Over and Under

One big show, one smaller

You’d be forgiven for thinking country music had wrung the last metaphor from its heartsick vernacular, but Margo Price might prove you wrong. “Been riding high on low expectations / It’s like singing loud with no one left to hear,” Price sings on “Hurtin’ (On the Bottle),” sounding like the spiritual ward of genre elders like Emmylou Harris and Loretta Lynn. After a decade of toiling the Nashville circuit, there are now plenty willing to hear Price’s Nixon-era twang, thanks to Jack White’s Third Man Records, which released her solo debut this year. Catch her and guitar whiz William Tyler at the Bluebird Theater on Oct. 24. Tickets: $15-$18 via bluebirdtheater.net. Like any good cult meeting, stumbling into a Mountain Goats show is an anthropological curiosity. John Darnielle commands the attention of his zealous onlookers with little more than the power of his voice and homespun music anecdotes. That’s the power of the now 25-year-old singer-songwriter project, which can shrink a big room and render a cozy venue into a bedroom set. Expect that at the Hi-Dive, where he’ll play in Denver as a duo (Peter Hughes will fill in on the bass) for the first time on Oct. 27 and 29. The Hi-Dive shows are sold out, but you can catch Darnielle presenting the horror movie “Targets” at the Alamo Drafthouse on Oct. 28. — Dylan Owens