The LA Setlist: June 10-16, 2024

A quadruple threat, Nigerian-Canadian rapper Dax has harnessed versatile rhyming, soulful singing, unusually imaginative visual content, and sick remix skills to gather millions of followers and, in 2022, a major record deal. While palpably influenced by Eminem, whose tracks he’s repeatedly remixed, Dax boasts multiple gears, including wonderfully enunciated hyperspeed flows, contemplative slower passages, and a very decent singing voice. Now LA based, he was a SoundCloud kid who broke through with the 2017 video for “Cash Me Out” featuring Danielle Bregoli, before dwarfing that success with the deliberately controversial, 66-million-viewed “Dear God” three years later. Lyrically, Dax dodges between personal observations on his struggles with betrayal and depression, macro mulling on philosophy that echo his background in motivational speaking (“Eternity”), and thoughtful rants on religion (“God’s Eyes”). While his marketing can be clumsily transparent, Dax is an intriguing artist with phenomenal chops whose music justifies whatever it takes to get people listening.

Tickets to the all-ages Joyner Lucas show with Dax and Millyz are on sale at AXS.

Jazz Sabbath is a seemingly silly concept made serious by the sheer caliber of musicians involved. They’ve created a fictional backstory – something about Black Sabbath stealing their songs (and apparently most of their name) in the late 1960s, despite their real back story being equally interesting. Jazz Sabbath’s founder, keyboardist/guitarist Adam Wakeman, is the son of legendary Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman and longtime Ozzy Osbourne and Sabbath sideman, as well as playing for everyone from Annie Lennox to Victoria Beckham. On drums – and pay attention now – is Dylan Howe, son of Yes guitarist and former Wakeman Sr. bandmate Steve Howe, as well as an ex Blockheads member. Completed by upright bassist Jack Tustin, Jazz Sabbath deftly render Sabbath’s classic songs all but unrecognizable, shifting moods entirely from the doomy originals, but also ambushes the seminal Brit quartet’s catalogue as an attention-getting shtick to spotlight dazzling musicality.

Tickets for the two-night stand at Catalina Jazz Club are on sale at Ticketweb.

“Walking around in a swimsuit with a number on your waist like a show horse, all while a bunch of weird old guys give you a score of 1 to 10,” recalled Tennessee chanteuse Cyrena Wages of growing up competing on the Southern beauty pageant circuit. Wages’ just-released debut album, Vanity Project is a poppy, confessional Americana counter to years of conditioning, both in pageants – the cover depicts her in a swimsuit and sash – and during a decade of creeping disillusion inside Nashville’s ruthless star-making machine with her former band. Returning to the grounding of her native Memphis, she finally tells stories pent up since childhood, her tremulous timbre and unhurried arrangements aching with internal struggle and outdoorsy, backroads auras.

While tonight she performs on Hotel Café’s second stage as part of its monthly, eight-act Open Folk showcase, Vanity Project should soon have Wages topping bills.

Raised in rural England, Delilah Montagu was composing orchestral pieces as a pre-teen, signed with Columbia Records on her 19th birthday, and last year sang at a sold-out Madison Square Garden (albeit a guest appearance with Black Coffee). Montague’s refreshingly soulful indie folk connects through flawless warbling vocals and subtly embroidered and eclectic arrangements. Indeed, her delicate yet empowered voice is so distinctive that it was her feature on Black Coffee & David Guetta’s 2018 hit “Drive,” and DJ Fred Again’s name-checking sampling of her shivering “Lost Keys” single on 2022 club smash “Delilah (pull me out of this)” that revealed Montague to whole new audiences. Now LA-based, she remains endlessly melodic and open to embracing R&B and pop within an essentially organic/acoustic palette.

The marvelously intimate Moroccan Lounge will be an apt setting for an artist who is first and foremost a songsmith fascinated by human connections. Tickets at Ticketmaster.

While any genre can appear cartoonish from afar, listen closely and you’ll appreciate the nuances that enthrall aficionados. So it is with San Jose deathgrind flagbearers Exhumed, who since 1990 have personified a style that ostensibly just grafts intentionally repulsive lyrical concepts to ludicrous, unintelligible vocals and instruments bestially assaulted with zero restraint. But spend time with any Exhumed album and out seeps its humor, use of gore as metaphor, and emphasis on hooks. Their most recent full-length, 2022’s To The Dead, is as good a gateway as any, finding them still cryptkeepers of their frenzied, fetid field, which they imbue with poppy structures all bowing to king chorus. While guitarist/vocalist Matt Harvey has been the sole constant amidst bewilderingly unstable lineups (linger too close to the stage and you, too, risk getting recruited), Exhumed’s current reanimation includes longtime drummer Mike Hamilton and wonderfully named returnee vocalist/bassist Ross Sewage. Tickets on sale at Live Nation.

While Marina Allen has always expertly channeled classic singer-songwriters like Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell and Carole King, on new album Eight Pointed Star she truly adds her own gorgeously glacial voice to their conversation. Her third full-length finds the LA-based Allen finally tackling that perennial artistic inspiration, love, in wistful, of-her-time fashion. “Deep Fake” is an exquisitely harmonized cyber age Americana love song from her perspective as a self-confessed “recovering codependent,” while potent opener “I’m The Same” traces a friendship’s downward spiral. Eight Point Star also digs through Allen’s history and ancestry with the conscious selective-memory mythologizing that’s long infused folk music. On the fantasy-nostalgic “Red Cloud” she paints a largely imagined picture of pre-industrialization in the eponymous town (“I made a stew with rainwater and frozen meat, thick with pine needles), inspired by tales of her grandmother’s early life in Nebraska. Tickets at Dice.

North Carolina’s Luke Combs deftly teeters between beers ‘n trucks bro country and super-slick country-pop. It’s a niche that serves him well, propelling his everyman persona from debut EP to two nights at the 70,000-capacity SoFi Stadium within a decade. Infusing classic country with Southern soul, Combs has retained an endearing lyrical authenticity, as implied by the very title of last year’s chart-topping Gettin’ Old, a collection of songs about nostalgia for youth and finding his way as a husband and new father. Alongside sister 2002 album Growin’ Up, linked by single “Growin’ Up and Getting’ Old,” this easy-to-love record is another reminder that Combs’ (co)songwriting has a warts-‘n-all realness to the point of admitting his anxiety in aging, alongside its myriad joys. And Comb’s narrative frankness has proven hugely relatable – just ask any of the 140,000 folks about to flock to the SoFi to watch him play.

Without so much as an album to her name, English folk-pop singer-songwriter Paris Paloma is already touring globally. Her worldwide reputation is largely down to last year’s viral single “Labour,” in which her intoxicating multi-layered vibrato challenges societal relationship norms to enormously arresting effect. Even a cursory listen to Paloma unearths a hugely literary, goth-licked artist disinterested in well-traveled lyrical paths and not afraid to incorporate anything from art history to Greek mythology in her musical expressions. While unashamedly nerdy, even shooting an entrancing live rendition of “Labour” at London’s Tate Britain art museum, Paloma’s simmering tone and steely, single-minded delivery are utterly visceral and supremely alluring. It says much that her debut full-length, Cacophony, due in August is a double album, confirming Paloma as a wellspring of questioning creativity with a voice that could make a CVS receipt sound sexy. Tickets at Ticketweb.

Don’t hit a Drain show expecting the cliquey, self-righteous aura that all too often blights hardcore punk. They’re what you might expect a hardcore band from sunny, surfy Santa Cruz to sound like, soaked in California’s genre history and a good times take on an ostensibly violent style. Emanating from nicest-guy-in-the-scene singer Sammy Ciaramitaro oozes an all-in-this-together, everyman’s attitude that tempers musical and vocal intensity with its emphasis on fun and community. Ciaramitaro forgoes tough guy posturing in favor of honestly channeling his middle class, suburban roots, to which an exploding fanbase evidently relates to in droves. Drain unleashed an expectations-exceeding masterpiece in last year’s Living Proof, Ciaramitaro’s spewed/growled (and occasionally sung) utterances elevated by spiteful Slayer riffage, dexterous drumming, and attention-refreshing shifts in pace and groove. Earning a 5/5 review in heavy music bible Kerrang!, Living Proof is indeed evidence that aggressive sounds needn’t be negative or nasty. Tickets on sale at Live Nation.

This annual two day jazz-gravaganza is a calendar fixture for genre aficionados and more casual fans alike, many of whom travel from far afield for its gathering of revered talent. The 2024 edition includes Kamasi Washington, Robert Glasper with special guest Yebba, Cory Henry, The Soul Rebels with special guest Seun Kuti, Baby Rose, and Aneesa Strings. Hosted by Arsenio Hall, it also features performances by future greats from Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz Performance at UCLA and LAUSD Beyond the Bell All-City Jazz Big Band. Additionally, Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band alone is a remarkable coming together of jazz luminaries, comprising John Cowherd, Melvin Butler, Myron Walden, Roland Guerin, Brian Blade, and U2/Bob Dylan producer Daniel Lanois on guitar and steel. Arrive early for the Jazz Village Experience on the Kagan Patio, an exploration of the intersection of jazz and art through exhibitions, vendors, and art/photography displays.