10 Best Concerts of the Week: IDLES, Circle Jerks, Korn and More

With Labor Day Weekend upon us and the intense summer heat slowly drifting away, there's no better way to kick off the new season than with a music-filled weekend. Thursday night presents the most options, with hard-rocking shows in Deep Ellum, The Cedars and on Greenville Avenue. The annual Riverfront Jazz Festival will take place Friday through Saturday, while DFW also gets concerts such as The Fixx in Dallas, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss in Grand Prairie and Sub-Sahara in Deep Ellum. Also this weekend, Peter Hook & The Light brings a Joy Division celebration to Victory Park. Early next week, Dallas welcomes Korn's summer tour with Evanescence in Fair Park and Tav Falco & Panther Burns in Deep Ellum. Unlike past weeks with concerts all around North Texas, this week's list consists of concerts that are actually in Dallas, so you won't have to travel far to get the best live music this holiday weekend.
IDLES
6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 1, The Factory in Deep Ellum, 2713 Canton St. $35.50+ at axs.com

The last time IDLES came through Dallas, it was for an absolutely packed show at the Granada Theater. This time around, the band booked a venue that can accommodate its massive underground fanbase. At the time of its last appearance, IDLES had just debuted the lead single, "The Beachland Ballroom" off the 2021 album Crawler. This time, the album will get proper support. The band has always had a penchant for writing deeply introspective lyrics without sacrificing the intensity of the music. Described as post-hardcore, noise, powerviolence or even grindcore, IDLES encompasses and transcends these genre labels with its artistic vision. While many bands attempt to glossy-up their words to evade specific interpretations, IDLES says it like it is and means it. Arizona-based hip-hop group Injury Reserve provides the opening support.
The Devil Wears Prada
6:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept 1, South Side Music Hall, 1135 Botham Jean Blvd. $24 at seetickets.us

Metalcore band The Devil Wears Prada began making records as a Christian metal band, and despite its best efforts not to be seen as a Christian band, the band still manages to land on the Christian music charts. Despite carrying a religious label that would be detrimental to any other metal band, The Devil Wears Prada has transcended that reputation to be taken quite seriously as trailblazers in developing the metalcore sound that rose in the mid-'00s — when other bands like As I Lay Dying and Bullet for My Valentine began mixing the music and atmosphere of extreme metal with the speed and aggression of hardcore punk and turning it into something painfully melodic. This past summer, The Devil Wears Prada announced that its eighth album, Color Decay, would drop on Sept. 16, two weeks after its show with Stray From the Path and Dying Wish on Thursday.
Circle Jerks
7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 1, Granada Theater, 3524 Greenville Ave. $32.50+ at prekindle.com

As North Texas marches ever closer to its chance to see the Misfits in October, local punks can delight in knowing that yet another iconic and influential punk band is coming to town — as if the Fear concert last week wasn't enough. After going through what seemed like about a billion postponements due to the pandemic, the Circle Jerks show at the Granada is finally happening. Circle Jerks came into being after singer Keith Morris left Black Flag, the band he had co-founded with Greg Ginn. The band was active throughout the '80s but has played only sporadically since breaking up in 1990. This reunion tour is a celebration of both the band's 40th anniversary and the anniversary of its most iconic album, Group Sex. If that's not enough, the Jerks will also bring fellow punk icons 7 Seconds and Negative Approach along with them.
Riverfront Jazz Festival
5:30 p.m. Friday, 12 p.m. Saturday – Sunday, Sept. 2 – 4, The Black Academy of Arts & Letters Complex, 1309 Canton St. $69+ at ticketmaster.com

If lying back and feeling the groove sounds like the best part of Labor Day weekend to you, then the 2022 Riverfront Jazz Festival might just be your best bet. For three days at the Dallas Convention Center Theater Complex, The Black Academy of Arts and Letters will showcase some of the biggest names in local and national jazz, R&B, soul, blues and neo-soul. Founded over 44 years ago, The Black Academy of Arts and Letters has sought to promote Black American artists in the visual and performing arts with an absolutely stacked program of events each year. For the past five years, the Labor Day tradition of the Riverfront Jazz Festival has been the highlight of that annual program. As in years past, Erykah Badu will headline the festival's first day of festivities. On Saturday, 1970s funk band Cameo headlines, and on Sunday, jazz pianist Robert Glasper closes the festival.
The Fixx
7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 2, Granada Theater, 3524 Greenville Ave. $35+ at prekindle.com

We tend to think of English bands of the 1980s as hugely successful across the pond but one-hit wonders in the States. Bands like Madness, Modern English and Soft Cell come to mind. Such is not the case with London-born rock band, The Fixx. Though the band has performed and recorded consistently since 1979, The Fixx is probably best known for its output on MCA Records between 1982 and 1986. In that four-year span of time, the band released four chart-topping albums on the strength of eight top-20 U.S. singles, while the same albums and same singles barely registered on the U.K. charts. What is perhaps even more striking about The Fixx is that while many bands from that era still tour under their famous name with only one or two of the core members, The Fixx remains the same band it has been since 1983. Also, remember the band Spacehog, which had that really cool track, "In the Meantime," in 1996? Spacehog's lead singer Royston Langdon is the opening act.
Peter Hook & The Light
6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 3, House of Blues, 2200 N. Lamar St. $32.50+ at livenation.com

If the name Peter Hook doesn't sound familiar, perhaps his band New Order will. If that's not enough, perhaps you've heard of his first band, Warsaw, later renamed Joy Division. It's been more than 40 years since Joy Division released its second and final album, Closer, just two months after the death of singer Ian Curtis. In celebration of the band's enduring legacy, Hook is taking the band's songs out on the road. While this is not the first time Hook and company have performed Joy Division's songs live, the Joy Division: A Celebration tour is the largest tour the band has done. Peter Hook & The Light will perform both of Joy Division's albums in full during Saturday night's performance. The band will also play early Warsaw material, tracks from the Still compilation and “In a Lonely Place,” which was written by Joy Division but became New Order’s first single.
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 3, Texas Trust CU Theatre, 1001 Texas Trust Way, Grand Prairie, $49.75+ at axs.com

In 2007, the music world was taken by storm when former Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant teamed up with country-bluegrass singer Alison Krauss. The pairing sounded strange on paper — Plant with a voice that defined stadium rock coupled with Krauss and her angelic country voice. When critics heard what the two had put together, however, everything made perfect sense. The T-Bone Burnett-produced album Raising Sand was met with nearly universal acclaim as critics lauded the surprising vocal harmony between the two and the overall craft of the album. In 2021, the trio of Plant, Krauss and Burnett worked together again to create Raise the Roof, which was released at the end of last year. Like its predecessor, the album includes a collection of country standards. Unlike its predecessor, it contains one original penned by Plant and Burnett. Roots-rock musician JD McPherson warms up the crowd.
Sub-Sahara
7 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 4, Three Links, 2704 Elm St. $10 at seetickets.com

Once upon a time (in 2018), Sub-Sahara was considered the best live act in Dallas. Known for its hard-driving drums, funk-punk bass and aquatic guitar, the trio rose to prominence in the local punk and post-punk scenes, balancing Cure-like lamentations with Bay Area punk attitude and a rhythm that is unshakably dancey. Back then, it was hard to find a weekend in which Sub-Sahara wasn't playing a show at a house, a record store, a tool shed or at Three Links, where the band will be this weekend celebrating the birthday of Eleventeen's Michael Cheney. These days, however, Sub-Sahara has been less than prominent, with the band playing just a handful of shows since returning from the pandemic. Instead, the group has been using the time to write and record new material that has yet to see the light of day. Perhaps you can hear it in the dark of a Sunday night. Eleventeen will be there, as will Ottoman Turks.
Korn
4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 6, Dos Equis Pavilion, 1818 First Ave. $29.50+ at livenation.com

Korn has had quite the evolution since its heyday, but then again so have so many bands that were stuck with the label "nü metal." Labeling aside, Korn's music production from 1994 to 2001 was absolutely solid, as it produced four classic alt-metal albums that still stand the test of time. Through several lineup shifts, Korn pressed on, experimenting with different sounds as a means to keep things fresh. Notably, the band released its MTV Unplugged album in 2007, which was filled with uncommon acoustic instruments as well as duets with names such as The Cure's Robert Smith and Evanescence's Amy Lee. The Path of Totality in 2011 featured production work from producers such as Skrillex and Excision. The band has since returned to form, releasing The Nothing in 2019 and Requiem earlier this year. Evanescence opens for Korn Tuesday night. Perhaps we will see another collaboration.
Tav Falco & Panther Burns
7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 7, Limbo Room at Ruins, 2653 Commerce St. $10 at prekindle.com

Musician, performance artist, filmmaker and author Tav Falco has been doing some version of his rock 'n' roll cabaret since the mid-1970s, when he teamed up with Big Star's Alex Chilton to create the first iteration of the Panther Burns. Over the course of four decades, nearly 100 musicians have passed through the ranks of the Panther Burns collective, including bluesman Jim Dickinson, singer-songwriter Jessie Mae Hemphill, punk bassist Mike Watt and many, many more. Due to the rotating cast of musicians, the Panther Burns' music is really difficult to narrow down to any specific genre. So, it's best to focus on the kind of performance you are going to see at a Tav Falco's show, and that is, to say the least, theatrical. Tav Falco & Panther Burns add rock 'n' roll go-go dancer supreme Moana Santana to spice up the night. Jimmy Dale Richardson and Labretta Suede and the Motel 6 will be there for the fun.