10 Best Concerts of the Week: Scarface, Echo & The Bunnymen, Rob Zombie and More

This weekend in North Texas, your concert week begins and ends with a goodbye. First, on Thursday, Houston Rapper Scarface will make his final North Texas performance at House of Blues, and next Wednesday, Texas music legend Robert Earl Keen will say goodbye to Dallas at his show in Deep Ellum. In between, however, there is always room to celebrate. First, Echo & The Bunnymen come to Dallas while local indie band Cool Jacket celebrates the release of its new video in Fort Worth. Later in the week, Wavves and The Get Up Kids come through town on separate anniversary tours, celebrating the albums that made them famous. You might also want to celebrate your Hot Topic phase at the Rob Zombie show Saturday night. If you just want to celebrate the end of the week, ODESZA has you covered in Fair Park, and if you want to rock, go to Three Links Friday night.
Scarface
6 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 18, House of Blues, 2200 N. Lamar St. $49.50+ at livenation.com

Houston rapper Scarface has been at it since he was 18 years old, and more than three decades later, he's going on a farewell tour and bringing the live band Formaldehyde Funkmen along with him. Scarface began his long career in hip-hop as part of the Houston rap collective Geto Boys with fellow rappers Willie D and Bushwick Bill, but after he released his solo debut, Mr. Scarface Is Back, in 1991, Scarface became much more popular as a solo act than he ever was as part of a collective. Scarface released 11 solo albums over the course of his career while continuing to write and perform with Facemob, The Product and the Geto Boys sporadically until the group disbanded in the mid-2010s amid legal and health troubles. Scarface's Dallas show will be his third-to-last before the tour heads to Austin and ends in Odessa on Aug. 27.
Echo & The Bunnymen
6 p.m. Friday, Aug. 19, House of Blues, 2200 N. Lamar St. $49.50+ at livenation.com

For over 40 years, Echo & The Bunnymen has created music that's dark and magical, releasing 13 albums that continue to delight the band's rabid fan base. Fronted today by original band members, vocalist Ian McCulloch and guitarist Will Sergeant, Echo & The Bunnymen has endured the last four decades amid many changes in personnel, including McCulloch's departure from the band in 1987, the death of drummer Pete de Freitas in 1989 and original bass player Les Pattinson's departure shortly after a 1997 reunion. The work McCulloch and Sergeant have released as a two-piece accounts for nearly half of the band's recorded output released over the second half of its career. While the band has undergone many, many changes throughout the years, one thing that remains intact is its ability to make music that gets audiences moving, even if that means gazing at one's shoes while doing so.
Cool Jacket
7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 19, The Post at River East, 2925 Race Street, Fort Worth. $10 at eventbrite.com

If you're in the mood for something local this Friday night, why not stumble into The Post at River East in Fort Worth. North Texas indie rock band Cool Jacket has just released a new video for the song “Sports Talk” off the band's new album, Pipeline. The video was made by friend of the band and local artist and founder of Unicorn Club, November Fest and the Off White zine series AHK. Mixing elements of digital, rotoscope and stop-motion animation, AHK has created a singular audio/visual experience for the band's new single. In celebration of the video's release, the band and AHK are hosting a show with special guests Teal Stripe and Jon Ruhl. A self-described working class North Texas rock band, Cool Jacket self-produced and released its debut album on Moonball Records in May. An indie-rock band with an emo heart, Cool Jacket makes fun music to fight back the boredom. 
Disowned
7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 19, Three Links. 2704 Elm St. $15 at seetickets.us

If you're looking for something a little bit harder for your Friday night, Three Links is the place to be with a stacked bill of metal and hardcore acts. Things kick off with thrash metal band Cold Case, which will be playing its first show ever. Next will be Crucial Times, a North Texas hardcore supergroup featuring members of Blot Out, Phorids and Corkscrew Nosedive that released its first EP, Behind Closed Doors, in January and is laying down tracks for something new. Woman-fronted, blackened crust metal band Wildspeaker takes the penultimate spot for what is sure to be an absolutely face-melting set. Austin hardcore crossover band Disowned headlines the night, supporting its most recent release, Empty Inside, which came out in April.
Lorelei K
7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 19, The Kessler. 1230 W. Davis St. $22 at prekindle.com

Dream pop singer turned group Lorelei K crafted its new album, Swimming Pool Eternity, with a full band as a way of balancing its signature avant-garde, ethereal pop sound with the weight of rock music. With lyrics written before and during the beginning of the pandemic, singer Dahlia Knowles has given listeners a set of songs that is even darker than her previous work. Composing from long, free-verse poems, Knowles transforms her words into prophetic hymns and dynamic pop rock anthems. A profound mix of post punk and art rock, Lorelei K's music is already an incredible show whether there is an audience or not. Dallas space-pop band Helium Queens kicks off the show with its always-mesmerizing performance.
Rob Zombie
5 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 20, Dickie's Arena, 1911 Montgomery St., Fort Worth. $39.50+ at ticketmaster.com

It feels like a turn-of-the-century trip to Hot Topic with Rob Zombie, Mudvayne, Static-X and Powerman 5000 pulling into Dickie's Arena in Fort Worth this weekend. Each band originates from that brief moment in the late '90s when industrial metal and nü metal converged into a menacing, technological nightmare filled with sounds of destruction and confounding lyrics. In 1998, Zombie released Hellbilly Deluxe, spawning two mega-hits, "Dragula" and "Living Dead Girl," and what either of those songs is actually about is anyone's guess. The same goes for Mudvayne's "Dig," Static-X's "Push It" and Powerman 5000's "When Worlds Collide." Listening back to each of these songs, what becomes most clear is that these bands weren't as concerned with what the music made you think as much as that it made you feel something at all. If you've got any pent-up aggression, this would be the place to feel it and release it.
ODESZA
6 p.m. Saturday–Sunday, Aug. 21–22, Dos Equis Pavilion. 1818 First Ave. $26.56+ at livenation.com

Washington electronic music duo ODESZA has been at it for just about a decade now, and despite the moniker The Last Goodbye Tour, Saturday and Sunday night will not be the last time ODESZA comes to town. ODESZA has built its following slowly over the last 10 years. After releasing its first album to little more than SXSW fanfare, the group's aptly named 2014 album In Return debuted at the No. 1 spot on Billboard's Dance/electronic chart and eventually broke into the Top 200, topping out at 42. The duo's next album, A Moment Apart, was met with mixed criticism for its big production values. Critics seem split on why a group that seems so set on introspection would need so much amplification behind its music, but what it really seems to reveal is just how loud what we keep hidden can actually be. Sylvan Esso, San Holo and Gilligan Moss open the show.
Wavves
7 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 21, Tulips, 112 St. Louis Ave., Fort Worth. $20+ at prekindle.com

Twelve years ago, Wavves released its iconic King of the Beach album, and to celebrate, the band is taking it back out on tour. The San Diego band had released two albums prior to King of the Beach, each one dripping in lo-fi noise-rock built for skaters like those who graced the covers of those albums. The third album was different, though. While the band maintained its deep connection to the lo-fi aesthetic, King of the Beach was anything but. Noisy, poppy and surfy, yes, but lo-fi? Absolutely not. Along with Grammy-winning producer Dennis Herring and Jay Reatard's rhythm section — Billy Hayes and Stephen Pope — behind him, singer and guitarist Nathan Williams turned King of the Beach into a blueprint for many surf-rock bands to come. Two Los Angeles bands, the indie-pop band BOYO and punk band Smut, will be helping Wavves round out the Texas dates of the tour before heading off to the Southwest for the tour's end.
The Get Up Kids
7 p.m. Monday, Aug. 22, Amplified Live, 10261 Technology Blvd. E. $25+ at seetickets.us

A major player in emo's "second wave" originating in the Midwest, The Get Up Kids made its first impression with the 1997 debut Four Minute Mile. Twenty-five years later, the band is taking the album back on tour with help from special guests Sparta, which features Jim Ward, Paul Hinojos and Tony Hajjar of the legendary post-hardcore group At the Drive-In. While Four Minute Mile was nowhere near as popular as The Get Up Kids' follow-up Something to Write Home About, the album helped the band grow a national fanbase that was captivated by the sound of a highly emotional band that had turned away from the aggression of hardcore that defined early emo bands like Dag Nasty and Rites of Spring toward the intricacy of math rock. The Get Up Kids also brought in an element of pop punk that made the melancholy lyrics more palatable to larger audiences and influenced bands like Blink-182, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance and so many more who found a home on alternative radio in the 2000s.
Robert Earl Keen
7 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 24, The Factory in Deep Ellum, 2713 Canton St. $39+ at axs.com

Robert Earl Keen has always sung that "the road goes on forever and the party never ends," but he never promised to stay on that road. In January, the Texas music legend surprised his legions of adoring fans by announcing his retirement from touring in September 2022. Keen assured fans that his decision to stop touring was not from illness or any kind of existential crisis. Rather, it was based on his desire to leave the road while he still enjoyed it. While Keen plans to continue writing, recording and releasing music until his heart stops, his last scheduled appearance in Dallas will take place Wednesday night at The Factory in Deep Ellum. After that, Keen will play one last show in North Texas at Billy Bob's Thursday night before heading south and culminating in a sold-out, three-night residency at the Flores Country Store in Helotes, Sept. 2-4.