The Best Los Angeles Concerts: Jan. 13-19, 2025

Even if you can barely pronounce Meshell Ndegeocello’s name, you’ve likely heard it if you’ve had more than a passing interest in contemporary music over the past thirty years. Along with her 1994 solo hit “If That’s Your Boyfriend (He Wasn’t Last Night),” a Billboard number 3 cover of Van Morrison’s “Wild Night” with John Mellencamp that same year, and a string of Dance Top 20 singles, she’s played bass on recordings by Madonna, The Rolling Stones, Alanis Morissette and many, many more. Fast forward to the current decade and Ndegeocello took home GRAMMY Awards for Best R&B Song (“Better Than I Imagined”) in 2021 and last year in the newly created Best Alternative Jazz Album category for The Omnichord Real Book. She swiftly followed up with No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin, which intertwines jazz, soul, and spoken word while exploring issues of race, gender and sexuality just as celebrated writer/activist Baldwin did, and marks the centenary of his birth.

When Midas-touch producer Rick Rubin signs an artist, eyebrows raise. Rubin, who co-founded the Def Jam and American Records labels, had a hand in the success of everyone from the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC to Slayer and Danzig. Late last year, singer-songwriter Alex Amen signed a publishing deal with American, who were impressed by his independently produced debut album. Amen is a new name and only recently relocated to LA, but he sounds like he’s been holed away in Laurel Canyon since the folky 1970s on his first single for American, “California Blues,” written while still a teen in Texas (and before he’d ever set foot in the Golden State). Accompanied by a suitably sunny, Super 8-style video, “California Blues” sounds authentically old – not nostalgic for a time and place that are gone, but like it never left in the first place, breezing lonesome around the state with only Amen’s brew of folk, country and country-rock for company. Tickets at Dice.

LA-based Frances Whitney has been a secret songwriter since age six but only recently felt sufficiently confident about her compositions to post them online. They quickly went a little viral, attracted the attention of a Canadian production team and, after a year of writing and recording, her debut EP Old Hobbies appeared in November. Still only in her mid 20s, the former pro volleyball player reveals not only her songcraft but also much of herself across eight largely acoustic, lyric-driven tracks of hugely cathartic country/folk-tinted confessionals. Influenced equally by timeless 1970s songwriters like Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell and Jim Croce and the contemporary sounds of Phoebe Bridgers, Frank Ocean and Sufjan Stevens, Old Hobbies’ title is a reference to breaking toxic habits and reclaiming self-worth. The EP’s delicate acoustic guitar, rich melodies, and evocatively eloquent lyricism are embroidered with strings, synths, and sometimes beats, yet retain Whitney’s innately candid signature and an early adulthood learning-curve vulnerability. Tickets at Ticketmaster.

England’s Arlo Parks only performed her first-ever gig in 2019 and yet, even with the significant interruption of the pandemic, here she is making her Walt Disney Concert Hall debut, thousands of miles from home. Merging indie soul and bedroom pop, her atypically vivid lyrics (Parks is also a poet) about peer emotional experiences and mental health awareness have, at age 24, made her a voice of Gen Z. Her 2020 song “Black Dog” brilliantly bottled lockdown lows, and almost from the get-go Parks was winning BBC, BRIT and Mercury Prize awards for her debut album Collapsed in Sunbeams, while also receiving two 2022 GRAMMY nominations. On 2023 sophomore full-length My Soft Machine, she subtly builds upon Collapsed in Sunbeams with more tales of trauma and mindfulness that impart complex stories through attention to illustrative details that many might miss, her gossamer timbre and deft turn of phrase once again throughlines of an understated yet enormously emotive artistry.

Elsa y Elmar is the musical moniker of Mexico-based Colombian singer-songwriter Elsa Carvajal, who first made waves in 2014 by winning the Grand Prize in the Latin category of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest. Since then, her folk, tropical, and Latin music-informed synth-pop has earned her a Coldplay opening slot in front of 40,000 people back in Bogotá and multiple Latin Grammy nominations. Three years ago, Elsa y Elmar’s visceral fifth album, ya no somos los mismos reached out to whole new audiences - widely praised for its lyrical authenticity, notably on the topic of re-finding oneself after unhealthy relationships. Incorporating bachata, dembo, and tender ballads without ever sounding pandering or retrogressive, Carvajal’s voice spans hair-raising yelps, adroitly enunciated rapid-fire passages, and a tremulous croon that lends every word the weight of ages. Last year’s follow-up, Palacio, may be the most personal expression of Elsa y Elmar’s already unusually candid catalog, with each song accompanied by similarly remarkable visuals. Tickets at Live Nation.

With a story reaching back over fifty years, The Motels’ sleek, atmospheric output almost personified LA’s early 1980s new wave scene. Fronted by the magnetic Martha Davis, they enjoyed a string of hit singles and albums, remaining best known for ’82 Top Ten smash “Only the Lonely” and ‘83’s equally successful “Suddenly Last Summer.” In an era of foggy videos, Patrick Nagel makeup, and melodramatic delivery, The Motels briefly reigned supreme. But simultaneously, with Svengali producer Val Garay increasingly at the helm, the band was morphing, in the studio at least, into just Davis plus a revolving door of session players. Unsurprisingly, by 1987 the singer had dissolved the band to go solo. But within a decade, Davis was once again performing as The Motels (or under names that included “The Motels”) and, with original sax/keys player Marty Jourard back aboard, the band has experienced a resurgence that has included playing Pasadena’s huge Cruel World Festival and touring with peer acts like The Go-Go’s. Tickets at AXS.

Satsang is a conscious music collective gathered around singer-songwriter Drew McManus, who tonight will perform their material solo. A seductive blend of folk, soul, reggae, and hip-hop, Satsang’s signature is McManus’s heartfelt and uplifting lyrical messages. While often introspective, his words reach out to encourage spiritual awakening, mindfulness, and positivity among listeners. After years on the road, McManus was compelled to retreat to his native Montana during the pandemic, an experience that hugely informed Satsang’s 2021 album All. Right. Now. Recorded in a barn in bucolic Paradise Valley, the album soaks up and reflects back the state that McManus still calls home. “I wanted the record to play like an audio map of this place that I love so much,” he recalled. With just his acoustic guitar as accompaniment, Drew McManus will be bringing a little of Montana’s wide open spaces to the cozy Venice West while offering warm, bonding vibes during divisive times. Tickets at AXS.

Regarded by some as the crown jewel of Latin concerts, the recurring Calibash is a vibrant celebration of music and culture that gathers some of the top stars of reggaeton and Latin music on a single stage. Beginning as a one-off event at Anaheim’s Honda Center back in 2007, it has evolved into a recurring mini-fest in LA, Las Vegas and, since 2023, in Mexico (as Calibash MX). This year’s LA edition at Downtown’s huge Crypto.com Arena features Maluma, Wisin, Xavi, Manuel Turizo, Emilia and Kapo. Many attendees will be flocking to the Crypto for Colombian headliner Maluma, who at age 30 has achieved almost all an artist can in Urbano music, including Grammy, Latin Grammy, MTV Video, and Latin American Music awards on his way to becoming one of the best-selling Latin music acts. Traversing reggaeton, Latin trap and pop, Maluma manages to sound at once sweet, seductive, and streetwise, a rare combo that’s proven irresistible to legions of fans. Tickets at AXS.

For Chicago trap titans Flosstradamus, two quite literally became one. Because what was initially a DJ/producer duo consisting of Curt Cameruci (aka Autobot) and Josh Young (aka J2K) became, in 2016, the stage name of Cameruci alone (Young has since performed as YehMe2). Word of mouth initially did Flosstradamus’s marketing for them, their eclectic and, back in the mid aughts, pioneering collisions of electro, house, grimy R&B and minimal techno selling-out parties almost immediately upon announcement. Soon, folks from all over the country were flocking to Chicago for monthly Flosstradamus bashes, and by 2011 they were recording and releasing music for the hugely influential Fool’s Gold label. Also spreading music through the similarly taste-shaping Ultra and Mad Decent imprints, Flosstradamus has remained at the forefront of the now all-powerful trap genre. Cameruci’s solo incarnation has continued to be prolific, including collabs with Waka Flocka Flame, Dillon Frances, and Boombox Cartel, plus a 2019 remix of Nghtmre’s “Redlight.” Tickets at Ticketweb.

Like all the great synth-pop pioneers who forged the genre at the turn of the 1980s, current torchbearers Male Tears embody not just a sound, but an entire aesthetic and vibe. With the style now largely an underground phenomenon, this scene is more than ever about being, surviving, and self-celebrating as a societal outlier, seeking out others who signal their synth-tentions with tell-tale futuristic makeup and attire. California’s Male Tears has only been around since 2020, formed as a lockdown solo project by James Edwards but soon joined by Frank Shark. Their DIY, bedroomy mélange of new wave, goth, New Romantic, and Italo disco swiftly caught the ears of lovers of acts like Soft Cell, Virgin Prunes, and VNV Nation, making Male Tears among today’s premier synth-pop stalwarts. For this year’s fourth album, Paradísco, they expanded to a foursome, creating a larger safe space in which to sound even more vulnerable and honest – traits highly prized in synth-pop circles. Tickets at See Tickets.

Formed in São Paulo in 2003, CSS was initially just a jokey undertaking among a circle of friends (CSS stands for Cansei de Ser Sex, which translates as “Tired of Being Sexy”). But their comic timing was perfect, their energized bilingual indietronica both helping to fuel and riding the explosion of so-called “new rave” in the late 2000s. Songs like “Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above” and “Off The Hook” captured the era’s zeitgeist, with simple beats, garagey guitars, and frontgal Lovefoxxx’s vocals simultaneously conversational and lurkingly sensual. Brilliantly described by AllMusic as “that elusive point where Beyoncé and Sonic Youth intersect” – indeed, their very name is derived from a Queen Bey quote – they toured with Gwen Stefani and played Coachella before co-founding multi-instrumentalist/producer Adriano Cintra departed in 2012, leading to several years of inactivity. Now an all-girl quartet, CSS is playing its first North American tour in 11 years and triggering mid-aughts memories coast-to-coast. Tickets at Ticketmaster.

While the name Slaughter might imply death or at least thrash metal, this legacy quartet are in fact an ‘80s hair metal hangover. They were latecomers to that scene, formed in 1988, but made up for lost time with a double-platinum debut album, Stick It to Ya in 1990 and Top 10 follow-up, The Wild Life two years later. Despite their genre often being in the doldrums since, this Las Vegas outfit never disbanded, instead becoming a staple of throwback metal package tours and fests. And the fact that the classic lineup’s drummer was Blas Elias, now of Blue Man Group and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, implies serious musical chops behind Slaughter’s energized but poppy metal. It says a lot that only Elias has ever quit the band (original guitarist Tim Kelly was killed in a 1998 auto accident) and today’s incarnation still boasts founding singer/guitarist Mark Slaughter and bassist Dana (both formerly of Vinnie Vincent Invasion), and Kelly’s replacement, Jeff Bland. Tickets at Ticketweb.