Buck 65

Sat., Nov. 17, 9 p.m., $10, with Bernard Dolan, Johnny Brenda's, 1201 Frankford Ave., 866-468-7619, r5productions.com.

by Drew Lazor

hip-hop

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Blessed with one of the most incomparable voices in music, Buck 65 has been required reading for backpack nerdster types since the release of 1997's Vertex. Then he started channeling the soul of an itinerant boxcar hopper. The Nova Scotia native's last release, the digital-only Dirty Work EP, shelved most of his rappish inclinations in favor of moonshine-soaked tales of Civil War-era grave-diggers named Sam. With his loosely themed latest, Situation (released on Sage Francis' Strange Famous imprint), Buck moves away from what could very well be classified as hobo-hop and returns to a slightly more traditional approach bolstered by heady, break-based production by fellow Canuck DJ Skratch Bastid. The record indirectly tosses around some of the socioeconomic issues the country faced in the late 1950s, as tipped off by the excellent "1957" ("Faces are fading with the loneliest drunk/ empty rooms haunted by Thelonious Monk") and the bizarre, groove-driven "Cop Shades." There's still a few shades of Dirty Work bandying about, though — "Ho-Boys" is just a song about hobos.

Sat., Nov. 17, 9 p.m., $10, with Bernard Dolan, Johnny Brenda's, 1201 Frankford Ave., 866-468-7619, r5productions.com.