Live Music Now

Here are the 7 best concerts in Houston this week

Leave it to Saturday Night Live to skewer the glut of music reality TV shows right now with their spoof on America's Got Talent, aired November 3. It keyed in on the one thing that makes us all suckers for these programs: the performers who don't look like they'd have any chance to be good wind up blowing us away. It's obviously staged this way for ratings, but it doesn't stop us from falling for them.

In other music reality TV music show news, Houston-based performer Sarah Grace entered the knockout stages of The Voice, which aired on November 5. The 15-year-old singer is currently being tutored by fellow Texan, Kelly Clarkson, and was picked from thousands of entrants to appear on the hit show. She was saved by Clarkson to move onto the next round, so be on the lookout to see her in the weeks ahead.

Meanwhile, the following bands have loads of talent — no surprises here. These are the best, biggest, and most notable shows of the week:

Twenty One Pilots soar
For some reason or another, Columbus, Ohio's non-distinct Twenty One Pilots became one of the few bands to be wholly embraced by alternative and mainstream rock radio over the last five years, with singles “Ride” and “Stressed Out,” still receiving tons of airplay from their 2015 album, Blurryface. So what does this duo, a mix of Offspring bounce, Sublime melodies, and ineffectual vocals, do for an encore? They release their most relevant album to date, Trench, garnering some of their best reviews of their career, led by single, the Nine Inch Nails-like "Jumpsuit." They’ll headline a heavy alt-nation slate at Toyota Center, where you’ll be able to hear all the hits you have to listen to in the car a dozen times a day.

Twenty One Pilots take over the Toyota Center, located at 1510 Polk St., on Tuesday, November 7. AWOLNATION and Max Frost open. Tickets start at $39.50 plus service fees. Doors open at 6 pm.

CultureMap recommends: Killer Queen's rhapsody
One of the beneficiaries of the success of the No. 1 movie in the world, Bohemian Rhapsody, is the many Queen cover bands that bring Freddie Mercury's legacy alive for those who never got to see the absolute best frontman in the history of rock music do his thing — before his early demise due to AIDS complications. It's a kind of magic, then, that we get one of the more well known knock-offs, Killer Queen, performing in quite literally, a barn, this week. While Freddie might be rolling over in his grave due to this fact, Queen diehards will want to pony up the cash to see this show to get a small semblance of the power that is/was one of the best to ever prance across a stage to power chords.

Killer Queen featuring Patrick Myers performs at The Big Barn at Dosey Doe, located at 25911 I-45 N., The Woodlands, on Thursday, November 9. Tickets start at $98 plus service fees — includes a three course meal. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

Billy Gibbons does the Blues
ZZ Top frontman Billy Gibbons is taking some time away from his regular gig to play some initimate blues shows with friends, including Guns 'N Roses drummer Matt Sorum, as part of his promotion of his second solo record, The Big Bad Blues. Gibbons is an underrated guitarist, so a solo show should allow him to show off his chops.

Billy F. Gibbons does the solo thing in his home town at Revention Music Center, located at 520 Texas Ave., on Friday, November 9. Tickets start at $35 plus service fees. Doors open at 7 pm.

CultureMap free show of the week: Bayou Concert Series
The Bayou Concert Series wraps up for the season with an ode to "Houston Blues, Jazz, and Soul." Only 22 years-old, headliner and Houston native James Francies often appears with The Roots on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on piano, and is currently working on his debut album for the legendary jazz label, Blue Note. He'll be joined by vocal blues and gospel powerhouse, Diunna Greenleaf. The event will be part of the celebrations surrounding the 10th anniversary of Discovery Green.

af, an internationally recognized powerhouse

vocalist who learned gospel and blues from her father

singer-songwriter Diunna Greenle

af, an internationally recognized powerhouse

vocalist who learned gospel and blues from her father

The Bayou Concert Series goes down at Discovery Green, located at 1500 McKinney St., on Saturday, November 10. Admission is free. Bands start at 7 pm.

Wye Oak at Rockefellers
Baltimore duo Wye Oak comes into town hot on the heels of the release of one of the best albums of the year in The Louder I Call, the Faster it Runs. The group combines indie rock with folk, dream pop, and experimentalism, not unlike fellow Baltimore act, Beach House. Wye Oak keeps good company. It shares a label with bands such as Arcade Fire, Spoon, and The Magnetic Fields, all on Merge Records.

Wye Oak performs at Rockefellers, located at 3620 Washington Ave., on Sunday, November 11. Tickets start at $15 plus a $4.31 service fee. Doors open at 8 pm.

The return of Good Charlotte
Good Charlotte is back on the road promoting its second comeback album, Generation Rx. The band, led by lead singer Joel Madden and guitarist Benji Madden hit the big time in the aughts with a series of alt-rock meets emo hits, including "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," and the Blur-aping "Girls & Boys." The band hasn't been that active over the last decade, the Madden brothers more content to date Hollywood starlets than to make music. But the last few years have seen the group back on the touring circuit with varying degrees of success.

Good Charlotte is back in Houston at House of Blues, located at 1204 Caroline St., on Monday, November 12. Sleeping with Sirens, Knuckle Puck, and The Dose open. Tickets start at $39.50 plus service fees. Doors open at 6 pm.

CultureMap show of the week: Of Montreal

One of the most inventive and creative bands in indie-rock, Athens, Georgia's Of Montreal return to Houston after a well-received set at Day for Night festival late last year. That performance featured several costume changes for frontman Kevin Barnes, props, dancers, and a kaleidoscopic video backdrop. A full show promises to up the antics from these tricksters, making this a show for anyone who simply loves a great show, regardless of knowledge of the band's extensive back catalogue.Their latest blast of ADD-addled psychedelia is this year's White is Relic/Irrealis Mood.

Of Montreal headlines White Oak Music Hall, located at 2915 N. Main St., on Monday, November 12. Wild Moccasins and Reptaliens open. Tickets start at $20 plus a $8.63 service fee. Doors open at 7 pm.

Twenty One Pilots plays the Toyota Center on Tuesday, November 6.s

Photo courtesy of Twenty One Pilots

Twenty One Pilots plays the Toyota Center on Tuesday, November 6.s

nightlife column music concerts

Movie Review

Final Destination: Bloodlines reboots cult favorite horror franchise

Photo by Eric Milner

Kaitlyn Santa Juana in Final Destination: Bloodlines.

On the surface, the Final Destination films really shouldn’t work. There is no villain other than the concept of death itself, and nearly every death that occurs is foreshadowed so heavily that it removes the normal suspense that comes in horror films. And yet the franchise was successful enough to spawn five films over 11 years in the early 2000s, and now a reboot, Final Destination: Bloodlines.

A fantastic opening sequence set in the 1960s sets both the tone and the plot of the film, in which Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) has a recurring nightmare about a disaster that her grandmother, Iris (Gabrielle Rose), helped to avert. A visit to the reclusive Iris convinces Stefani that she and her family should not exist, and that each one of them is destined to meet a grisly end in the near future.

Met with resistance from her family members, Kaitlyn is unsurprisingly proven right as the film goes along, with different people dying in a variety of bizarre ways. A visit to William Bludworth (the late Tony Todd), a mortician who’s been the one constant in the series, provides a glimmer of hope that they can cheat death. But will they figure it out before it’s too late?

Directed by Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein, and written by Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor, the film does not try to reinvent the wheel for the concept. The entire point is to get as creative as possible with the death scenes, and the filmmakers take that mandate seriously, with each successive death becoming increasingly gruesome. The Rube Goldberg-like manner in which each death occurs makes the scenes come off as entertaining instead of off-putting.

The idea of Death hunting down an entire family line due to the actions of the family elder is a solid twist on the series’ central premise, and that change keeps the film from feeling repetitive. The story also introduces the possibility that the entire series is connected due to Iris’ actions, with the character possessing a scrapbook that references well-known incidents from previous films, a fun Easter egg for longtime fans.

The creativity of the kill sequences does not carry over to the overall story, though. Almost every character in the film only exists in order to meet a horrific end, so anything that they have going on outside of being stalked by Death is purely window dressing. Consequently, it’s hard to really care about anybody, even if they are all related to one another.

Because characters are so easily dispatched in the film, the cast is devoid of well-known actors. This is by far Santa Juana’s biggest role to date, and she does well enough to want to see more of her in the future. Adults like Alex Zahara and Rya Kihlstedt are character actors who bring some history with them, while the younger group is composed of people still trying to make names for themselves.

Final Destination: Bloodlines is a solid return for the franchise, even if it feels more like a one-off film rather than a justification for more stories in the future. But given how easily the concept can be adapted into new circumstances, don’t be surprised if another movie pops up in a couple of years.

---

Final Destination: Bloodlines opens in theaters on May 16.

movies film