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Published: Feb 7, 2008

On its own, Skyrider is merely an obscure instrumental rock group from Flagstaff. Its music can be evocative, but mostly it's meandering. Enter indie hip-hop magnate Sole (nee Tim Holland) and the trio's eerie Southern gothic flavor nicely sets off the Anticon founder's meditative rhymes about coping with a dying planet, surviving in endemic poverty or just plain being an emcee when you're 30.

—John Vettese

Thu., Feb. 7, 9 p.m., $8, with Telephone Jim Jesus and the Popo, Khyber, 56 S. Second St., 215-238-5888, thekhyber.com.

Pianist Simone Dinnerstein has always done it her way. She never entered a competition, and she turned down an offer to study at Curtis (which is almost unheard of), but her self-produced recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations has catapulted her into a major career. Some of the Brooklyn resident's earliest mainstage performances were in Philly, via Astral Artists. She's in the area again this week, playing Beethoven, his magnificent Fifth Piano Concerto, with the excellent Delaware Symphony Orchestra.

—Peter Burwasser

Delaware Symphony Orchestra, David Amado conducting, Simone Dinnerstein, piano. Fri.-Sat., Feb. 8-9, 8 p.m., $10-$57, Grand Opera House, 818 N. Market St., Wilmington, Del., 800-374-7263, desymphony.org.

Deb Callahan is one of those gritty blues singers who don't need a microphone. From the drop of the first note, her deep soul voice fills up the room. Callahan, along with her band, will take the stage this weekend and perform some cuts from her 2005 full-length, The Blue Pearl, and perhaps give a preview of her upcoming release, rumored to be out in spring of this year.

—Deesha Dyer

Sat., Feb. 9, 9 p.m., $7-$12, World Café Live, 3025 Walnut St., 215-222-1400, worldcafelive.com.

Last spring a friend sent me an EP on this band, Vampire Weekend. Now I know that you know that I know you guys never tire of centuries-old jokes about how I'm living/looking Dracu-like-forever and eternally young. It's true, so boo already. But what my pal meant to feed was my lust for yipe-ing voices and vaguely Talking Heads-y sounds. Done and done, here, kinda. VW play dry, icy reverb-less highlife guitar signatures, at least when they're not pulling out their jagged ones. "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" on their eponymous XL label debut is Byrne & Co.'s Remain in Light as funneled through the mellow tone of Graceland. And with the crotchety cardigan-rocking "Campus," their button-down demeanor and references to New England (despite lead vamp Ezra Koenig being from Jersey), the quartet pretty much have the Heads down cold. If it only had a little more bite.

—A.D. Amorosi

Thu., Feb. 7, 8 p.m., SOLD OUT, First Unitarian Church, 2125 Chestnut St., 866-468-7619, r5productions.com.

 

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