Kaleidoscope

By mining the '70s for material, Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs ' Under the Covers Vol. 2 easily surpasses its predecessor, which was mired in the mellow side of the '60s. Naturally, Hoffs does right by Carly Simon on a steely "You're So Vain." More surprising is her raspy rendition of Rod Stewart's "Maggie May," which reads so wrong and feels so right. They play together Wednesday at World Café Live.

Dear Death, I've now see four barely different movies where you hunt down hot mannequins who cheated you thanks to some kind of a psychic heads-up. (The most recent entry was the gruesome, clever, 82-minute The Final Destination 3D.) I was wondering: Who keeps giving these douchebags those life-saving visions in the first place? Seems like you've got a mole, or information leak of some kind. You could save a lot of time and effort by tightening things up back at the office. Perhaps a flowchart? Sincerely,

If Marc Bolan were alive today and, for some reason, his fascination for Americana rivaled the one he had for soul, he would sound like Benjy Ferree. His second full-length, Come Back to the Five and Dime Bobby Dee Bobby Dee (Domino), is a concept album about child actor Bobby Driscoll, who was largely forgotten after adolescence, only to be found dead in his apartment at 31. Catch Ferree Sunday at Johnny Brenda's.

To me, the word "geology" conjures memories of a rocks-for-jocks semester fueled entirely by Mountain Dew AMP. To UPenn grad Rebecca Rutstein, it's a fine source of inspiration for her fifth solo show at Bridgette Mayer Gallery, "Precipice" (through Sept. 26), an underwater world dense with geometric, geologic layers. Building vertically — first a muddled aquamarine sea capped with distant rocks, then a layer of white mesh keeping a sea of hexagons afloat, all topped off with cloudlike algae — Rutstein imagines her stress as a submersion; her seascape fantasy, then, is simple relief.