Live Music Now

These are the 5 best concerts in Houston this week

RodeoHouston is right around the corner, which usually means a dip in larger shows coming through town. Thankfully, rock and hip-hop fans will be satiated with some big name acts before Houston goes all boots and saddles for three weeks, kicking off with a powerhouse multiple Grammy Award winner next Monday.

CultureMap's best, biggest, and most notable shows of the week are:

CultureMap show of the week: Muse
Monster British rock trio Muse got off to a slow start. First compared to Radiohead upon their debut album, Showbiz, in 1999, they made a small dent on the U.K. charts and barely a blip in the U.S. But a tour slot on the 2004 Curiousa Festival bill alongside heavyweights The Cure and a fantastic album, Absolution, started their ascent, eventually culminating in albums and singles placing near or at the top of the U.S. charts and multiple headline festival slots, solidifying them as one of the best live acts in the world.

Critics may not love them, but there is no denying that Muse can seduce audiences like few other bands with their mix of glam, prog rock, and Queen-like theatrics. This is a can’t miss performance for any rock fan with the group having eight albums to pull a truckload of great tunes from, the latest being 2018’s Simulation Theory..

Muse takes over Toyota Center, located at 1510 Polk St., on Friday, February 22. Tickets start at $39.50 plus fees. Doors open at 6:30 pm.

Meek Mill at Revention
Philly rapper Meek Mill’s career started out promising enough, his debut album, Dreams and Nightmares, reaching No. 2 on the charts. But his long list of run-ins with the law meant that he missed out on possibly millions of dollars in recordings and touring time. But his legal woes seemed to up the spotlight. Following the latest release from prison last year, Mill released his latest album, Championships, which went straight to No. 1, and he was invited to perform on Saturday Night Live. Unfortunately, this show is sold out with the only hopes of getting in the resale ticket market, but the hype is strong with this one.

Meek Mill is at Revention Music Center, located at 520 Texas Ave., on Saturday, February 23. Tickets start at $85 plus fees on the resale market. Doors open at 7 pm.

John Oates at Heights Theater
One-half of the classic ’80s group, Hall and Oates, John Oates is mostly known for his guitar work in that duo, but he’s also an underrated singer. While his first group was a going concern throughout much of the ’80s, Oates spread his wings in the early-2000s with a solo career, producing five albums under his own name. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee is touring behind 2018’s Arkansas, which is much more influenced by blues, jazz, and gospel than the pop music of his early career.

John Oates performs at the Heights Theater, located at 339 W 19th St., on Saturday, February 23. Vanessa Peters opens. Tickets start at $24 plus a $6 service charge. Doors open 7 pm.

Cypress Hill at HOB
Cypress Hill rose to fame in the early-’90s, speaking to a generation of suburban kids with the group’s undeniably catchy melodies and off-the-wall lyrics a la nasal voiced B Real. Singles “How Could I Just Kill a Man,” and “Insane in the Brain” pervaded U.S. youth culture before harder-edged gangster acts shuffled Hill’s stoner-rap to the sidelines. But nostalgia being a powerful motivator and ticket seller, Cypress Hill is back on the road, promoting their latest album, 2018’s Elephants on Acid, sticking largely to their sticky-icky rap playbook.

Cypress Hill lights up the House of Blues, located at 1204 Caroline St., on Sunday, February 24. Hollywood Undead open. Tickets start at $34.50 plus fees. Doors open at 6:30 pm.

CultureMap recommends: Kacey Musgraves
When CultureMap spoke to Jason Kane, managing director of entertainment for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, at the annual RodeoHouston artist line-up announcement in January, he said Kacey Musgraves had been on his radar as a possible performer for the last few years.

Then she released the critically and commercially acclaimed, Golden Hour. Kane smartly booked the crossover country-pop star to open RodeoHouston festivities and she went on to win four Grammy Awards, including Best Album. Other than Cardi B (set to perform at Rodeo Houston on March 1), no other star is going supernova like Musgraves is right now.

Kacey Musgraves opens RodeoHouston at NRG Stadium, located at 1 NRG Pkwy., on Monday, February 25. Tickets start at $20 plus fees. Doors open at 6:45 pm.

The massive British rock band Muse is at Toyota Center on Friday, February 22.

Photo by Danny Clinch

The massive British rock band Muse is at Toyota Center on Friday, February 22.

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Movie Review

Jennifer Lawrence plays mom on the edge in artsy drama Die My Love

Photo by Kimberley French/courtesy of MUBI

Jennifer Lawrence in Die My Love.

Writer/director Lynne Ramsay does not make feel-good movies. Her previous two films —You Were Never Really Here and We Need to Talk About Kevin — were about a traumatized veteran who tracks down missing girls for a living and parents reckoning with a child who might be a sociopath, respectively. Her latest, Die My Love, has a story as dark as its title.

Grace (Jennifer Lawrence) and Jackson (Robert Pattinson) are a married couple who move into a run-down house that used to belong to Jackson’s uncle, who shot and killed himself on the property. That doesn’t exactly scream “great vibes,” but the somewhat manic duo quickly introduce a child into the equation, an event that forms a schism between two people who previously seemed to be on the same off-kilter wavelength.

While Jackson works to provide for the family, Grace is left to take care of the baby and herself at the somewhat remote house. She doesn’t appear to be a big fan of the arrangement, engaging in all manner of odd behavior, like crawling around the floor, talking to herself, and taking the baby on miles-long walks to visit her mother-in-law, Pam (Sissy Spacek), who’s not doing well herself after recently losing her husband, Harry (Nick Nolte).

Ramsay, who co-wrote the film with Enda Walsh and Alice Birch, foregrounds Grace’s experience above all others, but the film is far from straightforward. The idea of post-partum depression is raised as a reason for Grace’s weird behavior, but as both she and Jackson are introduced as two people who skew to the “ab” side of normal, it’s difficult to say that everything she does is due to feelings that arise after giving birth.

Plus, Grace has plenty to be upset about in general, including living in a death house, being left alone with their child the majority of the time, and Jackson bringing home a yapping dog without even so much as a conversation. But the manifestation of her anger/depression is hard to parse, as Ramsay includes scenes of her carrying around a butcher knife, meeting up with a mysterious figure on a motorcycle, and other strange things that may or may not actually be happening.

There is clearly a lot of metaphorical work being done by seemingly random things like the reappearance of a black horse on multiple occasions, blaring rock music that accompanies several scenes, and the use of the 1x1 aspect ratio by Ramsay. It’s easy to feel the intensity of the film’s central relationship and their conflicts even if you can’t make heads or tails of the allusions that the filmmaker seems to love.

Lawrence is put through the wringer almost as much as she was in Darren Aronofsky’s Mother!, and her performance is one that can be felt strongly. Still, because the narrative is unclear, she often appears to be overwrought in certain scenes. Pattinson never fits well with his uncaring and/or oblivious character. Spacek makes a nice impression in a limited amount of screen time, but why Ramsay chose to use the ultra-talented LaKeith Stanfield in the nothing part of the motorcycle rider is baffling.

Those who love to dig into symbolism and non-linear storytelling will have a field day with the arty Die My Love. But for everyone else, anything Ramsay might have been trying to say about the difficulties of being a mother gets buried under many scenes that don’t make any logical sense and over-the-top acting that’s only fit to match the bizarreness of the film itself.

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Die My Love is now playing in theaters.

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