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Recommended The List (Music) All Ages

Scale the Summit, Elitist, Centaurus, Burn the Remains

Scale the Summit got it right when they decided to forgo vocals. Lots of instrumental metal or postrock bands eventually experiment with singing, but I don't even want to imagine this Houston prog outfit with a front man—I just know it'd add nothing but overblown pomp to their already heady songs, like the vocals in old-school Dream Theater and, dare I say it, Coheed & Cambria. Last year's The Collective (Prosthetic) is half metal and half atmospheric prog, full of seven- and eight-string guitar lines and seriously skilled six-string bass moves (though you'll have to deal with some slapping). Of course, you'd better know what you're doing when you start fiddling around with mutant, extra-level Guitar World instruments, and Scale the Summit definitely do. The album's standout cut, "Gallows," starts off with double-kick-drum head-banging heaviness, then morphs into a lovely, epic jam that could soundtrack any one of the scenes from The Neverending Story where Atreyu is riding high on Falcor's back. Who needs vocals when you've got that? —Kevin Warwick Elitist, Centaurus, and Burn the Remains open. $12, $10 in advance

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A-Trak

Montreal-bred DJ and producer Alain "A-Trak" Macklovitch, co-owner of the Fool's Gold label, is one of the few people in electronic dance music who has equal footing in two parts of that world that sometimes seem mutually exlusive: he's beloved by the underground club scenes that defined the form's recent past as well as by the more mainstream crowd that's recently (finally) brought EDM in America to the arena-size level of popularity it's long enjoyed in Europe. His bipartisan appeal isn't hard to figure out. Macklovitch is a firm believer in the transcendent power of big, broad, dumb hooks—take for instance "Barbra Streisand," the anthemic earworm he and Armand Van Helden recorded as Duck Sauce—but because he knows that they're best used sparingly, he prefers to maintain a steady simmer rather than overload the senses like, say, Skrillex. January's installment of his monthly Fool's Gold Radio mix series is typically ebullient and eclectic, with nods to everything from swag rap to retrofuturistic acid house. —Miles Raymer Gun Love, DJ Trentino, and Phenom open. $15-$20

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Netherfriends, Secret Colours, Vamos

Nearly two years ago, Netherfriends main man Shawn Rosenblatt set out to write and record a song in every U.S. state, and now that he's done, the nomadic former Chicagoan has collected 12 of them on the impressive new full-length Middle America (Kilo). Rosenblatt's dreamy psych-pop trip through the midwest covers a lot of territory—Hawaiian-sounding slide guitar, propulsive drum rolls, laid-back sax, funky fatback synth—but he wraps it all up in a warm, gauzy blanket that gives the album's soaring choral melodies and airy, reverb-soaked soundscapes a romantic tinge. Even when he sings about the banality of his road-ravaged lifestyle—playing to tiny crowds, living on food stamps—he keeps Netherfriends' ebullient spirit alive. His unwavering devotion to his lifelong dream to be a musician (another recurring theme in his lyrics) keeps him going through those rough patches, helping him turn them into songs that sound as beautiful as anything inspired by his brighter moments. —Leor Galil Secret Colours and Vamos open. $8

Recommended Early Warnings (Music) The List (Music) All Ages

Ana Moura

Of all the new wave of Portuguese fado singers to emerge in the past decade, no one cleaves to tradition like the fantastic Ana Moura. She resists the temptation to aim for a broader audience by tweaking the music's fundamentals, and her approach appears to work—last summer I saw her playing to a packed house in Vancouver, and she had the audience eating out of her hand. Last year's Coliseu (World Village) is a live album of a 2008 performance where she's accompanied by a nimble backing band of bass, acoustic guitar, and Portuguese guitar; Moura's powerful voice fills the room, its honeyed warble ever so slightly scuffed up by the meticulously pitched drama of her delivery. Her English-language banter is a bit showbizzy, but it's hard to be bothered by that when she sings. —Peter Margasak $26-$30

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Swan King, Bridesmaid, Sun Splitter, Oyarsa

The Swan King are clearly a metal band at heart: their songs are loud, punchy, and heavy; they share bills almost exclusively with metal bands; and their LP Eyes Like Knives came out last year on Seventh Rule, which has also released music by heavyweights Indian, Sweet Cobra, and Batillus. But one spin of Knives and it's obvious that there's more going on in these dudes' heads than just metal. Drummer Zafar Musharraf and former Planes Mistaken for Stars bassist Jamie Drier give their rhythms the grimy push and swing of the Jesus Lizard, and guitarist Dallas Thomas has a throaty yell reminiscent of Rick Froberg. The Swan King's heavy-handed blend of punk and metal is both brutal and catchy, and it's even better live—you wouldn't expect a band that sounds like this to shy away from turning up and hitting hard onstage, and these guys don't. —Luca Cimarusti Bridesmaid, Sun Splitter, and Oyarsa open. $8, free with RSVP at rsvp@emptybottle.com

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Netherfriends (DJ set)

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Mike Reed Trio, Jacob Garchik Trio

Consisting of three of New York's most skilled and adaptable improvisers, this trio upends audience expectations about the roles played by the instruments in a traditional jazz group. Leader and trombonist Jacob Garchik (he also squeezes a mean accordion in the Four Bags) writes music that blurs the boundary between what's composed and what's improvised and messes around with which instrument does what—sometimes the drums, which usually enjoy the most latitude in interpreting jazz scores, play the most tightly prescribed parts. That's not to say that Garchik insists his bandmates follow his scores to the letter: in a recent e-mail he told me, "We've been playing some new, un­recorded music which is even more highly notated, but I'm sure as time goes on, we will become more and more free with those too." Garchik, drummer Dan Weiss (a regular collaborator with Rudresh Mahanthappa), and pianist Jacob Sacks bring a lyrical fluidity to even the thorniest tunes, like the through-composed "7s," whose front-line melodies conceal loads of tricky twists and turns. That song appears on the trio's recent live release, At Play, which is downloadable for free at Garchik's website. The album also includes "Alls," a version of the standard "All the Things You Are" that's mostly free improvisation and delivers the theme only obliquely at the end, and "X," which employs the most ubiquitous nonblues chord changes in all of jazz—from Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm"—though you probably won't notice unless you listen for them. —Peter Margasak The Mike Reed Trio headlines. $7 suggested donation

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Donald Harrison Quartet

Alto saxophonist Donald Harrison is the quintessential New Orleans musician—he's adept at playing anything with a nice groove, regardless of genre, and his deep soulfulness embraces the past as much as the present. On last year's This Is Jazz (Half Note), his third album with bassist Ron Carter and drummer Billy Cobham, he's in strict hard-bop mode—with the exception of the sole original, "Treme Swagger," where Harrison eats up the funky second-line groove, elaborating on a melody that recalls vintage Meters. He does his best to elevate the otherwise predictable program of standards, navigating the changes with assurance and grace and inextricably intertwining his lyric and rhythmic mastery. For this visit Harrison is joined by a strong Chicago rhythm section he's worked with before: pianist Willie Pickens, bassist Marlene Rosenberg, and drummer Robert Shy. —Peter Margasak $20

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Black Belles

It's tempting to call Nashville's Black Belles the all-female American version of the Horrors—they've got an idiosyncratic take on second-wave garage rock and an archly goth image that's also vaguely Hanna-Barbera—except that so few people in the U.S. even know who the Horrors are, aside from NME subscribers and Mighty Boosh superfans. The Black Belles, on the other hand, have had more than their share of stateside exposure thanks to their relationship with Jack White: he's produced their records, released their music on his Third Man label, directed their videos, hooked them up with a gig backing Stephen Colbert, and generally promoted the hell out of the band. But their 2011 self-titled album suggests that they'd do just fine without the A-list association. The material is long on atmosphere and image, heavy on the hooks, and, rather refreshingly, almost entirely devoid of anything that doesn't help deliver on those primary concerns—plus, YouTube evidence suggests that their live show is witchy as all get-out. —Miles Raymer See also Wednesday. This set is part of the Reader's Anti-Valentine's Day Party. $14

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Heartless Bastards, Hacienda, Precious Blood

If you're a native Cincinnatian like me, you know two things—first, you have to like covering spaghetti with watered-down chili, and second, you're pretty much obligated to count the Heartless Bastards among your favorite bands. Cincy isn't the hottest hot spot for breakout acts, so when somebody does make the leap (the Greenhornes, for instance), the community rallies around. I hadn't yet freaked over the Heartless Bastards' bluesy and soulful bar (punk) rock when I left the Queen City in 2008, but since then the power and attitude in Erika Wennerstrom's voice—with its impossible­-to-ignore, Patti Smith-like force—has won me over completely. She's remained the only constant member through several lineup changes (the band's now based in Austin), and honestly, that's all that matters. Arrow (Partisan), the follow-up to 2009's breakthrough The Mountain, comes out on Valentine's Day, and Wennerstrom owns it from the get-go. On the six-minute opener, "Marathon," she shows off an unreal range, beginning with a sultry kind of timidity and gradually climbing into an anthemic, take-no-prisoners holler. She leads the charge on the rest of the album too, whether she's singing an acoustic ditty or a plugged-in number like "Got to Have Rock and Roll"—which delivers exactly what its title promises. —Kevin Warwick Hacienda and Precious Blood open. $15

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Cate Le Bon, Talkdemonic, Bone & Bell

Though Welsh singer Cate Le Bon is a protege of Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals), her extraordinary second album, Cyrk (The Control Group), reminds me more of the great Welsh rock band Gorky's Zygotic Mynci in the irresistible way it collides woozy pop, genteel British folk, and wiggy psychedelia—it probably doesn't hurt that her backing guitarist, Sion Glyn, played in the group for a bit. Le Bon is often compared to Nico, presumably because they share a kind of exaggerated enunciation, but that's as far as the similarities go—whether Le Bon's sanguine songs sound like 60s punk (the jackhammering "Falcon Eyed") or a trippy waltz ("Julia"), there's nothing icy about them. Her lyrics often describe characters with vivid imaginations: on "Greta," a deliberately broken ballad that reminds me of early Faust, she sings, "You can realign light, but you can't tame the girl / When her eyes are the size of lagoons." Glyn routinely and magnificently punctures the tunes with fuzzed-out guitar solos, while Le Bon gilds them with ethereal, overdubbed vocal harmonies, turning the album into a series of jolts and caresses. It's still early in the year, but I've yet to hear anything I like more. —Peter Margasak Talkdemonic and Bone & Bell open. $12, $10 in advance

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Contempo

The University of Chicago's in-house contemporary classical ensemble—which draws on the lineups of Eighth Blackbird and the Pacifica Quartet, augmented by musicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Lyric Opera—presents a strong program of three works by arguably the most important living Russian composer, 80-year-old Sofia Gubaidulina. The centerpiece is a 13-part chamber cantata for two voices and seven strings, Perception (1981), which employs the Fibonacci series as an organizing principle and combines many of the composer's favorite elements—sacred and mystical themes, modern dissonance juxtaposed with quasi-Baroque lyric beauty, consonant baritone spoken word versus swooping soprano singing. The other two pieces employ relatively stripped-down instrumentation: The Garden of Joys and Sorrows (1980) is a luminous, richly colored meditation for flute, harp, and viola, and the haunting In Croce (1990) uses only cello and a button accordion called the bayan. As usual, Contempo members will be joined by guests including soprano Tony Arnold, harpist Alison Attar, baritone Ricardo Rivera, bassist Collins Trier, and bayan player Stas Venglevski. —Peter Margasak $25

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Bleached, Black Belles, Hollows

See Tuesday. Hollows open.

Recommended The List (Music)

Wrack

The unusual front line of Kyle Bruckmann's Wrack—viola, oboe, and bass clarinet—gives the quintet a narrow timbral range, but it uses wriggling, high-intensity counterpoint to create an exhilaratingly bright, multilayered sound. As Bruckmann says in the liner notes of the group's forthcoming third album, Cracked Refraction (due from Porter Records on February 21), "I take perverse glee in using the wrong tools for the job." The onetime Chicagoan started Wrack as a jazz-oriented project, but over time he's come to focus more and more on jagged themes, unwieldy time signatures, and tricky pinpoint interplay (a la Anthony Braxton), all played with the postpunk energy of his old band Lozenge—on "Exacerbator," for example, Jen Clare Paulson's acidic viola slashes against the grain of a charging unison pattern from Bruckmann's oboe and Jason Stein's bass clarinet. Drummer Tim Daisy and bassist Anton Hatwich make for a whirlwind rhythm section, and when they buckle down and play hard they sometimes seem to splinter the front line with their momentum as they signal the rapid-fire shifts in Bruckmann's knotty, episodic compositions. The intensity can be pretty relentless, which makes the occasional quiet passage—like Paulson's lyrical, almost hushed solo on "Notwithstanding," accompanied by light percussion and pointillistic bass—hit just as hard emotionally as the wind players' most furious barrages. —Peter Margasak $8