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LOS CENZONTLES This group is the live-performance face of the Los Cenzontles Mexican Arts Center, a community-oriented music and dance school in San Pablo, California, that’s sort of like the Old Town School of Folk Music. Many such folkloric ensembles sound quaint and stale, but under the guidance of musical director Eugene Rodriguez, Los Cenzontles (Aztec for “the Mockingbirds”) take a lively, catholic approach to Mexico’s various folk forms. Their 2000 compilation, De Una Bonita (Arhoolie), showcases the fiery intensity they bring to traditional rancheras, boleros, and son jarochos, and they take some admirable stabs at Cuban son and Colombian cumbia as well. Most of the arrangements are string driven, but there are a few superb brassy banda tracks; only a couple of mediocre Latin-rock tunes drag down the album. Pasajero: A Journey of Time and Memory, a documentary screening this week at the Gene Siskel Film Center, chronicles a trip some of the group’s members made to Jalisco to learn from precommercial mariachis, and it further illustrates Rodriguez’s refreshing lack of pedantry–he’s more interested in helping Mexican-Americans understand their cultural roots than in making museum-quality simulacra. Sones de Mexico open. 9 PM, HotHouse, 31 E. Balbo, 312-362-9707, $17 in advance, $20 at the door. –Peter Margasak
OKKERVIL RIVER Your appendix is a generally unnecessary thing you only think about when it has to be removed, which is why it’s always bugged me that we don’t have a different name for it–appendices are often quite important parts of books, after all. Okkervil River push their luck by calling their new seven-song EP Black Sheep Boy Appendix (Jagjaguwar)–folks who already own the Black Sheep Boy full-length are hardly gonna prick up their ears at that. But though this appendix is indeed a collection of outtakes and unfinished tracks from the album, they’ve been revisited and transformed into rich new songs in their own right. And I’ve got to say that seven tunes is just about the right number–more than that, and Will Sheff’s almost-naked, shivering alt-folk (which, amazingly, takes ten people to create) starts being much too much of a good thing. Minus Story and Catfish Haven open. 9 PM, Abbey Pub, 3420 W. Grace, 773-478-4408 or 866-468-3401, $10 in advance, $12 at the door, 18+. –Monica Kendrick
BIG BUSINESS While the press release for their debut album, Head for the Shallow (Hydrahead), declares that Big Business’s sound is “mastery of what punk rock should be,” a more apt description might be “mastery of what you wish the Melvins still were.” The Seattle-based duo consists of bassist/singer Jared Warren–whose previous work in Karp was also, in essence, one long love letter to the majesty of King Buzzo’s hair–and ex-Murder City Devils drummer Coady Willis, and for just a two-piece, they push a mammoth sound, contrasting a wall of overdriven low-end pummel with Warren’s stentorian shrieking. They’re not even vaguely original, but their raw power and bass-blowing force will snap your neck nonetheless. Local H headlines, Detachment Kit plays third, Russian Circles plays second, and Big Business opens. 9 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, 773-549-0203 or 312-559-1212, $15, 18+. –Jessica Hopper
JOHN CALE There’ve been long stretches in the past decade or so when it seemed like John Cale had entirely given up on rock and pop, but he’s just followed up 2003’s HoboSapiens with the new BlackAcetate (Astralwerks). (Table of the Elements released his amazing experimental 60s work with electronics and tape loops in the interim, which made for a nice distraction.) He says he’s taken inspiration from hip-hop, but thankfully that shows up only in the music’s revved-up energy and production values, not in any stabs at reproducing the genre itself–it’s hard to imagine anybody less suited to that. Cale’s at his best when he remembers that he’s capable of rocking out, shaping his thick, awkwardly regal voice into a declamatory instrument of sinister confidence. Or maybe he’s at his best when he’s writing really, really pretty songs and playing a little viola on them. After all these years I’m still not sure, but there are enough of both kinds of moment on BlackAcetate that I can forget the songs where he goes astray. Chris Connelly opens. 9 PM, Double Door, 1572 N. Milwaukee, 773-489-3160 or 312-559-1212, $20. –Monica Kendrick
