Friday, June 14, 2013

This week's hot concerts

Yacht Rock Revue
6 p.m. Friday, June 14, NC Music Factory’s Fountain Plaza, 1000 NC Music Factory Blvd. $10. www.ncmusicfactory.com
The Atlanta cover band focuses on the decadent late `70s, early `80s era of Christopher Cross, Michael McDonald, and early Hall & Oates with a wink and a tip of its captain’s hat - fun whether you’re a fan of the time period or not.

Elizabeth LaPrelle
7 p.m. Friday, June 14, Great Aunt Stella Center, 926 Elizabeth Ave. Free (donations encouraged). www.folksociety.org
This 26-year-old Virginia musician and storyteller sings Appalachian ballads in the traditional unaccompanied style with a voice that can go from low aching moan to a ringing bell. She helps Charlotte Folk Society close out its 30th anniversary season.

The XX/Grizzly Bear
7:30 p.m. Saturday, June 15, Uptown Amphitheatre, 1000 NC Music Factory Blvd. $35-$60. www.livenation.com
The UK group combines the cool, hypnotic chill of slowed down electronic dance music and the sultriness and heart of R&B. Its quirky Brooklyn-based tour mates similarly straddle harmony-driven, electronic indie-pop and rootsier psychedelic folk-rock.

Lucius
7:30 p.m. Monday, June 17, Stage Door Theater, 5th and College St. $10. www.blumenthalarts.org
The dual vocals of Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig anchor this Brooklyn combo’s sweet pop songs, which run from bubblegum ear candy to playful and intelligent, harmony-driven rock that’s already been heard on Fox’s “New Girl” before its full-length debut is released in the fall. 

David Byrne & St. Vincent
7:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 18, Belk Theater, 130 N. Tryon St. $29.50-$84.50. 704-372-1000.
The Talking Heads frontman turned heads with this collaboration with songwriter Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent). The pair replaced traditional rock instruments with a big brass band, which joins it on stage and on the album “Love This Giant.”

Two Gallants
8 p.m. Wednesday, June 19, Visulite, 1615 Elizabeth Ave. $14-$17. www.visulite.com
The seemingly troubled San Francisco indie-folk rock duo recharged after a van accident and solo albums with an apparently new lease on rock. Its 2012 record “The Bloom and the Blight” is a gnarly, moving psychedelic garage rock opus.

Billy Joe Shaver
9 p.m. Wednesday, June 19, Double Door, 1218 Charlottetown Ave. $18-$20. www.doubledoorinn.com
The prolific Texas songwriter’s autobiographical tunes became country standards from Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings. His life reads like a country song - from his wife’s death  to his guitarist son’s fatal overdose to going to trial for shooting a man. That’s just in the last 14 years.

Merchandise
8 p.m. Thursday, June 20, The Milestone, 3400 Tuckaseegee Rd. $10-$12.  http://www.ticketfly.com/event/223227 
Though its Morrissey-on-depressants vocals hide under a crumbling wall of distortion, reverb, and noise, there’s a thread of pop charm and melody that recalls late `70s/early `80s art rock. In another era it would’ve been a fixture at CBGB’s.