> CONCERT SAMPLER
Live music highlights for the week of July 13-19. Kelly Lee Owens Wales native Owens gave up a nursing career to pursue her musical passions, going from hawking festival merch to interning at an English indie label and finally going her own way after falling in with a group of Londoners DJing and producing. At 28, this local debut — part of her first North American tour — comes with some anticipation thanks to a string of singles and a debut LP of pulsing, melancholic techno-pop. More seasoned Barcelona house counterpart John Talabot returns to a dance club he knows well as the headliner — precede it with Dears duo Murray Lightburn and Natalia Yanchak getting stately stringed accompaniment at Roy Thomson Hall’s outdoor patio (a 6 p.m. start and free, but get there early) and you’ve got yourself a long, well-rounded summer night. (Friday, Coda, 10 p.m.)
Main Source and the Sorority With roots in Toronto and New York, threesome Main Source broke big in 1991 with Breaking Atoms, an album that quickly became much more: a hip-hop classic for its forward-thinking production, rangy sampling, wicked scratches and the pointed verses of the Large Professor. A silver-anniversary vinyl reissue has led to a couple of reunion gigs this year for core emcee Professor and DJs K-Cut and his brother Sir Scratch, and that includes Saturday’s gig as headliners for the Unity Festival that this year turns a decade old. Down the bill for a show that’ll run into the night, the Sorority are four female emcees from Toronto who last spring revisited and updated an R&B classic in “Ladies Night.” Between them all, themes of empowerment and historical memory underpinning this annual festival of all things hip hop appear to be well-served. (Saturday, David Pecaut Square, 3 p.m.)
Metallica You want it loud? These heavy metallists are right around their retirement-planning years but can still brave tinnitus and bring the decibels and, late last fall, their tenth studio record Hardwired . . . To Self Destruct. Given their spotty track record and intramural shenanigans, it has them in decently thrashing form and apparently harmonious as hell as they traverse the cavernous stadiums of their World wired tour. This stop has them jousting for the Legends of the Week prize against a wide range of veteran tourists including Iron Maiden, Tom Petty, Thurston Moore, Jill Scott and Ride — on sheer wattage, riffage and testosterone they would seem to be up to it. (Sunday, Rogers Centre, doors 6 p.m.)
Julie Byrne You want it quiet? Buffalo’s Byrne will give you that, delivering first-person observationals that amplify her moments of solitude (from touring, a day at the shore, walking in the woods or stepping outside a relationship to look back in). “I was made for the green — made to be alone,” she puts it on “Follow My Voice,” and having worked as a ranger in Central Park she does write from experience. Just her voice and a subtly fingerpicked acoustic guitar is enough to give the material wings and considerable warmth — she creates a beautiful sonic oasis and gets support from matching tourmate Johanna Warren, who guested on Byrne’s winter release Not Even Happiness and that collaboration may well be reprised here. Pick of the week. (Tuesday, Great Hall, doors 8 p.m.)
Re-TROS A number of classically trained Chinese virtuosos have been playing Toronto’s leading concert halls, but Rebuilding the Rights of Statues, or Re-TROS, land in humbler surroundings for their local debut: a 200capacity Dundas West joint befitting their Beijing-underground post-punk. The threesome has been around since 2003, along the way spiking their insistent grooves more and more with big fat synths and electronics — they punch way above their weight, with throbbing jamout “At Mosp Here” from upcoming LP Before the Applause hitting as heavy as anything LCD Soundsystem have thrown down. Local fellow post-punk trio Mimico are worthy openers. (Tuesday, Baby G, doors 8 p.m.)
Mbongwana Star Out of the boom-bust Kinshasa street band Staff Benda Bilili, bandleading composers Coco Ngambali and Theo Nzonza got back in their wheelchairs (they both use them) at the front of Mbongwana Star, a younger, louder and snottier step to the cutting edge beyond their predecessor group’s already fresh take on Congolese rumba funk. The fronting pair and five bandmates tone down the spacey electronic embellishments of their studio work to bring prime guitar-fed Afro-futurist beef live, and have held their own when sharing stages with Malian desertblues titans Songhoy Blues, including in March at the Apollo in New York. They didn’t make it up here on that springtime run so these first local chair-spinnings look very enticing. (Wednesday, Great Hall, 9 p.m.)