If you’re in the mood for some absurd circus metal, tonight’s your night to head out to the ‘burbs. Two of the most ridiculously over-the-top experimental metal acts you’ll ever hear are headlining a night at Jaxx in Springfield. Japan’s Sigh and Quebec’s Unexpect (pictured) play the kind of symphonic metal that you can’t help but laugh at, at least at first, because it’s just so bombastic and (some might say) pretentious.

But criticizing either of these groups for being too bombastic is kind of like criticizing Britney Spears for being too pop. It might be a meaningful statement of opinion, but as any kind of objective description or evaluation it just misses the point. These bands revel in their shamelessness and take bombast to the level of art form. If there was ever anything deserving of the slightly horrifying label “prog metal,” these guys are it.

If that sounds awful, consider this: I’ve seen Unexpect play Jaxx twice already this year, and each time I saw them I came away a bigger fan. After spending enough time with their records to actually figure out what’s going on in their insanely twisty compositions, a certain naive charm emerges. You have to admire bands like these who are completely unafraid to throw it all out on the table at once - hitting the listener with obvious jazz, rock, metal and classical influences one after the other.

Additionally, Sigh are kind of a historically significant band, as the only non-Scandinavian group that was signed by the infamous and short-lived Øystein Aarseth (aka Euronymous) to his infamous and short-lived Deathlike Silence Productions label. If that’s not black metal cred, nothing is.

On Sunday, Comet Ping-Pong (otherwise known as Ground Zero of everyone’s favorite northwest D.C. culture wars) plays host to a pair of bands that have recently been profiled here and in the print edition: Extra Life, whom I wrote about a couple months ago, and Tussle, whose latest record is reviewed in this weeks’ print edition.

So I suppose we’d be remiss not to mention that show in this space; but more than that, there’s no way I’m missing Extra Life in the flesh. Fans of tuneful, accessible avant-rock, you know who you are… if you haven’t gotten your fill at 611 Florida on Saturday, come up to Comet on Sunday.

I’ve never seen live music at Comet before–rumor has it the show should start around 8pm, but I’d take that with a grain of salt. There’s also a closing DJ set after Extra Life and Tussle are done, courtesy of Will Eastman.

As Aaron Leitko noted in his post back in July, the days of amazing house shows at 611 Florida Avenue are drawing to a close. After five years of hosting a wild blend of subterranean sounds and adventurous local artists within a makeshift rowhouse venue, the good folks at 611 will hold their final event tomorrow evening, September 12. The show will be the fourth installment of the Free Folk Phantasmagory series (held annually since 2004), showcasing an eclectic lineup of ethereal songsmiths and experimental psychedelia. Music starts at 4pm, with performances by:

Kohoutek
Max Ochs
Julie Mittens
Human Adult Band
Silver Summit
Hat City Intuitive
Ilya Monosov
Teething Veils
Insect Factory
Layne Garrett

Thankfully, I moved to the area soon enough to catch at least two shows at the house during the summer, but regret I couldn’t have witnessed more. It’s definitely a shame that this place is going away; one less cozy outlet for truly out-there/interesting/odd music here in the District, and there weren’t that many to start with. But all the more reason to make it out on Saturday and wax sentimental on a D.C. institution you probably didn’t know existed.

And when the drummer drums with a garbage can on his head, in the middle of the audience.

And when the singer sings with a girl in jeans in his arms.

Crazy-haired Israelis who call themselves Monotonix, last night at the Cat.

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

Two years ago, I had the privilege of seeing Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii perform a mesmerizing set in the basement of George Washington University’s Phillips Hall. That show was one of the most exhilarating concerts I saw all year. I had a similar feeling last night, once again in room B120 in Phillips Hall, watching Baltimore-based pianist Nobu Stowe play an improvised set with two D.C. musicians, Daniel Barbiero on double bass and Ted Zook on electric bass-cello. This comparison doesn’t really go anywhere—Stowe’s melodicism and improvisational style is completely different from Fujii’s, and he prefers to fill spaces that Fujii would leave empty—except for the fact that I had a certain feeling of watching brilliance at work.

These three musicians had never played together before, which was fairly evident in the first piece, as Stowe spent the entire piece watching the other two performers and giving the occasional visual cue. Even after this initial feeling out, Barbiero and Zook were happy to merely accompany Stowe on his dense melodic excursions for most of the concert. The second and third pieces the trio played almost could have been Stowe solo pieces—his sense of melody shone through brilliantly, as he found compelling tunes off of which to base exploratory improvisations. A percussive duet with Barbiero did lead off the third piece, but soon enough Stowe was in his own world again, playing over the other two musicians—dominant, but not aggressively so.

A fourth, more fragmented piece allowed Barbiero and Zook some room to maneuver, but to my ears this came at the cost of Stowe’s lyrical sense of melody. The fifth and final piece was in a similar vein but came off better, with Stowe providing a bouncy accompaniment to Barbiero and Zook’s swirling arcos. All in all, while it was fairly clear that these three musicians had never played together before, the result was deeply satisfying thanks to Stowe’s impressive abilities at what he calls “total improvisation”—a concept he derives from Keith Jarrett and describes thusly: “definite melodies/harmonic/rhythm structures all spontaneously ‘composed’… as opposed to ’sound-exploration’ à la free-improv.”

A rapt audience of about 25 seemed a pretty good showing—actually one of the bigger crowds I’ve been part of in this performance space—but Stowe’s accessible style should hardly preclude him from eventually playing to much, much larger audiences.

While you’re indulging in the D.C. tradition of weather-related paranoia and stocking up on food, water and batteries, maybe you should considering grabbing some earplugs as well. On Saturday, Dub Trio, a heavy-hitting group on Mike Patton’s Ipecac label who mix chunky metal riffs with chilled-out dub, hit DC9. While these guys still have a ways to go before perfecting their formula, at the very least it’s a fascinating one, and as of now at least a seriously hard-rocking one. Hop over to their MySpace page for a listen.

Sunday, what better place to weather a storm (though I suppose it’ll be gone by then) than hanging out in the basement of an imposing university building? The monthly experimental madness that is Electric Possible is on this weekend at its usual location of room B120 in the basement of GW’s Phillips Hall (22nd & H Streets). This time around, the Nobu Stowe Duo (piano/drums), augmented by locals on cello and bass, get top billing. Stowe’s latest album was recorded at, and named after, Baltimore’s An Die Musik performance space, and is a thoughtful, restrained brand of free improvisation that mostly eschews the skronk and cacophony of most collective improv. Stowe’s own comparisons invoke more Keith Jarrett than, say, Cecil Taylor.

“Prolific” is almost an understatement when speaking of Los Angeles-based John Wiese’s absurd body of work in the realm of confrontational electronics and subterranean weirdness. Check his page on Discogs, or browse his bio on Wikipedia for a look at his impressive resume, which boasts ongoing mayhem through Sissy Spacek and LHD among collaborations with the top names in the noise game: Wolf Eyes, Merzbow, Bastard Noise, Lasse Marhaug, and Sunn O))). His most recent release even chronicles two improvised live sets with Burning Star Core’s violinist extraordinaire, C Spencer Yeh. But as his extensive solo output proves, Wiese is much more than just a noise-gun for hire. His 2007 full-length, Soft Punk, was an opus of mangled punk rock bathed in digital deterioration—a taste of the laptop deconstructions he regularly displays onstage.

Equally exciting for the night is Bulbs, a duo comprised of San Fran residents William Sabiston (ex-Axolotl) and John Alamraz. Their sound could be likened to the gnarlier side of Black Dice’s techno perversions fed through dismantled punk ramblings and lysergic rattles. They’ve got a relatively new record called Light Ships out on Freedom To Spend, the newly-conceived label from Pete Swanson of the now defunct Yellow Swans. Foxy Digitalis has a pretty decent review of the record that’s worth reading. I’m particularly interested to see how these two manifest themselves live; hopefully, their borderless gurgles will solidify a tad for entertainment’s sake.

Local jams will be provided by Kuschty Rye Ergot, the nebulous psych-ensemble led by area multi-instrumentalist John Stanton. Rounding out the bill is Fairfax-based Nick Henry’s Silvum moniker, bringing frigid drone lurches to dip your toes into. Sounds like a promising showcase for those with a taste for the abrasive, cosmic, and bizarre. If that sounds a little too harsh for your mellow, then maybe you should play it safe and see Pineapple Express for the third time instead.

Photo of Weise by Dustin Fenstermacher

“I’m a certified senior citizen/Got Florida on my mind/I won’t even mess/With checkers or chess/Just take me to the place where they bump ‘n’ grind….”

Though not characterized by the bump ‘n’ grind, Sunday’s 10 p.m. show at Blues Alley drew a rapt and well-dressed crowd of LP nerds, precocious twenty-somethings, and couples in search of an atmospheric canoodle to see Mose Allison, a man whom Pete Townshend once dubbed “the Blues Sage.”

Mose knows, as the saying goes. And more to the point, he still puts on one hell of a show.

It is now 50 years since Allison’s first release—the groovy Back Country Suite, with which Richard Fariña fell in love—and 80 since his birth, but heck if he ain’t still the cat of cats. His elegant blues (or is it demotic jazz?) is as sharp as ever, his swagger intact, his delivery sly but unaffected (few bluesman can pull off a phrase like “your little psychic walkabout”). Joined by Tony Martucci on drums and Tommy Cecil on bass, Allison stuck almost exclusively to originals, and his few covers tended less toward Nat “King” Cole smoothness and more toward the down-home stuff of Lefty Frizzell (”If You’ve Got the Money…”) and Muddy Waters (a fantastic “Catfish Blues”).

Punctuating each quip with a sneaky piano lick, Mose kept the interstitial passages jumping with manic rhythm in the right hand over the left hand’s open fifth/stride patterns—funky enough to make middle-aged white cats in wraparound shades convulse with (or against) the music, but not so frenetic as to threaten the breeziness of lyrics like “If silence was golden/You couldn’t raise a dime.”

There’s something tremendously boyish about an 80-year-old singing this stuff. Allison has always been an insistent naïf (with a nod, of course, and a wink), but now he seems doubly so. Sure, he occasionally finds himself a bit short of breath, and his upper register may have shriveled somewhat; but the sheer delight he takes in his own contradictions seems more exuberant, more self-evident—unshriveled, one might say, by the miles and the years. A “certified senior citizen” by his own account, Allison has broadened the facetious strain in his blues to make old age seem pretty cool.

In other words, the fellow who taught “Young Man’s Blues” to the Who certainly seems to be enjoying the fruits of his own senility.

It’s not just the ever-present half-smile, not just his private scat (which through the years has morphed from a Neal Cassady-type exhortation to a vaguely apprehensive creaking sound), not just an evergreen predilection, in both composition and interpretation, for the zippy one-liner…it’s the reactive dissonance of the old man singing the songs of youth, the wise guy playing the innocent, the white boy stealing the blues.

Parchman Farm:

Young Man’s Blues:

Set list, and recommended discs, below.

Oh, and here’s a video of “Mind on Vacation”:

Sunday’s 10 p.m. setlist:

• “Just Like Livin’”
• “Fool’s Paradise”
• “Swingin’ Machine”
• “Days Like This”
• “If You’ve Got the Money, I’ve Got the Time”
• “Trouble In Mind”
• “Do Nothin’ Till You Hear from Me”
• “Certified Senior Citizen”
• “Ever Since I Stole the Blues”
• “How Does It Feel? (To Be Good-Looking)”
• “What Do You Do After You Ruin Your Life”
• “Middle-Class White Boy”
• “That’s The Stuff You Gotta Watch”
• “Hello There, Universe”
• “Your Mind is on Vacation”
• “Catfish Blues”
• “This Ain’t Me” (encore)

Recommended discography:

• Back Country Suite (1957)
• The Seventh Son (1972)
• Middle-Class White Boy (1982)

…and, of course, the totally fun Greatest Hits (Prestige), to which Christgau gives the most lukewarm A- in CG history. Though it does overlap prodigiously with The Seventh Son.

Liz Phair began the live rendition of her 1993 debut, Exile in Guyville, by thanking the 9:30 Club’s sold out crowd for its enthusiasm, which continued through the night. The 9:30’s DJ had warmed the crowd with hits from Guyville contemporaries like Urge Overkill’s “Positive Bleeding” and the Afghan Whigs’ “Gentlemen,” and expectations were high.

I’d first seen Phair on the original Guyville tour at Minneapolis’ First Avenue, and while that show was far from bad, the 15 years since the legendary album’s release have served Phair’s stage abilities well. Foremost, she now holds the guitar on her hip in true gunslinger form. At First Avenue, it was clasped under her armpit like she feared it would make a break for the exit, and she did her best to blend in with her touring band. At the 9:30 Club show, however, Phair stood out in front and engaged the crowd, hopefully putting the tired stage fright story line to rest.

After a carbon copy of Guyville’s third cut, “Glory,” Phair answered the question of many an audience member:

“By the way, no one is going to miss Obama tonight. Not on my watch.”

This led to wild applause, and then she ripped into “Dance of the Seven Veils.” Aside from a slight slip at the start of “Soap Star Joe”, the rest of the show was tight and professional. And Phair’s voice is as strong as ever, evidenced by the high notes she hit in “Explain it to Me.”

Guyville’s bold and raw lyrical content is often cited as the reason for the album’s greatness. I embrace that assertion, but it was always the album’s music that drew me in. She rocked on Guyville, and from the basement no less. It was also a refreshing antidote to the grunge movement. The highlights of last night’s show were “6′1″,” “Never Said” (with her touring band hitting the backing vocals just right) and the foot-stomping charge of “Johnny Sunshine.” The grooves on “Mesmerizing” were deeper than the album cut and came with double the swagger.

Two lucky fans were plucked from the audience to accompany Phair on the audacious “Flower”. Much blushing and giggling ensued. My favorite cut from Guyville, “Divorce Song”, however, lacked the recording’s final tight jamming frenzy. Instead, Phair used the album’s closer, “Strange Loop”, for displaying her ax skills, dueling with her touring guitarist.