Les Georges Leningrad play Chop Suey.

VietNam play the Crocodile.

Young Galaxy play Neumos.

Cat Power plays the Showbox (click here for Hannah Levin’s online interview with Chan Marshall).

And lastly:

PEARLS AND BRASS, WHALEBONES, JOHNNY AND THE MOON
(Sunset) Please excuse the analogy, but in football terminology, you would refer to the dudes in Pearls and Brass as “corn-fed boys.” While they may not have that linebacker physique, the phrase in this instance refers more to the concept of growing up in a podunk town, only to one day shock the world with an innate talent that is both genuine and daedal. The Nazareth, Pennsylvania—based band’s latest album, The Indian Tower, is good-ol’-boy rock revamped for a stonier generation; I consider it the embodiment of that über hot, Gummo glue-huffing chic that every fashion magazine in the world seems to be touting these days. Full of crunchy, Queens of the Stone Age—style riffage, but with a much sharper freedom rock gleam à la Steppenwolf, and a pseudoephedrinized pace highly reminiscent of the Fucking Champs, Pearl and Brass’s rock moxie totally belies their sissy name. STEVEN SAWADA