THURSDAY 10/5
Gorgon City, Solardo, PRZM
Over the past year, English house DJs Ky Gibbon and Matt Robson-Scott have built the foundation for their Kingdom tour one bass-pumping collaboration at a time. After working with artists like NAATIONS, Mikky Ekko and Wyclef Jean, their latest EDM opus—the double-album Kingdom—is complete. To celebrate, Gorgon City is packing up their turntables and leaving the shores of their beloved European club scene with a hard drive full of glittery new material. Opening this leg of the tour, Manchester-based techno duo Solardo began with gritty, garage-forged dubstep before evolving into an accessible house sound. As this quartet of DJs is used to performing in Europe's most notable dance venues—Gorgon City just wrapped up a residency at Amnesia in Ibiza—it's important to give them a turnout that shows just how nasty SLC clubbers can get on the dance floor. (Alex Springer) The Complex, 536 W. 100 South, 8 p.m., $22.50-$30, all ages, thecomplexslc.com

 

FRIDAY 10/6
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Tropical Fuck Storm, Ice Balloons
Tonight's headliners have a name that sounds like a Guided by Voices song title, and are even more prolific than Dayton's beloved indie-arena rockers. Since its founding in 2010, the Australian octet has dropped 11 albums, with two more coming this year (for a total of five in 2017). They also put a lot of thought into their visual aesthetic, and they have ideas coming out of their gizzards. But is KG et al. the Aussie GBV? While not doppelgängers, the two bands share—in addition to the aforementioned—boundless creativity and a devotion to rock as an art form. GBV nucleus Robert Pollard would certainly dig KG's current project, a five-album suite, coming out this year. The first two installments—the far-out Flying Microtonal Banana: Explorations in Microtonal Tuning (February) and the absolutely bonkers concept album Murder of the Universe—came in February and June, respectively. No. 3, Sketches of Brunswick East (ATO), is a month old, and it's an improvisational jazz collab with Mild High Club (Alex Brettin). Kinda makes you think that KG might one day out-GBV GBV. (Randy Harward) Metro Music Hall, 615 W. 100 South, 8 p.m., $16 presale; $18 day of show, 21+, metromusichall.com

 

Palehound, Besando, Blood Handsome
Ellen Kempner ... Wow. I can't wait until I can recite her name in a list of comparisons/references to musical forebears to illustrate how good some other young singer-songwriter's music is compared to her own distinguished canon. A list like this: Evan Dando, Vic Chesnutt, Cat Power, Stephen Malkmus. But there's more than goodness implied here: She has Dando's sweet sad-sack-ness, Chesnutt's way of sketching situations with economical and perfect strokes, an excuse to behave like Cat Power and Malkmus' sardonic humor. And maybe a bit of J. Mascis' heavy-lidded stoner wisdom. Check out this line from the title track to her 2015 album Dry Food (Exploding in Sound): "You made beauty a monster to me/ so I'm kissin' all the ugly things I see." Musically, she covers all the same bases, in order, from Dando to Mascis: slacker punk, artsy singer-songwriter, tortured artist, smart-alecky hipster and Midwestern fuzz junkie. Except she's from Boston. She also has a new album, A Place I'll Always Go, out now on Polyvinyl. (RH) Kilby Court, 741 S. 330 West, 7 p.m., $10, all ages, kilbycourt.com

 

SUNDAY 10/8
Rock 'N' Beer Fest, feat. Skid Row, D'Molls, Az Iz
D'Molls bassist Jonni Lightfoot and KBER's Corey Draper are throwing "a last blast before the cold hits" in the lot behind Pinky's Cabaret strip club in South Salt Lake. Don't let the name fool ya. It's not a hoity-toity craft beer festival, but a good ol' backyard cook-out with the best kind of beer—cold—and a full liquor license, too. They've also booked some dudes outta Jersey called Skid Row, who are responsible for such glam-era gems as "Youth Gone Wild," "I Remember You," "18 and Life" and other monkey business. I hear you out there—so what if they're on their fourth singer since their classic era? Following high-strung Canuck Sebastian Bach was redneck-ish Texan Johnny Solinger, then metrosexual Scandinavian Tony Harnell, and now they're with hirsute, hulking South African ZP Theart, formerly of power metal group DragonForce. If you miss Bach, you'll be pleased to know that Theart's pipes are just as powerful, with a cool Bach-meets-Bon Scott tone—and Skid Row can still bring down the house. Perhaps obviously, cult glam-rockers D'Molls (whom we can now claim as hometown boys) provide main support, hot off of their killer performance at Liquid Joe's last month. Az Iz opens. (RH) The Stage at 4141, 4141 S. State, 6 p.m., $20 presale; $25 day of show, 21+, bit.ly/2g5hObJ

 

MONDAY 10/9
Queens of the Stone Age, Royal Blood
From their eponymous 1998 debut through 2007's Era Vulgaris, Queens of the Stone Age held to a roughly biannual schedule of putting out genre-stretching, rule-breaking but accessible albums. Then commenced a six-year break in which Josh Homme and his bandmates focused on individual projects. The band's re-emergence in 2013 with ... Like Clockwork (on new label Matador) was met with googly eyed adoration. Likewise the new joint Villains, which was released in August. By design a more danceable (but still thoroughly rocking) album, it's produced by Mark Ronson and Mark Rankin, known more for dance and pop music, respectively. That's not to say that Queens have sold out—they've simply indulged an urge to shake some asses, even as they continue to agitate the concept of rock 'n' roll. Opening the show is another act that messes with the model: U.K. bass-drums duo Royal Blood. After their self-titled debut came out in 2014, Jimmy Page went to see them and subsequently remarked to Brit rock mag NME, "Their album has taken the genre up a serious few notches. It's so refreshing to hear, because they play with the spirit of the things that have preceded them, but you can hear they're going to take rock into a new realm—if they're not already doing that." Their second album, How Did We Get So Dark? (Warner, 2017), came out in June. (Randy Harward) The Complex, 536 W. 100 South, 7 p.m., $42.50, all ages, thecomplexslc.com

 

TUESDAY 10/10
Terence Hansen Trio
This is one of several warm-up gigs before local guitar hero and innovator (and sole master of the cross-necked guitar) Terence Hansen heads out on tour to The Netherlands, Germany, Romania and Austria to promote not one, but two albums. Guru—recorded in 2014 in Oudenhoorn, The Netherlands—focuses on Hansen's jazzy pop-rock tunes, which merge the citified night-songs of Steely Dan with the breezy yacht rock of Christopher Cross, in songs that deal with "inner struggle, loss, searching, spirituality and existential themes," Hansen says. This, while the unrepentant shredder finds room to flash his chops in subdued but explosive solos, revealing an interesting junction between soft rock/smooth jazz class and arena rock flash. City Weekly hasn't heard Baktun yet, but Hansen teases it as "a mix of instrumental and experimental songwriting—also very esoteric, but with a lot of shredding." (RH) Wilmington Plaza, 1215 Wilmington Ave., 6 p.m., free, 21+, musicgarage.org