Shows of the Week: The Best Loud Rock Show of the Summer

DEFTONES, RISE AGAINST
Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, June 26
The best loud rock show of the summer features co-headliners that might sound different but make a perfect pairing. Deftones have always been outsiders of a sort, even in their own genre, with a sonic flexibility that has cultivated a wildly passionate fanbase. It also means they can tour with pretty much anyone and fit right in, because doing their own thing just works. Rise Against have never taken the easy path when it comes to road partners, touring with great live acts like NoFX and Bad Religion and rising to the occasion every time. How many fans fit in the middle of a Deftones/Rise Against Venn diagram remains to be seen, but if there were ever two bands built to impress strangers at a concert on the strength of their live performances, these would be the two. Both deep into their careers at this juncture, these groups have enough classics to carry an entire show on their own, which means fans are going to get sets that are as filler-free as you can get. You'll be talking about this one when you make your “best concerts of 2017” lists. With Thrice and Frank Iero & the Patience. CORY GARCIA

FAT TONY, YOUNG MAMMALS
Party on the Plaza (1001 Avenida de Las Americas), June 28
There’s a piquancy to this double-dose downtown. Party on the Plaza is a venerable concert series; alt-facts have it that Sam Houston threw the first one. It’s always been free and easy, but seldom so fresh. Fat Tony reps the Third Ward, and his stock seems to rise higher every month, He’s been popping up all over the festivals and magazines and fast-talking his way into the hearts of the world through his singles and collaborations. Young Mammals haven’t been burning out as many transmissions on the indie-rock trail of tears of late, which is about the only reason you may not already know about their most recent album, Jaguar, a trophy from their safaris across the savannahs of 610. TEX KERSCHEN

ROKY MOON & BOLT!
White Oak Music Hall, June 29
Houston’s rock dives have been a lot dingier ever since Roky Moon & BOLT! faded from the scene. Until they vanished like the Spiders From Mars a few months after releasing 2011 tour de force American Honey – the real, albeit much less sexy, story is that singer Mike Hardin left for Austin to focus on his other group, still-active guitar-shredders American Sharks – Moon and his able-bodied companions prowled local stages brandishing high-volume glitter-rock that put their neighbors on most bills to shame, evoking the platform-booted majesty of Bay City Rollers, New York Dolls and Rocky Horror Picture Show all at once. Then life, as it will, interrupted, but separate cities and separate dreams could not quite quench their thirst to rock, and little by little the band began writing again. Now, reports drummer Jeoaf Johnston, they’re about halfway through their third album, “back in fighting shape [with] plenty of stuff to look forward to.” With Deep Cuts and Young Girls. CHRIS GRAY

AMY BLACK
McGonigel’s Mucky Duck, June 29
Other locales have skin in the game, no question, but no U.S. city soothes and seethes with soul music quite like Memphis. As Dusty Springfield and Shelby Lynne did before her, Amy Black heeded the mid-South’s siren call from Alabama, where 2015’s The Muscle Shoals Sessions soared over the rustic Americana of the Nashville resident’s first two albums. In Memphis, both location and title of Black’s fourth LP (Reuben Records), she linked up with alumni of two of the R&B-rich city’s great labels, Hi and Stax, calling on their crowded pantheon of vocalists — Mavis Staples, Ann Peebles, O.V. Wright — for inspiration. Black’s originals, like “It’s Hard to Love an Angry Man” and “Let the Light In,” strut by in a self-assured parade of church-y organs, triumphal horns and purposeful groove that matches to a T the tone of vintage tunes by Otis Clay, Bobby “Blue” Bland and Ruby Johnson. CHRIS GRAY

AMBIENT 3
Walter's Downtown, June 29
Though we take the psychotropic munificence of our cow fields for granted, it is often hard to find even the stemmiest dirt weed in Steve Hauschildt’s hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, which makes his time-tested commitment to expansive, nonlinear music for the head and etheric body all the more laudatory. Since his time with Emeralds, Hauschildt has issued several solo records of zoned-out synthesizer music, just right for deep space exploration, couch trips, the yoga dojo or the therapy table. Meanwhile, Gerritt Wittmer’s psychologically tense performance art, which abounds with suspense and the absence of confidence in the future, is seldom ambient, unless one’s sense of ambience was calibrated in an animal testing laboratory. Happily, the rest of the lineup falls more in line with the soothing electronic idylls popularized by Cluster, Klaus Schulze, JD Emmanuel and Brian Eno. TEX KERSCHEN

BUSH
Revention Music Center, July 1
Many fans moved on from Bush after the band’s sophomore album, Razorblade Suitcase, didn’t approach the critical or commercial heights of the band’s debut, Sixteen Stone. This makes sense and was fairly common in the ‘90s. However, those who stuck with the band have no doubt experienced the ups (their first two records) and downs (the mess that was Golden State) that come with being a fan of Gavin Rossdale and crew. Bush is back on the road again in support of its latest, Black and White Rainbows, which released in March. Rainbows finds Bush shifting its sound a bit into more of a U2-like, arena-rock type. If Rossdale can mix in the new with the old – yes, it’s a safe bet the band will play “Glycerine,” “Everything Zen” and the like – they’ll give fans one rousing performance and show that there is life after radio superstardom. CLINT HALE

CHILDREN OF POP
White Oak Music Hall, July 1
Like the songwriting teams of Howard Moon and Vince Noir, the Entertainment System, and 10cc before them, Children of Pop are working on the new sound, an exuberant concoction of New Romantic drama and New Jack Swing, adorned by totally modern production. This party celebrates the release of two new songs on their own #veryjazzed record label. Each of their mutant earworms seems to have arrive as if through a Stargate or by way of a Kubrickian assembly line for sound obsessives, fully formed and wild-eyed, speaking a cryptic patois. With Pearl Crush, DJ Kona FM and John Allen Stephens. TEX KERSCHEN

DIANA ROSS
Smart Financial Centre, July 2
It’s only on the strength of our democratic principles that we refrain from referring to the supreme Supreme as Lady Diana Ross. As an artist she is royalty; Michael Jackson lay at her feet in his lifetime, and the scepters since carried by Madonna, Beyoncé and Rihanna all bear one or another of her imprimaturs, from “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” to “I’m Coming Out.” Ever since her beginnings with Motown in her teens, she’s spent more time at the top of the pops than anywhere else. Her current “In the Name of Love” tour is going into its fourth year, and her catalog of hits, both with the Supremes and as a solo artist, is so vast and rich that she may never stop. TEX KERSCHEN