Music Forecast 5.8-5.14: Lyle Lovett, the Dandy Warhols, Slayer, and more
Slayer
Slayer is bringing a raging storm of blood and doom to the Uptown Theater Tuesday night. Consider this your PSA: Avoid that section of Broadway if your ears are sensitive and you can’t stomach speed rhythms and doomsday lyrics. For those with stronger constitutions, this weeknight show is particularly worthy. Gary Holt, guitarist for opening act Exodus and onetime Slayer band member, fills in for guitarist Jeff Hanneman, who died a year ago. The set list is reportedly classic tracks from the early Slayer catalog, so there’s a lot to look forward to here. Bonus: Suicidal Tendencies is opening.
Tuesday, May 13, the Uptown Theater (3700 Broadway, 816-753-8665)
Lyle Lovett
The longevity of Lyle Lovett’s expansive career — 11 full-length studio albums and various film and TV roles over more than three decades — is due to the artist’s most dominant feature: character. Lovett has never compromised his eclectic leanings. His albums can be as much western swing as orchestra. Though Lovett filled 2012’s Release Me with cover songs from the likes of Townes Van Zandt and Chuck Berry, the four-time Grammy winner creatively reimagined them as though they were his own. Experience Lovett Friday at the Uptown.
Friday, May 9, the Uptown Theater (3700 Broadway, 816-753-8665)
The Dandy Warhols
Four years ago, I interviewed Courtney Taylor-Taylor while he was touring in support of the Dandy Warhols’ 10th album and “best of” compilation, The Capitol Years 1995–2007. Our conversation then was like most of the Warhols’ catalog: vastly entertaining and wildly tangential. We talked about books and eating organic (the Warhols are from Portland, Oregon), and Taylor-Taylor gave a vivid account of the best Bordeaux he had ever drunk. After 20 years, the band has little left to prove. In March, the Warhols released a live album, Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia: Live at the Wonder. This recording is the live-show experience of the band’s seminal third album and a wonderful slice of 1990s nostalgia. The Warhols’ show Friday night at the Riot Room is an excellent excuse for a trip down memory lane if you can get a ticket. (The show is sold out.)
Friday, May 9, the Riot Room (4048 Broadway, 816-442-8179)
Water Liars
Water Liars began in 2011 as a songwriting partnership between guitarist Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster and drummer Andrew Bryant. The Mississippi–via–St. Louis band’s debut record, Phantom Limb, was a shaky promise of tender-footed talent; the nine folky tracks sounded more like bedroom demos than fully realized songs. Then 2013’s Wyoming hammered out a few of Kinkel-Schuster and Bryant’s ideas — mainly the trials and tribulations of folk-rock artistry — and left in some purposeful sonic wrinkles. In February, the band released a self-titled full-length album that managed to finally shake off some of the heaviness that the duo had been carrying around. It’s a satisfying record from a band whose sound has grown quite a bit in the last three years.
Tuesday, May 13, Czar (1531 Grand, 816-421-0300)
Queens of the Stone Age
Queens of the Stone Age make a type of music I’ve categorized as “scumbag rock.” Maybe that has something to do with my distaste for the off-color character of ex-bassist Nick Oliveri (famously fired from the band in 2004 and arrested most recently in 2011 on charges of domestic abuse, following a standoff with a SWAT team) and the macho-rock lyrics that QOTSA gets off on. Still, the band’s 2013 album, …Like Clockwork, is an impressive and heavy affair, with guest appearances by Trent Reznor, Jake Shears and Elton John, of all people. Let the Queens have their swinging egos — the live show should be worth it.
Tuesday, May 13, Starlight Theatre (4600 Starlight Road, 816-363-7827)
