ALT-COUNTRY | Two Cow Garage
Sat. March 1
8 p.m.
$5
Tin Roof

“We’re all prizefighters and we’re frustrated writers with insurance salesmen mouths/ All we ever wanted was to kiss her lips, all we wanted was to burn down her house,” or so sings Two Cow Garage frontman Micah Schnabel on “Stars & Gutters,” one of the highlights off the band’s sixth album The Death of the Self-Preservation Society. Schnabel’s impassioned vocal style and literate lyrics call to mind Conor Oberst, though the Columbus, Ohio-based trio favors the chunky twang and distortion of early Lucero and Drive-By Truckers. The Death of the Self-Preservation Society is arguably Two Cow’s best in an unsung 12-year career. Like Oberst, Schnabel has a gift for critiquing our cultural dysfunctions from “Annie, Get your Guns” to “My Great Gatsby,” which laments the absence of Woody Guthrie. Self-Preservation Society continues in that vein, worrying about losing one’s soul to suburbia (“Hey Cinderella”), the competing impulses in Schnabel’s head, (“The Little Prince and Johnny Toxic”), and a search for some emotional truth (“Lost on Youth,” which musically references Pavement’s “Cut Your Hair”). —Chris Parker SATURDAY

METAL YO | Attila
w/ I See Stars, Capture the Crown, Ice Nine Kills, Myka, Relocate
Sat. March 1
7 p.m.
$16/adv., $18/door
Music Farm

If you’re looking for a good time in a bad way, check out Attila, the Atlanta quintet that wrote the book on party-hardy death metal. Their Spinal Tap spirit offers freewheeling irreverence to the notoriously dour, moribund genre; they’re sort of like Dethklok with a Juggalo undercurrent, particularly on last year’s About That Life. Attila’s fifth album features plenty of rapping, “Thug Life” imagery, and chunky riffage lifted from ’70s cock rock. It’s still a death metal album, though, but the frequent tempo, style, and vocal changes create something dynamic and theatrical in an almost Thrill Kill Kult manner. There’s simply a lot going on. Unlike a lot of death metal, Attila is anything but monolithic. In fact, there’s a wild backwood kegger vibe to the disc — “Middle Finger Up,” “Break Shit,” “Party with the Devil” — like any minute the cops are going to bust it for underage drinking. On About That Life, producer Joe Sturgis (The Devil Wears Prada, Emmure) gets a big multifarious sound filled-out with loops and programming, at times even evoking Pitchshifter. It’s a dramatic step for Attila after 2011’s breakthrough Outlawed and shows an admirable desire to not sit still. —Chris Parker SATURDAY

ORIGINAL RNR | Rachel Brooke
w/ GreyMarket, Lectra Lust, Dunder Chiefs
Wed. Feb. 26
9 p.m.
$5
Royal American

Drawing inspiration from rock ‘n’ roll’s early days — we’re talking mid-’50s here — Michigan chanteuse Rachel Brooke’s latest release, A Killer’s Dream, is a near-perfect firepit listen. Full of sultry singing and nods to bare-bones jazz and blues, the LP is one of those minimalistic and reverby discs that sound both spooky and sexy — and it doesn’t overwhelm the conversation with musical bombast. “I’m always listening to old country and blues and a little bit of jazz, and it comes out in my music,” Brooke says. “When ’50s/original rock ‘n’ roll music was being made for the first time, those artists were also influenced by that same stuff. So I think that my music sort of fits that time frame because I’m listening to the same stuff they were listening to.” And like many of rock ‘n’ roll’s original tunes — from “Hound Dog” to “Roll Over Beethoven” — there’s a fun-loving spirit to Brooke’s songs. “The old songs have a lot of wit and storytelling to them,” she says. “I definitely try to gravitate toward that because I think songwriting nowadays has lost that wit and subtlety, and it doesn’t leave much to the imagination, which,

in my opinion, is what songwriting and music is all about.”
—Chris Haire WEDNESDAY

FEMINIST FOLK | Lovely Locks
w/ Rachel Kate
Sun. March 2
9 p.m.
$5
Tin Roof

The gals in Savannah, Ga.’s Lovely Locks — Britt Scott, Anna Chandler, and Crystina Parker — like drinking their whiskey straight. That right there would have won us over, but then we found out that they’re also fiery feminists and, well, then we were positively smitten. “We sip whiskey before shows to warm up and have been approached by an astounding amount of dudes at the bar, dumbfounded, asking to marry us because they’ve never seen a woman drinking straight whiskey before,” says singer-percussionist Britt Scott. “Somewhere between a proposal and beating the hell out of a guitar while telling it like it is on the mic, we decided the two things we all champion are feminism and Jack Daniels.” Scott adds, “We value camaraderie and empowering women and girls to pick up an instrument and do it themselves — and we have amazing allies in Tom Worley and Brian Bazemore, our drummer and bassist.” Scott and company craft tunes that some have described as “electric folk with an attitude problem.” Case in point: their rough-around-the-edges single “Don’t Really Care.” Lovely Locks are currently working on a debut EP, and they hope to make Charleston a second home — they’ve helped out at the Holy City’s Girls Rock camp, and they’re pals with our very own Rachel Kate. —Chris Haire SUNDAY

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