Music Forecast 1.30–2.5: Jason Eady, MewithoutYou, Judah & the Lion, and more

Latenight Callers, Kentucky Knife Fight

If you’ve never seen the Latenight Callers, you should know that the local quartet has sexy on speed dial. Lead singer Julie Berndsen is a vampy force with a voice to match her pinup-girl look. On the band’s debut full-length, Songs for Stolen Moments, Berndsen slinks and
slithers through gothic synths and drumbeats like a starlet of film noir. On the other hand, Kentucky Knife Fight is far less treacherous than the name implies. The St. Louis band blends rowdy barroom blues with rowdier rock and roll. Jason Holler’s singing is just gruff enough to stand out against all the shrieking guitars. Local rockers Knife Crime open.

Friday, January 31, RecordBar (1020 Westport Road, 816-753-5207)

Jason Eady, with Courtney Patton

With his 2012 full-length, AM Country Heaven, Jason Eady seems to be single-handedly trying to save Top 40 country music. In the album’s title track, Eady attacks the clichés of “modern country” and blasts them with the good-old-cowboy wisdom of Waylon and Willie. January 21, the Mississippi-born Texas transplant released Daylight & Dark, an album that’s more introspective than confrontational. It’s a little too early to tell where he stands with FM country-music now, but his show at Knuckleheads could shed some light. Fellow Texan Courtney Patton shares Eady’s ability to make new country that’s as easy on the ears as the music that inspired it.

Friday, January 31, Knuckleheads Saloon (2715 Rochester, 816-483-1456)

The Sluts

Kristoffer Dover has a genteel way of explaining how his band, the Sluts, took its name. Three years ago, when Dover and Ryan Wise were fumbling through notes in a friend’s garage, they admittedly were “very successful philanderers.” The name of their duo seemed “honest and awesome,” Dover says. Now the Sluts are celebrating the release of Virile, their first full-length album. A nine-track collection of grungy, headbanging atrocities, Virile lyrically is a sordid trip through a few of Dover and Wise’s more salacious experiences, masked by fuzzy guitar, gruff singing and aggressive drumming. The Sluts remain a band best experienced live in all their unsanctioned glory. You can raise a glass or slam a shot and not feel a lick of guilt for the skeletons in your own closet.

Saturday, February 1, the Riot Room (4048 Broadway, 816-442-8179)

MewithoutYou

In 2001, long before hashtags were a thing, people were squishing words together without hitting the space bar — like MewithoutYou. For years, MewithoutYou existed and flourished between the post-hardcore and Christian alt-rock worlds. But the band’s latest album, 2012’s Ten Stories, bears little similarity to the music it created a decade ago. Sounding a little like Murder By Death meets a broken-music-box jingle, Ten Stories is an album driven by story line and best understood in context. Lead singer and lyricist Aaron Weiss has encoded his songs with enough historical and philosophical references to give an “Intro to College Writing” class a semester-long headache.

Tuesday, February 4, the Riot Room (4048 Broadway, 816-442-8179)

Andrew Ripp, Judah & the Lion

Andrew Ripp wants to be a pop star. That much is clear on his latest full-length, the Charlie Peacock–produced Won’t Let Go. (It’s also obvious given his Bieber-like hair swoop and leather jacket.) The Illinois native is not a bad singer. His songs are catchy, and he seems to be on the path to wherever it is he wants to go. So if you see him at the Bottleneck, maybe you’ll have an “I remember when” moment with your kids 20 years from now. The real star of the evening may be Nashville’s Judah & the Lion. Despite its Mumford tendencies, Judah & the Lion delivers the sort of rough-edged Americana that makes you feel at home. Frontman Judah Akers was raised on gospel and church music, and you can hear plenty of those influences in his all-together-now choruses.

Wednesday, February 5, the Bottleneck (737 New Hampshire, Lawrence, 785-841-5483)