> CONCERT SAMPLER
Live music highlights for the week of March 30 to April 5:
Sleaford Mods
It’s been some time for Jason Williamson and laptop-packing pal Andrew Fearn, who’ve been at this for a few years now but had to wait until the push from a Rough Trade signing (and getting the Lego treatment in a video) before finally making it to Toronto. Their latest album, English Tapas, takes its inspiration from a depressingly wry pub menu listing (scotch egg, chips, pickle, pie) — a metaphor for today’s England, according to Williamson, who amid Fearn’s spare beats delivers pointed, profane rants in a thick East Midlands accent that can get screamingly funny and spare no one, including of course himself. Will their workingman’s punk-hop resonate with T.O. anglophiles? As Williamson might answer — “f--off.” (Saturday, Opera House, doors 8 p.m.)
Judith Owen
This Welsh-born, L.A.-based pianist-singer-song writer calls herself a late bloomer but she’s a cheeky one — with husband Harry Shearer ( Simpsons, Spinal Tap, etc.), she’s been working on music and related projects for a while, including a smoky jazz-club “Big Bottom” and two wellreceived LPs of her own work. Bryan Ferry liked her version of his Roxy Music classic “More Than This” enough to get her out on tour with him and before she’s due back in Montreal to finish off that assignment on Monday, Owen and her band of session aces (bass man Leland Sklar among ’em) squeeze in a Sunday matinee show on the edge of Parkdale. (Sunday, Gallery 345, 4 p.m.)
Jain
Parisian artist Jeanne Galice, a.k.a. Jain, has style to burn and a little over a year after her debut LP’s release hit the heights back home, copping female artist of the year and best video for “Makeba” at February’s Victoires de la Musique awards. Now comes her first tour on this side of the Atlantic, following the same path taken a couple of years ago by fellow Frenchwoman Christine and the Queens, and she seems ready. Jain’s tribute to legendary South African singer Miriam Makeba is a nice place to start exploring what makes her sound different, as she lays African and Arabic accents onto dance-club thumpery. Pretty irresistible. (Monday, Mod Club, doors 8 p.m.)
Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness
Hitting his mid-30s, the L.A.-based piano man’s been through a bunch, including surviving leukemia (and in the wake of that, establishing the Dear Jack Foundation to aid youth cancer treatment). Those experiences inform his latest record, Zombies on Broadway, his most polished grab at pop’s brass ring yet — at its best, you gotta love his heart and with three bandmates and a sold-out house to help with the choruses (he does big chorus) there will be blood-pumping. Warm-ups from Aussie synth-pop duo Atlas Genius and California alt-rockers Night Riots would seem a decent match for starters. (Tuesday, Opera House, doors 6 p.m.)
Kate Tempest
South Londoner Tempest has taken literary prizes in poetry and extended into theatre and novel-writing, but having picked up punk poet John Cooper Clarke’s torch, she counts rap as her most natural channel: “My instrument is my voice, so when I heard the Wu-Tang Clan for the first time I was blown away,” she said. “Europe is Lost” is the centrepiece of third LP Let Them Eat Chaos, and the current showstopper — given her gift for the telling, economical kiss-off line, this is a night to circle where there’ll probably be a few in the house doubling up off her Sleaford Mods compatriots, the week’s other big travellers in incendiary verbiage. Pick of the week. (Wednesday, Mod Club, doors 7 p.m.)
Allison Crutchfield and the Fizz, Vagabon
The well-travelled Crutchfield is no stranger here, though her latest project is quite a turning: She’s very much at the front of the band now, and “the fizz” might also serve to describe the sugary voice and serrated wit she brings on her solo debut album Tourist in This Town, a breakup record that lands like a series of uppercuts to the heart of the matter. That makes her a good fit here, where saying goodbye and turning the page with spunk and vinegar very much matches the Silver Dollar in its final month. Add Cameroonian New Yorker Laetitia Tamko, alias Vagabon, who weaves airy, ambient threads into her guitar shredding on her first LP Infinite Worlds, and here’s a match of different but equally original takes on DIY noisemaking. (Wednesday, Silver Dollar, 8:30 p.m.)