Since J. M. Synge's 1903 play The Shadow of the Glen portrayed a corpse awakening onstage to find his "widow" cavorting with a homeless tramp, Irish dramatists have favored narratives that juxtapose the hilarious and the macabre. Conor McPherson, a Dublin-based playwright, screenwriter, and director whose film The Eclipse opens this Friday in U. S. theaters, shares this proclivity. McPherson's most recent play The Seafarer, staged on Broadway in December 2007 and in D.C. last January, features the devil incarnate playing high-stakes poker with a trio of working-class drunks, the dialogue crackling with ad hominem jibes and Mephistophelian musings.

The Eclipse pursues a more somber tack than The Seafarer, though McPherson finds moments of comic relief in his gothic narrative about a widower haunted by apparitions of his deceased wife. As McPherson tells it, "All stories have light as well as shade. Life can be pretty shocking, very crazy, but there certainly are little moments of joy."

At just 38, McPherson has accumulated a body of critical praise as well as multiple awards, including a Laurence Olivier Award and a Critics' Circle Award for The Weir in 1997, as well as three Tony nominations. His film Saltwater won the CICAE Award for Best Film at the 2000 Berlin Film Festival, and The Eclipse received raves at Tribeca last year. As both a writer and director of his own plays and films, he has emerged as a multi-talented auteur with a wholly distinctive voice and aesthetic.

In contrast to the repartee between drunks and the devil in The Seafarer and the monologued ghost stories that shape The Weir, The Eclipse involves carefully composed portraits of the Irish landscape and extended single-shot scenes that evoke the isolation of  protagonist Michael Farr (Ciarán Hind). Maneuvering within a five-week shooting schedule and a two million-euro budget, McPherson took what he calls a "Russian Roulette" approach to making the film.

"A lot of scenes were shot in one take, as that was all I had," he says. "I forbade myself even the option to edit and spent time taking just one long shot, one camera move."

That approach, McPherson insists, helped him hew to an old-fashioned style of filmmaking.

"I was trying to emulate the visual style of The Exorcist and The Shining, which have a very assured, formal kind of filmmaking style.... People might have thought at the time that it was slightly crazy and difficult to pull off, but I knew if it worked it would seem more assured."

Giving equal screentime to workaday details and supernatural questions, The Eclipse dramatizes Michael's struggle to preserve the memory of his dead wife while functioning in the realm of the living. Michael volunteers at an international literary festival in his seaside town, shuttling two writers between readings and social engagements and finding himself embroiled in a love triangle with the arrogant American novelist Nicholas Holden (Aiden Quinn) and mystery writer Lena Morelle (played by the Danish actress Iben Hjejle, known on the American screen as John Cusack's epic ex Laura from High Fidelity). (An intricately choreographed, nearly slapstick boxing match between the two men relieves the tensions wrought by their rivalry and suggests that McPherson refrains from taking his material too seriously.) Lena shares Michael's interest in the paranormal and, despite Nicholas's constant stalking and drunken threats, helps Michael navigate the sequence of nightmares and supernatural visions that hinder his ability to move on.

McPherson views ghosts and supernatural experiences as metaphors for "the unknown, the existential and the unfinished business of our lives." In The Eclipse, moments of horror-film imagery are meant to draw the audience into Michael's tormented psyche—as opposed to "just freaking [them] out."

"When Ciarán Hinds is having these really terrifying moments, the audience experiences it with him," McPherson says. "The horror becomes a visual manifestation of what he's struggling with, the grief and the feelings that can't be expressed. By struggling through it he becomes free."

Like The Exorcist, The Eclipse draws on Catholicism as a source for some of its eerier elements: McPherson confronts the audience with crosses, graveyards, statues of Christ, and wounds that resemble the stigmata. The story is set to choral arrangements in Latin that echo an evensong service. (McPherson, along with his wife Fionnuala Ní Chiosáin, had a hand in arranging the soundtrack.)

“As a kid I was really fascinated with ghosts and the supernatural,” McPherson says. “I think it might have had to do with being brought up as a Catholic. The holy ghost, and Jesus dying on the cross . . . it all seemed so dramatic."

The Eclipse opens Friday, April 9 at the Landmark E Street Cinema

Mostly playing music from his most recent album, 2009’s Bromst, the Baltimore native accomplished a feat that can prove difficult for experimental artists to pull off: the ability to stretch one’s tolerance for abstract sound while inspiring the type of vertical bouncing and fist-pumping usually found at a Journey cover band show. In this contradiction lies Deacon’s brilliance, though, because the theatricality that supplements the music does not read as attempted irony. Deacon closed the show with “Wham City" (the clincher of Spiderman of the Rings) as his entire band and touring crew fell off the stage to surf the sea of upraised arms. Left alone onstage, sweating through a one-piece painter’s suit and tinkering earnestly with his buttons and knobs, Deacon cut the figure of a mad scientist in a lab whose product inarguably transformed the world into a far better place to be.

The entire show was recorded and is available for streaming at NPR Music.

Given Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan’s storied relationship with booze and drugs (a relationship which has sidelined him on occasion during his own band’s performances), the moment when he emerged onstage at the 930 Club Wednesday night for the last of three D.C. shows came as something of a pleasant shock. Throughout the Pogues’ long and tumultuous lifespan, MacGowan’s onstage antics have grown into the stuff of legend. Whether it be “that time Shane traded shirts with a random audience member” or “that time Shane booted on a crowd in Dublin,” MacGowan-related lore has staked out a precious place in Irish rock history. In recent years, though, rumors have begun to circulate that the Pogue party might be nearing its end.

As the lights dimmed and a machine began to belch puffs of smoke over and across the stage, the crowd grew abuzz with nervous energy, until the eight Pogues, dressed in various degrees of black, emerged from the wings. One man, thick-bodied and shaggy-haired, swayed forward to the mike, wielding a cigarette and half-smiling at the crowd through a sunken mouth. The crowd seemed to breathe a sigh of relief before erupting into cheers—Shane MacGowan, abysmal dentistry notwithstanding, was alive and, it appeared, well.

With little ado, the Pogues kicked off their set with “Streams of Whiskey,” which, surprisingly, did not noticeably rouse the crowd. The second number, “If I Should Fall From Grace With God,” got people slightly more excited, though it took guitarist Phil Chevron letting go his instrument and gesturing to the crowd in “pump it up” fashion for the energy to begin to build. After these first two songs, MacGowan muttered an almost incomprehensible “thanksalot” and flashed a thumbs-up before swaggering offstage, leaving vocalist and tin-whistler Spider Stacy to lead the band into a lyric-less yet rollicking jig. “Ya havin’ a good time?” Stacy asked, gesturing offstage after MacGowan. “He’s always havin’ a good time.” As if called to arms, the crowd grew increasingly frenzied, welcoming MacGowan back onstage with raised cans of Guinness.

The Pogues, who have been around since 1982, still play with the glee and enthusiasm of adolescents throwing down for the first time (with the exception, perhaps, of banjo-player Jem Finer, who looked as though he had been dragged from bed moments before the show). Accordionist James Fearnley, possibly the most charismatic Pogue, leapt off the drum platform onto the edge of the stage, pumping his instrument so close to the audience that a stretched-out hand or two might have touched him.

Musically, the Pogues these days offer nothing new. The band has not dropped an album since 1996’s Pogue Mahone, recorded just before their breakup, and since reuniting they tend to cycle through the same repertoire of roughly twenty songs: On this year’s tour, the Pogues are playing almost identical sets. Whatever the formula, it works. Closing with two ballads (“Dirty Old Town” and “Rainy Night in Soho”) and two punky slam-dance instigators (“The Sickbed of Cuchulainn” and “Sally MacLennane”), the Pogues leave their audience sweaty and sated. As usual, the band seals the deal once and for all with “Fiesta,” during which Spider Stacy reliably bangs a metal tray against his forehead in tune with Andrew Rankin’s percussion. By this point last night, the mosh pit was in full force: elbows were raised, bodies slammed. Eardrums, by the end, were shot to hell.

So if the Pogues are still rattling through their old bag of tricks, what is it about their shows that continues to inspire audience members to slam their bodies up against one another? Judging by last night’s show, it is the band’s ability to regenerate while never straying far from their original identity. These days, they display a discernible yet remarkably placid awareness of its own mortality—which, at this point, clearly depends upon Shane’s well-being.

During his final moments onstage, as his bandmates cranked out the final bars of “Fiesta,” MacGowan caught sight of an uncorked bottle of white wine perched on a stool to his right. Without hesitation, he clasped the bottle by the neck, sized it up with a mischievous glance, and began pouring it down his gullet, allowing the liquid to douse his chest and puddle on the stage. Watching, one could not help but raise a can of Guinness, praying to God that this rock legend might soak our humble stage in booze once again….

Eric Earley of Blitzen Trapper

Around 11:45 p.m. last night, I heard it straight from the horse’s mouth—the horse being, in this case, Marty Marquis of Blitzen Trapper: the crowd of fans who braved last night’s ice-capped sidewalks to see BT and Alela Diane perform at the Black Cat was…"yeah, pretty stiff."

Lounging by the soundboard after his band’s sold-out show, Marquis offered this answer to my question about the notably somber mood that prevailed throughout Blitzen Trapper’s no-nonsense, efficiently satisfying set. Marquis and his four bandmates, as well as opener Alela Diane, hail from the Pacific Northwest—Portland, to be precise—and the entire show reflected a sense of longing for a forsaken yet much wished-for home. At times, lead vocalist Eric Earley and his four fellow “Trappers” seemed to have been struggling to overcome a resistance to the crowd’s adulation—as if becoming popular and remaining authentic were mutually exclusive projects.

Critical consensus lauds the band for its ability to walk the line between earthy, old-timey folk themes and cutting-edge variations in rhythm and instrumentation. An introductory run-through of the band’s most recent album, Furr (2008), yields thirteen tightly produced songs, only one of which—the eponymous first single—exceeds four minutes in length. Although BT has moved away from the bold experimentation that characterized Wild Mountain Nation (2007), Furr’s atmosphere ranges from Tom Waits-style twang, on such songs as “Stolen Shoes and a Rifle” and “Black River Killer,” to the glam-rock audacity of “Love U.”

The history behind Blitzen Trapper’s wildly successful “spring tour” with fellow Oregonian Alela Diane is pretty standard: promising band self-produces a handful of albums (in BT’s case, three), gets picked up by a prominent indie label (Subpop), collects positive—if pompous—reviews from iconic music sources (Pitchfork doled out comparisons to Bob Dylan and Neil Young), and sells out venues across the country. With the giddiness of young children, Blitzen Trapper posts comments under the “Tour” section of its website—the listing for their February 19th show at Chicago’s Empty Bottle reads: “TWO SHOWS! 10pm and 7pm, both SOLD OUT. Holy crap! Thank you Chicago!”

Considering the frenzy of excitement currently circulating around this tour, the band’s austere performance was somewhat perplexing. Earley, the only band member to have foregone facial hair for this particular performance, hardly cracked a smile—except when prefacing his grandma’s favorite song, a folk ditty from the twenties about cocaine. Altogether, Earley plays as though he might be paying a price for something, or giving the audience members what they want out of some sense of reluctant altruism. This does, though, make for a good rock show. For all the kudos that the band receives for its willingness to blur genre lines, Blitzen Trapper plays most poignantly when focused on extremes: either the spare, plucky harmonization of a song like “Lady on the Water,” or the all-out rock degeneration of the show’s finale, which Earley titled “The Gold for Bread Suite.” The Trappers, evidently, are Renaissance men when it comes to instrumentation; Michael Van Pelt, on bass, added a plastic bird whistle to his ensemble to use during “Furr.”

If Earley and his boys had trouble accepting their audience’s thirst for a bit of throw-back country comfort, Alela Diane and her four backup musicians (one of whom happened to be her father) provided, as one fan professed to me, “power and inspiration.” From the moment that the Black Cat’s tightly packed crowd laid eyes on Diane and her gang of long haired, vintage-styled troubadours, a sensation of bi-coastal intimacy emerged, thanks not only to Diane’s remarkably soothing voice, but more so to the wonderfully casual, socially intimate manner in which her band invites the audience into its world.

Sticking mostly to songs off her new album To Be Still, Diane mesmerized the crowd to a degree that became almost uncomfortable. For a female singer-songwriter these days, the waters of indie rock celebrity are difficult to navigate, given the apparent similarities between many of the genre’s forerunners. Diane’s unpretentious manner—most endearingly, the way she giggles while triple-fisting bottled water, red wine and coffee in between songs—seems fragile, especially given the comparisons with Cat Power, Sandy Denny, and Joanna Newsom already abound. Call it a pleasant surprise, call it heroine worship—either way, the crowd received Diane gratefully. As a front-row fan explained to me during her set, “She fills me up. We are blessed to have her here. I am happy—are you happy?”