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The Best Concerts to See in L.A. This Week
Comments (0)By LA Weekly
Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 3:30 AM
Categories: Los Angeles Concerts
Be sure to check out our constantly updated concert calendar!
Monday, October 27
Rachael Yamagata
TROUBADOUR
Rachael Yamagata continues to sing well-crafted pop songs that are pretty without being sugary, and romantic without lapsing into complete bathos. The Virginia-born singer-songwriter is able to take her own experience and transmute it into music that is both universal and personal. “All those words you said at the ending were pretty revealing,” she sings ruefully about the end of a relationship. “Who knows why two people perfectly aligned should ever have to find themselves apart?” Even in the midst of such heartbreak, Yamagata always retains her poise, confiding her vulnerability with an endearing openness and lyrical grace. She’s recorded a couple EPs in the past few years but hasn’t released a full album since 2008’s Loose Ends, so perhaps she’ll debut some new songs tonight. Also Tuesday, Oct. 28, at the Hotel Cafe, where she’ll perform her 2004 debut album, Happenstance, in its entirety. —Falling James
Tuesday, October 28
The New L.A. Folk Fest Presents: Murder Ballads
ECHOPLEX
Autumn’s annual Murder Ballads night is always an intensely atmospheric gasser, and this fifth edition, touted as “A Tribute to True Crimes of Passion,” guarantees a stimulatingly sinister earful. Featuring contributions from psychedelic Westerners Spindrift, the unhinged psych-pop provocateurs Bloody Death Skull (who’ve been aptly and admirably pigeonholed as “Tin Pan Dali”), shaggy harmony specialists The Zmed Brothers, Blank Tapes’ Pearl Charles and her Pipes Canyon Band, along with a horde of others (Joel Jerome, Z Berg, Skin & Bones, Rachel Fannan, Honey Child and Jenny Luna among them), it’s a formidable round-up of local talent. And with a tall stack of songs fueled by such appetizing motivations as jealousy, rage and revenge, it’s an unparalleled celebration of irresistible impulse and good old-fashioned blood lust — the ideal pre-Halloween mood enabler. —Jonny Whiteside
Wednesday, October 29
Low End Theory with Afrika Bambaataa
THE AIRLINER
This month, DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist finished off the Renegades of Rhythm tour, during which they DJ’d Afrika Bambaataa’s records, now archived at Cornell University. To be clear: Those were Bambaataa’s actual, personal records from the late ’70s and ’80s, the exact physical artifacts that helped birth hip-hop. So let’s call that an opening act for this appearance by the man himself. Bambaataa was instrumental in establishing hip-hop, a musician, organizer, theorist and visionary whose music and ideas still reverberate today — particularly at Low End, where genres and generations still align to look for that perfect beat. It will be one of those rare moments where an originator gets to see exactly what strange new things have grown from the seeds he planted so along ago. —Chris Ziegler
Monday, October 27
Rachael Yamagata
TROUBADOUR
Rachael Yamagata continues to sing well-crafted pop songs that are pretty without being sugary, and romantic without lapsing into complete bathos. The Virginia-born singer-songwriter is able to take her own experience and transmute it into music that is both universal and personal. “All those words you said at the ending were pretty revealing,” she sings ruefully about the end of a relationship. “Who knows why two people perfectly aligned should ever have to find themselves apart?” Even in the midst of such heartbreak, Yamagata always retains her poise, confiding her vulnerability with an endearing openness and lyrical grace. She’s recorded a couple EPs in the past few years but hasn’t released a full album since 2008’s Loose Ends, so perhaps she’ll debut some new songs tonight. Also Tuesday, Oct. 28, at the Hotel Cafe, where she’ll perform her 2004 debut album, Happenstance, in its entirety. —Falling James
Tuesday, October 28
The New L.A. Folk Fest Presents: Murder Ballads
ECHOPLEX
Autumn’s annual Murder Ballads night is always an intensely atmospheric gasser, and this fifth edition, touted as “A Tribute to True Crimes of Passion,” guarantees a stimulatingly sinister earful. Featuring contributions from psychedelic Westerners Spindrift, the unhinged psych-pop provocateurs Bloody Death Skull (who’ve been aptly and admirably pigeonholed as “Tin Pan Dali”), shaggy harmony specialists The Zmed Brothers, Blank Tapes’ Pearl Charles and her Pipes Canyon Band, along with a horde of others (Joel Jerome, Z Berg, Skin & Bones, Rachel Fannan, Honey Child and Jenny Luna among them), it’s a formidable round-up of local talent. And with a tall stack of songs fueled by such appetizing motivations as jealousy, rage and revenge, it’s an unparalleled celebration of irresistible impulse and good old-fashioned blood lust — the ideal pre-Halloween mood enabler. —Jonny Whiteside
Wednesday, October 29
Low End Theory with Afrika Bambaataa
THE AIRLINER
This month, DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist finished off the Renegades of Rhythm tour, during which they DJ’d Afrika Bambaataa’s records, now archived at Cornell University. To be clear: Those were Bambaataa’s actual, personal records from the late ’70s and ’80s, the exact physical artifacts that helped birth hip-hop. So let’s call that an opening act for this appearance by the man himself. Bambaataa was instrumental in establishing hip-hop, a musician, organizer, theorist and visionary whose music and ideas still reverberate today — particularly at Low End, where genres and generations still align to look for that perfect beat. It will be one of those rare moments where an originator gets to see exactly what strange new things have grown from the seeds he planted so along ago. —Chris Ziegler
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