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LISTINGS@CITYPAPER.NET | APRIL 25 - MAY 1
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the agenda
[ men do not have friends ]
I CAN UNSCREW MY HEAD: Flying Lotus plays Union Transfer on Friday. TIMOTHY SACCENTI
The Agenda is our selective guide to what’s going on in the city this week. For comprehensive event listings, visit citypaper.net/listings.
38 | P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R |
A P R I L 2 5 - M A Y 1 , 2 0 1 3 | C I T Y PA P E R . N E T
IF YOU WANT TO BE LISTED:
Submit information by email (listings@citypaper.net) to Caroline Russock or enter it yourself at citypaper.net/submit-event with the following details: date, time, address of venue, telephone number and admission price. Incomplete submissions will not be considered, and listings information will not be accepted over the phone.
THURSDAY
4.25 [ americana ]
✚ SONS OF FATHERS Paul Cauthen sounds stunned, in a good way: “Every day I wake up and it’s something new,” he beams. Along with David Beck, he’s created what is unarguably the hottest ticket in Americana today, Sons of Fathers. American
Songwriter and No Depression are lionizing the powerful story-songs on Burning Days (Blanco River Music). The Sons are bringing the entire six-piece band with them on the road, so the lush, sometimes Balkanesque harmonies will be performed just as Lloyd Maines produced them. Asked why SoF has succeeded where others only come close, Cauthen chuckles. “We’ve put in the hours! But,” he says, “we are doing pretty well, considering we hated each other at first.” —Mary Armstrong Thu., April 25, 9 p.m., $8-$10, with Maitland, MilkBoy Philly, 1100 Chestnut St., 215-925-6455, milkboyphilly.com.
[ theater ]
✚ ARABIAN NIGHTS “In the wake of what’s happening in Syria and what has occurred in Boston,” says director Amy Dugas Brown about her University of the
Arts production of The Arabian Nights, “I think telling this story, and stories like this, is essential. We should strive to keep stories about life and love triumphing over stories of selfishness and violence.” Artistically, Brown appreciates that Scheherazade’s classic tales, adapted by Mary Zimmerman, are all told by a woman “in a culture that doesn’t, on face value, encourage a woman to take that kind of control. The women in this play empower themselves by embracing their femaleness, not by imitating men.” Though her cast of undergrads comes from many different races and ethnicities and the stories are universal, she says, Arabian Nights “consistently reminds us of the wonder and richness [of life] and challenges our ideas of what ‘Middle Eastern’ means.” —Mark Cofta Thu.-Sun., April 25-28, $10-$20, Arts Bank Theater, 601 S. Broad St., 215717-6030, uarts.edu/onstage.
FRIDAY
4.26 [ rock ]
✚ THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN When The Dillinger Escape Plan was between singers in 2002, they drafted Mike Patton (who had earlier invited the band to open for Mr. Bungle) for their Irony Is a Dead Scene EP. It was an almost too-perfect match, a singer known for his ability to swerve crazily between the sublime, the punishing and the ridiculous joining a band founded on the same principles. In singer Greg Puciato, DEP found a replacement who approximates Patton’s manic swings while staying just shy of impersonation, a razor’s edge he continues to walk on the band’s fifth full-length album, One of Us Is the Killer.
The record is built on rapid-fire dynamic shifts: moody melodies colliding with blast-beat brutality, or suddenly overcome by the eruption of jazz-funk metalcore. DEP has essentially written one long song over the course of its career, each piece a Lego block that could be connected with any other, but they manage to construct some imposing edifices. —Shaun Brady Fri., April 26, 6:45 p.m., $20, with The Faceless and Rolling Thunder, Union Transfer, 1026 Spring Garden St., 215232-2100, utphilly.com.
[ jazz/pop/soul ]
✚ FLYING LOTUS The grandnephew of John and Alice Coltrane, Steven Ellison definitely inherited the family’s penchant for searching into the mystical, an ability to create sound worlds both serene and extreme. On Until the Quiet Comes, his latest as Flying Lotus, Ellison creates beats that are elusive and
insectoid, seeming to skitter away from perception like roaches from the light. There are elements of old-school soul, ’70s jazz fusion, Brian Wilson harmonies and instrumental exotica, but all of this is processed into something 21stcentury and decaying, as if decades of collected sound had been captured by a far-off satellite and beamed back into our dreams. As the title suggests, there is a twilight hush to the album, but not quite a calm; Ellison is waiting for the quiet, perhaps, but the anticipation is sensuously unsettling. —Shaun Brady Fri., April 26, 11 p.m., $20, with Thundercat, Union Transfer, 1026 Spring Garden St., 215-232-2100, utphilly.com.
[ rock/pop/experimental ]
✚ LOVELY LITTLE GIRLS The music of the Chicago avant-rock oddballs Lovely Little Girls is inspired by the