4.13 sunday [ singer-songwriter ]
NINA PERSSON $15 | Sun., April 13, 8 p.m., with White Prism, World Café Live, 3025 Walnut St., 215-222-1400, worldcafelive.com. Technically speaking, Animal Heart (The End) is the first solo album in Nina Persson’s 20-year career, but it’s much less a clean break than a con-
tinuation of the magnificent, countrified torch balladry she’s made with/as A Camp, or the morose, strummy melodrama of the latter-day Cardigans records. Indeed, it carries on down the rootsy, bummer-bound trajectory she’s followed ever since the sardonic glitter-bomb pinnacle of “Lovefool.” Sonically speaking, it’s actually one of the poppier things she’s done since then, the lap steels and lounge piano sharing space with ample synthesizers and almostdanceable drumming. The title JORGEN RINGSTRAND
for the odd audio sample here and there). Their propensity for run-on sentences and buzzword album/song titles doesn’t help. That’s why it’s good that GY!BE’s Efrim Menuck actually sings in his other band, Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra. At least in theory. After seven albums of Mt. Zion’s carefully orchestrated cacophony (including this year’s Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light on Everything on Constellation), we’re not much clearer on where Menuck’s soapbox is. But that’s fine. As with any Menuck-related project, without a vague doom resting somewhere in the multi-movement background of discordant strings sounding like BP-oil-spill hell, it just wouldn’t be the same. —Marc Snitzer
track, in particular, recalls the muted electro-sparkle of the recent Broken Bells record. But the production, and even the songs — among Persson’s most restrained and introspective, co-written with her longtime collaborator and husband Nathan Larson (of Shudder to Think) and producer Eric D. Johnson (of Fruit Bats) — take a backseat to the potent-asever evocation of her searing, raspy, inimitable voice. —K. Ross Hoffman
4.14 monday [ rock/pop ]
DANIEL ROSSEN $14 | Mon., April 14, 8 p.m., Underground Arts, 1200 Callowhill St., undergroundarts.org. Daniel Rossen — the softly expressive singer and multiinstrumentalist known for his leading roles in Grizzly Bear and Department of Eagles — has an even quieter side. It was first revealed on his Silent Hour/Golden Mile EP in 2012, and we’ll hear it again when he performs a solo, seated gig at Underground Arts on Monday. Comprised of songs originally intended for Grizzly Bear’s Shields, the EP is an ethereal light-filled chamberpop affair, rich with brass, yawning lap steel guitars and the complex melodic beauty Rossen fans have come to expect. —A.D. Amorosi
4.15 tuesday HOLLY GOLIGHTLY AND THE BROKEOFFS $10 | Tue., April 15, 8:30 p.m., with The Pretty Greens, Honey Radar and Joe Castro, The Fire, 412 W. Girard Ave., 267-671-9298, iourecords.com/thefire.
has taken the opposite course: She now makes her home on a rural Georgia farm, alongside Lawyer Dave, her Texas-born partner in twang and the A P R I L 1 0 - A P R I L 1 6 , 2 0 1 4 | C I T Y PA P E R . N E T
long-running only member of The Brokeoffs. A quick listen to any of the ridiculously many recordings Golightly’s made in the last two decades — running the gamut from blues, country and rockabilly to ’50sstyle R&B and rootsy garage pop, typically infused with a punkish impetuousness that, if anything, makes it all the more authentic — will leave little doubt that rural Georgia is where she belongs. All Her Fault (Transdreamer), album number twentysomething, involved a longer creative process than usual (they made it at home, juggling recording and farm duties), but it’s still plenty ragged and right. It’s a mighty fine place to dip your toe into her catalog; surveying all the aforementioned styles but tending toward the countryblues end of things, including a swampy, stompy rendition of the standard “Trouble in Mind.” —K. Ross Hoffman
[ punk ]
PROTOMARTYR [ blues/country/rock ]
Holly Golightly was born in London where, yes indeed, her mama named her after a certain sprightly Truman Capote heroine. But whereas her literary namesake was a Southern country girl making her way in the big city, this Golightly
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[ events ]
$10 | Tue., April 15, 8 p.m., with Spray Paint, Amanda X and Push-Ups, Kung Fu Necktie, 1250 N. Front St., 215-291-4919, kungfunecktie.com. On record — specifically, the just-released Under Color of Official Right (Hardly Art) — Detroit four-piece Protomartyr cut a curious figure of a punk band. They can rail and pummel with the best of them but aren’t averse to cleanly picked guitar lines and bluntedged tunefulness. Vocalist Joe Casey’s wordy, dour (but funny!) Mark E. Smith-style screeds are offset by alternating patches of claustrophobia and spaciousness. On stage, though, they overwhelm: dialing down the textural nuance in favor of forceful squalling while Casey — a decidedly unpunk-looking figure in rumpled business wear, hair thinning — spews his rants with a smirking, Tourettic nonchalance tinged with apathetic disgust. A recent set at SXSW left me unsure whether to smile or shudder. —K. Ross Hoffman