Live Music Now

These are the 7 best shows to see in Houston this week

The concert season is in full-swing with plenty of local, national and international acts swinging through town. This week, it's the line-up of ultra-talented female singers that impresses with other notable shows by the fellas that will make for tough choices for music fans in the Bayou City.

Best show for the multimedia art aficionado
Eric San, also known as Montreal’s Kid Koala, is one of the most gifted, if not artistic turntablists on the planet. Yes, he has the scratching skills to go up with the best DJs around, but what makes him brilliant is his ability to blend different forms of media — video, graphics, and sound — into an exhilarating display. The musical genius, recently featured on the Baby Driver soundtrack and a favorite of Radiohead and Arcade Fire, will bring out his full arsenal at a rare Houston show.

The Society for the Performing Arts features Kid Koala performing next to Oscar-nominated production designer K.K. Barrett at Jones Hall, with a theatrical rendition of Koala’s graphic novel, Nufonia Must Fall. This event will include a live-adaptation of the book that features puppets, the strings of Afiara Quartet, and multiple screens and stages.

Kid Koala creates his own world at Jones Hall for the Performing Arts, 615 Louisiana St., Friday, February 9. Tickets start at $34 but use the promo code ROBOTS for half-price tickets. The show starts at 7:30 pm.

Best place to hear the second coming of Elliot Smith
Los Angeles-based, 23-year-old, singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers plays a headline slot Friday hot on the heels of one of the best albums of 2017, Stranger in the Alps, after opening for Noah Gunderson at the Heights Theater last November. Bridgers, who has been writing music since she was 11 years old, has gained the attention of some of the best songwriters in the country, including Ryan Adams, and Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst. The latter appeared on one of the most heartbreaking songs of the past year, “Would You Rather.”

If you ever wondered what Elliot Smith’s love child would sound like if she was raised in Laurel Canyon bohemia, this is the show to catch.

Phoebe Bridgers sings sparse songs of beautiful melancholy at White Oak Music Hall, 2915 N Main St., Friday, February 9. Soccer Mom opens. Tickets are $13 in advance, plus fees. Doors open at 8 pm. Bridgers will also play a free in-store set at Cactus Music at 2:30 pm Friday afternoon.

Best modern day femme fatale
What a strange trip it’s been to follow Lana Del Rey’s career. First came the transformation from mediocre singer-songwriter Lizzie Grant, into her current incarnation as the chart-topping, pouty-lipped seductress that she’s known for today. Then, there was the cringe-worthy appearance on Saturday Night Live. Not to mention, the sexually violent Marilyn Manson video. Then this past week, there was a kidnapping attempt on her by a stalker.

Throughout it all, she’s been producing high-profile exercises in well-produced, breezy pop music filtered through the lens of the Twin Peaks soundtrack, speaking to multitudes of Millennials who have aped her fashion sense and embraced her romanticism of youth culture. That she’s playing a basketball arena on the back of last year’s No. 1 Lust For Life speaks volume to her power in the American musical landscape.

Lana Del Rey holds court at the Toyota Center, 1510 Polk Street, on Saturday, February 10. Kali Uchis opens. Tickets start at $39.50 plus fees. Doors open at 8 p.m.

Best chance to see a future megastar
Say what you want about reality TV mogul Simon Cowell — he’s generally right when he gushes about a future star. Grace VanderWaal, then a spritely 12-years-old, captured the hearts of viewers by winning the massively popular competition series America’s Got Talent. Now a wise-old 14 years, she’s following Taylor Swift’s playbook of starting off with a a pleasant, acoustic-driven pop record of her own songs in 2017’s full-length, Just The Beginning.

Soon enough, she’ll have fake celebrity boyfriends and a musical empire to run. Until then, be one of those who can say you saw her at the beginning when she hits Warehouse Live.

Grace VanderWaal performs an intimate, sold-out at Warehouse Live Studio, 813 St Emanuel St, on Monday, February 12. Check out Warehouse Live’s ticket exchange for a chance at admission. Doors open at 6 pm.

Best show for busting out your flannel shirts
One of the more melodic alt-rock bands to hit the mainstream in the grunge-era, Gin Blossoms hit the big-time with 1992’s New Miserable Experience, a still pretty-great album that mixed ’80s jangle-pop with heavy guitar chords of the ’90s. That album produced hits, “Hey Jealousy,” “Allison Road,” and “Until I Fall Away.”

The following single from the Empire Records soundtrack (much better than the actual movie), “‘Til I Hear It From You,” kept them on the radio for years, but the band’s legacy is firmly tied to a time when Friends was must-see TV on Thursday nights. This show will either be a fun nostalgia trip or a reminder of how old we all are getting.

Gin Blossoms flashback to a time when guitar band topped the charts at House of Blues, 1204 Caroline St., on Tuesday, February 13. Tickets start at $30. Doors open at 7 pm.

Valentine’s Day dates for varying tastes
Are you and your bae fans of late-’90s/early-2000s, lo-fi indie-rock, and looking for something special to do this Valentine’s Day? Then check out the return of David Bazan’s cult-project Pedro The Lion at Rockefeller’s, who produced some of the most critically acclaimed albums of the aughts in the vein of Sebadoh and Pavement.

Feeling a bit friskier and looking for something more bump-‘n’-grind? Popular rapper G-Eazy has you covered at the Smart Financial Centre at Sugar Land. He’ll be showcasing his huge radio hits, “Me, Myself & I” and similarly titled “Him & I” alongside a big line-up of hip-hop acts as part of the Beautiful & Damned tour.

Pedro The Lion plays Rockefeller’s, 3620 Washington Ave., on Wednesday, February 14. Marie/Lepanto opens. Tickets start at $20 plus fees. Doors at 7 pm.

G-Eazy hits the Smart Financial Centre in Sugar Land, 18111 Lexington Blvd., on Wednesday, February 14. Trippie Redd, Phora and the Anthony Russo Band open. Tickets start at $29.50. Show starts at 8 pm.

Cult-act Pedro the Lion returns from a long hiatus to play Rockefeller's on Valentine's Day.

Courtesy Photo

Cult-act Pedro the Lion returns from a long hiatus to play Rockefeller's on Valentine's Day.

music concerts

Movie Review

New horror movie Faces of Death puts a modern twist on cult classic

Photo courtesy of of IFC Films

Dacre Montgomery in Faces of Death.

True horror fans will likely be familiar with the 1978 cult film Faces of Death, which purported to be a documentary showing real-life killings in gory detail. It didn’t, of course, but that didn’t stop rumors from continuing to spread for decades. Now, almost 50 years and multiple sequels later, comes a new version of Faces of Death, an actual movie that pays homage to the original in interesting ways.

Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at a YouTube-like company called Kino as a content moderator, flagging videos that violate the company’s policies. This means her job often involves seeing some truly despicable things from all manner of depraved people. One day, though, she comes across a video that seems a little too real, and after seeing more similar videos, she starts to believe they’re genuine murders.

Going against her company NDA, she starts to investigate the videos on her own, which puts her on the radar of Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), who is actually kidnapping people and killing them on camera through methods seen in the original Faces of Death film. It’s not long before Arthur tracks her down, with a plan to make her one of his next victims.

Written and directed by Daniel Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and co-written by Isa Mazzei, the film is not so much scary as it is creepy, with the occasional gross-out sequence. The idea of having someone emulate the killings in the cult film is a good idea, and pairing it with the modern-day attention economy — in which content creators go to increasing lengths for clicks — is a clever twist on a concept that other films have done.

The film as a whole is a commentary on how social media and video sharing sites have often decided to prioritize profits over the well-being of their users. Margot is shown allowing videos involving violence and sexual assault to stay on the site while nixing ones depicting how to use Narcan or demonstrating putting on a condom on a banana. Josh (Jermaine Fowler), Margot’s boss, is even explicit in the company mandate that outrageous videos drive views.

While Arthur has the makings of a good villain, there are few attempts to make him seem truly diabolical. His kidnappings often seem more spur-of-the-moment than calculated, and even though he has a well thought-out dungeon at home, the house’s location in the suburbs seems to make him vulnerable to easy discovery. Goldhaber and Mazzei leave more than a few unanswered questions along the way that take away from the intensity of the story.

Ferreira is yet another actor from Euphoria who’s capitalizing on her exposure from that show. She plays Margot’s increasing anxiety well, and when the action ratchets up in the final act, she meets the moment in a satisfying way. Montgomery returns to the vibe he had while playing the evil Billy on Stranger Things, and even though his character doesn’t fully live up to his potential, Montgomery sells his evil for all it’s worth.

The new Faces of Death may not be what some are expecting given the reputation of the previous films, but it’s a solid horror/thriller that uses the brand as a launching pad into something different. It doesn’t make much of a dent in the scare department, but it does give its violence and gore a degree of relevance in today’s often desensitized world.

---

Faces of Death is now playing in theaters.

movies film