Coming pop shows: Robert Earl Keen, The Spinners, and Mali Music

He's going up against the Grammys on Sunday night, but Robert Earl Keen is likely up to the task. The Texas songwriter is a little less glitzy than the likes of Beyoncé, Sam Smith, or Iggy Azalea, who will be on TV screens while he and his top-notch country band (who just released an excellent instrumental Christmas record, Santa Is Real, which is a Louvin Brothers in-joke title) are holding forth in grittier fashion at the Ardmore Music Hall. Keen is a sharp-eyed and funny songsmith whose best known song is his metaphoric outlaw saga "The Road Goes on Forever," not to mention his own jocular holiday song, "Merry Christmas from the Family." And he has got a fine new album, Happy Prisoner, coming out Tuesday. In a departure for him, it's made up entirely of well-chosen, expertly rendered bluegrass covers.

- Dan DeLuca

The Detroit Spinners, as the band was sometimes called in its Motown days in the early '60s, achieved its greatest success with the Philadelphia Sound and the great producer Thom Bell. "I'll Be Around," "Could It Be I'm Falling in Love," and "One of a Kind (Love Affair)" all came from 1973's Spinners, the vocal group's first album for Atlantic Records. "Mighty Love," "Rubberband Man," and "Games People Play" came in the next few years. That clutch of hits wasn't enough to get the Spinners into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, although the group made it to the final cut. In the words of the musicians' first big single: "It's a Shame." But we can honor them Friday at the Keswick Theatre, when baritone Henry Fambrough, the last surviving original member, will lead the Spinners in "An Evening of Classic Motown Hits You Know and Love."

- Steve Klinge

Not to be confused with the sonorous song of Africa's driest region, the earnest tones of Mali Music are focused on one Savannah, Ga., Christian-themed, singing/songwriting man, Jamaal Pollard. Like Bilal, with more of an overt gospel influence and less weird jazz, or Lauryn Hill without the Bob Marley references, Pollard/Mali crafts supple, neo-soul-hop like a model shipbuilder: with great care, intricate detail, and a loving touch. On his 2014 album Mali Is . . . Pollard strays a bit from his usual sacred screeds (save for songs such as "I Believe," "Fight for You," and the genial uplift of "Beautiful") in the Southern R&B of "No Fun Alone" and "Make It."

- A.D. Amorosi