Tuesday: EMPRESS OF at Rickshaw Stop
Meet your new favorite pop star in the making: Lorely Rodriguez. The 23-year-old songwriter/producer hails from Brooklyn but recorded her debut album Me on a journey to Central Mexico where reflection and newfound frontiers inspired beautiful musical meditation. The album is taking off after earning critical kudos from Pitchfork and the Guardian. Nice to meet you, Lorely.
Tuesday: Titus Andronicus at The Chapel
New Jersey rockers Titus Andronicus typically masquerade as punk troubadours, but there’s a profound ambition underlying this band's working ethos. Taken as a whole, Titus Andronicus songs amount to rock symphonies and statements on the human, American condition. 2010’s The Monitor still stands as one of the finest concept albums of the last decade, and should be considered required listening for any indie rock nerd.
Wednesday-Saturday: San Francisco Symphony at Davies Symphony Hall
Soprano Susanna Phillips performs Knoxville, Barber’s brilliant rendering of small town America. Don’t be surprised if Phillips seems especially inspired. It’s been a big month for the singer — usually she gets her name in the paper for winning hearts and minds through music, but she just got her mug in the New York Times for getting married. Phillips’ performance comes before Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony dig into Tchaikovsky’s wondrous Pathétique Symphony.
Friday: R. Kelly at Oracle Arena
R. Kelly wrote 462—not a typo: 462!—songs for his latest album The Buffet, and we’re not talking just hooks. He told Entertainment Weekly “they’re not ideas, they are whole full songs. I wanted to be sure that I really nailed it to the point that when I started breaking it down to the 14, 15, 16 songs that go on the album that I had more than enough to choose from, and they would all be great choices.” So expect new material from R. Kelly at Oracle, and expect them all to be hits. Also, expect this masterpiece...
Friday-Sunday: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2015 at Golden Gate Park
See the link above for the full lineup, but do not miss out on freebie viewings of the following notables: local weird-folk band Sonny and The Sunsets, country rock mainstay Steve Earle & The Dukes, gypsy punk outfit DeVotchKa, Wilco hired assassin Nels Cline & Julian Lage, O.G. indie darling Conor Oberst, local classic rock staples Boz Scaggs, late-breaking soul phenom Charles Bradley & His Extraordinaires, Americana songstress Neko Case, up-and-coming singer-songwriter Angel Olsen, and living legends Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell.
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