If folk music’s prime currency is authenticity, Langhorne Slim might well earn some crooked eyebrows. Classically trained at the SUNY-Purchase conservatory, Sean Scolnik donned loafers and floppy hat and named himself after his hometown in the tradition of all those rail-hoppin’ ramblers who used to do that. The blogosphere gobbled up this aesthetic and and have cast Slim in the role of Guthrie-Dylan inheritor he came dressed to play.

Really, Slim doesn’t make music like that at all. His music is much more poptimistic, with an evangelical energy that has led some critics to call his music religious (and not in the way Bob Dylan equated Woody Guthrie’s music with religion). Slim’s lyrics lunge, albeit passionately, with a blade that is shinier than it is sharp. Cat Stevens, with his spiritual conceit, is an apter analog—or the Avett Brothers, with whom Slim has toured.

The irony, of course, is that once Langhorne Slim is amputated from the Guthrie-Dylan continuum the question of authenticity ceases to pose a problem, and we can appreciate Scolnik for what he is: An upbeat kid with a folk-gospel bent who makes dynamic, non-threatening, thoroughly enjoyable pop music.

Langhorne Slim plays tonight at the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hotel with Dawes, left-coast country rock act whom Rolling Stone last week certified as “breaking,” and who occasionally go Steinbeck all over their blog. Doors at 8 p.m.; $12-$14.

Compared to the utter preposterousness that was Lady Gaga at the VMAs, last night’s show in Richmond was surprisingly tame. Still, if you’ve got tickets for Gaga’s show tonight at DAR Constitution Hall, you’re in for a pretty bizarre spectacle. Lots of photos after the jump and at the full gallery.

The fans were as much fun to photograph as Gaga’s performance was:

Full gallery here.

If having your first name added to the name of your band is a bellwether for burgeoning celebrity, then you could say 22-year-old Davy Knowles has arrived. A British blues guitarist with a soulful baritone, Knowles has sort of an Stevie Ray Vaughan-meets-Richie Havens thing going on. His band, Back Door Slam Davy Knowles and Back Door Slam, released an album earlier this summer called Coming Up For Air. Produced by Peter Frampton, the record is very much pop with a blues sensibility, rather than the other way around.

In many ways, Knowles & BDS sounds like the younger brother of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals; both jam-ish blues-pop bands with lead singers who have great pipes and love to show them off—the main difference being that Knowles plays guitar, and Potter plays keyboards your heartstrings.

Speaking of Knowles’s weapon-of-choice, the dude flat-out shreds. For guitar nerds, this will be well worth the drive to Alexandria.

DAVY KNOWLES & BACK DOOR SLAM, TONIGHT @ BIRCHMERE, 7:30 P.M. $20

Some 14 years after their first big hit, No Doubt is still a far bigger draw than I would have imagined, nearly selling out the 25,000-capacity Nissan Pavilion. After watching their stage show, that fact becomes a bit more comprehensible: these are incredibly professional entertainers with hit song after hit song after hit song to draw from. And they treat their fans well, particularly one whom Gwen Stefani pulled up onstage for a hug and a quick photo of the two of them with tens of thousands of cheering fans in the background.

Paramore, who in a lot of ways are the new generation’s version of No Doubt—complete with their own rabid and rapidly expanding fan base— were a fitting opener alongside Swedish new-wavers The Sounds.

Check out more photos after the jump or the full gallery at Flickr.

No Doubt:

Paramore:

The Sounds:

Full gallery here.

Yeah, that’s right. Had enough of SXSW coverage and all that damn hipster music? Armed with photo pass and camera and ready and willing to destroy any last vestige of my music-snob credibility, I joined thousands of fans, parents and curious observers for the biggest concert in town last night, Britney Spears and the Pussycat Dolls at the Verizon Center.

Photos of the Pussycat Dolls are in this Flickr gallery; for contractual reasons I have to post the Britney Spears photos right here on the blog, so you’ll find a huge number of photos after the jump, as well as some brief thoughts on the little bit of the show that I saw.

Given that listening to a Britney Spears concert is no different than listening to a Britney Spears CD—no music is actually played live as far as I can tell—there is obviously a huge emphasis placed on visuals. This concert was a monstrously over-the-top spectacle, even for the three songs I was allowed to photograph. A 15-minute circus act (acrobats, dancers etc) preceded the show proper, which kicked off with Spears being lowered from the rafters. It only got more ridiculous from there. This was one hell of a well-produced show, with 20 dancers onstage (or in the air) with Spears at all times, all kinds of props, pyro, video interludes, costume changes between every song, a bizarre S&M theme for the first couple songs… the works.

It’s arguable whether or not things were ever different, but for several years now (especially since Blackout) Spears has been little more than a delivery mechanism for other people’s songs. With her vocals auto-tuned into robotic oblivion, the only thing remaining for her to contribute are her dance moves. At least for what I saw, she was actually upstaged in that department by The Pussycat Dolls, who seemed more energetic, their choreography less dependent on gimmicks and elaborate props. This is kind of amazing considering that they were absolutely awful when I saw them open for Christina Aguilera a couple years ago—yes, I have a bit of history of going to concerts like this.

In fact, I’ll quote my review of that show, equally applicable to this one even though I only saw a bit of it:

Overall, this show was something that was definitely worth seeing once, if only for the ridiculous, gaudy spectacle of it all… It was really fascinating to see major-label corporate music in all its “glory” — I’ll always be much more comfortable in a dingy rock club or a tiny jazz club, but seeing what the majority of the country thinks of when they think of “live music” was quite the eye-opener.

(A final aside: one criticism people level at current-day Spears is that she doesn’t look like she did 10 years ago, and that’s one I vehemently disagree with. Of course she doesn’t look like she’s 18 anymore. She actually looks like a real person now, fit but not model-skinny, which is surely a healthier example for the mobs of teenage girls attending her shows.)

Click on any of the thumbnails below for a full version. Please do not re-use these photos.

“I’m like a sugar bomb,” Lenka Kripac sings in “Skipalong,” and that about sums it up.

The former vocalist/keyboardist for Australian post-rockers Decoder Ring played a decidedly un-post-rock set at DC9 last night. In sharp contrast to her old band’s material, Lenka’s solo writing is basically straight-up indie pop, and almost relentlessly upbeat—even the breakup song (”Knock Knock”) is bouncy. She’s the kind of artist many of the folks at BrightestYoungThings would totally lose their shit over, and even I—as a grumpy City Paper curmudgeon—found myself caught up in the feel-good vibes.

That said, Lenka’s self-titled album is a concise 40 minutes, but in concert things began sounding a bit samey about halfway through. Thankfully, there were two pretty nifty surprises towards the end of the set: first, an a capella piece that Lenka sung against a backing of radio static, which is essentially her solo music’s only nod to her post-rock past. The second surprise proved to be the highlight of the show; the encore, according to the setlist, was supposed to be a cover of M. Ward’s “Vincent O’Brien,” but for whatever reason the band decided to do something that Lenka rather sheepishly introduced as “a live disco remix” of her single “The Show.” Hilarious, amazing, and, all things considered, pretty awesome.

Also of note were openers The Spring Standards (below), whose energetic indie-rock was very well-received indeed. They were led by a vocalist with a remarkable range and cleverly overcame their lack of a drummer by splitting a full drum kit up among their three members: one member with the bass drum, one with the snare, one with the hi-hat. Worked surprisingly well.

I took an absurd number of photos, mostly because Lenka proved to be one of those performers who seems to gravitate towards cameras.

EMWIH’s early releases suggest that the members of the band (one of whom is Nevershoutnever’s Christian/vegetarian Christoph(f?)er Drew) opted for sampling chunks of the styles that influenced them instead of coming up with a coherent sound of their own.

The only two tracks I’ve listened to more than once contain geeky screaming and deathcore growls, super-slow, doom-metal breakdowns, lots of palm-muted rhythm lines, sparse electronica beats, judicious use of double-bass, and saccharine pop-punk choruses. There’s even a pirate “Argh!” somewhere near the end of “Two Armed Man,” and a tribute to Leave it to Beaver The Andy Griffith Show in “The Point.” But neither combination amounts to much. If I want post-hardcore, I’m going to listen to Burden of a Day, Oceana, or Underoath, or five or six of the other bands that do the crowd proud (and if I want new post-hardcore, I’m going to listen to Hand to Hand–post forthcoming). There’s better pop, too, like The Academy Is… (see next week’s City Lights) and Emery. And it’s telling that the more-focused “The Point” is a better song.

Ultimately, the price of being artsy–if mindless eclecticism counts as art–totals up to a limited true-fanbase, a possible quick rise to indie fame, and ultimately, obsolescence. So long as they’re working off a gimic, EMWIH will never hear their songs on indie FM stations, and I doubt they’ll release anything  beyond an EP. In other words, if they last more than a season, it means that EATMEWHILEIMHOT! will have picked a genre and stuck with it.