The Best Concerts in L.A. This Week

Solange -- See Thursday

Gliss
LOS GLOBOS
Gliss is one of L.A.'s more unusual bands. All three members -- Martin Klingman, Victoria Cecilia and David Reiss -- switch off on instruments and vocals. Yet no matter who's on the mic, their sound is always dreamy, packed in cottony layers of shoegazer guitars and keyboards. The trio's latest album, Langson Dans, is their best yet, fully realizing the potential sparked by earlier releases like Devotion Implosion. On Gliss' new video, "Weight of Love," Cecilia's languid voice floats like a disembodied ghost over Klingman's and Reiss' hazy wash of keyboards, and the overall impact is delicately haunting. Cecilia imbues "Blur" with a girl-group sheen, deepened by echoing Raveonettes/Dum Dum Girls--style reverb, even as her low vocals turn somber and sad, belying the poppy setting. With Gliss launching a weekly residency this month at Los Globos, now is the time to catch up to them before the great wide world steals them away. --Falling James

Ron King Big Band
TYPHOON
Typhoon at the Santa Monica Airport offers a unique combination of food and music. How unique? Scorpions and crickets are on the menu. Mondays at the Typhoon have long been a regular gig for big bands, and tonight trumpeter Ron King steps out as a leader fronting no less than a 17-piece band. A past Grammy nominee as a soloist, King's orchestra moves freely from jazz standards to Latin to contemporary styles. In recent years King took the band to the highly regarded Java Jazz Festival, eventually being named to its Hall of Fame in 2011. Come back Tuesday for the silkworm larvae and catch the 2012 Grammy-nominated Clare Fischer Latin Band while you're at it. --Tom Meek

Tuesday, February 5

Hot 8 Brass Band
BOOTLEG THEATER
The Hot 8 Brass Band is the kind of outfit that could only come out of N'awlins -- a second-line marching band that makes The Specials' "Ghost Town" into something almost spiritual, that matches rapped verses to fiery horn lines. The band even went after the New Orleans Police Department after the cops killed one of its members, with a song called "Can't Hide From the Truth." Spike Lee put the band in his Katrina doc, When the Levees Broke, and David Simon used it for both a plot point and a soundtrack in Treme -- you'll see Hot 8 leading a call-and-response of "New Orleans, that's where I wanna be/that's the place for me." This is strong and revitalizing stuff -- in the human spirit way, and in the stiff drink way, too. With local polymath Oliwa and his Pleasure Circus. --Chris Ziegler

Wednesday, February 6

ZZ Ward, Delta Rae
THE TROUBADOUR
These co-headliners are both on the rise, and at this point they're so evenly matched that tomorrow, when the bill continues at this club, they'll switch places, with Delta Rae headlining. Tonight, local singer ZZ Ward gets the top billing, crooning easygoing, rootsy tunes like "Charlie Ain't Home" and darker, bluesy plaints such as "Put the Gun Down." For all of her down-home soul, Ward is funky enough to collaborate with rappers like Freddie Gibbs. North Carolina's Delta Rae is the latest in a long line of stellar signings by Sire Records' Seymour Stein, who previously discovered the Ramones and Madonna. The coed band features four singers -- three of whom are siblings -- and while the songwriting on their debut album, Carry the Fire, is uneven, the singing is always impressive, especially on "Bottom of the River," where Brittany Hölljes wails with a compellingly fiery gospel fervor. Also Thursday. --Falling James