.Social Eyes: Week of Jan. 23-29

Featuring ScHoolboy Q, Yuko Mabuchi Trio, Post Heaven, Raue, Kathryn Mohr, Kodo, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Talib Kweli, stop.drop.rewind, and Masta Killa

THURSDAY

RAP

SCHOOLBOY Q

After a nearly five-year hiatus, ScHoolboy Q has returned with Blue Lips, an album describing the bittersweet fruits of success: the comforts, the paranoia, the riches, the constrictions. It’s another creative evolution for Q, who spent over a decade transforming harsh realities into hypnotic rhymes and appealing club jams. Maturity doesn’t mean stagnation; at nearly 40, Q’s influences and interests have shifted, and he isn’t afraid to sound different. That being said, there are plenty of Q mainstays: cheeky jokes, big flexes and precise, compelling verses. SONYA BENNETT-BRANDT

INFO: Thu, 8pm, Fox Theater, 1807 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. $54-$172+. 510.302.2250.

THURSDAY

JAZZ

THE YUKO MABUCHI TRIO

Born and raised in the central Japanese city of Fukui, Los Angeles pianist Yuko Mabuchi has made herself a valuable part of the Southland music scene as a bandleader and commanding improviser. Honing a melodically verdant, rhythmically assertive amalgam of European classical music and modern jazz often laced with lithe vocalizations, she’s found receptive audiences near and far, including a joyous set at last summer’s Monterey Jazz Festival. Her trio, featuring veteran drummer Peter Buck and electric bassist Jermone Randall, is a formidable unit roaring through arrangements that require dynamic control and high-velocity zigzagging. ANDREW GILBERT

INFO: Thu, 8pm, Yoshi’s, 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland. $34-$74. 510.238.9200.

FRIDAY

METAL

POST HEAVEN

Post Heaven promises Oakland some good old-fashioned metal destruction to kick off the weekend. The Australian band debuted in 2023 with the EP Watch the Framework As It Falls. Deliriously heavy tracks mixing shoegaze and alt-rock with Yasmin de Laine’s ever-eerie vocals had the band quickly drawing a hardcore fan base in their native Melbourne. They’ve howled and shrieked their way from the Surf Coast to Sydney and back; now they’re taking on America. Between Realms, Wroht and Infidel join the bill for a night that will exorcise listeners’ oldest demons . . . and maybe spawn some new ones. ADDIE MAHMASSANI

INFO: Fri, 7pm, Elbo Room, 311 Broadway, Oakland. $10. 510.350.8116.

FRIDAY

GRUNGE

RAUE

Few duos successfully pull off powerfully hard music that’s not only good but creates a sound much fuller than it should be. Raue, the grunge power duo from Santa Cruz, forged on out of necessity after falling out with another band member in 2021. The move proved serendipitous as vocalist and guitarist Paige Kalenian—whose middle name is Raue, meaning “rough” in German—and drummer Jax Huckle managed to continue dropping heavy riffs, catchy melodies and sharp hooks to reel in the listeners. A stacked lineup with Persephone, Opus and the East Brothers shares the bill. MAT WEIR

INFO: Fri, 7pm, 924 Gilman, 924 Gilman St., Berkeley. $15. 510.524.8180.

FRIDAY

INDIE

KATHRYN MOHR

Oakland-based Mohr’s debut album, Waiting Room, presents an ethereal, eerily jarring otherworld. The music’s origins are fascinating, written in an unused fish factory during a month spent on a remote island in eastern Iceland. She recorded it in a windowless concrete room using a handheld field recorder, thoughts plunging into remembered trauma, imagined horrors, the reality of lost dreams, hope and love. From this space—her literal surroundings, her mental corridors and humanity’s universal house of collective violence, abandonment and neglect—the songs emanated, sometimes clashing and smashing into a fantasy serenity or hope of peace. In other tracks, Mohr tauntingly beckons, as if to say, “dare to hear this; dare to know darkness.” LOU FANCHER

INFO: Fri, 8pm, Thee Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. $12/adv, $15/door. 510.859.8709.

SATURDAY

PERCUSSION

KODO

Taiko troupe Kodo’s Warabe is an athletic, dramatic and polished spectacle in presentation and design. They could’ve honored the Japanese tradition with stifling preciousness, but that never happens with the much-loved Kodo. Instead, every lunging musician embodies exuberance; power radiates from the backswing preceding each stroke. It all adds to a prevailing sense of joy as an undercurrent of childlike thrill weaves into the textural, technical mix of the program’s rhythmic diversity. Men and women wielding sticks, beating drums as big as boulders, working in unison to reach into the soul that must live deep in the earth’s center and draw wonder from it? It doesn’t get better than that. – LF

INFO: Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm, Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley. $63-$116. 510.642.9988.

SATURDAY

ROCK

SLEEPYTIME GORILLA MUSEUM

As part of the San Francisco music scene’s baroque weirdness in the mid-’90s, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum emerged as a gothic art-rock band with a penchant for apocalyptic imagery, virtuosic musicianship and spooky costumes. The relocation of founding violinist/vocalist Carla Kihlstedt and percussionist Matthias Bossi to the East Coast eventually put the band on hiatus. But Sleepytime rose from its slumber to deliver a fresh jolt of doomsaying at the eclectic Big Ears Music Festival last summer. Featuring Kihlstedt on electric violin, Bossi on percussion, bassist Dan Rathbun, guitarist/vocalist Nils Frykdahl and multi-instrumentalist Michael Iago Mellender, SGM headlines a triple bill with Gumby’s Junk and Soriah. – AG

INFO: Sat, 8pm, UC Theatre, 2036 University Ave., Berkeley. $34. 510.356.4000.

SATURDAY

RAP

TALIB KWELI

Rapper and activist Talib Kweli graces the Continental Club stage this weekend, bringing the socially conscious lyrics and catchy beats that made him famous. His storied career began in the late ’90s when he performed alongside Mos Def as one part of the Brooklyn-based duo Black Star. He cemented his status as one of East Coast hip-hop’s legends with a series of solo albums in the early aughts, including Quality, The Beautiful Struggle and Eardrum. More recently, he published the memoir Vibrate Higher: A Rap Story. To this day, Kweli proves that an intellectual approach to one’s craft need not preclude emotional resonance. – AM

INFO: Sat, 9:30pm, Continental Club, 1658 12th St., Oakland. $34. 510.542.5742.

SUNDAY

PROG

STOP.DROP.REWIND

Prog-punk favorites stop.drop.rewind, from Valparaiso, Indiana, blend pop-punk energy with progressive rock complexity, creating an imaginative, varied discography stuffed with technical prowess and daring time signatures—or as the band says in their social media bios, “What happens when emo kids grow up and get jazz degrees?” Their self-titled album features standout tracks, like “Sleep” and “Luminescent,” that showcase stop.drop.rewind’s balance of polished musicality and the raw, gritty, shouty energy that propels their blistering live performances. – SBB

INFO: Sun, 7:30pm, 924 Gilman, 924 Gilman St., Berkeley. $15. 510.524.8180.

MONDAY

HIP-HOP

MASTA KILLA

Be on the lookout: “There’s an APB on an MC Killer/looks like the work of a Master.” That’s Masta Killa, to be exact. Those words were some of the first Masta Killa laid down with the Wu-Tang Clan on their debut, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), forever solidifying him as an MC with some of the sickest flow in the game, despite being the last member to join the group. Four solo albums and 31 years later, Masta Killa continues to evolve his skills while keeping his pen as sharp as his wit. It’s not often that one can see such a legendary talent up close for a reasonable price. – MW

INFO: Mon, 7:30pm, Yoshi’s, 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland. $34-$69. 510.238.9200.

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