Ravyn Lenae, Spoon, the Magnetic Fields, and More Crucial Concerts: Plan your week in music with a little help from these recommendations – Music

Photo by Brandon Hoeg

Ravyn Lenae

Friday 18, Scoot Inn

By the time Chicago crooner Ravyn Lenae released her long-awaited debut album Hypnos in 2022, she’d had her elvish falsetto compared to greats like Billie Holiday and Erykah Badu and opened for contemporary alt-soul/hip-hop favorites SZA and Noname. More big names appear on August follow-up Bird’s Eye – Ty Dolla $ign lends a verse on “Dream Girl,” and Childish Gambino plays Lenae’s absent father on melancholy standout “One Wish” – but with infectious pop melodies (“Genius”), reggae beats (“Candy”), and slippery bass (“Love Me Not”), the 25-year-old artist proves herself to be more than an R&B student.   – Carys Anderson

Austin Ghoul Gang Movie & Music Night

Friday 18, Kick Butt Coffee

Taking place within a venue/coffeeshop whose vibes are, respectfully, supernaturally strange, Morbidly Beautiful contributor Alyssa Miller stages a terrifyingly good mashup of music and movie. Costumes encouraged, and ticket price in part benefitting We Luv Video, Friday’s lineup features metalsmiths Stitched Up, hardcore western-wear wielders Dead Horse Creek, gender-punk poets Snatchwitch, and No Culture, which plays “subatomic booty shakin’ music.” Stand for the tunes, but sit your butt down for the WNUF Halloween Special, a found-footage gem playing in the “haunted house local news segment” space complete with in-world dentist commercials offering cash to kids who toss their candy.   – James Scott

Courtesy of Paramount Theatre

X

Friday 18, Paramount Theatre

Los Angeles’ flagship punk band X, featuring now-Austin resident John Doe, blow into town on what they’ve declared is their final tour, promoting their final studio LP, the excellent Smoke & Fiction. Ironically, X will be rocking the art deco splendor of the Paramount, down the street from the former East Fourth location of New Wave stronghold Club Foot, where they began their Austin love affair on Nov. 17 and 18, 1982. The Paramount is considerably upmarket from Club Foot, but X will play as furiously as they did then. Squirrel Nut Zippers singer/songwriter Jimbo Mathus opens.   – Tim Stegall

Austin Record Convention

Friday 18 – Sunday 20 Palmer Events Center

Call my lawyer – John Barrymore in William Wyler’s Counsellor at Law, 1993! “The greatest record store in the known universe for three days only,” that’s MY line. (See “Playback,” May 5, 2017.) Prominently attributed on the Austin Record Convention website to some wacky weed writer, the Doc Brown of the scene, I either fed him that line or … erm (cough) … edited it into one of his columns (ahem). Because think about it: The U.S. populates the best record stores in the world, so if Earth inhabits the only life known around us … So, yeah, “Greatest record store in the known universe for three days only.™” Early shopping Friday, $30, Saturday-Sunday, $5.   – Raoul Hernandez

Photo by Tom Hines

Spoon

Saturday 19, Longhorn City Limits

When was the last time Spoon played a free afternoon show? Anything for the Longhorns. Two years after dropping the Grammy-winning, back-to-basics rock & roller Lucifer on the Sofa (and hot off the release of a 10-year anniversary expanded edition of 2014’s glimmering They Want My Soul), Austin’s most famous indie rock exports warm up the LBJ Lawn – alongside DJ Mel and local Afrobeat collective Hard Proof – before our Red River Rivalry-winning team faces off against the Georgia Bulldogs at home.   – Carys Anderson

Mary Gauthier (Photo by Chad Cochran)

Three Women and the Truth

Saturday 19, State Theatre

Mary Gauthier writes the kinds of songs that cut to the core, compassionate but steeled with the kind of wisdom and direct poetry that strikes both intimate and universal. Her Three Women and the Truth shows multiply that impact in a powerful evening of unvarnished feminine storytelling in an all-star songswap. This iteration recruits local Laboratorio maestro Carrie Rodriguez and Austin native Jaimee Harris, returning home behind last year’s poignant Boomerang Town, each artist worthy of carrying the State stage on their own. Gauthier, meanwhile, marks the 25th anniversary of Drag Queens in Limousines, her seminal sophomore LP.   – Doug Freeman

Paul Wall

Saturday 19, The Backyard Grill and Stage, Waco

Though the longtime Swishahouse representative could be playing larger venues or attaching himself to similar artists for bigger shows, the still-in-demand Paul Wall is back to his slab roots, playing extremely local Texas and nationwide haunts in places like Amarillo, Plano, and even a tiny collegiate sports arena up in Omaha. His most recent release, 2023’s The Great Wall, wasn’t his best work. However, between his acclaimed early-to-mid Aughts output (from his Chamillionaire partnership, 2005’s Peoples Champ, and 2007’s Get Money, Stay True) through his recent album double-dip with rapper Termanology, there will be more than enough to satisfy.   – Kahron Spearman

Diplo

Sunday 20, Mayfair Austin

Equally talented and complicated, the Grammy-winning Diplo’s solo and collaborative discographical output has few peers in his fields of dance/EDM. It would be challenging to locate an “it” artist for whom, over the past 20 years, he hasn’t done production, a remix, or joined in a brief project (including Sia, Skrillex, and others). The producer and DJ appears to be ramping up for another run to close out 2024 with his latest, the lush, festival-ready Afro-house single “Forever,” with French house/EDM maven HUGEL, featuring Malou & Yuna. The song gained significant buzz pre-release after his social media use in the culmination of a Mt. Fuji climb.   – Kahron Spearman

Courtesy of ACL Live

Lyle Lovett and His Large Band

Sunday 20 – Monday 21, ACL Live

Lyle Lovett’s annual two-night stand in Austin ought to be a holiday. With his phenomenal 15-piece Large Band, the Texan digs deep into his catalog for rare deep cuts, surprising covers, and of course familiar hits, with special guests often joining throughout the set. This year marks 35 years since Lovett released his Lyle Lovett and His Large Band LP, a surprising turn for the songwriter that leaned into heavy jazz elements and won the artist his first Grammy. Yet the album also showcased his humor, sharp songwriting, and eclectic stylistic span that has come to define his career.   – Doug Freeman

Superchunk

Monday 21, Radio East

In the pantheon of breakup albums, Superchunk’s Foolish may be indie rock’s apogee. The North Carolina power pop progenitors’ fourth LP plays as brutally melancholy and questioning as it does cathartic and loud, a real-time unraveling of the relationship between frontman Mac McCaughan and bassist Laura Ballance. The quartet survived the split (as did the couple’s nascent indie imprint Merge Records) and now exhumes the critically acclaimed album for a 30th anniversary showcase, as well as cuts from last year’s compilation LP Misfits & Mistakes: Singles, B-Sides & Strays 2007-2023 and new singles “Everybody Dies” b/w “As in a Blender.”   – Doug Freeman

The Magnetic Fields

Tuesday 22 – Wednesday 23, Paramount Theatre

Twenty-five years ago, the Magnetic Fields unleashed 69 Love Songs, a sprawling, three-disc ode to popular music’s most famous kind of composition that traversed synth-pop, folk, jazz, country, and, of course, indie rock. For the first time in almost just as many years, Stephin Merritt and company will play the whole record, home to such hits as “I Think I Need a New Heart” and the Peter Gabriel-covered “The Book of Love,” over two nights. Tickets to Tuesday are largely sold out, but if you’re willing to accept a measly 35-song set on Wednesday evening, snag yours now. Merritt will also pop over to AFS Cinema on Monday, Oct. 21 for a special screening of 2010 doc Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields.   – Carys Anderson

FIDLAR

Tuesday 22, Mohawk

FIDLAR’s timing is either dead-on or off by a week. Hawaiian punk Zac Carper’s SoCal skate squad once bro’d up hard here in A-Town, raging ACL Fest stages like they owned the place. Their raw 2013 debut matched beach hooks to beat vulnerability such that critical consensus never swung back in their favor. Until last month! Surviving the Dream bottles the same slacker charge, easily the band’s best since its debut. And in a ditty like “Break Your Heart” Carper reveals maturity enough to have penned an alternative wedding song for the ages. Perhaps FIDLAR outgrew local festivals, then. Sugar Pit opens.   – Raoul Hernandez

Tinashe

Wednesday 23, Stubb’s

At long last, former child actor Tinashe (born Tinashe Jorgensen Kachingwe) has thoroughly shaken off the sweet image that became “you do realize I’m an adult woman.” Now emerging into the sultry singer capable of “Nasty,” she can ask, “Is somebody gonna match my freak?” without her full-grown freak flag being pulled down by remembrances of her child/teen-bop cuteness. The massive U.S. Rhythmic Radio Chart-topping single “Nasty,” off the well-reviewed Quantum Baby, was spurred by its virality and effortless use in memes and Maya Rudolph’s Instagram fashion stories.   – Kahron Spearman

Margaret Slovak Trio

Wednesday 23, Monks Jazz

Coached by mavericks John Abercrombie, Ralph Towner, and Kenny Wheeler, guitarist Margaret Slovak is one of the bright stars in Austin’s galaxy of first-class jazz musicians. The author of 2022’s Ballad for Brad, dedicated to her husband during his cancer battle, Slovak composes music known for deep compassion as much as sublime beauty. She doesn’t often step away from her busy schedule performing for chemotherapy and hospice patients and a monthly Chez Zee gig for an intimate club gig, so this will be a treat. Slovak will be joined at Monks by bassist Chris Maresh and drummer Masumi Jones.   – Michael Toland

Judas Priest, Sabaton

Thursday 24, Germania Amphitheater

Sure enough, KK’s Priest reduced our century-old Paramount Theatre to kindling last month, the blond bomber laying into 1977’s Sin After Sin like a metal time machine. The band K.K. Downing co-founded with high school mate – and now sole original member – Ian Hill will find themselves busy wielding their 19th and latest iteration of British steel, Invincible Shield. Bell-ringers “Panic Attack,” “As God Is My Witness,” and “Trial by Fire” match up the March payload with its peak catalog predecessor Firepower from 2018. The Birmingham sentinels collude with Swedish power metal juggernaut Sabaton, who open celebrating a silver jubilee.   – Raoul Hernandez

Don Toliver (Courtesy of Atlantic Records)

by Derek Udensi

Halloween Children’s Concert

Sunday 20, the Long Center

Bring the kids out for some Halloween-themed fun! Austin Symphony Orchestra Assistant Conductor Pablo Zamora leads an ASO that’ll mostly be decked out in spooky costumes as they tackle The Composer Is Dead. Actor André Martin joins to help discover the guilty suspect among the orchestra. Pre-concert activities such as games and an instrument petting zoo start at 2pm on the Long Center Lawn.

Už jsme doma

Wednesday 23, the Lost Well

The Lost Well’s last week of shows starts with this progressive punk band coming to Austin all the way from the Czech Republic. The group’s local stop is part of their first United States tour since 2010. Locals We Are the Asteroid and Rëigncoät support.

Don Toliver

Wednesday 23, Moody Center

Owner of one of the most hypnotic hip-hop hooks this decade (“Lemonade”), this Houston hip-hop/R&B artist has impressed fans for years with his penchant for slick-voiced melody. The Cactus Jack Records signee tours in support of his newest album, HARDSTONE PSYCHO. Ski Mask the Slump God (“Catch Me Outside”) replaces Teezo Touchdown as support, with Monaleo and Molly Santana serving as additional openers.

Want to see all of our listings broken down by day? Go to austinchronicle.com/calendar and see what’s happening now or in the coming week.