THURSDAY 3/26

MITSKI

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9 p.m. Juanita’s. $5.

Mitski Miyawaki lives in Brooklyn and is a very talented songwriter, producer and performer who records under her first name. On her album “LUSH,” there were these delicate, private songs that worked like noise-canceling headphones — listening to them made you feel underwater or stuck in your own head. Her next album was called “Retired from Sad, New Career in Business,” and made use of more sophisticated instrumental arrangements: cellos and trumpets and all of it a little discordant and loopy and breakable. The underlying emotional temperature was self-lacerating and uncomfortable, but mostly inscrutable. Her latest is “Bury Me at Makeout Creek,” and it’s full-on noise pop (apparently at least partly a concession to the realities of touring), but with more attention paid to dynamics than the genre usually affords. “It’s about being stuck, being impatient,” she told The Fader, “being bored to death, being angry with what you’ve been given, and being young and soft and defiant inside and not knowing what to do with that.” Recommended for fans of Bjork and punk rock.

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THURSDAY 3/26

BLACK MILK

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9 p.m. Stickyz. $12.

Imagine being a high school student in mid-’90s Detroit who likes messing around with old records. And there’s Slum Village in your own town, a rap group making trippy origami collages out of Iron Butterfly and George Duke and The Fatback Band and Barney Kessel, whoever that is. J Dilla, who was Slum Village’s in-house beat-maker until he died in 2006, was the Ornette Coleman of rap production, and Black Milk is likely sick of being compared to him, though he acknowledges that it was something to see, and that Dilla is No. 1 on his list. That’s a long shadow, though, and Black Milk, the producer born Curtis Cross, deserves better than to be stuck in it. Probably best known for his work with fellow Detroit eccentric Danny Brown, the great Pharoahe Monch and Slum Village’s Elzhi (plus a one-off with Jack White), Black Milk has created a universe of his own over the course of about six albums, the most recent being “If There’s a Hell Below,” which features Bun B and Pete Rock. Now more into Flying Lotus than DJ Premier, he’s taken his sampling habits in a notably expansive, psychotropic direction, embracing a maximalist wall of sound.

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FRIDAY 3/27

WINTER JAM 2015

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7 p.m. Verizon Arena. $10.

“I like to tell people that Skillet is biggest-selling band that you’ve never heard of,” Skillet singer John Cooper told the Huffington Post not long ago. Cooper plays in Skillet with his wife, Korey. They live in Kenosha, Wis. Their last album went platinum. They’re a Christian band. They’ve toured with Nickelback, and now they’re headlining Winter Jam 2015, which is a huge touring festival of Christian artists. Skillet is the biggest among them. Let’s not dwell on their music. It’s sort of heavy. I think they have a violinist. It reminds me of an older guy who lived in my neighborhood growing up, who had a chinstrap beard and an Incubus tattoo and wore bowling shirts and drove an old two-door Dodge Avenger covered in bumper stickers. I think his name was Doug. “We’ve not been critical darlings,” Cooper also said. He thinks it might be because of their faith, though I tend to doubt it. Glenn Beck has featured them on his website, TheBlaze, and said they had a “life-changing message.” Also on the Winter Jam bill are Jeremy Camp and Francesca Battistelli.

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FRIDAY 3/27

YOUNG BUCK

9 p.m. IV Corners. $20.

Young Buck was never a particularly memorable rapper, but he has had a long and admirable career, an accomplishment that itself demands a degree of respect. Also there is his loyalty. He has been nothing if not loyal. Songs you might know by Young Buck: “Shorty Wanna Ride”? “Let Me In”? The former had a mysterious, Moroccan-sounding beat by Lil Jon, a little winding snake-charmer of a riff. It was on his second album, “Straight Outta Cashville” (He’s from Nashville). Buck was on Cash Money Records for years, not that he has much to show for it. He left with Juvenile — they never got the attention they needed, the resources. They formed a group called UTP that also featured Wacko and Skip and Soulja Slim, who was later shot and killed at his mother’s house in New Orleans the night before Thanksgiving 2003. Buck himself was shot several times at his own home in Nashville in 2000. It was a break-in. He got a blood transfusion. He joined G-Unit, a rap group forged by 50 Cent, who grew up with his grandparents and eight uncles and aunts in a house in Queens. Here Buck found the family that he needed. They made group mixtapes and supported each other and insulted each other’s rivals. 50 bought Mike Tyson’s old mansion in Connecticut and gave his friends their own rooms. He read Architectural Digest and divided the house into three sections, including a nightclub. Later he dismissed Buck for “inconsistent behavior.” I can’t imagine how that made Buck feel. Things got worse for him after that. The public bankruptcy hearings. The lawyers even wanted his name. Called it an “asset.” Wasn’t much of an asset anymore. But that was then. G-Unit reunited last year, even Buck. This is as it should be. He has been nothing if not loyal.

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FRIDAY 3/27-SUNDAY 3/29

DISCOVER THE DINOSAURS

Statehouse Convention Center. $16-$22.

One way to get a sense of the kid-friendly touring exhibit “Discover the Dinosaurs,” which features animatronic recreations of species who lived between roughly 231.4 and 65 million years ago, is to read the Yelp reviews. Alex G, a 13-year-old who used to want to be a paleontologist, more or less loved it. “However,” he wrote, “the Mastodons are very small and not actual size at all. And there is no Saber Tooth Cat, which was disappointing.” Helen C called it a “load of crapola.” Deez N, who I suspect is using a pseudonym, wrote, “The purveyors of that show really put the ‘mess’ in the Mesozoic Era.” Aroz, out in San Bernardino, claimed to have “seen better dinosaurs in coloring books,” and Jose, from La Puente, advised, “You’re better off taking the little ones to Chuck E. Cheese’s.” Others were even less forgiving. “Worst possible use of time and money,” Ivan M. wrote, a little hyperbolically. Still, it has its fans. Shane, who must not have noticed the tenor of the other reviews, asked, “Who doesn’t like 15 ft. tall flesh-eating reptiles?” Who indeed, Shane? Who indeed?

WEDNESDAY 4/1

DARSOMBRA

9:30 p.m. White Water Tavern. $6.

Together, Brian Daniloski and Ann Everton operate what they often call a “transcendental audio/visual rock duo.” They call it Darsombra. Like David Byrne and Baltimore Club and Panda Bear and Wham City and John Barth and Edgar Allen Poe, they are from Baltimore. Have you ever mixed oils in a little glass tray over a slide projector? Have you ever seen 16mm films overlap? Are you afraid of dying? Do you frequent sweat lodges? Have you ventured into the Amazon seeking the secrets of the Banisteriopsis caapi vine, which the Amerindian cultures collect to brew yagé, or ayahuasca? Darsombra are of the cosmic sort. They think big picture. They think in terms of inner space. The brain is a screen, etc. Like hosts of an acid party in 1970s East Berlin, all of us with our beards and hand drums, they will bring their audio and visuals to the White Water Tavern Wednesday night. Also performing will be Little Rock’s Auto-Dreamer and Mainland Divide, who seem like kindred spirits, brothers in the prism of the eternal now.

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