MUSIC

Ravi Coltrane Quartet

Thurs. & Fri., Jan. 27 & Jan. 28

Being the son of one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century must wear down Ravi Coltrane. Critics indulge in silly comparisons, and listeners expect a certain sound from the instrument he shares with his father. But anyone who has experienced a night with this man on the bandstand knows that Ravi is a young artist walking his own path, engulfing listeners in the sound of his warm brass. This week Coltrane plays twice, Thursday at Zebulon Café in Brooklyn with his trio; Friday at Tonic with a quartet.

Zebulon, 258 Wythe Ave. (betw. 3rd St. & Metropolitan Ave.), Bklyn, 718-218-6939; 8; free.

Tonic, 107 Norfolk St. (betw. Delancey & Rivington Sts.), 212-358-7501; 8 & 10; $15, $12 adv. & one drink min.

-Steven Psyllos

Vijay Iyer | Thurs., Jan. 27

Vijay Iyer premiers a new improv piece commissioned by and performed with string quartet Ethel, then loads the bill of this "Zoom: Composers Close Up" series concert at Merkin Hall with his self-taught, much-lauded percussive/melodic approach to jazz piano, in both trio and solo settings.

Iyer's accelerated out beyond the curve since returning to New York in '98, after making a lot of music in the Bay Area and getting a Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley. His two recent releases reaped critical acclaim: the quartet record Blood Sutra (Artists House) Broke the top 10 in JazzTimes' critics poll, and In What Language? (Pi. Recordings, with hip hop poet Mike Ladd, an ensemble of musicians, and an international airport setting) garnered 4 1/2 stars from Downbeat, and Album of the Year from UK's Jazzwise mag.

Live, Iyer's a study in well-situated ease and concentrated intensity. At a busy Tonic benefit at last year, he opened with his band then swept over that venue's weary piano as if he were in the Bosendorfer showroom, weaving intricate melodic textures with a driving sense of rhythm (that group's release, Reimagining, is out in spring, first of a multi-release deal with Savoy Jazz).

The Ethel commission, "Mutations," bridges musical friendships, and two distinct schools of improvisation. "I've known Ethel since they formed," Iyer said on the phone. "We were both on a Steve Coleman record, then I kept bumping into [violinist] Todd Reynolds, who moves in a lot of different musical worlds." With the Merkin date set, Ethel's Foundation for the Arts got funding, and Iyer set out to mix things up. "When new music people approach improvisation, they often neglect the history of improv in the U.S., jazz being a central thread in that. I wanted to connect what they do to the structured freedom of jazz. Much of what you hear won't sound a lot like jazz-whatever that may mean-but it's based on real time decision-making, not chance operations. I encourage formal decision-making based on what's going on onstage-which is a lot like life."

Merkin Concert Hall, 129 W. 67th St. (betw. B'way & Amsterdam Ave.), 212-501-3330; 8, $25.

-Alan Lockwood

JASON MORAN | WEDs.-Sun., JAN. 26-30

Pianist Jason Moran eats his young. Check out the first tune, "Gangsterism on the Rise," from his new Blue Note label CD, Same Mother. It runs from floral and Guaraldi-esque to urgent and pungently Monk (a little Thelonious and a little Meredith), always in off-time with the militarism of drummer Nasheet Waits. His theatrically hammered rhythms, his rapid yet thoughtful runs-he swallows you whole. That's no surprise to Moran fans. Since arriving in Brooklyn from Houston, Moran (along with The Bandwagon, his unit featuring Waits and bassist Tarus Mateen) has proved himself a unique, unctuous musical entity, playing tough and tender behind the likes of saxophonists like Steve Coleman, Greg Osby, and vocalist Cassandra Wilson.

The lumpy, gutsy roadhouse rhythms of Same Mother are reportedly inspired by the lost art of foot-stomping Mississippi prison songs. Mother is a cranky blues record-with wild dancing blues from the heart-leaping "Jump Up"-as well as a tinkling, twinkling jazz record (witness the starry eyed tickle of "G Suit Saltation" and the elegiac twitchiness of "Field of the Dead" But Mother's improv flights of fancy and its dirt-ball elegance transform what could be staid into something tart.

Jazz Standard, 116 E. 27th St. (betw. Park & Lexington Aves.); 212-576-2232, 7:30, 9:30, 11:30 (Fri.-Sat. only), $20 (Weds.-Thurs.), $25 (Fri.-Sat.).

-A.D. Amorosi

Bobby Bare Jr. | Fri., Jan. 28

There's a messiness to Bobby Bare Jr.'s most recent album From the End of Your Leash that is both unsettling and addictive. The songs are sloppy, but in their unconformity lies brilliance. They are byproducts of an upbringing drenched in country music. Yet Bobby Bare Jr. remains a bit of an iconoclast in his native Nashville, his latest output displaying neither the twang of his father nor the raucousness of his previous efforts. He's settled on something in between, a maudlin hybrid of schlock ("Valentine") and roots ("Your Favorite Hat").

Bobby Bare Jr. is a gifted songwriter, with a Townes van Zandt storytelling voice and a Paul Westerberg stage presence. But his greatest contribution may be his sense of humor, something lacking in most Americana music (Bottle Rockets notwithstanding). Lyrics are anything but conventional: "If you talk any faster with food in your teeth/I swear to god I'm gonna call the police."

Despite his outcast role in country music circles, Bare Jr. says he doesn't disdain his hometown and even backhandedly sings its praises in "Visit Me in Music City." Yet it's hard to believe that this is the same five-year-old kid once nominated for a Grammy back in 1974 for a touching father-son tune written by Shel Silverstein. Of course, back then Michael Jackson was singing about the alphabet.

With the Stands, Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion and Hula.

Mercury Lounge, 217 E. Houston St. (betw. Ludlow & Essex Sts.), 212-260-4700; 8:30, $10.

-Lionel Beehner

Death from Above 1979 and Man Man | Thurs., Jan. 27

Just off the vicious Vice label tour with noise-brethren Vietnam and Panthers, the duo that is Death From Above 1979-holy, hollering Sebastien Grainger, bummer bassist Jesse Keeler-seems like the driven-hard, still-syrupy sex machine to which their album title, You're a Woman, I'm a Machine, creepily alludes. It's the squalid noise of Suicide with Journey-size hooks. Moistboyz mixed with The Matrix. Their feed-backing bass lines and squelch-o-phonic synths gurgle and cough seductively-yes, hacking in the right way at the right time has its own brand of allure-as if in league with that other Death From Above, the DFA danz-production team. But the girth and grunge of their ability to rock hard (check "Blood on Our Hands") is beyond boogie, beyond primal. DFA1979 take that seductive surge to frantic new heights on the way-surly bump-and-grind anthem "Pull Out" as well as "Sexy Results": 2004's best come-on track.

Opening for DFA1979 is Man Man, the Philadelphian crew whose The Man in a Blue Turban with a Face features freakish rhythms and airless Ukranian-like melodies. But their caba-rawk is closer to Zappa's Mothers of Invention records-the orchestral melee of Lumpy Gravy, the tumbling drums of Absolutely Free, the curled guitars of Weasels Ate My Flesh-than anything currently found in the bars of the East Village. There is vintage violence afoot, with subtone saxo-moans and unmerry marimbas, speaking-in-tongues sing-songy vocals and garbled guitars all burping out a sloppy yet beautiful noise. And Man Man manages to bring out the tenderoni in you on the gorgeous ballad, "Gold Teeth." Now that I think of it, Man Man's kinda sexy too. (And yes: they often come with a live strip show starring dancing gyrating gorillas.)

Mercury Lounge, 217 E. Houston St. (betw. Ludlow & Essex Sts.), 212-260-4700; 8:30, $12.

-A.D.

THE BREAKUP SOCIETY | Sat., Jan. 29

There aren't many lost albums of the '90s, but few summed up the doomed decade like I Am Curious (George) by The Frampton Brothers. It was a power-pop masterpiece that captured the futility of trying to find power in pop culture. In that same spirit, Ed Masley and Sean Lally kept the band going through lesser efforts before retiring the act with 1999's File Under F for Failure. Just when he should be settling into middle-age as the rock critic for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Masley now reemerges as The Breakup Society with James At 35. The supposed rock opera has Masley's reedy voice looking back on a lifetime of miserable romance via defiant garage rock. It's no hit record, but Masley's getting more attention now than he ever did with the Framptons-which is why he's back on the road, including this week's 8:45 slot at The Continental.

A lot of people won't notice that James At 35 is a rock opera.

Yeah, I didn't want to make it sound like Tommy, where there was a cast of characters. I wanted to just show the progression of someone fumbling their way through a series of bad relationships. "Robin Zander" suggested this reflective thing, and then the next song I wrote was about the first girl I ever had a crush on. That's how the songs came together. It's really loose, not tightly scripted. There was no blueprint, or no sense of a resolution-other than wanting the album to end on a note of total despair.

You've still got a good eye for the absurdity of living up to rock 'n' roll, though.

I'd feel weird addressing those themes without some sense of humor. I do worry about coming too close to being a novelty act. That might have been a problem with the Frampton Brothers. We were big fans of the Young Fresh Fellows, and it just seemed like a time when that kind of music might break through. I think I pulled it back enough on this one. There's such sadness and disappointment in so much of the record. If it was played straight, it would be too depressing.

It's still strange that you've made this record, since I Am Curious (George) was so insightful about romance and maturity.

You're saying that I should've avoided those pitfalls? [Laughs] I see what you're saying. It's like that's now my place in the whole messed-up scheme of things. But not every song is autobiographical. Sometimes I draw on other people's relationships. "Corn Palace" is about the break-up of the Frampton Brothers, but I wrote it as a relationship song. We played together for 12 years. I remember us being out on tour, and I could tell it was falling apart. So I wrote that song as this wistful wish that we could all go back to how it felt on our first ridiculous tour, when we could be laughing and enjoying a place called Corn Palace.

The Continental, 25 3rd Ave. (betw. St. Marks Pl. & 9th St.), 212-529-6924; 8:45, $5.

-J.R. Taylor

HAROLD ARLEN CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION | Weds.-Sun., Jan. 26-30

As one of the architects of Tin Pan Alley's row of opulent homes, American composer Harold Arlen will be best remembered for the lachrymose soundtrack to The Wizard of Oz, its score and songs legendary beyond any obsession with Judy Garland. And that's okay. I need to cry once a year with a couple of "tra la las" under my belt. But as a Jewish son of a cantor with a love of early jazz, gospel and ragtime, Arlen's deep sense of traditional Southern music and the plantation songs of African America gave rise to his best, most ardently felt music. From forlorn weather anthems like "Come Rain or Come Shine" and "Stormy Weather" to churchy shouters like "Get Happy" and delirious laments like "I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues," Arlen owned Afrocentric song. Pretty fly for a white guy.

To celebrate what would have been his hundredth birthday, a taut college of musical knowledge-pianist Eric Reed, bassist Peter Washington, drummer Kenny Washington, saxophonist Harry Allen, trumpeter Jeremy Pelt-sways and swoons behind a grouping of contemporary jazz's most Arlenesque crooners. While some of the sonic essayers like Ann Hampton Callaway and Paula West might be a bit too cabaret-do-mi-so for these darkest of Arlen's lamentations, no one could walk through the dusk of Arlen's tender, fragile tunes ("One More for the Road," "It's Only a Paper Moon") like singers Grady Tate and Andy Bey. Tate may be too upbeat to tackle the lovelorn tatters of matters of the heart like "Night after Night." But sometimes his snappiness cracks, and you get a cheerlessness more colorful than most rainbows.

Bey, the child jazz prodigy and Horace Silver stalwart whose latter-day recordings have proven to be a second coming of sorts, is nothing short of America's finest living interpreter of sad, slow song-whether his own or those of a master like Arlen. Bey could sing "If I Only Had a Brain" the whole night and I'd be pleased.

Blue Note, 131 W. 3rd St. (betw. 6th Ave. & McDougal St.), 212-475-8592; 8 & 10:30, $15-$25.

-A.D. Amorosi

Sonny Landreth & the Goners w/ the Campbell Brothers | Tues., Feb. 1

While steel guitar has always been a relatively arcane art form compared to standard electric guitar, the "sacred steel" style of the Campbell Brothers was almost totally obscured from public view until just 10 years ago. Since then, the Brothers have drawn considerable attention, winning over secular and spiritual fans across blues, folk, jamband, jazz and gospel lines with high-profile festival and symphony space appearances (Bonnaroo, Playboy Jazz) and collaborations (Steve Gadd, John Medeski). Besides the double steel-guitar attack of Darick and Chuck Campbell, one of the first things that hits you about the Campbells' sound is its fiery electric blues element verging on rock. Honoring sacred steel's traditions, the Brothers' blend of styles was a crossover waiting to happen; Chuck Campbell, for instance, actually plays with various effects and wah-wah.

The Campbell Brothers are the sons of a Keith Dominion bishop, and have been accompanying church services for 30 years. Rounded out by electric guitarist and third brother Phillip Campbell, his son Carlton on drums, and the booming gospel vocals of Katie Jackson and cousin Denise Brown, the band proves how the soaring quality of steel guitar serves the otherwordly aspirations of gospel music, presenting a fresh angle that bolsters the mystique the instrument. Fittingly, electric-slide guitarist Sonny Landreth, most widely known for his longtime affiliation with John Hiatt, but also renowned for his solo work, appears with his fellow Hiatt cohorts the Goners. World music slide specialist Bob Brozman opens.

B.B. King Blues Club, 237 W. 42nd St. (betw. 7th & 8th Aves.), 212-997-4144; 8, $25, $20 adv.

-Saby Reyes-Kulkarni

Legends of the Blues: Blues Express | Fri., Jan. 28

Barely a year after Martin Scorsese nearly killed off the blues with his soft-focused mini-series, Lincoln Center, of all folks, is looking to buy back the gutbucketness PBS left behind with a histrionic reverie of blues masters and blasters. Think of this night as if box sets from Chess, Malaco and Alligator were exploding into oncoming traffic. Veterans from Chicago to Detroit, from the Delta to the urban jungle, play hard, fast and furious-united for one solid evening of overheated history. It would be enough that members of Howlin' Wolf's most legendary band (pianist Henry Gray, saxophonist Eddie Shaw, bassist Bob Stroger) and Muddy Waters' finest configuration (harp wizard James Cotton, drummer Willie "Big Eyes" Smith, pianist Pinetop Perkins) were there (David "Honeyboy" Edwards and Robert Lockwood Jr., too). But Little Milton adds an eminence to the evening, makes it homey and right.

Subtle, spine-tingling guitarist and equally emotive vocalist, Milton has caressed the shoulder of soul and the rump of R&B during his long career, starting as far back as the 50s. But his Bobby "Blue" vocal style has never been Bland. While my personal fave is "Grits Ain't Groceries" (as well as his Stax material from the funky 70s), his supple bluster has made the civilly disobedient "We're Gonna Make It" and the raunchy "Who's Cheating Who?" familiar hits.

Then there's Buddy Guy, still touring under the aegis of his most recent Silvertone label acoustic CD, 2003's Blues Singer. You can run down the list of clichés that fit his sound: "incendiary," "harrowing," "risky," "manic." Or you can qualify Chicago's still-thunder-bearing guitarist and vocalist with any ferocious adjectives you like. Almost weekly, someone tells me about their favorite Buddy Guy album. It's always different-from man to man, from station to station. One jazz guitarist tells me Pleading the Blues, a slow-pot-boiling stew of nimble-fingered prowess, is Guy's finest. A younger, hungrier guitarist swears by Stone Crazy!, a fiery, sloppy, almost-avant blues recording whose highlight is the way-long "I Smell a Rat." I tend to agree with him. Older less-blue heads hold Feels Like Rain to the light. Well, all right. Whether, he's "drinkin' TNT" or "smokin' dynamite," all Buddy Guy is good Buddy Guy.

Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, 10 Lincoln Center Plaza (betw. 62nd & 65th Sts. & Columbus & Amsterdam Aves.), 212-721-6500; 8, $35-$90.

-A.D. Amorosi

Tommy Stinson | Sat., Jan. 29

Believe it or not, it was almost 25 years ago that Tommy Stinson, along with his brother Bob, put Minneapolis on the rock 'n' roll map with their legendary Replacements. During those years, Tommy and Bob, along with Paul Westerberg and Chris Mars, created some of the time's catchiest drunken punk. Through it all, Tommy sat shotgun for the Mat's turbulent ride to the top, and then as drugs and booze took their toll, watched it crumble. He replaced his own brother due to an out-of-control substance-abuse problem, only to bury him a short time later.

Post-Replacements, Stinson stayed busy with bands Bash & Pop, Perfect, and the reformed Guns N' Roses. Due to GN'R's infrequent schedule and Axl Rose's erratic behavior (one unfinished record, and only a handful of shows in the last seven years), he's had time to write and create a fine solo debut, Village Gorilla Head, out now on Sanctuary. Recorded over the last few years at head-Pixie Frank Black's studio, Village Gorilla Head is the result of Stinson's journey, a songwriter's validation. From songs like "Something's Wrong," with its hints of Replacements dirty pop, or the spacey acoustic "Light of Day," to the punk snarl of "Couldn't Wait," Tommy shows his ability to set out in different directions while maintaining a unifying pop sensibility.

Stinson wasn't shy about calling on former band mates, namely Richard Fortus (Psychedelic Furs), who lays down great lead guitar work and even cello, and keyboard player Dizzy Reed, as well as Josh Freese (Perfect Circle), who lends magic on the drums.

Mercury Lounge, 217 E. Houston St. (betw. Ludlow & Essex Sts.), 212-260-4700; 11; $10.

-Jimmy Ansourian

The Hip Hop Hoodios | Fri., Jan. 29th

The Hip Hop Hoodios began as a sketch on frontman Josh Noriega's Cornell radio show. But as he started envisioning the product of an imagined collaboration between hip-hop groups Beastie Boys and Cypress Hill-each of whom have members of Jewish and Latino heritage, respectively-Noriega realized that the Latin-Jewish hip-hop concept held more promise than a two-minute satire. So Noriega, along with musician Abraham Velez, began experimenting with hip-hop, salsa and traditional Jewish tunes. With songs like "Kike On The Mic" and salsa fied "Hava Na Gila," the Hoodios have turned musical and cultural notions about both Latinos and Jews upside-down, while remaining true to Latin Americans' mestizo nature. Their latest release Agua Pa'La Gente ("Water For The People") features Jewish and Latino musicians like Frank London of the Klezmatics and Karl Perrazo from Santana.

This Friday's show, their first since last April, will launch Agua, the follow-up to their debut, Raza Hoodia. Latin surf-rock outfit the Cuban Cowboys open.

Makor (Steinhardt Building), 35 W. 67th St. (betw. Central Park W. & Columbus Ave.), 212-415-500; 9, $15.

-Monika Fabian