Read on for more details or click over to Phoenix New Times’ online concert listings for even more shows happening from Monday, October 17, to Thursday, October 20.
Carly Rae Jepsen
Monday, October 17Arizona Financial Theatre, 400 West Washington StreetWhen “Call Me Maybe” hit the airwaves in 2012, it quickly became inescapable. Much like “Old Town Road” was for 2019, the song was a chart-topper, a calling card for a new star, and a song heralding a new trend. The Canadian singer-songwriter hit the scene just as poptimism — the critical tendency to treat mass culture with the same rigor and level of aesthetic importance we usually give to “high art” — had started becoming the defining cultural mode. Few artists have benefited as much from our current age where everyone is a Stan like Carly Rae Jepsen, whose later albums like 2015’s Emotion was met with a rapturous critical response. So call her an auteur, maybe. The big surprise is how much Jepsen has eclipsed “Call Me Maybe.” She’s leaned into new wave, mall pop, and other vintage sounds to create hook-laden, irresistible pop music. For every stinker like “Good Time,” Jepsen thrills with a polished-to-perfection gem like "Run Away with Me"," Your Type," and "No Drug Like Me." She may not have Taylor Swift’s cult of personality, Beyonce’s iconic status, or even Charli XCX’s freaky experimental spirit, but she deserves to have her face alongside those divas on the poptimist Mount Rushmore. With Empress Of; 7:30 p.m., $23-$100 via livenation.com. Ashley Naftule
Action Bronson
Monday, October 17Marquee Theatre, 730 North Mill Avenue, TempeWhenever hip-hop artist Action Bronson has been in the spotlight in recent months, it’s seemingly been for everything but his music. To wit: Last month, he made his pro wrestling debut tag-teaming with AEW star (and human meme machine) Hook and also unveiled his new sneaker collab with New Balance. When he hasn’t been dishing out slams and shilling shoes, the Queens-born rapper has also been touring behind his latest full-length, Cocodrillo Turbo, which dropped in April. Dabbling in non-music projects while still recording and performing has been something Action Bronson has been doing for years; over the last decade, he’s written cookbooks and self-help guides, released signature vapes, collaborated with Vice Media, hosted travel and talk shows, and acted in flicks like The Irishman, all while releasing various albums and mixtapes. But you needn’t worry if all the side projects are diminishing the quality of the lyrically dexterous rapper’s music, as Crocodrillo Turbo has been touted by critics as his “most focused project since Mr. Wonderful” and placed alongside 2011’s Dr. Lecter and 2015’s Blue Chips as among some of his best releases. 7:30 p.m., $45-$80 via ticketweb.com. Benjamin Leatherman
Death Cab for Cutie
Monday, October 17The Van Buren, 401 West Van Buren StreetWhen absurdist '60s rockers Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band recorded "Death Cab for Cutie" in 1967, they couldn't have imagined that one day it would inspire the formation of one of the world's most humorless bands. This isn’t to say that the Death Cab for Cutie boys are total Debbie Downers: They write deeply moving, elegiac music that make perfect soundtracks for both love won and love lost. They could never write something as anarchically goofy as the Bonzo’s "The Intro and the Outro,” but in fairness to Ben Gibbard and the Cuties, The Bonzos couldn’t have written something as achingly sad as “Title and Registration” either. Ten albums into their career, DCFC settled into a comfortable groove on 2022's Asphalt Meadows. Forced by the pandemic to break their usual practice of writing and recording, they recorded the album remotely- passing pieces of songs back and forth and building on them like a game of Exquisite Corpse. What they came up with is an autumnal record, full of relaxed vibes, richly layered keyboards, tremulous guitars, and Gibbard’s understated vocals. Cutting a record this tight and self-assured 10 albums into your career is nothing to laugh at. 8 p.m., tickets are available on the secondary market. Ashley Naftule
Omega X
Tuesday, October 18Marquee Theatre, 730 North Mill Avenue, Tempe In the multiverses of Marvel Comics, Weapon X is a secret government facility that engineers living weapons of war like Wolverine and Fantomex. Presumably the eleven members of the South Korean boy band Omega X may not have any adamantium-laced bones or wicked claws, but they too have been engineered to be apex predators. Their battlefield is the international pop charts, and once these boys get their claws into you there’s no hope of escaping their music. While Omega X didn't hit the scene until 2021 with the hyperactive single “Vamos,” the group’s members have been familiar faces in K-pop for years. Appearing across several “survival shows” (similar to American performance-based reality competitions like The Voice, only dialed up to 11) and other K-pop groups over the years, the shadowy masterminds behind Omega X finally found the right combination of androgynous boys, boisterous swagger, and “something for everyone” music to form a world-conquering pop unit. Their debut album, 2022's Story Written in Music, sounds like hip-hop, R&B, Latin pop, adult contemporary, and heartthrob voices tossed into a trash compactor and smashed together into a single, unbreakable cube of shining, algorithmically perfected product. Where’s Magneto when you need him? 7 p.m., $59-$149 via ticketweb.com. Ashley Naftule
Moodie Black
Wednesday, October 19The Rhythm Room, 1019 East Indian School RoadIn high school, Moodie Black frontwoman Kristen Martinez was drawn to the world of hip-hop and started making music. Her first forays stuck closer to traditional rap, although she says she didn't find acceptance in the Phoenix scene. For Martinez, that meant a musical evolution that took her from more traditional hip-hop to Moodie Black's unique sound of dark, grimy, entrancing noise rap. In the mid-2000s, Martinez left Phoenix for Minneapolis. Her partner, Jamee Varda, is from Minnesota, and Martinez was seeking a more accepting music scene than she found here. She and bandmate Sean Lindahl built Moodie Black into a musical act that didn't necessarily click with everyone but developed a cult following. They were preparing to tour to promote their 2020 album, Fuzz, when the COVID-19 pandemic happened. And when the world moved world moved out of the quarantine phase of the pandemic, Maynard James Keenan came calling. He was looking for an opener for Puscifer's summer 2022 concerts and Moodie Black fill the bill. They’ll continue to be a supporting act on Puscifer this fall but will also conduct a mini-headlining tour that will bring them to the Valley this week. With Snailmate, Rogue!, Robbie The Rapper, and The Saturn III; 7 p.m., $10 at the door. Jennifer Goldberg
