Concert Previews

Macy Gray makes her way into the realm of Quiet Storm soul on her latest, the Will.I.Am produced

Big.

The Black Eyed Peas leader shied away from his Sly Stone-style deep funk jams and stripped the music down to its essentials, but there are enough idiosyncrasies left in Gray's Daffy Duck soul voice to keep the kooky charm of her music intact. On Saturday, Gray plays the cozy Music Box theater at the Borgata with the Brand New Heavies, the British acid jazz act that is reunited with its original lead vocalist, soul woman N'dea Davenport.

- Dan DeLuca

The new album is called Going Way Out With Heavy Trash, but it could just as well be called Going Way Back With - . The second platter by Jon Spencer and Matt Verta-Ray, a.k.a. Heavy Trash, is another retro-fired blast of rockabilly and garage-rock seasoned with dollops of blues, soul and country. In other words, it's nothing new. But once again, Spencer and Verta-Ray, with the help of the Sadies and others, bring to these original songs their own deranged and ultra-greasy panache. It's a non-reverential approach, but one that steers just clear of caricature.

- Nick Cristiano

Witty British wag Jamie T. makes his local debut Saturday at the North Star in support of his stylishly scrappy Panic Prevention, which plays like a mash up of Lily Allen and the Streets . . . Well-dressed New York quartet Interpol show off how much they've learned from Joy Division on Saturday at the Tower . . . Irish folk super group of sorts PreNup, featuring ex-Pogue and former Mrs. Elvis Costello, Cait O'Riordan, and fellow divorcee Fiachna ó Braonáin (of Hothouse Flowers), are at the Tin Angel on Tuesday . . . Literarily inclined singer songwriter Suzanne Vega, back on tour behind Beauty & Crime, her first album in six years, plays the World Café Live on Wednesday.

Shameless fun, that's what this bill is all about. Girl Talk is Gregg Gillis, the former Pittsburgh biomedical engineer who released the sample-mad

Night Ripper

last year. He mashes together a history of top 40 hooks, anything from Hall & Oates and Elton John to Nirvana and Madonna to 50 Cent and Young Jeezy. The result is head-spinning and smile-inducing. Add to that Baltimore's Dan Deacon, whose

Spiderman of the Rings

takes amped-up electroclash and adds Woody Woodpecker cackles, Chipmunk-like sped-up vocals, and singsong Sesame Street choruses, and Cleveland's White Williams, whose forthcoming

Smoke

hearkens back to the percolating synth rock of David Bowie and Brian Eno in the late '70s. It also includes a slinky cover of "I Want Candy." This sold-out show could produce nonstop ecstatic dancing.

- Steve Klinge

We're sorry that it never worked out for this progressive British ensemble once its guitarist Steve Hackett and its vocalist Peter Gabriel departed for successful solo careers. It left their twittering art-rocking lot to an occasionally singing drummer and his pals. Better luck next time, right? Obviously, we're joking, as nothing could have made more fiscal sense for Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks than having the other two goobers leave this Genesis trio to more moneymaking ways and streamlined, grandiose pop.

It's not like Collins, Rutherford and Banks didn't try to go long: An amiable reunion of the original quintet got dashed by Gabriel's usual noncommittal namby-pamby-ness. So expect this Genesis to take on the stuttering prog-pop of '80s heavy-MTV-rotation classics like "Land of Confusion" and the sweet synth-stomp of "Invisible Touch," as well as dip into Gabriel-era sounds - spookier wordier days when its original front man wore funny masks and codpieces.

- A.D. Amorosi