While big name contributors like Stephen Malkmus, Bob Nastanovich, and Will Oldham have come and gone, David Berman has remained the lone constant of Silver Jews. Geography is one big reason for that—he opts to hide out in Nashville, which isn’t much of an indie-rock magnet. Since the early ’90s, his outfit has been erroneously misconstrued as a Pavement side project, and Berman’s rare touring and erratic behavior (including a suicide attempt) didn’t make things much clearer. Now that he’s recording and performing more often, Berman’s better shown his solitary and unyielding artistic vision, which on the new Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea incorporates breezy country meanderings and sardonic lyrics that are practically literary achievements in their own right. SILVER JEWS PERFORM WITH MONOTONIX AT 8 P.M. AT THE BLACK CAT, 1811 14TH ST. NW. $13. (202) 667-4490. —Maggie Serota

Friday:

Though five seasons of The Wire exposed the masses to many aspects of Baltimoriana, there are a few things the show failed to properly address—crab chips, Natty Boh, and Baltimore club music among them. Luckily, B-more club doesn’t need David Simon to speak to its ubiquity and versatility when it’s got Tittsworth. The D.C. native, who calls his style “Baltimore-club-inspired,” is best known for blazing DJ sets and remixes. But on his debut album, Twelve Steps, he turns to making original tracks, and the entire production is a dancefloor murderer, mixing hip-hop, R&B, electronic music, and a little bit of pretty much everything else. And Tittsworth does it in a way that erases the “international night” stigma that folks outside of B-more often attach to club music of any kind. “Drunk as F*ck,” featuring Bay Area rappers the Federation, is exactly the sort of ’hood-tested, hipster-approved track that distinguishes club music from white-boy electronica or drag-queen house: Its driving beat and raunchy lyrics make for a smutty good time, tailor-made for after-hours play on 92Q and capable of pulling even the most booze-blistered onto the floor. “Bumpin’” is hilariously built around the House Party (and house party) scenario of some guy knocking his drunk ass up against a DJ setup. But unlike Bad Breath Bilal, Tittsworth makes the most of the situation and works every DJ’s least favorite sound—an unintentional scratch—into the mix. There’s a charm to choppy, mad-scientist splicing, and instrumental tracks such as “4.21” and “Haiku” are dense productions designed to move bodies and induce deep nods of the non-heroin-induced variety. But there’s also a lot to be said for the seamless, collaborative blending of beats and vocal work, and Twelve Steps really soars whenever it pairs Tittsworth’s production with guest singers and rappers. None of the artists on the disc are sampled—they’ve all tailored their work to each track, which elevates the disc above typical DJ mash-ups and remixes. “Here He Comes” features identical-twin duo Nina Sky and Miami rapper Pitbull, who know their way around a dance track. Same goes for the sticky “Almond Joy,” featuring Michelle Bell and Roll Wit Us All-Stars and “WTF,” featuring Kid Sister and Pase Rock. The best guest by far, however, is Tittsworth’s fellow new-school Baltimore DJ-scene standard-bearer Dave Nada, who offers up a mix of the track “B-Rockin’.” It’s a 3-minute shout-out to some of the best dance DJs on the planet. You know, Scottie B, Diplo, Frank Ski—and, of course, Tittsworth. —Sarah Godfrey

Tittsworth performs Friday, Aug. 29, at the 9:30 Club.

Over the last decade or so, My Bloody Valentine frontman Kevin Shields has needed merely to mention the idea of a new album in order to provoke a revived interest in shimmery, fuzzy, blaring early-’90s shoegaze. Now that Shields has made good on his threats of an MBV reunion, a lot of current bands could be considered a little redundant. It certainly puts Philadelphia-based experimentalists Relay in a tough spot. On one hand, a band could do worse than to be compared to My Bloody Valentine, as Relay often is; on the other, Relay is genuinely inventive, taking the Valentine formula and adding a few new tricks to it. The twinkles, twirls, and swells of electronic ambience that sometimes underpin Relay’s sonic atmospheres are delicate and unobtrusive, and the quartet’s yawning surges of sound and understated vocals distinguish it from the comparison du jour. RELAY PERFORMS WITH TIMBERWOLF DIVISION, GIRL LOVES DISTORTION, AND HIMALAYA AT 10 P.M. AT THE VELVET LOUNGE, 915 U ST. NW. $8. (202) 462-3213. —Matthew A. Stern

Friday-Sunday:

If age seems to be one of Mose Allison’s lyrical preoccupations, it’s also one of his distinctions. The 80-year-old singer/pianist was born in Mississippi at a time when jazz and blues were more or less interchangeable—and in his music, they still are, along with R&B and even postwar pop crooning. Though Allison says his genre-blurring has made it difficult to maintain a steady audience, those who’ve remained loyal include Van Morrison, Bonnie Raitt, Leon Russell, and the Who—all of whom have recorded some of Allison’s stellar compositions. But good as those covers are, Allison’s songwriting is best experienced through the filter of the maestro’s furiously rhythmic, greased-lightning piano technique and his wise but youthful voice. He makes the advancing years seem all but irrelevant, save for the years of study evidenced in the musical encyclopedia that Allison squeezes into every performance. THE MOSE ALLISON TRIO PERFORMS AT 8 AND 10 P.M. AT BLUES ALLEY, 1073 WISCONSIN AVE. NW. $25. (202) 337-4141. —Michael J. West

Saturday:

Is there anybody in the District who’s aged better than Chuck Brown? He got his start 40-some years ago, at a time when the local music scene wasn’t the easiest place to break out of. There were plenty of clubs back then—just very few labels and a whole lot of schemers. But Brown kept at it, wringing blues from his guitar in backyards for beer and barbecue. Graduating from the barbecue circuit to soul covers to inventing that go-go beat should have been enough. Now add a few more decades of steady gigs, hard playing, some tragedy, and contending with being called a legend everywhere you go. But as he gears up for tonight’s 73rd-birthday tribute, Brown remains the coolest guy gigging on any area stage. And since making Fenty look soulful at his inaugural ball, Brown can add miracle worker to his list of honorifics. Wind us up, Chuck. BROWN PERFORMS WITH CHOPTEETH AT 8 P.M. AT THE 9:30 CLUB, 815 V ST. NW. $25. (202) 265-0930. —Jason Cherkis

Plenty of Terrence Howard’s standout film roles have showcased his love of music—he rapped in Hustle & Flow, played guitar in The Best Man, and acted alongside OutKast (Idlewild) and 50 Cent (Get Rich or Die Tryin’). That speaks to his deep musical background: His grandmother, Broadway great Minnie Gentry, taught him to play piano, and he grew up listening to albums by his great-granduncle, jazz legend Cab Calloway. On his debut album, Shine Through It, Howard, who sings, writes, and plays guitar, does right by his influences, assembling a batch of jazz, R&B, and neosoul tracks. His crack backup band, led by bassist and co-producer Miles Mosley, moves from flamenco guitar to big-band-era jazz, but the disc’s finest moments are the ballads. On “Love Makes You Beautiful,” Howard’s deep baritone nicely blends with the humming female backup vocals, and the title track is a soulful, uplifting romantic tune. HOWARD PERFORMS AT 7:30 P.M. AT THE BIRCHMERE, 3701 MT. VERNON AVE., ALEXANDRIA. $25. (703) 549-7500.—Alfredo Flores

Friday:

Whether the world needs another garage-rock band is debatable, but Atlanta’s Howlies manage to pick some meat from a pretty dry bone. Deploying a spitfire rhythm section and wall o’ jangle, the quartet wildly careens through tunes that sound like a juvie-hall sock hop. It’s increasingly difficult for skinny boys with guitars to make three-minute ditties sound dangerous, but the Howlies come close, which could be why they caught the attention of producer/über-cad Kim Fowley, ex-manager of teen leatherettes the Runaways. (Fowley shepherded Howlies through their debut, Trippin’ With Howlies, which comes out this fall.) Even without that influence, the band would still have teeth. Howlies supposedly formed after wolves attacked members during a group camping trip, which, if olden legends are to be believed, can produce hairy results. THE HOWLIES PERFORM WITH FOREVERALWAYS, THE BARBERRIES, AND THE DAISY CUTTERS AT 9 P.M. AT THE RED AND THE BLACK, 1212 H ST. NE. $8. (202) 399-3201. —Casey Rae-Hunter

Sunday:

If the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” is the Of Mice and Men of psych-rock songs—a concise and to-the-point classic—then Oneida’s Preteen Weaponry is head music’s War and Peace. On its new album, Oneida piles on the krautrock noodling, synth wobbles, and ponderous medieval melodies as if its members were getting paid by the amount of disk space their composition was taking up. The result is a single song that clocks in at a nerve-frazzling 39 minutes. But the Brooklyn-based band puts all of that invested time to good use. “Preteen Weaponry” evolves into a rich and textured epic jam that draws inspiration from across the weirdo-music timeline. The album sounds like a microcosm of the psych fan’s lifespan—listening to it is like watching an entire family of stoners grow up, get married, slowly drift apart, and die. ONEIDA PERFORMS WITH APES AND DIRTY FACES AT 8 P.M. AT THE BLACK CAT BACKSTAGE, 1811 14TH ST. NW. $12. (202) 667-4490. —Aaron Leitko

Aesop Rock has improved his diction considerably since his celebration of the 9-to-5 grind on 2001’s Labor Days. He no longer swallows whole words while he spits, though his rhymes—generally, metaphors about the neurotic obsessions he shares with Woody Allen (sex and death)—remain willfully dense and obtuse. Aesop Rock’s core constituency prefers its man to retain his air of mystery; there is actually great fun in being able to decode only one-tenth of what the orally fixated emcee is going on about, even with the benefit of a lyric sheet and a dictionary. On last year’s return to form, None Shall Pass, Aesop Rock ditched the nebulous commercial overtures of his recent work in favor of spare backing tracks from frequent collaborators El-P and Blockhead. On “Citronella,” he simultaneously pokes fun at mass media and grouses about the decline of Western civilization. Pop a Prozac and try not to get too bummed. AESOP ROCK PERFORMS WITH ROB SONIC AND DJ BIG WIZ AT 7 P.M. AT THE 9:30 CLUB, 815 V ST. NW. $20. (202) 265-0930. —Nick Green

“The future ain’t what it used to be,” Yogi Berra once said. But when it comes to dystopian futures, pop culture has been remarkably consistent—for decades artists have been sharing pretty much the same vision of the apocalypse. Earlier this year, director Neil Marshall’s overlooked genre gem Doomsday featured a gang of marauders whose look was cribbed wholesale from The Road Warrior, from the quaint rooster mohawks to the BDSM leather fixations. The film’s lack of originality made the film no less enjoyable—there was a palpable sense of fun, and enough tweaks to the formula to justify its existence. In a similar fashion, Tucson synth-punk outfit Digital Leather explores well-mined veins of dark, sci-fi-themed electronic rock. But its latest release, Sorcerer, succeeds thanks to its ability to mix up tempos and styles, and the band injects each song with hooks more infectious than the airborne Reaper virus. The electronic instrumentation and disaffected vocals on the album’s closer, “Black Flowers From the Future,” recall synth-punk pioneers Suicide and the Units, but Digital Leather adds its own crackling stabs of synthesizer and a garage rock enthusiasm. Befitting an album obsessed with circuitry and robots, Sorcerer has a binary arrangement: The first half features Digital Leather honcho Shawn Foree working solo (save a Flying Lizards-like vocal contribution by Devon Disaster on “You Will Fall”), while the second features Foree and a full band, including former Reatards member Ryan Wong on drums, performing a live set at Gonerfest 2 in Memphis, Tenn., in 2006. The home-recorded songs from the first half are generally more minimal and subdued, but a lively cover of the Urinals’ “Hologram” proves that the solo songs are anything but listless. “Simulator” launches Sorcerer with a keyboard drone that sounds like a swarm of robotic bugs before Foree, sounding slightly robotic and British, asks “Simulator, Simulator/Can you please adjust the fader?” The most notable track, “Modulated/Simulated” is the slowest and moodiest, evoking early Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and Tubeway Army, as Foree sings mournfully of being unable to feel anything on his “robot skin” and that he’s living in a “modulated, simulated, painless place called love.” It’s a sad little number, though not as sad as the fact that “She Had a Cameltoe,” a rollicking, catchy screecher from the live set, is saddled with a title and lyrics more worthy of the Bloodhound Gang. Luckily, Sorcerer has more songs like “Scar Me” and “Dance Til Dead,” which balance dissonance and danceability. Digital Leather’s brand of synth-punk is worth hearing today, even if it doesn’t substantially add to yesterday’s version of the end of tomorrow. Digital Leather performs with Panther, Troll Tax, and the Shudders at 9:30 p.m. at Velvet Lounge, 915 U Street NW. $8. (202) 462-3213.
—David Dunlap Jr.

Pictured: Friel
Saturday:

Felix Mendelssohn was one of those kids you hated in middle school. His dad was a banker, his grandfather was a famous Socratic philosopher who inspired the Jewish Enlightenment, his sister married some hotshot mathematician—you know the type. Felix himself was a child prodigy who drew comparisons to Mozart and began writing major orchestral pieces while still in diapers. Whether it was piano lessons in Paris or aesthetics classes in Berlin, nothing was too good for daddy’s little man, who still found time to learn four languages and hobnob with the likes of Hegel and Goethe. He also composed 12 sinfonias (Italian-inspired baroque symphonies) by the time he was 14, about the same age you were devoting your considerably more limited creative talents to bad mix tapes and acne cover-up. The Marine Chamber Orchestra performs his Sinfonia No. 12 in G minor, along with the second of only two violin concerti written by Bach, and Dvorak’s Serenade in E for Strings. THE MARINE CHAMBER ORCHESTRA PERFORMS AT 7:30 P.M. AT NORTHERN VIRGINIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE’S SCHLESINGER CONCERT HALL AND ARTS CENTER, 3001 N. BEAUREGARD ST., Alexandria. FREE. (202) 433-4011. —Mike Paarlberg

Sunday:

“Noise music” isn’t often uttered in the same breath as “accessible,” but Brooklyn’s Dan Friel has routinely found ways to connect the two. As the frontman for the quartet Parts & Labor, Friel has penned fist-pumping anthems for several years, using annihilated keyboard lines to complicate the group’s songwriting. The increased emphasis on pop-punk vocal hooks since its 2003 debut, Groundswell, may not be particularly appealing for noise purists, but it’s certainly exposed the band to a larger indie-rock constituency. Friel’s first solo full-length is a place where everyone can get along, championing addictive electronic melodies among breakbeat blasts and digital overload. The fittingly-titled Ghost Town plays like an 8-bit epic Western, crafted from layered choruses of an old toy keyboard but still packing the punch of a Parts & Labor track. “Noise pop” may seem like an oxymoron, but in Friel’s case, it works. DAN FRIEL PERFORMS WITH INSECT FACTORY, MIND OVER MATTER MUSIC OVER MIND, AND PROJECTION: ZERO AT 9:30 P.M. AT THE VELVET LOUNGE, 915 U ST. NW. $8. (202) 462-3213. —Cole Goins

El Vez, the “Mexican Elvis,” is probably the most famous high-concept Elvis impersonator around, and he’s definitely the one with the most impressive place in underground music history. Watch the seminal Los Angeles punk documentary The Decline of Western Civilization, and you’ll see him in his pre-Presleyian incarnation as Robert Lopez, member of attitudinal synth-punk act Catholic Discipline. Dig deeper into punk history, and you’ll find he’s a founding member of the Zeros. In the years since Lopez took on the El Vez persona, he’s brought a punk mind-set to the world of Kingly simulacra: His larger-than-life, kitsch-meets-critique act employs sneers and pelvic thrusts that once left parents petrified in the service of more meaningful commentary. Rewriting Presley’s classic “Suspicious Minds” as a scathing attack on immigration policy in “Immigration Time,” he raises questions about race that surely never graced Graceland. EL VEZ PERFORMS WITH HUMAN HANDS AT 9 P.M. AT THE BLACK CAT, 1811 14TH ST. NEW. $15. (202) 667-4490. —Matthew A. Stern

There’s no greater disservice a music critic can do to Jukebox the Ghost than compare the trio to Ben Folds Five. Considering that both bands center around a singing keyboardist, though, it’s understandable. What sets Jukebox the Ghost apart is Ben Thornewill’s dynamic and uninhibited vocals, paired with a relentless whimsy and optimism in his lyrics—an attitude that’s far from the anger and melancholy that colors Folds’ output. Of course, the trio is comprised of recent graduates of GWU who haven’t had enough time to truly experience the exquisite agony dished out by employers, estranged spouses, or student-loan officers yet. Given the fact that the members have so far managed to bypass the cubicle farms and make the band something of a full-time effort, their charming Peter Pan sensibility looks like a wise strategy. JUKEBOX THE GHOST PERFORMS WITH THESE UNITED STATES AT 7:15 P.M. AT FORT RENO PARK, 3950 CHESAPEAKE ST. NW. FREE. (202) 355-6356.

The sixth man ever to set foot on the Moon, Edgar Mitchell isn’t shy about his claim that extraterrestrials are known by the government to have frequented our planet. If Mitchell’s conviction that aliens visited Earth before he visited space is a burden he bears mostly alone, he’s at least struck a chord with Arizona indie-rock act Mostly Bears. The band’s debut full-length, The Ed Mitchell Clinic, pays tribute to the country’s foremost explorer of real-life X Files, and though its content isn’t extra-terrestrially experimental, it is ornate, darkly dramatic rock that connects the arid American Southwest and the airless atmosphere of the dark side of the moon. Given how the music yelps, howls, and chimes through spacious sonic territory, it’s no surprise that the trio is so enchanted with outsider attitudes about life in space—even if they come from a guy who’s been there. MOSTLY BEARS PERFORMS WITH BAD PANDA AT 9 P.M. AT THE RED & THE BLACK, 1212 H ST. NE. $8. (202) 399-3201. —Matthew A. Stern