Mika Miko, Abe Vigoda, and KIT

Tues/29, 9 p.m., $8

Lobot Gallery

1800 Campbell, Oakl.

www.clubsandwichbayarea.com

SIDEBAR 1

A BLAST, FAST

CAROLINER


More unforgettable noise pageantry from underground OG Grux. With Hans Grusel’s Krankenkabinet, Loachfillet, Amphibious Gestures, and Bones. Wed/23, 9 p.m., $10. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

THE DUKE SPIRIT


That’s the spirit of UK retro rock with girlish sighs. With Aarrows and Scene of Action. Wed/23, 9 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill,1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

EDGETONE NEW MUSIC SUMMIT


The seventh annual experimental music hoedown gathers such diverse players as No More Twist!, a "sound and light lie detector" No More Twist!, local Chinese American hardcore unit Say Bok Gwai, Moe! Staiano’s Mute Socialite; High Mayhem–ite Carlos Santistevan’s the Late Severa Wires, and Birgit Ulher Trio with Gino Robair and Tim Perkis. Wed/23–Sat/26 at Community Music Center, 544 Capp, SF. See www.edgetonemusicsummit.org for details.

WYCLEF JEAN

The ex-Fugee brings out a full band. Wed/23, 9 p.m., $35–<\d>$50. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

TOILING MIDGETS


Up from the ashes of Negative Trend and the Sleepers. With Cloud Archive and VIR. Fri/25, 10 p.m., $10–<\d>$12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

HARVEY MILK


Harvey Milk lives — in the form of his namesake Athens, Ga., art-metal band, which plays live for the first time in SF. Sun/27, 8 p.m., $14. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.gamh.com

Guilt to the hilt

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Watching the chopped and cropped black-and-white promo vid for Beck’s new album, Modern Guilt (DGC) — a study in cut-rate Super 8 ways to make static images of the reedy rocker and cohorts look exciting and fresh — I can’t help but think of Velvet Underground hanger-on/documenter Andy Warhol and his bricolage brethren and kindred experimentalist Bruce Conner, who sadly passed July 7. Memories of the toothpick-thin, turtlenecked Bay Area beat-gen grandpappy shaking and shimmying beside breakdance troupe Sisterz of the Underground on an impromptu dance floor at the Guardian‘s 2005 Goldies bash are burned forever in my olde retina, for sure — right alongside indelible images from Conner’s Ray Charles–driven Cosmic Ray (1962) and his Toni Basil-go-go-happy Breakaway (1966). Where’s the joy in contemputf8g Conner’s fierce life force — one that happily, darkly captured the pure products of America gone mad — finally breaking away and making a run for the ether? And likewise — in an era of diminished expectations, recession-inspired belt-tightening, and exploding oil prices — who cares to question why Beck has got the 21st-century blues but bad?

Readings of Modern Guilt‘s songs as covert Scientology tracts can wait: the overt critical prognosis is that Beck’s latest disc is terminally bummed. "Modern Guilt sounds like an obligation," writes Amy O’Brien of Vancouver Sun. "It sounds like Beck has disengaged from his music." Meanwhile, Greg Kot of Chicago Tribune theorizes that the songwriter and producer Danger Mouse’s collaboration "sounds like it was dashed off between appointments on Danger Mouse’s increasingly stocked calendar." All grouse about the overall darkness of Beck’s mood: there are ruminations on bones, abandonment, and corrosive rain on the gluey exotica-bop "Orphans" and on melting ice caps, hurricanes, and heat waves amid the blissfully brisk, purring pop "Gamma Ray." "Replica" takes on a drum ‘n’ bass face, bright chimes tolling with dread at the age of mechanical reproduction, whereas "Profanity Prayers" invokes a spanking Devo rhythm and inverts "Mr. Soul" motifs to encapsulate soulless urban drift. "You couldn’t help but stare like a creature with the laws of a brothel and the fireproof bones of a preacher with your lingo coined from the sacrament of a casino … ," Beck breathes. "You stare into space trying to discern what to say now and you wait at the light and watch for a sign that you’re breathing." We’ve heard such expressions of ennui before from Beck, but can the weariness of age — he made 38 on July 8, the date of Modern Guilt‘s release — lie at the heart of the album, behind the minimalist bass bumps of "Youthless"? Or is Beck simply saving such crowd-pleasers as last year’s Grammy-nominated digital-only single "Timebomb" — just check the homemade video tributes on YouTube — for some Gallic-inspired megarelease to come?

I doubt it. Modern Guilt is far from giddily upbeat. It’s no Midnite Vultures (DGC, 1999), the larkiest Beck has ever skewed, nor is it as self-consciously crafted as The Information (DGC, 2006). Instead it reads like the man who is in touch, as usual, with the moment — one that would make Philip K. Dick’s skin crawl. My favorite songs emerge when Beck plunges into a Mutations-ish darkness and Sea Change–like doom. Downed jet passengers drown amid viewer paranoia in the dreamy, Gainsbourgian "Chemtrails," which roils in a gorgeous funk, and the fatalistic "Volcano" turns out be one of the most beautiful, beautifully imperfect songs Beck’s ever written. Its trudging beats dissolve like a heavy heart into his weary "I’m tired of evil / And all that it feeds." He continues, "I’m tired of people who only want to be pleased / But I still want to please you / And I heard of that Japanese girl who jumped into the volcano / Was she trying to make it back / Back to the womb of the world," and the melody resolves, ever so briefly, before returning to its sorrowful grind. "I’ve been drinking all these tears so long / All I’ve got left is the taste of salt in my mouth. I don’t know where I’ve been / But know where I’m going / To that volcano." Beck’s protagonist doesn’t want to fall in — nirvana has not been achieved, nor has the promise of Beck and his generation been completely fulfilled — but those uncredited violins make the brief journey out, into silence, a guilty pleasure. *

BECK

Aug. 22, 5 p.m., $85–<\d>$225.50

Outside Lands Festival

Golden Gate Park, SF

www.sfoutsidelands.com

MINE EARS HAVE HEARD THE GLORY

THE REAL TUESDAY WELD


Really, for reals. Wed/16, 7 p.m., $12. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

JASON ANDERSON


The K artist and ex–Wolf Colonel joins the aerobics and sock-puppet fun of the Unlimited Enthusiasm Expo ’08. With Harry and the Potters; Math, the Band; and Uncle Monsterface. Fri/18, 9 p.m., $12, and Sat/19, 1 p.m., $14. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

COLDPLAY


Chris Martin et al. were recently jumped by Lil Wayne at the top of the US pops, where they were perched with Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends (Capitol). Fri/18, 7:30 p.m., $49.50–<\d>$89.50. HP Pavilion, 525 W. Santa Clara, San Jose. www.ticketmaster.com

NOBUNNY


Bouncing with witchy hooks. With Gravy Train!!!!, the Floating Corpses, and Bridez. Sat/19, 9 p.m., $12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

CHRIS SCHLARB


The Sounds Are Active label head lets loose his Twilight and Ghost Stories (Asthmatic Kitty). Sat/19, 10 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

A HAWK AND A HACKSAW


Feeling horn-y? The Albuquerque, N.M., band recently hacked out a score for a documentary about cultural critic Slavoj Zizek. Mon/21, 8 p.m., $13. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

Taste the Mochi

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER "If you build it, they will come!" A few famous first words from David Wang — otherwise known as the ever-fruitful laptop lothario Mochipet — when we spoke recently, and something to ponder as I gazed around his so-chill, so-frolicsome, and oh-so-free Fourth of July barbecue bash in Golden Gate Park. In a green, leafy nook near the fields where the buffalo roam, a DJ tent is up and housing such pals as Phon.o and Flying Skulls. Funk ‘n’ Chunk fire the grill with impressive flamethrower action, and Christian of the Tasty crew plunges fish-sauce-marinated chicks into the hot grease for Filipino fried chicken. Throw a Tecate on the whole thing, pet your mochi, and call it an awesome party despite the fact that, as Wang confides, "we did get started a little late because there were some rangers sniffing around."

Mochipet, “Get Your Whistle Wet”

Wang is accustomed to building where few have ventured before — and as a collaborator extraordinaire who has worked with everyone from Spank Rock to Ellen Allien, he’s brought together communities of sorts in the most unlikely of locales (hence the name of his label, Daly City Records). Earlier that week we chatted by phone in lieu of digging into Hong Kong deep-fried pork chops and a sweet, cheap Filipino breakfast ("It’s like soul food for Asians — everything’s either deep-fried or smoked") at Gateway restaurant near the literal and spiritual home of Daly City Records. The occasion is his forthcoming Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival, an improv-y and likely collaborative performance, as well as a whopping release show at Club Six for his latest disc, Microphonepet (Daly City).

A formidable gathering of all of Wang’s work and collaborations since 2001, Microphonepet overwhelms with its awesome sonics, roving from "Tangle" with Salva and Epcot and "Get Your Whistle Wet" with the Hustle Heads, to "Vnecks" with 215 the Freshest Kids and "Lazy Days" with KFlay. Where has Wang been hiding his crazily deep-fried, deliciously bleepy hip-hop production skills all this time? "Guess it got to the point where last year I got 20 tracks, so I just put them out as a record, because some of them are really cool," he explains. "I thought they were really diverse and it would be a good segue to my next record."

Wang has been pouring plenty of energy into that coming disc, which may be released on Daly City or an imprint like Ninjatune. He describes it as more personal: he’s skating progressive, jazz, and South American musical influences off trad Korean and Chinese sounds, and acoustic guitar off heavy electronics. "I’ve always written traditional songs but I’ve never really been comfortable releasing it," says Wang, who describes his early aural interests as veering toward jazz and salsa. "All my records before this have been experiments — me trying new things. But they haven’t been as personal as this next record. I think of it as my first record, really. I’m a slow bloomer." *

MOCHIPET

MCMF show with Yoko Solo, Patrice Scanlon, and Blanket Head

July 18, 8 p.m., $7

Million Fishes Gallery

2501 Bryant, SF

millionfishes.com

Also Aug. 9

Microphonepet release show with Raashan, Mike Boo, Cikee, Daddy Kev, Dopestyles, Kflay, and others

9 p.m., $10–<\d>$15

Club Six

60 Sixth St., SF

www.clubsix1.com

BATTLE OF THE FESTS: MISSION CREEK VS. DIAMOND DAYS?

No need to create a faux feud: fests that clash by night and warehouse shows are no problem. In response to learning that Diamond Days — Heeb magazine’s hoedown, newly transplanted from Brooklyn to Oakland — goes down the same week as this year’s Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival, founder Jeff Ray said, "I think it’s great. I like Heeb magazine. We haven’t completely settled on those dates, and I randomly picked this weekend — normally we do it in May. Next time we might do it the first week of August." OK, so both fests also happen to include some of the same performers — each has its unique attractions as well. Sparkling offerings at DD’s Ella Baker Center for Human Rights fundraiser include Los Angeles’ punky-garagey Audacity, Seattle’s rousing Whalebones, Ventura’s thrashy Fucking Wrath, and a mother lode of intriguing folk from the LA area ranging from the sibling sublimity of the Chapin Sisters to the resurgent pop of "Windy" scribe Ruthann Friedman.

July 17 and 20, Mama Buzz Café, Oakl.; July 17–19, Ghost Town Gallery, Oakl. For details, go to www.myspace.com/diamonddaysfest

LOUDER, FASTER, STRONGER

APACHE


The garage rockin’ good times stream off this Cuts–Parchman Farm supergroup’s debut, Boomtown Gems (Birdman). Wed/9, 9 p.m., $6. Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. www.elbo.com

KODE 9


The London dubstep artist and Hyperdub label owner with a doctorate in philosophy gives a shout out to his boroughs. Thurs/10, 9 p.m., $12. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

QUITZOW


The multi-instrumental wiz grabs for Solex’s crown with some goofy fun, like kitty-sampling "Cats R People 2" off her Art College (Young Love). With Settting Sun and the Love X Nowhere. Thurs/10, 8 p.m., $10. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. www.rickshawstop.com

RATATAT


A kinder, gentler Crooklyn combo? Rabid fans can expect polyrhythmic rock from LP3 (XL). Thurs/10, 9 p.m., $20. Slim’s, 33 11th St., SF. www.slims-sf.com

20 MINUTE LOOP


The SF indie rockers chime in on tabloid culture with their new, self-released Famous People Marry Famous People. Fri/11, 10 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

Sonic Reducer Overage: Police cuff Elvis, Sun City Girls gather kudos, Flobots love those “Handlebars,’ and more

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The Sun City Girls also rise.

Too much time on your hands? Guitar Hero III and Gossip Girl not doing it for you? Have I got some high-quality musical fun for you.

Maria Taylor
The Omaha, Neb., songstress strips it all down for her latest release, the digital EP Savannah Drive, while teaming with Now It’s Overhead’s Andy LeMaster. Wed/9, 9 p.m., $12-$14. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455.

Sun City Girls and Charles Gocher Tribute
Alan and Richard Bishop keep picking up kudos for their acoustic performances – Will Oldham recently praised their recent Slim’s show. This time around they present a 40-minute film of Charles Gocher’s videos, The Handsome Stranger. Thurs/10, 9:30 p.m., $13-$15. Maxwell’s, 341 13th St., Oakl. www.maxwellslounge.com

Centiclubs

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER "It’s like an old ship. Things break, things fall apart, and you just keep bailing water and hope you hit land someday!"

That’s Guy Carson, Café Du Nord owner and ex-Hotel Utah booker, on owning a 100-year-old club. Yes, there are the inevitable aches and pains attendant with a structure erected just two years after the great ‘quake, as well as eerie little trap doors and escape hatches from the Prohibition era. But, oh, the stories the Du Nord, House of Shields, and Hotel Utah — a troika of oases overflowing with libation and live music that have all hit the century mark in the past year — could tell. ‘Member the time PJ Harvey played a not-so-secret show at the Utah, triggering round-the-block queues? Or the first San Francisco show by rock legends the Zombies at the Du Nord? Or the rumored gunfight played out by Comstock Lode robber baron William Sharon in front of his then-men’s social club, now known as the House of Shields?

‘Course you don’t. So much has been lost in the mists of Bay Area mythology and Barbary Coast conjecture. But there’s always word of mouth — in full effect at the shambling, loving June 19 celebration of the Utah’s centennial, as Birdman Records’ David Katznelson presented witnesses like owner Damian Samuel, a ukulele sing-along by music writer Sylvie Simmons and Bart Davenport, and tributes by artists who have stomped Utah’s boards, including Paula Frazer and Greg Ashley.

Since its days as Al’s Transbay Tavern (name-checked in 1971’s Dirty Harry) through the years owned by screenwriter Paul Gaer (who brought in Robin Williams and puppet shows), the venue has not only been instrumental in establishing a beachhead for local bands — Cake was considered a resident outfit in the 1990s and Counting Crows, Jewel, and Tarnation were onetime regulars ("For a while I used to say that the Hotel Utah was Geffen’s A&R department," recalls Carson). Its communities include "open mic–ers, the regulars, and the people who live in the building," Samuel offers. "It’s a live amoeba of sorts that has its own direction." He says the UK’s Noisettes now call the Utah its home base, and past staffers include ex-booker Mike Taylor (Court and Spark), Cory McAbee (Billy Nayer Show), and Shannon Walter (16 Bitch Pile-Up). One of Samuel’s fave tell-alls: in 1997 he had to walk future Guns N’ Roses guitarist Buckethead around the block so he could make a dramatic entrance onstage. "Here I am walking him around in SoMa, a chicken bucket on his head," Samuel recalls. "He kept saying, ‘I didn’t realize this block was so long.’<0x2009>"

Uptown, a century ago, the House of Shields also threw open its doors — in a much more hush-hush way: the venue began life as a men’s social club, and the only women permitted in until the ’70s were, says owner Alexis Filipello, "working girls." These days, the venue that got its name from its ’30s owner Eddie Shields is more likely to see indie artists like Sean Smith and Beam than highly establishment swells sneaking a stiff drink, but the crowd remains raucous, gathered around the elegant bar originally meant for the Pied Piper watering hole in the Palace Hotel across New Montgomery. When artist Maxfield Parrish made his Pied Piper of Hamelin mural (1909) far too long for the piece, the bar was sent over to Palace cobuilder William Sharon’s other nightspot. After Filipello bought the watering hole in 2003, she restored the natural wood, refurbished the moldings, reupholstered the booths, and jettisoned the "funky" taxidermy. "It was just such a beautiful old location, a piece of San Francisco’s history," she recalls. "We did a lot of work to get it back up to its beauty." No plans, however, for the firmly closed underground passage that links House of Shields to the Palace. Persistent rumors have it that in 1923, President Warren Harding died, not in the Palace as officially reported, but in the Shields’ speakeasy, and was transported through the tunnel back to his suite to avoid Prohibition-period scandal.

The ground is still shaking, happily, around Café Du Nord, which hit its 100th in October. In the next year Carson hopes to create a coffeehouse/art space upstairs next to the club, where performers can show their work, then play a show upstairs at the Swedish American Hall — which has hosted performers ranging from Cat Power to Michael Hurley — or downstairs at the Du Nord. He also plans to install an elevator where the Du Nord women’s room now sits, renovating the space so he can do the unique, one-off shows he prefers.

Carson is striving to continue nurturing the creative spirit of the Utah. "The difference between then and now is that everything costs so much. Our overhead here is so high, you can’t fail," he says. Back in ’90 when Gaer hired him at the Utah, he adds, "it wasn’t a big financial nut to crack, and we ran it like a living art experiment. I really miss those days. It was fun!"

QUESTION AUTHORITY?

MEGAFAUN


Backwoods Table of the Elements crustastic jams? The Durham, N.C., trio also joins Akron/Family at the High Sierra fest for a Mega-Akron set. Wed/2, 8:30 p.m., pay what you can. 21 Grand, 416 25th St., Oakl. www.21grand.org. Also Thurs/3, 9 p.m., $8. 12 Galaxies, 2565 Mission, SF. www.12galaxies.com. Fri/4–Sat/5, check Web site for times, $30–<\d>$168. High Sierra, Quincy; www.highsierramusic.com

BATTLEHOOCH


Kooky, crunchy spazz-tastic moves for kids? The SF band dons Baagersox guise for the first anniversary Lazerdance dance-off Thursday, then goes into seven-piece mode Saturday. Thurs/3, 10 p.m., $5. Knockout, 3223 Mission, SF. www.theknockoutsf.com. Also Sat/5, 9:30 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

RETRIBUTION GOSPEL CHOIR


All-boy rock testimonials from Low’s Alan Sparhawk? Tues/8, 9 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

Back to the land

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

I hold no truck with keeping too firmly tethered to the here and now. A little let-go does the soul a world of good, and nothing beats floating off on a cloud of question marks as time and place melt from view. I already have the perfect soundtrack for the occasion: Fleet Foxes (Sub Pop), the debut by the Seattle band of the same name, could very well offer the deepest decade-leaps and blurriest geographic-muddles you’re likely to encounter this year.

In their quest to fuse pre-rock ‘n’ roll sounds with indie-rock sensibilities, Fleet Foxes don’t simply settle for 20th-century American Music 101. Rather, their time-travel extends all the way back to the Black Plague. Along with offering fresh takes on the smooth sounds of ’70s SoCal pop; the baroque folk whimsies of Crosby, Stills, and Nash; and the hillbilly twang of your great-great-grandpappy’s barn dances, the quintet is also more than willing to get medieval on your unsuspecting ears. Listen closely, and the odd madrigal flutters forth now and again. Little wonder, then, that the Pieter Bruegel painting on the album cover hardly feels like an anachronism. Instead, it arrives thoughtfully recontextualized, much like the pan-decade musical explorations the group pulls off so effortlessly.

Mountains, rivers, birds, and forests — these are the main signifiers of Fleet Foxes’ pastoral, pre–Industrial Age mood-making, along with plenty of references to family and death. On paper, most of their lyrics could pass for traditional folk songs. Translated to plastic, however, the words take on a different character. Wafting and drifting in goose bump–raising harmonies and vocal rounds cloaked in hilltop echo, they at times evoke an agrarian Beach Boys or a less lustful My Morning Jacket. Vocalist Robin Pecknold is endowed with an equally hall-filling tenor as that of MMJ’s Jim James, and fluent in a full range of ghostly falsettos, tear-jerking howls, and sweet rally cries — each has been steeped in delicious reverb by producer Phil Ek (Built to Spill). Combined with the remaining members’ soaring vocal arrangements and deft instrumentation, Fleet Foxes manages to somehow feel comfortingly familiar yet bracingly fresh and new.

From its wordless sighs-from-country-heaven introduction to the heartbreaking Ronettes melodrama of its chorus, "He Doesn’t Know Why" might be the band’s most immediately persuasive pairing of otherwise perfect strangers, musically speaking. It’s also the recording’s most full-blown rock moment, along with "Ragged Wood," a transcendent country-rock shuffle powered by Pecknold’s exhilarating mountain cries of "You should come back home, back on your own now."

Lest they leave us too anchored to the modern age, Fleet Foxes peel back the centuries without a hitch on the spectral lilt of "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song," a spooky madrigal in which Pecknold ponders, "Dear shadow alive and well, how can the body die?" in harrowing echoes while a single acoustic guitar mournfully picks away in agreement. Elsewhere, in their boldest brain-rattle of century-confusion, Fleet Foxes weld ancient Andean flute melodies to furious Led Zeppelin folk-stomp on "Your Protector," a heavier-than-heavy meditation on death hoisted aloft by wide-eyed shouts of "You run with the devil!" Fierce words, but I’ll lose myself in Fleet Foxes’ fractured tableaus any ole time, thanks.

FLEET FOXES

Thurs/26, 9 p.m., $10

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

www.bottomofthehill.com

Mo’ Jello

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER What do you give a 50-year-old punk icon who has everything? A silver-studded dog collar? A reason to believe — or rebel? Peace of mind?

"Boy, I can’t think of much," Jello Biafra, né Eric Boucher, says with a chuckle at the question of what to gift him for his 50th birthday June 17. "I’m already such a pack rat, the last thing I need is more stuff. The main vice is vinyl, but I archive a lot of stuff. I’m a librarian’s kid."

Instead, the ex–Dead Kennedys vocalist, in characteristically against-the-grain fashion, will gift celebrants at his birthday-bash-to-end-all-bashes, the two-day "Biafra Five-O" at Great American Music Hall, with turns alongside the Melvins and a newly assembled band, the Axis of Merry Evildoers, which includes Victims Family’s Ralph Spight on guitar, Faith No More’s Billy Gould on bass, and Sharkbait’s Jon Weiss on drums. Oh yeah, and each punk-rock fire-/party-starter will receive a poster, or if it arrives in time, a 7-inch of Biafra and members of Zen Guerilla covering Rev. Horton Heat’s "Speed Demon" and Frankie Laine’s "Jezebel."

So what gives with the very public celebration of three decades of punky monkey-wrenching? "I saw the Stooges on Iggy’s 60th last year, and that was a great show," Biafra tells me while snacking in his San Francisco digs. "I got carried away with the moment and promised myself, if he’s that good at 60, I better be a tenth as good at 50 and get something together."

Expect Biafra’s new group to be part of a continuum: one that began with Dead Kennedys and has manifested in collaborations with the Melvins, DOA, No Means No, Al Jourgensen, Mojo Nixon, and others. "The hope is you’re still going to get a pretty sharp set of teeth," he promises. And speaking of DK, the man who would be SF’s mayor ("It was done as a prank") — and who was nominated as the Green Party’s 2000 presidential bid, right on the coattails of Ralph Nader ("It kind of got dumped in my lap") — is also recognizing the 30th anniversary of the Dead Kennedys, which played its first show in July 1978 opening for the Offs, DV-8, and Negative Trend, despite an extremely acrimonious lawsuit between the vocalist and his bandmates that led a jury to award control of the catalog to the rest of the group.

Despite intimations of a reunion on the part of the remaining Dead Kennedys, the bitterness of the conflict still rankles, with Biafra confessing with a wry chuckle, "I’ve had battles with suicidal depression — especially after that ugly Dead Kennedys lawsuit." Further, he says, "I really resent all the times they played these so-called reunion shows advertised as reunions, and there’s my picture in the ad. I think we have a new genre of punk, and it’s called fraudcore!"

Nonetheless, he hasn’t completely ruled out a reconciliation: "Sure, if those guys were ever willing to undo every last bit of damage they’ve done, I’d consider going back on stage with them. But so far they’ve been way too greedy and way too cowardly to even consider it."

So leave it to the Melvins to convince Biafra to tackle a few DK songs in honor of his birthday. The once SF-based band — in a near-original lineup including Mike Dillard — also will attack early hardcore tunes culled from a 1984 demo sent to Biafra. It turns out those pack-rat tendencies, coupled with Biafra’s abiding love of music, led him to hold onto that ancient tape, which the Melvins lost long ago. "It’s a good thing I saved these things," Biafra says. "They’d forgotten those songs existed." *

BIAFRA FIVE-O

With Jello Biafra and the Melvins, Biafra and the Axis of Merry Evildoers, the Melvins, and (Mon/16) Drunk Injuns and Los Olvidados, and (Tues/17) Triclops! and Akimbo

Mon/16–Tues/17, 8 p.m., $22-$40

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

www.gamh.com

COUNTRY TEASIN’ WITH NEIL HAMBURGER

Moanin’ and groanin’ has never been so hammily hilarious. Comedian Neil Hamburger has a brand new hat — namely, a sorry-ass Stetson — to go along with his new bag: the recently released Neil Hamburger Sings Country Winners (Drag City). Teaming with longtime Bay Area–ite Dave Gleason on guitar, Amoeba Music co-honcho Joe Goldmark on pedal steel, and Todd Rundgren cohort Prairie Prince on drums, Hamburger, a.k.a. onetime Bay stalwart Gregg Turkington, plans to stir misery-loving odes to classic backwoods grimness ("Please Ask That Clown to Stop Crying") into his archetypal miasma of whining/joke-telling during his present tour. So why turn to C&W, which currently seems to consist of "songs about shopping," rather than tears, beer, and chicken dinners? "A lot of rock ‘n’ roll is just people screaming," groans Hamburger from Los Angeles, far from the SF storage locker he claims to have once dwelt in. "You hear enough of that in San Francisco on the streets. With those big, bushy beards and screaming — what’s the difference between a contingent of homeless guys carrying signs and the Doobie Brothers?"

June 11, 9 p.m., $13–<\d>$15. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. (415) 885-0750, www.gamh.com

IT’S TIME FOR TIMES NEW VIKING

They may be pegged as part of the so-called shitgaze underground — thanks to their pals in Psychedelic Horseshit who coined the term — but Columbus, Ohio, trio Times New Viking are as grounded as a trio of Midwestern ex-art-schoolers can be. Keyboardist Beth Murphy met guitarist Jared Phillips and drummer Adam Elliott while attending Columbus College of Art and Design, and the three found that their education came in handy when it came to playing together nicely — and noisily, particularly on their new Matador album, Rip It Off. "When you’re in art school you’re always forced to critique your work and think about everything you’re doing," Murphy, 26, explains from her hometown. "That got, like, really annoying to have to validate every mark you made. But now I think it’s kind of like ingrained in us, so we can’t help but think about every aspect of what we do." Their creative approach to music-making? "One of the first rules we set up was 300 percent creative control," she says. "We all have 100 percent say in everything, and we don’t ever tell each other what to do."

With Hank IV, Psychedelic Horseshit, and Fabulous Diamonds. Fri/13, 9 p.m., $12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

Fly boys

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER I never swooned over Jemaine Clement when his clueless geek-goon was busily copping quasi-Street Fighter moves in 2007’s Eagle vs. Shark, and I never noticed the spacey Middle Earthly beauty of Bret McKenzie when he was striking sultry elfin poses in The Lord of the Rings. But somehow, two discs of season one of HBO’s Flight of the Conchords and a couple jillion listens to the duo’s new self-titled Sub Pop album later, I’m hooked. I woke up this morning with the cyborg-gut-busting "Robot" roving through my head ("The humans are dead / We used poisonous gases / And we poisoned their asses…. It had to be done / So that we can have fun"), and I silently sang the lusty-nerd verses of "The Most Beautiful Girl (In the Room)" ("You could be a part-time model / But you’d probably have to keep your normal job") to myself for the rest of the morning. Apart from those lyrics, I’m at a loss for words — for a change. All I can say, doltishly, is "uhhh, they funny." Otherwise I’m considering a leg transplant and dye job so I can become the "Leggy Blonde" of FOC dreams — or at least a Rhys Darby tat.

What have they done to deserve such gushery? The way they sweetly snark at my rock, garbed in the amiable skin of a fumbling indie-rock-folk duo. The manner in which they poke at pop clichés, letting them fly well above the heads of those who don’t grasp the Shabba Ranks and Marvin Gaye references — and somehow those unfortunates still crush out on FOC. The botched trysts and fumbled musical careers of the pair, played by the half-Maori Clement and the sometime reggae musician McKenzie, which make all and sundry adore them that much more. Their humanizing humor, which stems primarily from FOC’s New Zealanders-straight-outta-Middle Earth naïveté.

Much has been made of the rise of so-called indie rock comedians like David Cross and Eugene Mirman — who both, coincidentally or no, are FOC labelmates — but lo, Clement and McKenzie are the real thing. They have the facial hair. They swill water. They hail from the land of the Clean and Tall Dwarfs. They combine pop-savvy wit and wiseacre lyrics, while sending up genres ranging from between-the-sheets R&B swoons ("Business Time") to backpacker hip-hop ("Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros" with Clement trotting out a ringer imitation of Del tha Funkee Homosapien) to art-rock nipple-antenna anthems ("Bowie"). A good deal of FOC’s appeal hinges on the fact that pop is so utterly ripe for lampooning — after all, doesn’t the title of E=MC2 (Island) sound like Mariah Carey is attempting a self-conscious, FOC-style jab at her own intellectual prowess?

It also helps that FOC come so often with the hooks: I can’t stop replaying "Inner City Pressure" — and reveling in its low-budg, pseudo-seedy Pet Shop Boys video tropes — repeatedly in my skull. My only critique of their recently released full-length might be that the songs cry out for a DVD clip or eight: while some tracks sport lyrics with built-in yuks that allow the songs to hold their own, still others like the puzzling opener, "Foux du Fafa," completely lose the original, necessary context — FOC was hitting on patisserie workers while frolicking through a color-coded Scopitone-esque Gallic pop reverie — that justifies, for instance, its litany of French baked goods. Some numbers such as "A Kiss Is Not a Contract" are sweet and strong enough to include on the CD, though you miss the series’ accompanying Serge Gainsbourg video parody even if the tune itself bears little musical resemblance to Sir Serge’s oeuvre. Still, most of FOC’s soaring sonic moves don’t fall too far from the tree shaken during the more larky outings of producer Mickey Petralia’s other client, Beck. And who knows, this high-school-friendship-turned-comedy-act could be the start of a beautiful musical career, considering that the other would-be beautiful "Loser" kicked off his illustrious catalog with what many considered a joke song as well: there have been stranger flights of fantasy. *

FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS

Tues/27, 8 p.m., $32.50

Masonic Auditorium

1111 California, SF

Also May 29, 8 p.m., $32.50

Davies Hall

201 Van Ness, SF

www.ticketmaster.com

OUT THERE

DESTROYER AND DEVON WILLIAMS


Dan Bejar pulls Destroyer out of the garage, while intriguingly minimal nouveau-’80s-popper Devon Williams unleashes Carefree (Ba Da Bing). Wed/21, 8 p.m., $15. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

MATES OF STATE


Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel polish their indie-pop to a bright sheen on Re-Arrange Us (Barsuk). Thurs/22, 9 p.m., $17–$19. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. www.slims-sf.com

DEAD MEADOW AND DAME SATAN


Yes, we’re weirded out that Jimmy McNulty’s spawn dug Dead Meadow on The Wire. The Bay’s Dame Satan cast a spell with the new Beaches and Bridges (Ghost Mansion). Sat/24, 9 p.m., $15. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. www.slims-sf.com

NO WAVE EVENTS


The definitive book on awesome atonal negheadedness is fêted by author Marc Masters and no wave authority Weasel Walter. Sat/24, 2 p.m., free. Amoeba Music, 1855 Haight, SF. www.amoeba.com; Sat/24, 9 p.m., pay what you can. 21 Grand, 416 25th St., Oakl., www.21grand.org; Sun/25, 5 p.m., $6. Artists’ Television Access, 992 Valencia, SF. www.atasite.org

WHITE RABBITS


The NYC nibblers have been ruling the boroughs since the announcement that they were joining Radiohead on ATO subsidiary TBD. Tues/27, 9 p.m., $12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

Kills thrill

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› Kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER "So … what kind of drugs inspired the record?"

"What kind of drugs?" Allison Mosshart of the Kills has to puzzle only briefly over that question. "Mmm … none. No, we didn’t take any drugs when we were writing the record. None. No, ate a lot of kale, drank a lot of coffee, made cocktails if we were getting bored, but no … "

Mosshart thinks I’m totally high. But I’m not: I’m just going ever so slightly deaf — thanks to all those Marshall stacks I’ve cozied up to over the years and those songs I can’t stop cranking to 13. And it doesn’t help that I’m feeling a wee bit hungover, and that the SF-UK phone connection this way-too-early Sunday morning is somewhat linty. So instead of hearing Mosshart sincerely explain that for the Kills’ latest album, Midnight Boom (Domino), she and bandmate Jamie Hince "didn’t listen to music, so we did things like read books, and watch documentaries, and cut out pictures from magazines, and type on typewriters, and take photographs, and do drawings," I semi-consciously absorb all of the above — as well as a tantalizing " … and do drugs." This is your brain on too many sidecars and Sazeracs.

That’s not Mosshart, though. "You know how when you’re trapped in a building and you don’t ever go outside for a long time?" she says of the CD’s recording. "It’s quite important that you don’t eat like shit so you don’t go mad."

Yet that inspired madness, the classic creative negativity of rock ‘n’ roll romanticism — the kind one might find in the nicotine rasps of Jennifer Herrema, hooked on the Stones as filtered through a jillion crappy boomboxes, or in the tattered valentines of Berlin-era Lou Reed, gloomed-out on jet-set trash — is just what the Kills seem to mainline. I witnessed as much at the sweaty, sizable hotbox of a Domino showcase at this year’s South by Southwest fest, where the pair entered silently and quickly, noisily conjured the outta-hand spirits that most definitely don’t virtuously devour kale or read good books. Hanging on to her mic stand like a lifeline in roiling waters, swaggering with a familiar rock pirate insouciance, and sporting big-cat spots like a lady who wanted less to drink from Keith Richards’ "Loving Cup" than to be the Glitter Twin himself, Mosshart sang, swayed, and spat. Her eyes were hidden behind midnight bangs, as if daring you to gaze at anything else.

So the vocalist-guitarist’s bare-faced honesty and earnest willingness to analyze the Kills’ work comes as a refreshing surprise. For instance, of the press literature that accompanied Midnight Boom, which pointed to Pizza Pizza Daddio, a 1967 documentary about inner-city kids and their playground songs, she complains good-naturedly: "I wish I could rip that press release up because every time I do an interview, every 15 minutes someone brings up that same thing." Mosshart and Hince merely identified with the "simplicity" of the subject matter, saw its similarity to what they were doing, and liked the juxtaposition of "these seven-year-old girls singing with these huge smiles on their faces, and the songs are really dark. They’re about murder and domestic violence and alcoholism."

More than anything, she says, they wanted a third album — which includes beats and additional production by Spank Rock producer Alex Epton — that "sounds like now. The other two records [2002’s Keep on Your Mean Side and 2005’s No Wow (both Domino)] are quite retro, y’know. The first one sounds a bit like a Velvet Underground record, and the second one sounds like a Suicide–Cabaret Voltaire kind of record."

So the Kills hunkered down at the Keyclub studio in Benton Harbor, Mich., far from the distractions of London where the twosome is based. After more than half a year and a getaway to Mexico, they came up with a clutch of songs they were satisfied with.

The scathing "Cheap and Cheerful" revolves around "just being honest with yourself and honest with other people despite hurting other people’s feelings and sometimes making a real big mess of things," Mosshart offers. "But not quite burying your emotions for the good of everybody all the time. Otherwise you’ll completely explode."

Most of the tunes were the pure product of collaboration. UK native Hince, whom the American-born Mosshart met in 2000, is "my best friend," she says. "He’s kind of like the most perfect creative partner I’ve ever had. There are no rules in this band. It’s not even a band — it’s this thing, whatever we do."

It’s something even tabloid attention — now that Hince has been linked to Kate Moss — can’t tear apart. "It’s a different world, isn’t it?" Mosshart says, sounding subdued. "It’s not my world, and it isn’t really Jamie’s world so … it’s nothing I, like, care too much about. I care about him being happy. That’s about it."

Supermodels or no, the Kills will continue to stoke the flames of that chemistry. How do they work themselves into that state? "We just get nervous, y’know," Mosshart says modestly. "There are so many ideas and so few of us. When I’m onstage, I’m, in a way, daydreaming and trying not to think about anything that’s really happening around me. Other than Jamie and not falling over."

THE KILLS

Sat/17, 9 p.m., $16

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

www.slims-sf.com

BLOW BY BLOWFLY

BLOWFLY


OMG, the OG of dirty way before ODB. Anyone with the chutzpah to turn "What a Diff’rence a Day Makes" into "What a Difference a Lay Makes" can come play by me. Sat/17, 10 p.m., $12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

SKY SAXON AND THE SEEDS


Marin County garage-rock legend/lurker Sky (a.k.a. Sunlight, a.k.a. Dog) Saxon at the legendary punk palais? Don’t push too hard. With Powell St. John and the Aliens, Kreamy ‘Lectric Santa, and Saything. Sun/18, 5 p.m., $8. 924 Gilman Project, 924 Gilman, Berk. www.924gilman.org

CLINIC


Surgical scrubs on wry. The sly Liverpool quartet continue to keep "funk, celebration, and soft metal" alive with Do It! (Domino) — unbeknownst to Nike. Mon/19, 9 p.m., $17. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

Mad jags

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER "That was just a major experience that I’ll never forget and I never, ever want to have again."

So sayeth 60 Watt Kid’s Kevin Litrow of the mind-render that occurred shortly after he moved to San Francisco from Los Angeles in 2006. "I was contacted — or I might have contacted them. I’m not really sure." He goes on to tell me of being visited one night by a "tornado" of energy that swirled fiercely through his room and knocked him "out of tune," while talking to him in his head. After his guest finally departed, Litrow says he was limping on one side. Finding no corollary for his experience among other UFO reports — "it physically didn’t look like the typically oval-shaped-face kids," he says — he discovered that, nonetheless, the experience "physically and mentally opened some doors." Can the glitch-garnished, knocked-askew psych of Litrow’s band 60 Watt Kid — captured on their intriguing self-titled Absolutely Kosher debut — be partially credited to a brain-tweaking twister from another dimension?

Alien visitations, madness, rehab, and Libya — last week I was lost on a vapor trail, looking down from a star called Planet Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder, and waltzing to a psychogenic fugue only I could hear. But now I’m found. I’m told it’s in the water. One moment you’re staring at the cover of Us Weekly, wondering how onetime pedophile’s-wet-dream Britney Spears came to be transmogrified into Our Lady of Mental Health Issues. The next you’re waking up, kicked to the curb with surgical staples where your kidney once was. The price of gas is high, but tripping — and sometimes falling — through the mind’s eye, gets you even higher. April gusts have blown in a slew of artists, spinning yarns of spirits and out-of-body travels. They lived through this. You will, too.

PROVEN GILTY Free Gold (We Are Free) is the name of Indian Jewelry’s forthcoming recorded game, so surely IJ honcho Tex Kerschen knows how to get baby some bullion. "You’ve got to go and roll the rich," says the Houston experimentalist. "You gotta catch ’em leaving restaurants and saying goodnight to their chauffeurs. Wealth liberation has come to rest in our minds as the answer, since we personally slave for oil barons." Kerschen knows: he says he spent the last year working in a refinery while Indian Jewelry took time off to regroup and record. So Free Gold is simply wishful thinking? "You get pummeled with wealth here in Houston," he explains. "They’re building continuously — literally, gilded fortresses. I’ve had to hang terrible art for terrible people. We decided we’d gild the lily ourselves."

REHABIT IT "It’s nice that people are into it," Kimya Dawson says sweetly about the chart-topping Juno soundtrack that hurled her into the consciousness of the mainstream — or at least that of National Public Radio listeners. "But I’m not really the kind of person who keeps track or cares about numbers and sales. I make music, and it’s just kind of what I have to do. It’s what I’d be doing regardless of who was listening." The Olympia, Wash., artist started crafting tunes as part of Moldy Peaches in 1994, and she’s still writing — albeit with less introspection since the birth of her daughter Panda (she just completed a children’s album). Songwriting has been an outright necessity since she drank herself into a coma and entered rehab more than nine years ago.

"I popped out of rehab, and I was depressed and on medication, and I didn’t know how to function on this planet, and I picked up a guitar, and it made me feel better," Dawson explains. The first Moldy Peaches show happened two weeks after she got out. "It’s always been mutual therapy for me and the people listening to my stuff. I always figured if I stopped doing it I might go crazy."

LIBYA LIBERATION How can a stellar Oakland combo like Heavenly States top their last heroic act as the first US rock band to play in Libya after the lifting of a 30-year travel ban? To start, they spent about a year working on a film about the experience, relying on puppet reenactments and animation, before they woke up and asked themselves, why aren’t we making music? After selling the rights to their Libya adventures (producer Jawal Nga is writing a script tentatively titled Rock the Casbah), the band has come up with their most eclectic and confident recordings to date, Delayer (Rebel Group). The group’s next act? "We got asked to play in Iran at this music festival," vocalist-guitarist Ted Nesseth tells me. "But Genevieve [Gagon] couldn’t sing in public. Then someone e-mailed to say her friend was a journalist living in a North Korean village filled with musicians, so we have to figure out a way to go there and record. There’s absolutely no way any of that crap is going to happen. I think we have a lot of touring to do supporting this album, and then we want to make another one."

SPIRITED "You know," announces Triclops! guitarist Christian Beaulieu, apropos of neither the group’s new CD, Out of Africa (Alternative Tentacles) nor what vocalist John Geek describes as their "bung load of shows," "Sonny [Kay] from GSL recently called me the ghost of Dimebag Darrell."

"It’s really kind of impossible because you were born way before he died," I venture.

"Well, I told my friend I was the ghost of Steve Vai," Beaulieu continues, "and he said, ‘Holy crap! That’s the best news I’ve heard all day: Steve Vai’s dead!’ I’m just trying to figure out how to put a handle on my Telecaster." *

INDIAN JEWELRY Thurs/24, 9:30 p.m., $8. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

KIMYA DAWSON Fri/25, 8 p.m., $20. Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF. www.ticketmaster.com

TRICLOPS! Fri/25, 6 p.m., free. Amoeba Music, 1855 Haight, SF. www.amoeba.com

HEAVENLY STATES Sat/26, 10 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

60 WATT KID Sat/26, 9 p.m., $25. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

Sonic Reducer Overage: Her Space Holiday, KUSF, Raconteurs, Pre, Basia Bulat, Night Marchers, Man Man, and so much more

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ManMan.jpg
Man Man, oh, man.

Man, there’s too much to do – you can blame it on Coachella for luring so many interesting acts westward.

MAN MAN
Beards, stuffed animals, and the sound of Philadelphia – this is what Man Man shows are made of. Man Man’s new album, Rabbit Habits (Anti-), has also been touched by facial hair. Count on much instrument passing, a palpable sense of humor, and fever dreams revolving round cheesetofu sandwiches. With Yeasayer. Wed/23, 9 p.m., $16. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. (415) 885-0750.

RACONTEURS
A pretty fun rockin’ time was had by all at the supergroup’s last show at the Warfield. Consolers of the Lonely sound like the combo are up to their mad, sad old tricks. With Birds of Avalon. Wed/23, 8 p.m., sold out. Bimbo’s 365 Club, 1025 Columbus, SF. (415) 474-0365.

HER SPACE HOLIDAY
San Mateo rising! Suburban savant Marc Bianchi is back from holiday with a new album to come on Mush Records – and his first children’s book, The Telescope, which was released in Japan. With Lymbyc System and Head Like a Kite. Thurs/24, 9 p.m., $12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455.

Sonic Overage: Triclops, Kanye, Ian Fays, Jay-Z and Mary J, Elf Power, Teenagers, and so much more

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elfpower.jpg
What is this crazy lil’ magikal thing called Elf Power?

San Francisco, you’re just too much. And that goes for you too, Oakland and San Jose. There’s just far too much to do in the Bay Area – more than we have pages for. But well hell, that’s what Sonic Reducer Overage is fer, ain’t it. Check out all the fun you maybe oughta be checking out.

BLACK DIAMOND HEAVIES
These southern raspies do the blues-rock duo their own nasty, hard-ass way. With Or, the Whale and Low Red Land. Thurs/17, 9:30 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923.



GHOSTLAND OBSERVATORY
Pigtail fever! Who knew this Austin, Texas, electro-synth-soul-pop twosome would be blowing up as massively as they have. Expect ’em to break out the Cylon with the release of Robotique Majestique (Trashy Moped). With the Villains. Thurs/17, 9 p.m., $20. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. (415) 820-9669.

IAN FAYS
The SF-by-way-of-Humboldt-County Ian Fays like it sweet and soft, judging by the tender sounds coursing out of their new CD, The Damon Lessons (Homesleep). With Catholic Comb and Here Here. Thurs/17, 9 p.m., $8. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455.

INSTANT MESSENGERS AND DJ LAZER SWORD
The Bay Area party rappers get rambunctious with the realization of their just-released disc, Slammers, while the SF DJ brings a folded and spindled sensibility to the cracked beats (behold his remix of 50 Cent’s “I Get Money,” above). With Toy Soldiers and All Teeth and Knuckles. Thurs/17, 8 p.m., $8. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011.

Sonic Reducer Overage: Mocheeba, Hercules and Love Affair, Enon, David Banner, and mo’

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Reflections on Enon. Photo by Emily Wilson.

So much to do and see, Lee. And Prince headlining Coachella on Saturday, April 26, doesn’t make the schedule any easier. Check out all these worthy shows that were fit for print but simply didn’t make the trim this week.


KING BROTHERS AND THE FLAKES
Kawaii-cute Japanese distorto-rockers meet Bay Area garage first-schoolers. With Shellshag and Bananas. Thurs/10, 8:30 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455.



HERCULES AND LOVE AFFAIR
“I cannot hold / a half a life / I cannot be / at half a wife.” So goes “Time Will” off Hercules and Love Affair’s new self-titled DFA/EMI album. Dulcet warbles care of Antony of Antony and the Johnsons meet cool synthetics with keys by Andrew Butler and drum programming by DFA’s Tim Goldsworthy. Instant love affair, for sure. With Timo Maas and Honey Soundsystem. Fri/11, 10 p.m. doors, $15-$30. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. (415) 820-9669.

Sweet, sweet Ruby Suns shine a light tonight

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ruby suns.jpg

Birthed in New Zealand and suckled on Cali pop, Maori folk, and assorted indie-rock eclectic undefinables, the Ruby Suns plucked the title for their new sophomore album, Sea Lion (Sub Pop), from our very shores: the critters basking off Highway 1. I exchanged e-mails with Ruby Suns’ king Ryan McPhun, who appears with his band tonight, April 4, at Bottom of the Hill.

SFBG: So why title your new album after the sea lions who live near San Francisco? What sort of experiences have you had with them?

Ryan McPhun: I guess my explanation is not too complicated. My girlfriend and i were driving down the coast on Highway 1 and came across this colony. We sat and watched these animals for about an hour. We were really close. They were making some amazing noises. It was a great time, so that’s why. It was an inspiring trip.

Now “Voyager”

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Carla Bozulich is a force of nature. And nature in all its sweetest Central Texas manifestations — crisply twittering songbirds, spring sun glinting off the tin-sided porch, a slight breeze blowing in from the Colorado River — responds gently in kind, encircling the half-renovated cottage where she’ll be playing a small house show on the outskirts of South by Southwest. The former Geraldine Fibbers leader piles out of the van along with the rest of her virtuosic, dusty, somewhat road-dazed ensemble Evangelista. We’re a long way — more than a decade — from the time Bozulich’s disintegrating ’90s alt-rock combo opened for Iggy Pop at Austin, Texas’s largest intersection for thousands of SXSW onlookers.

"I have a potential with my voice of — I don’t know how to say this without sounding really ridiculous — but I’ve frightened bears away from attacking," Bozulich says, laughing slightly, tucked into a porch a few weeks back and tackling each question with the driving eloquence of a woman who’s spent plenty of time behind the wheel of her passions. "Wild dogs at another time when I was with Tara." She imitates the hounds barking meekly then crawling away, whining. "I just consider it something that I was born with, and a lot of times when I sing, I’m kind of holding it back because it’s sort of too much. So I just kind of decided when I started doing Evangelista that I was going to sort of work on a project where I didn’t hold back and I would try to use it to really inspire people to blow off the kind of trendy, lethargic, like, boundaries — you know, the boundaries you don’t cross in terms of not embarrassing yourself!"

We’ve ducked onto the porch as Scary Mansion plays in back to talk about Evangelista’s new album, Hello, Voyager, Bozulich’s second on the great Constellation imprint — her first, titled Evangelista (2006), was the indie’s first non-Canadian release — and the stunning show she gave the other night. It was likely one of the best of the fest, with Bozulich howling into her mic, pacing the stage during the new LP’s title opus, uncoiling sharp, eloquent shards of noise, and hopping in place with a contented smile as her band — a relatively new incarnation that includes longtime bassist-collaborator Tara Barnes, cellist Andrea Serrapiglio, and guitarist Jeremy Drake — generated a moving, glorious din. "The west is the best and the wind knows my name," Bozulich told the heavens — and you believed her.

Unfortunately the heavens opened up and poured down misfortune last November while Evangelista toured Europe. "I got hurt really bad in Paris. I was hit by a random madman on the street, who broke my cheek," Bozulich recalls of the incident, which occurred while she was singing and being interviewed on the street. Her face still feels shattered. "It was completely random. In a nutshell, he hit everybody, but he broke my cheek." But instead of crawling home to a friend’s couch and recuperating, she decided to stay on the road. "It was a weird decision, but looking back I’m really glad I did," she says. She saw Pompeii, Rome, and Tuscany, though her face was purple and swollen, and it was, she allows, "hard to sing." Yet, she adds, "I was having the adventure of my life."

Bozulich’s tactic in the face of disaster perfectly parallels her desire to venture out on a limb in every way. "I don’t take drugs or drink and haven’t for many years," she confesses. "So for me the ultimate high I’ve discovered after all these years is really — I have to say — embarrassment, doing something that might not be supercool. It separates a room, and there will be some people who will be like, ‘Yeah, fuck it! I’m sick of this, too. I really want to express who I really am.’" And in a sense Evangelista’s music is a very specific response to wartime disenfranchisement, written by an artist who describes herself as a "really, really far-left progressive, politically, and I feel like music is one of our only ways that we can organize. Fundamentalists still have that leg up on us. They aren’t afraid to join together."

Bozulich has done it before: fronting her old group Ethyl Meatplow — during which the shy girl who once sang behind drum kits "really learned to be a badass" — she changed lives: "People still come up to me saying really great things like, ‘We conceived our child in the bathroom at an Ethyl Meatplow show.’ And there’s several people who have said, ‘I came out of the closet just from listening to Ethyl Meatplow’ — and that’s political. That’s great!" She stares out at the fast-food drive-throughs that surround even this tiny show, and the sweet recording deals, massive crowds, and Iggy Pop opening slots don’t seem like much after all. "I’ve just been very lucky, you know."

CARLA BOZULICH’S EVANGELISTA

Thurs/27, 7 p.m., free

Amoeba Music

2455 Telegraph, Berk.

www.amoeba.com

Also Fri/28, 9 p.m., $10

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

www.bottomofthehill.com

FILL ‘ER UP

MIA DOI TODD


Channeling Joni Mitchell and even dreamier Laurel Canyon lasses alongside hand-drummer Andres Renteria and bassist Joshua Abrams (Prefuse 73), Todd has bewitched the Arthur mag crowd with her seventh full-length, Gea (City Zen). With Jose Gonzalez. Thurs/27, 8 p.m., $25. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. www.ticketmaster.com

DEVIN THE DUDE AND BUN B


The SXSW smoke clears as the Texas hip-hop odd mob mess around in San Fran town. With Vital, Ryan Greene, Chris Lee, DJ D, and Jamie Way. Sat/29, 9 p.m., $15. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

LEYNA NOEL


The SF singer-songwriter serves up "tea metal" backed by Erase Errata drummer Bianca Sparta. With Ora Corgan, and Gabriel Saloman and Aja Rose. Mon/31, 6 p.m., $5. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

South by Cynic

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By Kimberly Chun


› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Date night, March 15, the closing Saturday eve of the South by Southwest music conference, and I swear, the biggest thrill around is my offroadin’ pedicab ride on my way to the Diesel:U:Music bash atop Mount San Jacinto, through the remains of the Mess with Texas 2 music-comedy day-party in Waterloo Park. How sad is that?

"I do yoga, so that helps," explains my "driver" Liam (his name changed to protect the innocent). The spines of his spindly, highly waxed mohawk shiver like excited mushrooms beneath a forager’s greedy digits and his wire-rimmed spectacles gently mist as he steps up and pedals hard, climbing the park’s slopes as the Texas Capitol shines reprovingly above. "Hopefully it’s not all blocked off — this is my favorite shortcut."

Some shortcut: we career down too-tight paved paths, nearly get decked by a hat vendor stand, then head off onto the grass and through the woods, plunk down a curb — with minimal lady-passenger spillage — and then get back on a path and through a parking structure and finally, somehow, we’re on San Jac. Saint Jack ‘n’ Coke be praised. Liam glances back, mildly beatific: "Wanna smoke a bowl?"

Hey, I’ve only downed a few gratis cans of Lone Stars and a tall sweet tea ‘n’ vodka so far tonight — and with only a giveaway energy bar to absorb it all. Welcome to Austin, Texas, and SXSW, the now unfailingly polite, organizationally fine-tuned, and increasingly disappointing group-grope-n-grip for the increasingly somber, not-so-extravagantly partying music biz. Sure, the numbers are there — the fest appears to be doing well, with more than 123,000 attendees and 1,500 showcased acts, while pouring more than $77 million in expenditures into Austin coffers, according to 2007 stats — and the nontoiling gawkers and stalkers still filled the streets for what has become the nation’s fave musical spring break. But how to quantify the new wave of malaise? Roughly parse the leavings in the tea cup: where were the conference heavies when Dolly Parton bowed out due to health issues, as did, ahem, the Lemonheads? Was 60-ish ex-Oakland R&B elder Darondo’s much-talked-of Ubiquity appearance the best of the fest — or was it Yeasayer or Vampire Weekend? Does Ice Cube really wanna forsake Friday for the rap game? Can all the Euro and overseas showcases sub for the dampened-down US major label presence due to layoffs and cutbacks? At the troubled heart of 2008’s decentralized music biz, few could be heard whooping it up or mourning over at the fall of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who as the state’s attorney general oversaw the uncovering of $50 million in unpaid royalties to musicians and served subpoenas against labels while investigating payola. Is it true, as so many I spoke to at SXSW have said, that "everything I’ve seen that I’ve liked, I’ve already seen before"? My, South By, how lame you were this year. (Can this trend bottom out? See Sonic Reducer’s 2007’s judgment: "But for a three-time SXSWhiner like myself … the fest generally underwhelmed this year," and 2006’s description of "the ground-level, vaguely dissatisfied vibe at this year’s fest — one studded with sentiments ranging from "there’s too many people here" to "everyone I’ve talked to is complaining about working too hard and not having any fun.")

Sure, there were plenty of free shows and oodles of guest-list jockeying, but when the most talked-about soirees were Perez Hilton’s hush-hush hoedown, Rachael Ray’s bid for day-party indie cred ("There better be good food!" one warily groaned), and natch, the Playboy after-hours warehouse rave — complete with more empties and Porta-Johns than you can shake a Hefty bag at — you can just toss the teacup and throw up your multi-wristbanded hands. The truth: do these brands, celebs, or marketing pipe dreams have anything to do with music? The sonic sustenance of SXSW has become secondary to product placement, relegated to background noise amid a recession-jittered hard sell. No surprise that my extremely random sampling of music lovers were uniformly disgruntled. They weren’t hearing the sounds that made it worth braving the yeehawing and puking hordes, risking podiatric agony for five whole nights.

Sure, there were revelatory moments: the grinning electro-diva Santogold, the crowd-entrancing the Whip, and teased blonde soulstress Duffy (dimpled Kate Bosworth-like everygirl to Amy Winehouse’s trouble-lady) were fab, as were Sightings and Evangelista. Lou Reed cracked mordantly wise even while hawking his new concert doc recreating Berlin (RCA, 1973), shades of Neil Young and Heart of Gold two years ago. SXSW organizers oughta take a cue from the packed "Vinyl Revival" panel, the teeming unofficial shows off the beaten Sixth Street path, where Monotonix raised the roof — and drum kit — at the Typewriter Museum, and where experi-punks screeched under sunny skies at Ms. Bea’s at shindigs hosted by Brooklyn party-starter Todd P, who was given his own official showcases this year. You can already make out signs of the next-gen underground filtering into Moby’s Girl Talk–like Playboy finale and folkie Liam Finn’s noise climax on DirectTV. Is the life-support-via-corporate-sponsorship worth the tourist buck, South By? Next time bring the focus back to the truly smokin’ sounds.

Also glad I saw: Black Moth Super Rainbow (spewing glitter and piñata), Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong (let the nouveau-mod boy-band revolution begin), Ra Ra Riot (kids love Arcade Fire!), High on Fire and Motorhead, Blitzen Trapper with Adam Stephens on harmonica, Justice and Moby’s DJ sets, Torche, High Places, Half Japanese (with a wiggly David Fair and Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan on sax), Deer Tick, Scary Mansions, Inca Ore and Grouper, a musically unimaginative but enthusiastic Carbon/Silicon, Goat the Head, Lightspeed Champion, Sons and Daughters, the Kills, "Body of War," Yacht, Does It Offend You, Yeah?, Smalltown Supersounders Lindstrom and Kim Hiorthoy, Naked Raygun, the Dicks, the Ting Tings, Paper Rad, Samara Lubelski, and Black Helicopter.

Regret I missed: the Rascals, the Wombats, Barbara Mason, Jaymay, Bun B, the Bo-Keys, Game Rebellion, These New Puritans, Robyn, Pete Rock, Ruby Suns, Napalm Death, the Touch Alliance, Snowglobe, Kayo Dot, Ola Podrida, Bowerbirds, Dark Meat, White Rabbits, White Rainbow, El-P, Herman Dune, Holy Ghost!, Digitalism, Arp, Juiceboxxx, Supagroup, Daryl Hall, Meneguar, Black Ghosts, the Mirrors, Van Morrison, 17 Hippies, Afrobots, Working for a Nuclear Free City, Boyz Noize, Peggy Sue and the Pirates, Death Sentence: Panda!, Christian Kiefer, Megafaun, Salvador Santana Band, Psychic Ills, Devin the Dude, Passenger, the Morning Benders, the Tennessee Three, the Switches, Sera Cahoone, Little Freddie King, A-Trak, Kid Sister, the Clipse, Headlights, Los Llamarada, Pissed Jeans, Rob G, Wale, Dax Riggs, Neon Neon, These Are Powers, WILDILDLIFE, Clockcleaner, Look See Proof, the Cynics, Dusty Rhodes and the River Band, Rahdunes, Stars Like Fleas, and Cheveu.

Pigeon vs. Fuck: Pidgeon, the Pigeon Detectives, Pigeon John, and Woodpigeon go up against Fuck Buttons, Holy Fuck, and Fucked Up, umpired by CunninLynguists.

BLACK MOTH SUPER RAINBOW

Wed/19, 9 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF
www.bottomofthehill.com

Just like Honeydrips

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› johnny@sfbg.com

Word on the streets and between the cuddlecore sheets has it that the best lovesick songs of this young year can be found on the Honeydrips’ Here Comes the Future (Sincerely Yours). As winter gives way to spring, I’ll admit I’m sometimes turning to Mikael Carlsson’s tender tunes for that special bruised but hopeful feeling. The 10 tracks of tears this Göteborg, Sweden, troubadour has assembled push all the right sentimental buttons. They also touch some meta-referential ones: from its anonymously pretty one-off girl vocal to its invocation of a rock standard from the past, the Honeydrips’ "(Lack of) Love Will Tear Us Apart" is an introductory single in the vein of Saint Etienne’s bright orange-red puzzle piece of a debut 45, which translated the rural folk whine of Neil Young’s "Only Love Will Break Your Heart" into synth pop.

The Honeydrips’ album might be titled Here Comes the Future, but Carlsson repeatedly laces his melodies with lyrics that nod to the past. "I Wouldn’t Know What To Do" not only invokes Morrissey’s romantic twist on Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes in order to stake a claim for the clumsy and shy, it pairs it with a jingle-jangle, strum-along guitar sound that ambles just a little bit faster than the one Johnny Marr created for Morrissey’s lyrical trip to the YWCA.

Since both men specialize in Smiths-flavored Swedish it makes sense that Carlsson’s virgin visit to United States’ stages is as an opening act for Jens Lekman. One of the peaks of Lekman’s most recent album Night Falls over Kortedala (Secretly Canadian) is "Shirin," in which Lekman turns a haircut from a girl who has fled Iraq for Sweden into four minutes of pop-symphonic poignance. For half a year now, I’ve wondered why — with only one or two blog exceptions — the heaps of rave reviews for Night Falls over Kortedala have failed to link Lekman’s first-person lyrical address to a person cutting his hair with the one in Morrissey’s "Hairdresser on Fire."

Lekman’s "Shirin" is a sequel that might improve on its inspiration, right down to the political complications that he adds to original scenarist Morrissey’s exploration of the strangely intimate bond between hairstylist and client. In "Hairdresser on Fire," Morrissey milks the lines "There was a client/He made you nervous/And when he said, "I’m going to sue you"/I really felt for you" for their full humor and pathos. Lekman’s corollary in "Shirin" is the concluding couplet "What if it reaches the government / That you have a beauty salon in your own apartment?," a genuine worry that a falsetto harmony somewhat futilely tries to kiss away with the promise, "I won’t tell anyone."

Lekman is peerless at marrying music-hall melody to lyrical melancholy. While Carlsson’s rock-inflected, ultravivid scenes have biff-bang-pow impact, they haven’t reached the same swoon-worthy level of storytelling mastery. To be sure, even Lekman traffics in heart-on-sleeve proclamations best indulged in through headphones, rather than shared blushingly in stereo with sure-to-mock strangers. Put your headphones on so I can whisper this to you: not only is Lekman’s "Rocky Dennis’ Farewell Song" perhaps better than the unique movie — Peter Bogandovich’s 1985 Mask — that inspired it, it’s the closest anyone has come to the Motown and Philadelphia International majesty of Holland-Dozier-Holland, and the first part of the best pop mini-suite since the underrated British group Prefab Sprout’s ditties for Jesse James.

The Morrissey, Saint Etienne, and Prefab Sprout songs I’m citing all date from 1988 or 1990, which shows that what comes around goes around in terms of nostalgia-drenched indie pop trends. Lekman and newer Swedish groups such as the Honeydrips and their fellow current critic’s faves and Sincerely Yours label mates the Tough Alliance owe varying degrees of overt debt to music from that particular era, when anorak-clad innocence cautiously rubbed up against bell-bottomed rave psychedelia to the oft-sampled beat of James Brown’s signature "Funky Drummer."

No matter which way they tip their B-boy hats, the Tough Alliance look more like a Cute Alliance. Still, their particular sonic revision of the cusp years of the twentieth century’s final decades is the one with a little swagger and some sneers. (It also has the least emotional variety.) In comparison, Carlsson begins Here Comes the Future with "The Strangest Dream (Pt 1 & 2)," where his paralysis upon running into a friend’s rapist is only the first instance of impotence countered by some golden guitar chords fit for a heroic leading man. When he hesitates and runs away at the end of the song, that same heroic guitar motif nips mockingly at his heels.

A harsher variant of that electric guitar motif flares forth on Here Comes the Future‘s next song, "Trying Something New," where the lyric nudges the listener that it knows about a secret place for love, much like Petula Clark once did, albeit less boisterously. It’s followed by yet another fresh expansion of the same guitar sound — an effect a bit like a new level of petals appearing on an unpruned flower — in "Fall from a Height," where Carlsson calls upon some well-placed snippets of sampled movie dialogue to add tinges of childhood existential crisis and teen angst (the latter element taken from Rebel Without a Cause, no less).

When Carlsson reaches Here Comes the Future‘s title track, it’s no surprise that it’s as much about resisting the lure of memory as it is about facing the unavoidable. A bell-clear melody similar to the kind that Amy Linton used to write and record for the Aisler’s Set answers him each time he claims that he wouldn’t turn back time if he could. The same push-pull between nostalgia and fantasy is taken to extremes two songs later in the album’s finale, as Carlsson’s closing sentiments are washed away by waves of synth pop. Ending the album as he began it, with a dream, he imagines a day centuries from now, but unsurprisingly, it’s a past-obsessed corner of that day, in which some archaeologist discovers the last remaining trace of his life. Even less surprisingly, that last remaining trace is a romantic one. What would love be, anyway, without the promise of eternity? *

JENS LEKMAN plus THE HONEYDRIPS

Sat/22, 9 pm; $18

Bimbo’s 365 Club

1025 Columbus, SF

(415) 474-0365

www.bimbos365club.com

JENS LEKMAN

Sun/23, 9 p.m.; $12–$14

Bottom of the Hill

1333 17th Street, SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

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