By Don Allred
Bass Jam! Featuring Freekbass/Jahman Brahman/Skeetones
Livetronica is the watchword tonight, exemplified by keyboard army Skeetones, who promise “Remixes on the fly--no loops or backing tracks.” They confidently moonwalk surreal boulevards with “General Sherman.” Skeetones’ Cincinnati colleagues Freekbass and DJ Tobotius ignite steel-belted radial grooves and sardonic samples; no wonder they’ve played so often with galactic funk guru Bootsy Collins. Former Columbus jam-rock journeymen Jahman Brahman now restlessly reflect their North Carolina mountain greenery home, with sure-footed funk as well. Also currently scheduled: local stalwarts Carma, Magua and Burgler, plus Newark, OH’s own luminescent live painter/dubstep DJ Heady Ruxpin.
1/6 @ Skully’s Music Diner, 1151 N High St., 9 p.m.
Wale
Rapper Wale’s freestyle whirlwind of imagery found improbable poise atop the creative and commercial peaks of his often brilliantly produced breakthrough album, Attention Deficit. The followup is bluntly titled Ambition, and it’s all about growing up and falling apart simultaneously. Some of us have been there, but rarely with Wale’s wealth of defensiveness, self-awareness, and other compulsions. Meanwhile, the elegant, sometimes eerie music is always as patiently seductive as fate. As guest Ne-Yo murmurs, speaking for all of the sounds surrounding Wale, “You got time.” Wale’s earned that much, for sure.
1/7 @ Newport Music Hall, 7 p.m.
Dead Indians/The Lindsay/Outer Spacist
Dead Indians are Ojibwe rappers from Winnipeg. Their 2005 debut album, Indian Affairs, exudes a smoothly chilling serenade of Old Milwaukee, soon followed by, “This is the last beer, I swear,” as the party rolls way on through another smoky night. Newer tracks sample pop radio hooks for sweetly bouncing beatdowns of faces, forces, and farces. Their live exuberance is compatible with the garage-morphing Mormon masks of Outer Spacist, also OS’s Columbus neighbors The Lindsay’s latest set of shiny indie incisors, Deep in the Queue.
1/13 @ Rumba Café, 2507 Summit St., 10 p.m.
Sewing Machine War
The Sewing Machine War is an adventurously focused band from Akron and Warren, Ohio. These wizards and weathermen aim to “invent an experience.” They also mean to tap “veins of history, truth, and turmoil.” So, living history--in songs such as “Jerico,” which is not quite the Biblical spelling, but they’re testing vast walls with good vibrations, not too sweetly. The guitar screams somewhere in a winter dream, though far from a nightmare. Is earthy progtronica a contradiction? It’s also these guys’ rock and roll.
1/15 @ Kobo, 2590 N High St., 9 p.m.
Griffin House
On 2007’s Flying Upside Down, singer/songwriter Griffin House listens and learns from all kinds of relationships in the verses, then steps or wheels out into the choruses. He never forgets the value of a challenge, while musically melding with his heroes from Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, and declaring, “She’s outta my league/That’s the kinda girl I need.” On 2010’s The Learner, House is at his best when celebrating and kidding his propensity to push romantic and musical luck, especially with “She Loves Girls.” Gee, so does he! He actually tells her that.
1/15 @ The Basement, 391 Neil Ave., 8 p.m.
Rascal Flatts
Rascal Flatts, two thirds of whom are from Columbus, have always been ideally suited for country crossover success. Especially in the way lead singer Gary LeVox guides his high lonesome mountain sound though vulnerable pop appeal. Unpretentiously tuneful, they’ve outlasted many a man band, with a thriving audience of young adults. They maintain their mellowness onstage, but aren’t shy of special effects. Also performing this evening: tabloid headline survivor Sara Evans, boldly wailing all over her comeback trail, and 20-year-old singer/songwriter/ multi-instrumentalist Hunter Hayes.
1/21 @ Nationwide Arena, 200 W Nationwide Blvd., 7:30 p.m.
Machine Head
Machine Head entered thrash metal’s festive fray in 1991, when Seattle’s alternative barbarians were about to sweep all metal from the throne. Yet in subsequent dark ages, Machine Head kept the faith, until straying into big-selling, though somewhat trend-dependent albums. Scorched by such pyrrhic victories, they returned unto the path, via Through the Ashes of Empires and The Blackening. 2011’s Unto the Locust finds them leading all true believers, even an arsonist, into trials by harvests of necessary fire: “Come young and old, suffer unto the locust!” As always, it’s an epic metal family affair.
1/24 @ Newport Music Hall, 1722 N High St., 6 p.m.
Los Campesinos!
Los Campesinos! are a wryly excitable art-pop troupe from Wales, launching pad of Dylan Thomas. Richard Burton, John Cale, Young Marble Giants, and other prestigious individualists. It’s also the UK’s picturesque backside, inspiring/requiring LC! to rattle the more desperate (and contagious) pretensions of their solemn peers, maybe including those in the mirrors: “Can’t tell/Is the singer’s keyboard a crutch/Or a synthesizer?” 2011’s Hello Sadness is a break-up album, but at least they finally found a love worth losing. Sweet! As long as they feel like giving popular culture and themselves a hard enough, energizing time.
1/25 @ Skully’s Music Diner, 1151 N High St., 9 p.m.
Trio Showcase with Karate Coyote and Dirty Girls
The men and women of Columbus sextet Karate Coyote raise voices and instruments into a complex clarity of melody, harmony, plot twists, and inescapable zingers. New tracks, unreleased but stage-ready, resolve to make even deeper impressions on walls, doors, die-hard habits, face-scraping carpets, and bone-filling rhythms (KC are making a list). Dirty Girls are guys, mostly graduates of Stucco Jones’s pool hall night school, plus former disco-pop-metal boogie knights of Chelsea Automatic. Preview track “Overblown” suggests 12-string guitars as spokes and tires of a scruffy mountain bike, blithely navigating the traffic of chugging bass.
1/27 @ Circus, 1127 N High St., 9 p.m.
Mieka Pauley
Submitted, as Rod Serling does in The Twilight Zone, for your approval: one Mary Dominica Pauley, born in Boston, raised in Ohio and other states, who earned a Harvard degree in biological anthropology, then forswore the Catholic schoolgirl associations of her birth name for the crisper tag of Mieka. Pauley, winner of songwriting competitions and creator of fan-funded albums, is now a seeking siren of scientific passion and enterprising visions. She applies overdrive to the quest for sexual justice, while sweeping headlights across channeled clues, exploded views, and detours.
1/29 @ Rumba Café, 2507 Summit St., 7 p.m.
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