Recommended Early Warnings (Music) Soundboard 17+ Member Picks

Bilal, PJ Morton, Avery Sunshine

When Philadelphia modern-soul singer Bilal Oliver released his 2001 debut, 1st Born Second, he was poised to be the next big thing out of the Soulquarians collective, which also included D’Angelo, ?uestlove, and J Dilla. But during the decade that he kept his modest following waiting for a second album, the jazz-bred vocalist seemed to do little more than sing hooks on hip-hop tracks for artists such as Common, Little Brother, and Clipse. In 2010, when he finally dropped Airtight’s Revenge, it was worth the wait—he found a sharp edge he’d previously missed. He advances that sound on his recent third album, A Love Surreal (Entertainment One), whose title makes a not-so-subtle wink to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. The single “West Side Girl” makes his debt to Prince obvious, but on most of the album Bilal makes it harder to parse his influences by scrambling them together—the small-scale electronic soul of Timmy Thomas; the earthy, tightly coiled R&B of D’Angelo; the late-night humidity of current urban jazz, represented by pianist Robert Glasper, who guests on the album; the idiosyncratic melodies of Stevie Wonder. On love songs colored with uncertainty and disappointment as well as desire, his voice alternates between a raspy yet malleable falsetto and a throaty, declamatory high tenor. Bilal’s current material isn’t as hooky as the work of, say, Frank Ocean or Miguel, but they’d be less likely to exist if he never had—and he’s got a stylistic breadth and depth of feeling all his own. —Peter Margasak PJ Morton and Avery Sunshine open. $35, $30 in advance

Recommended The Short List (Theater) Closing (Theater and Galleries)

Roadkill

This immersive, site-specific drama, directed by Cora Bissett and written by Stef Smith (it debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe festival in 2010), is staged on a bus and in a nondescript Bucktown apartment that soon starts to feel like a lower circle of hell. We arrive there with Mary, a teenage Nigerian girl, and her countrywoman Martha, who has promised Mary a prosperous life in America. Before long, the girl has been relieved of her passport, raped, held against her will, and forced into a prostitution ring run by a merciless Russian. The apartment's bland seediness and close quarters reinforce the feeling of entrapment and moral squalor, and bring us into almost unbearable proximity to Mercy Ojelade's heartrending Mary and Adura Onashile's tormented Martha. —Zac Thompson $45

Recommended Soundboard Member Picks

Gerald Clayton Trio

Pianist Gerald Clayton has recorded every one of his three albums since moving from his native Los Angeles to New York seven years ago, and in that brief time his music has undergone a dramatic transformation from brisk and lively post-Oscar Peterson postbop to burnished, thoroughly contemporary jazz that borrows rhythmic ideas from hip-hop and dices them up with staggering technique. He pushes even further on his latest album, Life Forum (Concord Jazz), beefing up his core trio of bassist Joe Sanders and drummer Justin Brown with three horn players (trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and saxophonists Logan Richardson and Dayna Stephenson) and two vocalists, Gretchen Parlato and Sachal Vasandani, who add refined wordless singing. Clayton’s dense, translucent arrangements frequently function as set pieces for his improvisations, even when the horns and voices stick to composed material, and he incorporates a pop-soul influence similar to what you’ll hear on records by Parlato and Robert Glasper. Clayton composed all the music, and he often revels in its lush, complex harmonies while the horns and singers move in elegant counterpoint against the core trio’s fleet movements—on the hard-driving “Some Always,” for instance, he and Akinmusire play an extended passage in precise unison over a churning, frenetic groove. When it’s just the core trio, as on the skittering “Sir Third,” the borderline telepathic rapport Clayton has developed with the band comes to the fore, especially when he and Brown navigate rapid-fire tangles of rhythmic displacements or trade phrases so quickly your ears barely have time to process the exchanges. I’d love to hear the full ensemble play this music, but the trio is so sharp that these new pieces will survive the transition just fine. —Peter Margasak $20-$45

Recommended Early Warnings (Music) 18+

Gorod, Kamikabe, Vale of Pnath, Inanimate Existence, Wet the Steel, Epitasis

Recommended Early Warnings (Music) Soundboard All Ages Free

Lee Ranaldo Band, Marc Ribot's Ceramic Dog

Your Turn (Northern Spy) is the second and best album by Ceramic Dog, the knotty rock trio led by guitarist Marc Ribot. The group’s 2008 debut, Party Intellectuals (Pi), felt a bit slick and chilly, but the new one—with raw, vibrant production by Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier—is elbow deep in blood and grit, and Ribot sounds his most inspired and concise, even on extended solos. Supported by bassist Shahzad Ismaily and drummer Ches Smith, he skips among genres and tropes without sounding at all dilettantish: a sort of punk-blues hijack of 60s rock (“Lies My Body Told Me,” about struggling against the procreative impulse), furiously swinging instrumental surf rock (“Your Turn”), quaint rocksteady (“Ain’t Gonna Let Them Turn Us Around”), early jazz (“The Kid Is Back!”), and even a version of Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five.” Ribot is at best a serviceable vocalist, and when he crosses over from his usual crankiness into outright bitterness—most egregriously on “Masters of the Internet,” an artless rant about musicians getting screwed by online piracy—it’s hard not to cringe, even though the sentiment is understandable. Luckily, though, he lets his guitar do most of the talking. He’s built a career by flouting expectations and yanking the rug out from under his own music, but in Ceramic Dog he often leaves well enough alone—and even when he does take things sideways, it’s easy to hang on for the ride. —Peter Margasak The Lee Ranaldo Band headlines.

Recommended Agenda

International Mr. Leather: Black & Blue Ball

Nothing says summer's here like a bunch of hairy guys in leather hats, chaps, and codpieces. Following a weekend (5/24-5/26) of parties, seminars, and leather markets, some lucky fella has already been crowned International Mr. Leather, but there's one last hurrah tonight, the Black & Blue Ball with DJs Matthew Harvat and Ralphi Rosario. $40

Recommended Early Warnings (Music) 17+

Jesse & Joy, La Santa Cecilia

Recommended

In Metamorphosis

It's always interesting to see two artists working independently of one another exhibited together. Done right, the juxtaposition can both enhance the viewer's understanding of each artist as an individual and allow for the creation of new meaning in the interplay between their work. That's the case with Vivian van Blerk and Douglas Stapleton's joint show "In Metamorphosis," which can be interpreted as an examination of narrative. Using ambrotype, an early photographic process that involves creating a positive image on a pane of glass, van Blerk captures characters from mythology in the moment their fate is sealed. He shows us Icarus as his wings begin to melt against the sun, and Daphne transforming into a tree to escape the lustful Apollo. By using an antiquated technique to re-create mythological scenes with modern models (his Dyrope is African-American), van Blerk pulls the story out of time, creating a mood that's neither past nor present. What we're left with is a consideration of the eternal recurrence of archetypes—the cautionary tale of Icarus, the exemplary chastity of Daphne—in both life and art. While van Blerk removes his subjects from time, Stapleton uses time as a subject, layering historical images and cultural references in collage. He creates what appear to be Speedos on a Roman frieze and Victorian birds over Italian frescoes, building a history that's both condensed and fractured, reconfigured according to a particular point of view. Stapleton presents another way the story of humanity can be told—by gathering elements of reality and applying them where we think they belong. —Sarah Nardi

Recommended Agenda

Fashion in the Street

Have you ever made awkward eye contact with a live mannequin? Now's your chance to try. At Fashion in the Street, local designers and boutiques take their clothes outdoors for a weekend of shopping, fashion shows, and music in the nice warm weather. $5 suggested donation

Recommended Agenda Free

Veggie Pride Parade

Some people love vegetables too much to eat them. Those people will not be marching in the Veggie Pride Parade today. The parade is a celebration of the vegan and vegetarian community and the virtues of a plant-based diet. Cheeseburgers are not allowed, unless they come from the Chicago Diner.

Recommended Soundboard All Ages Free

Restorations

DIY five-piece Restorations come from Pennsylvania, one of the most fertile breeding grounds for the nation’s underground emo scene—they’re from Philly, in fact, though from the sound of their music you might assume they’re blue-collar guys from the sticks. Restorations’ nervy, cathartic punk makes it easy to picture these dudes wiping motor oil off their hands and heading into practice. Their style complements the meat and heart of the songs on their recent sophomore album, LP2 (Side One Dummy), most of which describe working-class youngsters who “work 12 hours and then wake up” (as front man Jon Loudon sings on “Let’s Blow Up the Sun”) and dream of ditching their small towns while clinging to the people there who make their lives meaningful. The scorching guitars and forceful, chugging melodies of the album’s best tracks, particularly “Kind of Comfort” and “New Old,” feel like a 70s Chevy revving onto the next exit out of town and heading for Thunder Road. —Leor Galil The Menzingers headline; Fake Problems, Restorations and Captain, We’re Sinking open. Restorations also play a sold out show at Subterranean with Menzingers, Fake Problems, and Captain, We're Sinking at 8 PM.

Recommended Early Warnings (Music) Soundboard Sold Out (Music) 17+

Bolt Thrower, Benediction, Jungle Rot

This weekend’s Bolt Thrower shows both sold out in a few hours almost four months ago, and for the benefit of everyone who didn’t know that already I’m going to try to explain why. Formed in Coventry in 1986, these legendary UK war machines have been called “the AC/DC of death metal,” and since 1991, when they dropped blastbeats from their songs, Bolt Thrower have been refining a stripped-down, deceptively simple style that combines merciless martial drive with infectious groove. They depart from the AC/DC comparison, though, in that they refuse to make an album that doesn’t meet the high standards they’ve already set. I know that sounds like music-writer bullshit, but hang on: In June 2008, three years after releasing their eighth and still most recent record, Those Once Loyal, the band made a statement explaining their decision to scrap the material they’d written since. “We know everybody says that their new album is better than their last, but with us we really believed that,” it said. “From day one we made it clear that we’d stop recording when we felt we’d written the ultimate Bolt Thrower album; we just never knew when that would be.” I realize some fans will always prefer, say, 1989’s Realm of Chaos (“World Eater,” anyone?), but for me the skill and focus that the band gained in the intervening 16 years—to say nothing of the vastly improved production—more than validate Bolt Thrower’s claim that Those Once Loyal is the perfect expression of their swinging sledgehammer of a style. These are the best riffs in death metal, period stop. Come at me, bro. —Philip Montoro Benediction and Jungle Rot open.

Recommended Soundboard Sold Out (Music) 17+

Bolt Thrower, Benediction, Witchbanger

This weekend’s Bolt Thrower shows both sold out in a few hours almost four months ago, and for the benefit of everyone who didn’t know that already I’m going to try to explain why. Formed in Coventry in 1986, these legendary UK war machines have been called “the AC/DC of death metal,” and since 1991, when they dropped blastbeats from their songs, Bolt Thrower have been refining a stripped-down, deceptively simple style that combines merciless martial drive with infectious groove. They depart from the AC/DC comparison, though, in that they refuse to make an album that doesn’t meet the high standards they’ve already set. I know that sounds like music-writer bullshit, but hang on: In June 2008, three years after releasing their eighth and still most recent record, Those Once Loyal, the band made a statement explaining their decision to scrap the material they’d written since. “We know everybody says that their new album is better than their last, but with us we really believed that,” it said. “From day one we made it clear that we’d stop recording when we felt we’d written the ultimate Bolt Thrower album; we just never knew when that would be.” I realize some fans will always prefer, say, 1989’s Realm of Chaos (“World Eater,” anyone?), but for me the skill and focus that the band gained in the intervening 16 years—to say nothing of the vastly improved production—more than validate Bolt Thrower’s claim that Those Once Loyal is the perfect expression of their swinging sledgehammer of a style. These are the best riffs in death metal, period stop. Come at me, bro. —Philip Montoro Benediction and Witchbanger open.

Recommended Early Warnings (Music) All Ages Free

Sharon Van Etten, Speck Mountain

Recommended Agenda Free

Kick off Pride Month

Pride Fest is full of parades and parties, but it has its serious side, too. Kick off Pride Month with a screening of How Do I Look—Voguing in the New Millennium, a 2005 documentary about the Harlem drag ball competitions. Director Wolfgang Busch will be in attendance for a discussion following the screening.