ROCK AND POP

Musicians and night-club proprietors live complicated lives; it’s advisable to check in advance to confirm engagements.

 

B. B. KING BLUES CLUB & GRILL

237 W. 42nd St. (212-997-4144)—March 21: Bell Biv Devoe. Spawned from the wreckage of the eighties R. & B. favorites New Edition (following Bobby Brown’s departure for solo stardom, in 1986), the vocalists Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins, and Ronnie DeVoe emerged with an edgier sound. Inescapable hits like “Poison” and “Do Me!” made them mega-selling stars back in the day.

 

BROOKLYN BOWL

61 Wythe Ave., Williamsburg (718-963-3369)—March 23: Almost unbelievably, Black Lips, the energetic folk-punk outfit from Atlanta, is in its tenth year of cranking out a garage-inspired, distorted down-home sound laced with a dance beat. With the similarly inclined lo-fi Box Elders, out of Nebraska, and the New House.

 

CITY WINERY

155 Varick St. (212-608-0555)—March 23: With the poetic quirkiness of a non-native English speaker, the Norwegian songwriter Sondre Lerche makes offhand observations, sweetened by his clear bright voice. His eclectic musical references, from sixties Brazilian folk to eighties pop, make NPR-ready contemporary rock a gratifying listening experience, especially on his latest release, “Heartbeat Radio,” which came out last year

 

EUROPA NIGHT CLUB

98-104 Meserole Ave., at Manhattan Ave., Greenpoint, Brooklyn (718-383-5723)—March 17: This garish night club in the Polish section of Brooklyn, which for some reason has been a committed and unlikely incubator of extreme metal and hardcore punk, presents the long-standing thrash band Gang Green, with the local group Cerebral Ballzy as an opening act. Expect a crew of young drunken lunatics carrying the torch of eighties skate punk to wreak havoc in this stylized Euro-fantasy discothèque.

 

FILLMORE NEW YORK AT IRVING PLAZA

17 Irving Pl. (212-777-6800)—March 23: The bewitching pianist and vocalist Regina Spektor performs a benefit for Doctors Without Border’s Haitian relief efforts.

 

MUSIC HALL OF WILLIAMSBURG

66 N. 6th St., Brooklyn (718-486-5400)—March 23: David Bazan. As the prime mover behind Seattle’s Pedro the Lion, Bazan sang sparsely arranged reflections on relationships and religion in a parched and sonorous baritone until the band’s demise, in 2006. A born-again Christian and the son of a pastor, Bazan continues to soberly question his faith without didacticism, a welcome rarity in an indie-rock community that prefers to leave spiritual questions out of the equation.

 

NOKIA THEATRE TIMES SQUARE

Broadway at 44th St. (800-745-3000)—March 18: Responsible for one of the catchiest singles of the nineties, the hip-hop trio House of Pain scored a massive crossover hit in 1992 with the endearingly rambunctious “Jump Around.” Despite that success and their gimmicky image (the rappers Everlast and Danny Boy were very vocal about their Irish-American heritage), House of Pain ultimately proved to be a one-trick pony. After three albums, Everlast departed for what would become a critically acclaimed solo career, and DJ Lethal joined the critically reviled Limp Bizkit. A decade and half after the split, however, the trio has put the House of Pain back in order.

 

NUBLU

62 Avenue C, between 4th and 5th Sts. (212-979-9925)—Red Baraat, a marching band that mixes Indian bhangra rhythms with traditional brass funk, plays here Sundays in March. Its central instrument is a large double-headed drum called a dhol, which is handled with great verve by Sunny Jain, the leader of the festive outfit. (“Baraat” is Hindi for “marriage celebration.”) With DJ Rekha on March 21 and d.j. Dave Sharma on March 28.

 

(LE) POISSON ROUGE

158 Bleecker St. (212-505-3474)—March 18: A rare appearance by King Missile. John S. Hall burst onto the downtown poetry scene in the early eighties with a dry and penetrating body of work. It didn’t take long for a motley backing band to attach itself to him, and soon, as the lead singer of King Missile, he was churning out breezy folk psychedelia while waxing ironic with a nasal squeak on the mundane baseness of American life. The band has gone through a number of incarnations (and mustered a few underground hits, including “Detachable Penis” and “Take Stuff from Work”), and this show finds Hall, who since his high-flying downtown days has become an entertainment lawyer, performing with the guitarist Dogbowl (né Stephen Tunney), who was there at the beginning. Later on March 18: The British dubstep duo Nero. March 21: The Syrian-born singer Gaida celebrates the first day of spring, which is also Mother’s Day in the Arab world, with the release of “Levantine Indulgence,” a richly textured musical homage to her Damascus roots. As a toddler, Gaida learned Syrian folk songs from her mother, like the uplifting “Almaya,” which appears on the album. While she also embraces jazz and Brazilian elements, her music is deeply rooted in the tradition of Arabic singers like Fairouz and Umm Kulthum, and her voice, a warm and precise instrument, is most appealing when sticking close to those influences.

 

TERMINAL 5

610 W. 56th St. (212-582-6600)—March 19: The atmospheric pop of the French duo Air.

 

TOWN HALL

123 W. 43rd St. (212-307-4100)—March 18: Joanna Newsom, if she were just a little taller—and blue—might have been a candidate for Na’vi superstardom, so intricate and otherworldly is her combination of harp-playing, vocalizing, storytelling, and composing. Her latest release, a three-CD set called “Have One on Me,” is slightly more piano-based and just a couple of light-years closer to Earth.