Dan DeLuca’s Mix Picks: Drive-By Truckers, J. Roddy Walston, Deadmau5, and ‘The Devil and Daniel Johnston’
Our music critic's Sunday picks.
Drive-By Truckers, “Thoughts and Prayers.” Southern rock road warriors Drive-By Truckers were last heard from with American Band, the 2016 election year album that didn’t shy away from big issues like white working-class resentment and America’s racial divide. On this second song to be released from the forthcoming The Unraveling, singer Patterson Hood and fellow Truckers are back for more, beginning with a chilling description of a school shooting and seething with rage at the hollow words repeated ad nauseam by feckless politicians in response to the gun violence epidemic. The Unraveling is due out Jan.31. The band plays Union Transfer on Feb. 27.
J. Roddy Walston. Richmond, Va., piano-pounding rocker J. Roddy Walston has quit the business. Or rather, Walston has at least temporarily quit playing with the Business, his longtime backing band, and is on a solo tour with a stupendous collection of keyboards at his fingertips on which to play his pumped-up power pop songs in a show he’s calling “A Single Dose of Strangeness.” Parker Gispert of the Whigs is also on the bill. Monday at Ardmore Music Hall.
The Devil and Daniel Johnston. The revered indie songwriter Daniel Johnston — a favorite of Kurt Cobain’s — died last year after lifelong struggles with mental illness. Jeff Feuerzeig’s 2005 documentary will be screened on what would have been Johnston’s 59th birthday, followed by a performance by Joe Jack Talcum of the Dead Milkmen. Also, on Jan. 31, dBpm Records will release Chicago 2017, a vinyl-only Johnston album recorded that year with Wilco leader Jeff Tweedy’s family band Tweedy. Wednesday at World Cafe Live.
Deadmau5. The Canadian progressive house DJ and producer, born Joel Zimmerman, got the idea for his stage name when he found a deceased rodent in his computer. Along with Daft Punk and Marshmello, the former Made in America headliner fully understands the value of mystery, marketing himself as a masked music-maker, in his case by performing inside a giant mouse head that makes him seems like a playfully subversive, electronic-dance-music answer to Mickey Mouse. Thursday at the Met.