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Thursday, April 30
Portland-via-New Zealand psychonaut Ruban Nielson inaugurated his Unknown Mortal Orchestra projects with two albums that sounded like Led Zeppelin marinated in battery acid, inhabiting Jimmy Page guitar tones and turning up the volume until the songs and the tones became indistinguishable. But it was his detour toward psychedelic disco on 2015’s Multi-Love that cemented the band as an indie-pop institution, and on his latest album, V, Nielson bundles all the sides of his sound into one fogged-out 60-minute suite. Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark St. 8 pm. $52.37. All ages.
Thursday, April 30
El Ten Eleven’s music sounds like blueprints, shipyards, old documents—the calm of the functional, the intrigue of the liminal. It’s not just any band that could pull off the feat of soundtracking Helvetica: The Movie, the serene Gary Hustwit documentary that explores the hidden art of typography, but the Los Angeles bass-drums duo’s brand of instrumental, ambient post-rock has a lot in common with that most innocuous and functional font: welcoming, reassuring, but so irreducible as to be a little bit intimidating. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St. 8 pm. $25.82. 21+.
Monday, May 4
From his roots in the Bay Area indie ecosystem to his years as an itinerant man-and-boombox act to a deal with legendary indie label Run for Cover, Kevin Patrick Sullivan has witnessed the cult of his once folk-rock project Field Medic swell over the past decade and change. In keeping with the project’s diaristic slant, his latest album, Surrender Instead, is about the surreal position of finding yourself making music for a living, with sparse arrangements that depart from the fuller sounds of his recent records. Polaris Hall, 635 N Killingsworth Court. 8 pm. $26.20. 21+.
