- Nick Cristiano
Loretta Lynn, with John Francis, plays 8 p.m. Friday at the Keswick Theater, 291 N. Keswick Ave., Glenside. Tickets: $55 and $67.50. Information: 1-800-745-3000, www.keswicktheater.com.
Nightlands
Dave Hartley, bass player for Philadelphia trance-rockers the War On Drugs, made his debut as Nightlands with a 2010 debut album, Forget the Mantra, that was dreamy in a literal sense, as it used middle-of-the-night inspirations captured on a bedside tape recorder as grist for a challenging but altogether pleasing experimental mill.
Nightlands' lush, vocal-harmony-layered sophomore release, Oak Island, is due in January on Secretly Canadian. But while Hartley's Tuesday night show at PhilaMOCA will include some songs from both Nightlands albums, its main focus is another intriguing pet project.
With the electronic assistance of Jeff Zeigler, Hartley will be playing an original score he has written to Stanley Kubrick's far-seeing 1968 sci-fi movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, which in turn was based on Arthur C. Clarke's novel. Here's how he's explained what he's up to: "I'm going to take my favorite film, one that has its eyes squarely on the future, and recontextualize it with the sounds of nostalgia and past-watch. It represents a reverence for science and a dream of the future that died in the '60s, killed by the fear of change and dogmatism of religion."
- Dan DeLuca
Nightlands, with Mikele Edwards, plays 7 p.m. Tuesday at PhilaMOCA, 513 N. 12th St. Tickets: $14. Information: 267-519-9651, www.philamoca.org.
The Souljazz Orchestra
Canada's leading musical celebrities aren't just folksy singer-songwriters (Joni Mitchell, Neil Young) or prog-rockers like Rush (also with a Neil). There's been funk and noise in the chilly hills of Ottawa ever since the Souljazz Orchestra took to the good groove in 2002.
With roots sunk in social awareness, and a sound and polemic that derive from such sources as Fela Kuti's Afrobeat and Max Roach's operatic, jazzy Freedom Now Suite, the group had its first big hit with the Latin-laced 2006 single "Mista President." That was from its second album, Freedom No Go Die on the Do Right! label.
Since then, keyboardist Pierre Chrétien, alto saxophonist Zakari Frantz, baritone saxophonist Ray Murray, tenor saxophonist Steve Patterson, and percussionists Marielle Rivard and Philippe Lafrenière - all of whom sing - have grown prettier and richer in terms of its tropical musical palette, with lyrics spun toward the spiritually conscious as well as the political.
The Souljazz Orchestra's two most recent albums, 2010's Rising Sun and this year's Solidarity, are preachy in the very best way (see "Jericho," from their newest record) while upping the ante on the funk. And there's no one named Neil involved.
- A.D. Amorosi
The Souljazz Orchestra, with Zongo Junction, at 8 p.m. Sunday at World Cafe Live, 3025 Walnut St. Tickets: $15. Information: 215-222-1400, www.worldcafelive.com.
