Mike Brooks
Audio By Carbonatix
Maybe the only good thing about Daylight Saving Time ending this week is that an early nightfall means more time to make yourself concert-ready. This week’s concert lineup in particular is enough to have you ducking out of work early anyway. Your concert week begins with punk rock royalty in the center of Deep Ellum, while The Flaming Lips celebrate a modern classic in Fair Park. Over the weekend, giants from hip-hop, Americana and alternative rock find stages across Dallas and Fort Worth to celebrate the hits and look forward to the next chapter. The concerts keep rolling into the work week with Kim Petras touring two albums in The Cedars and alt-J celebrating its best album in Victory Park on Monday, Earl Sweatshirt and Wolfmother playing next door to each other on Tuesday and rock goddess Brittany Howard on Wednesday. So, why stress about the cold and early dark when there is so much warmth to be felt from stage lights?
Dead Kennedys
7 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 9, Trees, 2709 Elm St. $31 at axs.com
We’re opening ourselves up to a lot of criticism by placing Dead Kennedys on a Best Concerts list, but hear us out. Former lead singer Jello Biafra has derided the current iteration of the band as a great Dead Kennedys tribute band, but this comes after years of legal disputes about intellectual property that we have neither the time nor the energy to get into right now. As important as Biafra was to the formation and development of the band, he wasn’t everything. The sound of the band had as much to do with Biafra’s lyrics and vocals as it did with the buzzsaw guitar of East Bay Ray and the pick-driven tone of bass player Klaus Flouride. It’s hard to imagine the Dead Kennedys’ lyrics carrying the same weight without those two axemen. Dead Kennedys will be supported by The Queers and The Venomous Pinks as well as local punk band Noogy.
The Flaming Lips
8 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 9, Music Hall at Fair Park, 909 First Ave. $39.50+ at ticketmaster.com
Performing without an opening act, Oklahoma’s greatest psychedelic rock experiment invites you to celebrate the 2002 release Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots with The Flaming Lips Thursday night in Fair Park. The Lips had been around a full decade before landing their first buzzworthy video on MTV, “She Don’t Use Jelly,” which was a marked shift from the band’s earlier, more chaotic sound. From that point forward, the band’s reputation for experimentation grew. In 1999, they released Zaireeka, a four-CD set intended to be played on different CD players at the same time to achieve the album’s full effect. The band achieved its greatest acclaim in the ’00s, releasing Yoshimi and At War With the Mystics in 2006. “Do You Realize??” on the former album was once the official rock song of Oklahoma.
Lil’ Flip
9 p.m., Friday, Nov. 10, Trees, 2709 Elm St. $21 at axs.com
Representing the dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty South, “The Way We Ball” rapper Lil’ Flip was one of the many rappers to help bring Houston rap to the nation’s attention in the early 2000s. Not much is known about Lil’ Flip’s hip-hop career before he signed with SuckaFree Records in 1999, but what is known is that he was a battle rapper who earned a lot of respect for his freestyle skills in Houston’s underground rap scene. Flip’s first two albums put him on the radar of artists like David Banner, Three 6 Mafia and Ludacris who featured the rapper when everyone was grasping at that Houston sound. But Flip’s third album, U Gotta Feel Me, established the rapper as a true artist in his own right. It wasn’t long thereafter that Houston rap had had its moment in the sun, the major labels lost interest and Flip went back to being an independent, underground rapper. Today he sounds better than he ever did.
Better Than Ezra
6:30 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 11, House of Blues, 2200 N. Lamar St. $29.50+ at livenation.com
Somewhere in the U.S. right now, a radio station is playing one of the two big hits by ’90s alt-rock band Better Than Ezra. The band’s breakthrough single “Good,” from 1993’s Deluxe album, introduced the country to the Baton Rouge band that blended sincere emotion with crafty songwriting and catchy rhythms. In 1996, the band doubled down on dramatic intensity with “Desperately Wanting,” from the album Friction, Baby. For many, this is just about where they lost track of the band, and with good reason. Elektra dropped Better Than Ezra after the group’s next album, and the band saw only moderate success with sporadic releases on the Adult Contemporary charts until 2014 when it pretty much stopped – save for a non-album single release here and a one-off show there. This year, however, the band returned to form with new single “Mystified” and just last week released the country-influenced single “Contact High.”
Drive-By Tuckers
8 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 12, Tannahill’s Tavern & Music Hall, 122 E. Exchange Ave., Fort Worth. $32+ at ticketmaster.com
Co-founded by Patterson Hood, the son of David Hood from the highly influential Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, Drive-By Truckers have been creating deeply meaningful Southern rock for just under three decades now and have released something in just about every one of those years. This year, however, the Truckers decided to forego the demands of keeping up with its own prolific release schedule and instead re-released one of its greatest albums, The Dirty South. Originally released in 2004, The Dirty South was a follow-up to Drive-By Truckers’ Southern Rock Opera, both of which examined the beauty and flaws of Southern life and history. In June, the band released The Complete Dirty South, which added three new songs to the story as well as some additional vocal mixes on other songs. Alabama singer-songwriter Early James opens the show.
Kim Petras
8 p.m., Monday, Nov. 13, South Side Ballroom, 1135 Botham Jean Blvd. $59.50+ at ticketmaster.com
Earlier this year, Kim Petras was one of everybody’s talking points. The singer’s performance at the Grammys ignited a firestorm of right-wing blowback because of the overtly sexual performance of a nonbinary person, Sam Smith, and Petras, a trans woman. On the left, everybody could not get enough of that performance’s ferocity or how historic it was to see Smith and Petras win the Grammy Award for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for “Unholy,” making Smith the first openly non-binary artist to win a Grammy and Petras the first openly transgender artist to win a major-category Grammy. Since then, Petras has had quite the year, releasing not one but two full-length albums, Feed the Beast and Problématique, in June and September, respectively. Petras’ Dallas show will be one of the tour’s final U.S. stops before heading to Europe. DJ Alex Chapman will be there to warm up the crowd for Petras’ five-act concert.
alt-J
7 p.m., Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 13 and 14, House of Blues, 2200 N. Lamar St. $59.95+ at livenation.com
Named after the symbol created when you push the “alt” key and the “J” key at the same time on a computer (∆), English indie-pop band alt-J makes its way to House of Blues for a two-night celebration of its debut album, An Awesome Wave, which turned 10 this year. The album was a bold statement for the new band, filled with smoldering singles such as “Tessellate,” “Breezeblocks” and “Fitzpleasure.” From there, the band began a rigorous touring and recording schedule that didn’t really let up until they were done touring for third album, Relaxer, at the end of 2017. Five years later alt-J finally returned with a new album, The Dream. During the show, the band will play its debut album from start to finish followed by a selection of fan favorites. Berlin indie-rock band Meagre Martin will open.
Earl Sweatshirt With The Alchemist
8 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 14, The Studio at The Factory, 2727 Canton St. $40.50 at axs.com
Odd Future alumnus Earl Sweatshirt has been something of an enigmatic figure in the hip-hop world since his teens. The rapper was sent to a Samoan reform school after his mom found out about his involvement with the hip-hop collective, and he returned a changed musician. The rapper’s debut, Doris, surprised many critics with its intensely introspective songwriting and gritty production, noting that his voice, more subdued than the featured guests from the Odd Future collective, stood out in its emotional density. By the time the young rapper released his second album, I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside, he had completely left his past with Odd Future behind him. This year, the artist released Voir Dire, a collaborative album with producer The Alchemist. Opening will be NYC rapper MIKE and Detroit rapper Black Noi$e.
Wolfmother
8 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 14, The Factory in Deep Ellum, 2713 Canton St. $29.50+ at axs.com
The year was 2006, and everyone had just about had it with the garage-rock-gone-pop style of every band whose name started with “The,” played in the background of silhouettes dancing with an iPod. It was at that moment that Australian guitarist Andrew Stockdale blasted down the wall between garage rock and metal and reintroduced audiences to a sound that combined Black Sabbath’s heaviness with Led Zeppelin’s speed and power. Wolfmother had arrived. The world’s taste for hard rock has ebbed and flowed in the decades since, but one thing that absolutely has not changed is Stockdale’s allegiance to rock ‘n’ roll. There are few acts that approach the genre with as much purity and sincerity as Wolfmother, but opening act Fever Dog surely does.
Brittany Howard
8 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 15, The Factory in Deep Ellum, 2713 Canton St. $45+ at axs.com
It’s hard to describe the immediate impact Alabama Shakes had on the music world in the spring of 2012. Here you had this nothing little Americana band from Alabama trying to make it in a sea of other Americana bands, but Alabama Shakes had one thing none of the rest did – Brittany Howard. A queer black woman with a plus-sized body and bad eyesight, Howard had a gigantic blues voice and unmatched guitar prowess. Her standing in front of a bunch of country white boys immediately made Alabama Shakes the most important rock band on the planet. That was as short-lived as the band, which stopped touring in 2017 and went on an indefinite hiatus in 2018. Howard released her first solo album, Jaime, in 2019, which soared up the charts and landed on everyone’s year-end, best-of list. Last month, she released the title track from her upcoming album, What Now.
