Thanks in part to Don DeLillo's 1973 novel Great Jones Street, it didn't take long for the rock-star-toiling-away-in-seclusion narrative to go from the stuff of critical legend to obvious fodder for parody. Nevermind that two years later saw the release and instant canonization of Bob Dylan and the Band's long-buried The Basement Tapes—the inspiration, in fact, for the DeLillo character Bucky Wunderlick's "The Mountain Tapes." And so for listeners, the brilliant, hermetic artist has persisted, both as a reductive, suspect concept and as an undeniably seductive one. Listed here, some examples of the latter.

The D.C./Baltimore psych-folk act Le Loup retreated to a cabin in North Carolina to record much of its latest album, Family (out now on Hardly Art) and the result is druggy, country-fried, and poppy. Take "Grow," which sports what might be the best pairing of Beach Boys harmonies and the "Be My Baby" beat since, well, the Beach Boys. But the real innovation here is space: Where past Le Loup songs were concise and linear, Family's breathe and frolic and expand. The band—which performs Saturday at the Black Cat with Pree—recently recorded a session for All Our Noise. Check it out:

More records made in wooded seclusion after the jump: Reluctant backwoods Svengalis, some latter-day Johnny Cash, and brassy mountain ditties!

Dandelion Gum by Black Moth Super Rainbow (2007): The members of this blissed-out post-rock band cloak their identities with costumes, pseudonyms, and video-heavy performances, hoping to emphasize their music by de-emphasizing the personalities making it. As the group has acknowledged, this strategy of willful obscurity hasn't exactly worked out. No kidding: When you record your breakthrough record in a Western Pennsylvania cabin and sing trippy, hypnotic songs about witches, you're more or less asking to be typecast as backwoods Svengalis.

American Recordings by Johnny Cash (2004): The cabin that the late Johnny and June Carter Cash built in Hendersonville, Tenn., in the late '70s is definitely that, rustic patina and all. But in the early ’90s, when Johnny began collaborating with producer Rick Rubin for a tetralogy of morose, mostly acoustic albums, the space became a full-fledged studio, which is now run by Johnny and June's son, John Carter Cash. You can't find a knobsman more pro than Rubin, but in this case, he simply captured Johnny singing and strumming in his living room. How the Man in Black then wound up with this terrifying Anton Corbijn video, I can't quite say:

Cabin in the Woods by Retsin (2001): The name says it all. Tara Jane O'Neil and Cynthia Nelson met in the early ’90s when their bands, Rodan and Ruby Falls, shared a tour, and they soon became romantic partners and musical collaborators. The final Retsin album, made more or less in isolation in upstate New York, is dusty and acoustic, drawing as deeply from the well of American folk music as the '90s indie-folk milieu. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Retsin contributed to a Jandek tribute compilation around the same time.

Songs from the Black Mountain Music Project by Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn and Ginger Brooks Takahashi (2003): This between-album project found the Olympia, Wash., singer Mirah retreating for a month to the Blue Ridge Mountains with an eight-track and some fellow musicians. There, she recorded some playful ditties—more washboard band than precise, lo-fi folk—and found sounds. And then she laid down this brassy jam, which recounts, doo-wop refrain in tow, the month-long experience:

Image courtesy of the Cash Cabin Studio MySpace page.

I spent much of the last two years writing movie reviews, and I had just one ethical guideline for my morning press screenings: Don't take the food. So how should I have reacted when Tobacco, the frontman the costumed, dancing hype man of the acid-caked post-rockers Black Moth Super Rainbow shoved a stick of warm string cheese into my hand last night at the Rock & Roll Hotel?

It turns out the Pittsburgh quintet—more performance art than post-rock, really—thrives on blowing up expectations. The venue (quite full for a Sunday) seemed primed for something more studied—understandable, given that on record Black Moth Super Rainbow's verve and heavy use of Vocoder can suggest something out of the Battles playbook, with all the attendant influences. Live, though, the group was dancier, pithier, and freakier, as much flower-child bliss-out as art-school iconoclasm. Not just once was I compelled to abdicate my journalistic distance.

That abandon went for the audience, too, whose members quickly went from nodding their heads to shaking their tails. Decked out in a frayed gorilla costume and what looked like a bearded Bob Dylan mask, Tobacco the dancing furry emerged early from behind the projection screen blocking the rest of the band, and bolted into the crowd. There he largely stayed, hugging, grinding, and gifting with chocolate whomever crossed his path. Once or twice, he grabbed audience members and motioned for them to make out; other times, he whipped the peppiest attendees into a mosh pit. Like an art-damaged Jesus, Tobacco Gorilla Dylan sometimes fell onto the ground crucifixlike. And during the encore, he pulled a large chunk of the crowd on stage (good memories abounded). In other words: This did not look like your daddy's post-rock.

It didn't sound like it, either. In a watery and robotic voice, frontman Tobacco sang about heavenly bodies and forests and love while the rest of the group pumped out funky, heaving rhythms and blissful analog synthscapes. Black Moth Super Rainbow has opened for The Flaming Lips, and recently recorded with its producer Dave Fridmann; it was probably no accident that in pulsing songs like "Zodiac Girls" and "Sun Lips," the group seemed to share the Lips' crunchy aural texture and winking experimentalism.

The video projections were something far more homespun, but their presence said much about Black Moth Super Rainbow's performance-first-band-second M.O. Full of frolicking goths, oozing bodily fluids, and Sesame Street puppets from other countries, the videos looked like faux snuff films with a smile, cracked Appropriation art from the YouTube backwaters. Between the acid test on the screen and Tobacco Gorilla Dylan rocketing across the floor, the effect was sheer sensory overload.

And yet, all the visual stimuli meant that the sounds coming from the stage sometimes felt incidental. Or at least that's what I concluded afterward; during the show, my ecstatic brain barely produced a thought.

Good thing, then, that a short opening set by Dan Friel, who also sings and plays guitar in Parts & Labor, was a slightly more academic affair. Fiddling around a case of cables, pedals, Christmas lights, a drum machine, and a Hammond keyboard, Friel seemed to exhume infectious, high-register melodies from the ghost of Metal Machine Music, like Brian Eno mischieviously soundtracking home videos of his kids. Noisy and layered, Friel's music had the effect of an orchestra of broken computers and midis.

Strangely, both acts make music that sound hard to get on paper but fans find easy to love, a paradox not lost on Black Moth Super Rainbow. Before its set, the group screened a short film featuring clowns with knives in the first act and Brian Posehn (seriously) in the third. But the second part sent my pen flying fastest: a fake YouTube rant in which a self-appointed commentator laid out a list of his five least favorite bands. Topping the countdown, of course, was Black Moth Super Rainbow. "It just sounds like they're making music for printers," he moaned. "You must be a complete douchebag to listen to this music."

Photo by Benjamin R. Freed

• The Footprint in Hip Hop Tour: Method Man & Red Man, Ghostface Killah, Duo Live. 9:30 club. $35. All ages.
• Sophia Bass, Ruthi & the Tracers. Bangkok Blues. Call for price.
• Jimmy Thackery & the Drivers, Lil’ Ed & the Blues Imperials. Birchmere. $25.
• Head Automatica, Cubic Zirconia. Black Cat. $15. All ages.
• Carol Bui Butterflies, Impossible Hair, US. Comet Ping Pong. All ages.
• The Mass Shivers, The Alphabet, Hello Babies, Greenland, Wild Fictions. D.C. Mini Gallery. $5. All ages.
• Abigail Williams, Goatwhore,  Daath, Abysmal Dawn, Success Will Write Apocalypse Across the Sky, Fallen Martyr, Nightmare Ritual. Jaxx. $12/$15. All ages.
• The Winter Sounds, Go Home Robot, Achtung Panda. The Red & The Black. $8. +21.
• Bob Dylan. Ripken Stadium. Call for price.
• Bonjour Ganesh!, Ghost Light, The Mean Ideas. Rock and Roll Hotel. $10. All ages.
• Project Natale (Fri. & Sat. shows). Twins Jazz. $15.
• Sunsets with a Soundtrack: The U.S. Army Ceremonial Band. West Steps U.S. Capitol. Free.
• Girl Loves Distortion, Trophy Wife, Three Lexington Arrows, Fangs Out. Velvet Lounge. $8. +21.
• National Symphony Orchestra: “The Wizard of Oz.” Filene Center at Wolf Trap. $20–$48.

Saturday

• Trouble Funk 30th Anniversary Reunion Tribute to Dyke, w/ The Art of Junk, Da Mixx Band. 9:30 club. $20. All ages.
• Andy Paxon Band, Rose Between Thorns. Bangkok Blues. Call for price.
• Dave Alvin & the Guilty Women. Birchmere. $25.
• Extra Golden, Black & Tan Fantasy Band. Black Cat. $12. All ages.
• Bluebrain, Alfonso Bravo. Comet Ping Pong. All ages.
• Buster Brown & the Get Down. Dogfishhead Alehouse. Call for price.
• 2009 Capital Hip Hop Soul Fest. Marvin Gaye Park. Call for prices.
• Pants Velour, The Escape Artist, Reemstarr, Flex Matthews. The Red & The Black. $8. +21.
• The Mighty Heard, Baad Ingrish, Ndelible. Rock and Roll Hotel. $10. All ages.
• Satisfaction: A Tribute to The Rolling Stones. The State Theatre. $16.
• Nunchucks, 7 Door Sedan, We The They, DJ sets by Kingpin Soundsystem. Velvet Lounge. $8. +21.
• National Symphony Orchestra: “The Music of John Williams.” Filene Center at Wolf Trap. $20–$75.

Sunday

• Eric Weinberg & the Morrison Brothers. Birchmere. $35.
• Crystal Stilts, The Ladybug Transistor, Cotton Candy. Black Cat Backstage. $10. All ages.
• So Many Dynamos, Cast Spells, Detox Retox. DC9. $8. +18.
• Born Empty, Deville. The Red & The Black. $6. +21.
• Black Moth Super Rainbow, Dan Friel. Rock and Roll Hotel. $15. All ages.
• Sugarplums, Microwave Background. Velvet Lounge. $8. +18.
• Gordon Lightfoot. Filene Center at Wolf Trap. $22–$40.

Photo of Michael O'Neill, of The Ladybug Transistor, via MySpace.