The 10 Best Concerts of the Week: Mariah Carey, Jeff Tweedy and More

This week offers some nostalgia from Motown legends The Temptations and The Four Tops, '80s pop icon Lionel Richie and '60s rock band The Zombies. Pop superstars Mariah Carey and Kelly Clarkson play some big concerts this week, Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy plays some new songs at The Majestic Theatre on Sunday night plus more.


Mariah Carey
8 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 27 at The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory, 316 W. Las Colinas Blvd., $49 and up at livenation.com

Wednesday night’s appearance at Toyota Music Factory will be the initial outing on Mariah Carey’s Caution World Tour. The pop diva has grown into one of the highest-selling musical artists of all time in the years since her early-’90s debut. And though she continues to record new music and can still hit the high notes with anyone in the business, Carey, in recent years, tends to be seen as more of a celebrity personality than a recording artist. She’s been in a number of high-profile advertising campaigns, held feature roles in an abundance of films and infamously hosted season 12 of American Idol, an experience she cited as one of the worst of her life. As evidenced by her recent Las Vegas residency, the stage seems to be where she’s most comfortable, so expect a soulful evening of tunes both new and old, as she kicks off her tour in style here in our backyard. Jeff Strowe


The Temptations & The Four Tops
7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 28 at The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory, 316 W. Las Colinas Blvd., sold out

Motown legends The Four Tops and The Temptations play a double-headlining gig at The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory. The two groups rose to fame in the 1960s and cranked out some of the catchiest earworms of the time. The Four Tops' "Reach Out (I’ll Be There)" and "I Can’t Help Myself" sent them up the charts while The Temptations' "My Girl" and "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" got regular spins on the radio. Diamond Rodrigue



Kelly Clarkson
7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 28 at American Airlines Center, 2500 Victory Ave., $39 and up at ticketmaster.com

Nearly two years after its release, Kelly Clarkson is finally touring on her 2017 album Meaning of Life. The first American Idol winner will be back to perform for fans around her home city of Fort Worth. The album is her first since completing her contract with RCA Records. She signed on to a long-term deal with Atlantic Records and started executive producing with Craig Kallman. Clarkson wanted to step away from pop music and give Meaning of Life a more soul and R&B sound. Although the album is different, it still obtained a similar response to her previous releases. The album peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart just like My December. Jacob Vaughn


Lionel Richie
9 p.m. Friday, March 1 at WinStar Casino, 777 Casino Ave., Thackerville, Oklahoma, $95 and up

Lionel Richie is easy like Sunday morning but will make his next local appearance on a Friday. That evening, March 1, he will play a show at the Global Event Center at WinStar World Resort and Casino. Despite launching a new home decor collection sold exclusively at JC Penney, the longtime crooner isn't giving up his day job. Jeff Strowe

Metric & Zoé
with July Talk, 7 p.m. Friday, March 1 at South Side Ballroom, 1135 S. Lamar St., $41

Metric kicked off a huge co-headlining tour through the U.S. earlier this month with Zoé. The Canadian indie-rockers just released a seventh studio album, Art of Doubt. Zoé recently won a Grammy for Best Latin Rock, Urban Or Alternative Album for Aztlán. Last year they were nominated for three Latin Grammy awards. DR


The Zombies
with Liz Brasher, 8 p.m. Friday, March 1 at The Kessler. 1230 W. Davis St., sold out

What's left of the Zombies is still worth seeing in 2019. The key duo of Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone are joined by three apt players to perform the joyous psychedelic pop of yesteryear. Normally the band plays bigger venues, but for this sold-out show, it's at the wonderfully intimate Kessler. The band is not some oldies hits revue. Expect to hear the radio hits, but plenty of album cuts people have loved, like "Care of Cell 44" and "I Want Her She Wants Me," as well as Argent songs. This is definitely a great opportunity to see music from the 1960s that still resonates. Eric Grubbs


Car Seat Headrest
with Naked Giants, 7 p.m. Friday, March 1 at Canton Hall, 2727 Canton St., $20 and up at ticketfly.com

In the early days of his band, Car Seat Headrest, Will Toledo would often find himself screaming vocals into a microphone from the safety of a church parking lot, so as not to wake his parents, who he lived with at the time. The band’s come a long way since then, and their latest project seeks to rectify some of the once necessary haphazardness of one of their first outings. Released last February, Twin Fantasy (Face to Face) is a rerecording of an album Toledo originally released on Bandcamp in 2011. Featuring reworked lyrics and much improved production quality, the update does justice to the original’s hybrid of existentially harrowing self-reflection and hyper-literate indie pop. Showcasing a more confident Toledo, Car Seat Headrest added 19 more cities to their tour last October, with Dallas being the second-to-last stop. They’ll be playing on stage as a seven-piece band, bringing opening act Naked Giants on to man additional instruments as well. Assuming Toledo has paced himself over the course of his last 63 tour dates, this show’s more than worth the price of admission. Nicholas Bostick


Adia Victoria
9 p.m. Saturday, March 2 at Three Links, 2704 Elm St., $12-$15

Adia Victoria makes funereal blues steeped in the cultural and social weight of Southern politics and the anxiety that engenders in people of color. Her creaking, haunted ballads are slow to unravel but quick to get under your skin, animated as much by emotional scar tissue as heady cynicism. Inside her dusty, shadowy narratives, religion, alcohol, mourning and emotional intelligence mix, producing something akin to old-world storytelling with a distinctly millennial bent. There’s no sulking in Victoria’s music; instead there’s a celebratory, if fatalistic, spirit that drives her songwriting, an optimism made explicit in her flinty voice and bouncy rhythm sections. Music like this has a way of bridging generations — wrestling with fundamental human suffering never goes out of style. Jonathan Patrick



Big Ass Brass Band
7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 2 at Box Garden at Legacy Hall, 7800 Windrose Ave., free

The six-piece brass band Big Ass Brass Band isn't like your typical horn section. They make every concert feel like a party with a unique fusion of funk and jazz. The band also received a nod for best jazz act at the Dallas Observer music awards. DR


Jeff Tweedy
with Buck Meek, 7:30 p.m. Sunday, March 3 at Majestic Theatre, 1925 Elm St., $39.50 and up at songkick.com

As a Grammy-winning indie songsmith, Jeff Tweedy is about as endearing and emotionally powerful as they come. With his band Wilco, Tweedy has consistently imbued the familiar textures of Middle American indie rock with a depth of genuineness so often lacking in the genre. If there’s one consistent thread in the artist’s subject matter, it has something to do with the struggles of being a human seeking connection amidst the mundanity of everyday life, and how intensely essential empathy is to that humanity. Last year saw Tweedy’s first collection of entirely original solo material, Warm, and the results felt wholly fresh and surprisingly poignant for an artist so far along in a successful career. The songs are sparse, brittle, at once melancholic and triumphant. The distance between the heart of Tweedy’s art and listeners has never felt so intimate. His music is now more skeletal and less adventurous than previous work, sure, but that’s exactly the point. Mortality, addiction and familial love don’t require fancy vehicles to click into place. If anything, such adornments only serve to muddy the signal. Over 30 years into this music thing, Jeff Tweedy is still finding new, soul-stirring ways to make human connections. Jonathan Patrick