When I first heard Evangelicals’ sophomore release The Evening Descends in December of 2007, it sounded like the second coming of Arcade Fire. To my ears, it was the only album since Funeral capable of matching its intensity without sounding like a canned attempt at doing so. It brought Graham Parsons and Beethoven to mind in equal measure; it was marked by thematic cohesiveness, lyrical depth and an epicness that most other swing-for-the-fences-type indie acts come embarrassingly short of achieving. It had moments you just couldn’t totally shake: the opening bass line of “Skeleton Man;” the anguished, wailing coda to “Party Crashing,” the bitingly hilarious and totally unexpected satire of the “blind leading the blind” parable from the New Testament at the tail-end of “Bloodstream.” And I could go on like this.

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There was a moment—one of those collective pant-shitting moments that only the truly great or deeply unstable ones can produce—in which the crowd at last night’s Jesus Lizard show was transfixed by the possibility of David Yow whipping his cock out.

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For a noisy, obscure-outside-the-scene kind of art rocker, it’s a situation fraught with danger and opportunity both: The crowd is primed for a rare and probably venue-wrecking set from some of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll ass-kickers of the past 20 years, and you’ve got to warm it up. By all logic, said ass-kickers should have fed the crowd a band capable of whipping them into a frothing mob. But said ass-kickers are the Jesus Lizard, and, amazingly, they think softening the crowd up should take a backseat to musical artistry and skill.

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For many music fans, Travis occupies a malign place in recent history. The band is a crucial link between Oasis and Coldplay, joining the unselfconscious schlock of Britpop to its narcoleptic, eye-gougingly inoffensive successor. But taken on its own terms, Travis’s sap approaches sublimity—in addition to mocking Britney Spears and making one of the most (I’m guessing unintentionally) disturbing videos of, like, ever, Travis wrote a few of the all-time great wussified rock songs. “Why Does it Always Rain On Me?” still instantly comes to mind whenever it y’know, rains on me, and “Turn” has an epic, swinging-for-the-fences quality that makes it an exercise in earnestness rather than Coldplay-style self-debasement.

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A night in which the Yankees are poised to win their 27th World Series begs for some wholesome, non-fascist entertainment, and The Very Best, the much talked-about collaboration between Radioclit and Malawi-born singer Esau Mwamwaya fit the bill—but only barely.

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Deep down, I'm still repenting for the moment I realized just how much I hated Bob Dylan's live show—when the part of me that wasn't choking back tears during "Masters of War" wondered when the geezer would wheeze his way through "All Along the Watchtower" and let us all just go the fuck home. Now, I don't love Talk Normal quite as much as I love Dylan (sorry ladies), so I doubt my disappointment with their set last night will rack me with the same, deep-seeded guilt.

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It's crass to open a write-up of a talented up-and-comer by talking about the venue, but what the hey: the Fat Cat. Wow. A couple of years ago the Cat consisted of an opium den-like jazz room and a depressing expanse of mostly-empty chessboards and ping-pong tables. Then someone had the brilliant idea of removing the wall that once divided the two spaces, thus forcing the jazz nerds to uncomfortably knock elbows with the Scrabble nerds, and inadvertently creating one of the most massive jazz venues in the city. The fact that a good percentage of the crowd isn't there to hear jazz necessarily makes for a place that's blissfully pretension-free: the Cat is ugly, crowded and chaotic; you couldn't imagine anyone going there to feel sophisticated or look cool (there were people playing Settlers of Catan on Friday night). This is a good thing, particularly if you've got a soft spot for jazz dives.

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A noticeably older and more yuppified crowd than I’m perhaps used to turned out for Gordon Gano’s set at the (Le) Poisson Rouge on Friday night. Strange as it was to be the youngest person at what was ostensibly a rock concert by, I dunno, five to 10 years, it was even stranger to witness what had become of the Violent Femmes’ listenership.

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The Elephant 6 Collective hasn’t let their belated indie icon status go to its head—as last year’s Holiday Surprise tour demonstrated, E6 (or at least what’s left of it) is every bit as exuberantly strange as it was before Aeroplane and Cubist Castle helped peg them as one of the period’s truly original and indispensable groups. Last night at (Le) Poisson Rouge, E6 co-founder William Cullen Hart and Circulatory System offered what hopefully won’t be a final glimpse into the exhilarating, DIY weirdness and surprising pop instincts that made that first wave of E6 bands so special.

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