Four Opening Bands Worth Seeing This Weekend

There isn't a shortage of bands trying to succeed at simply performing cute, catchy, electronic-based indie pop. The stuff is technically easy to make, sure, but when it's good, it's magnificently good. (I'm looking at you, Jens Lekman.) The ideal combination of humility, vulnerability, melody -- and grooves that make you wanna wiggle -- is hard to achieve, but Las Vegas' Kid Meets Cougar is on the right track. The band's songs also branch off from cute: some go all raw-and-screamy, while others get oblique 'n' funky. Expect earworm choruses and pristine harmonies -- and expect this band to go somewhere.

Most reasonable people, if you ask them, will say that they like country music in theory -- just not the shit that passes for "country" on mainstream radio. Well, T and A are a San Francisco kind of country band. No product-placement-laden odes to pick-up trucks and budget six-packs here -- just old-timey, down-and-out ruminations about drunken fights, bad days, and how much that ex-lover sucks. Combining punk attitude and redneck abandon, T and A sport a country style that oughta mesh well with today's flannel-fond, handlebar-mustache-sporting hipsterati. Hey, rednecks were drinking PBR long before you were.

Sunday: Toxic Holocaust at The Regency Ballroom with Danzig and All Shall Perish 

So it's a typically optimistic-sounding bill of metal at the Regency on Sunday. Thankfully, the band kicking things off is Portland's Toxic Holocaust, which puts just enough punk concision in its blitzkrieg thrash/death metal to suit those of us blessed with a short attention span for wankery. The band brings such a cornucopia of death and skulls and misery and chugging guitar notes that we can't help but wonder if it's all supposed to be ironic. That katana-sharp logo reminds us of some of the best from the past, and the titles of the band's caffeinated headbangers -- "War is Hell," "Wild Dogs," "Endless Armageddon" -- strike the perfect balance of doom and absurdity. But what else would you expect from the opener for Danzig?