Tues. Jan. 31

Kurt Vile and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore at the Somerville Theatre Tuesday, Jan. 31? Sweet. Moore you know – the noisemaker/guitarist out on his own right now, playing intricate acoustic music. Vile?

It’s a name that could have come from the 1976 punk rock revolution alongside Rat Scabies and Poison Ivy, with its nasty implications and pun on Kurt Weill. Yet, it also happens to be the real name of the 31-year-old singer-songwriter who fronts Kurt Vile & the Violators. Go figure. Maybe it’s fate. For what other job would the surname Vile be so viable?

There is some corrosive punk rock attitude in the Philadelphia-based former Bostonian, certainly when it comes to volume and cacophony. Vile and his backing trio played a steamroller of a set at the soldout Brighton Music Hall last year, an 80-minute onslaught of Stooges/Velvet Underground-like aggro rock.

But it was a bit of a shock to the system.

Because if you listen to Vile’s CDs, particularly his fourth and latest, “Smoke Ring For My Halo,” this full-bore attack is not what you’d expect. Vile’s studio sound is textured and nuanced, sometimes folksy and rural. Sure, it can get noisy and psychedelic, but it’s mostly dark and subtle music with arrangements that suck you into a sonic web. And Vile has a well-earned reputation as a melancholic, cryptic lyricist and conversational singer. Think Neil Young circa “On the Beach.”

That was pretty much blown away in concert. Think Dinosaur Jr.

Vile and the Violators had their full blare on - vocals and instruments all mixed to the max, at stun-gun level. Vocal clarity was a lost cause. And though Vile often played an acoustic guitar, he used multiple effects pedals to give it fully electric jolts. Vile, rhythm guitarist Jesse Turbo and bassist Adam Granduciel shook their shaggy manes and stared at their shoes up front. Mike Zeng was at the rear, banging drums.

Jan. 29 

Motorhead: Who'd have thought this band - forever fronted by singer-songwriter-bassist Lemmy Kilmister - would be around, and so vital, in 2009? Lemmy is always Mr. Motorhead. These days, his mates are guitarist Phil Campbell and drummer Mikkey Dee, though Dee drops off the tour Sept. 8  Believe it or not, he's filming a Swedish version of "I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here!" in Malaysia. His replacement is ex- G 'n R skin-pounder Matt Sorum, currently serving time with Velvet Revolver. But here at the House of Blues, Sunday Sept. 6, we got Mikky before they droop him in a jungle. Now, fans debate which if Motorhead's many lineups is the best, but, really, what we're talking about is a body of work - punk/heavy metal - that has remained remarkably consistent since 1977. Lemmy, god love him, is 63. I've interviewed him a bunch over the years, and I remember him grumbling something about Motorhead being described as "gorillas in leather jackets." I said, "Oh, yeah, right, that's good." And he said, no, that was the misconception. They play wild, fast, crunching and super-loud rock 'n' roll, but they're not goons. If you listen to "1918," you'll actually here one of the best anti-war ballads this side of Eric Bogle or Billy Bragg.

Sun. Jan. 29 

You can get your Lemmy live and in person at Lowell's Tsongas Arena Jan. 29 as the 66-year-old king of speed leads the Motorhead assault on your eardrums. Or, you can get your Lemmy on your flat screen, with the  DVD, "Lemmy: 49% Motherf**ker, 51% Son Of A Bitch," which hit #1 on the Billboard music video chart. Both the DVD and Bluray disc landed in the top 10 best seling documentaries on Amazon.com. Hey, JSInk recommends you just Lemmy out and do both, catch the mighty steamroller of punk-metal-rock in concert and spend time on the couch with the DVD (and while you're at it pick up the new CD, "The World Is Yours," it's one of their best. It's also got some clever self-referential stuff. Old song titles pop up in new songs.)
   About 11 years ago, Lemmy Kilmister - Motorhead's founding and sole remaining member, bassist, singer and songwriter - and I were backstage at the (now defunct) Axis club. Thinking of metal as being a young man's game, I asked how long Lemmy thought he could keep slamming away at a mega-decibel volume, touring clubs. He looked at me quizzically. "What else am I gonna do? A fucking talk show?"
   Point taken. "We don't known when to quit/We don't have room/But we'll get over it," Lemmy barks in "Get Back in Line," on the new disc. In "Rock 'n' Roll Music," he sings, "Rock 'n' roll music is my religion/I don't need no miracle vision/I don't need no indecision ... do it til the day I die."
   I talked to Lemmy in 1998 when I was at the Globe. Once again, asked about perseverance. "The main secret of surviving," Lemmy posed, "is not stopping, right? It's just what I want to do. I don't want t do nothing else and I don't want to stop doing it, 'cause I'm enjoying it. Also, my facial presentation doesn't lend itself to a lot of other jobs." The survival thing also has to do with Lemmy's intake of drugs and drink, and while he's never shied away about taking things that make him go fast, he wrote one of the sharpest, most devastating anti-heroin essays I've ever read in the defunct Nerve magazine some years ago.
   Is Motorhead a metal band? Not exactly, but they're loved but many metalheads and every metal band worth its salt. Metallica even dressed up like four Lemmys and played his 50th birthday bash - "bullet belts, black shirts and trousers, shades and wigs on," Lemmy told me, "they looked more like me than I did, but then they had the tattoo on the wrong arm."

Fri. Jan. 27

 Praise for Willie Nile? Sure. You heard it back in the '70s when the New York singer-guitarist-pianist was touted as another new Dylan or Springsteen. And you can hear it now, too. Director Jim Jarmusch says Nile’s last studio CD, “Streets of New York,” “may even be his best record yet.” Bono calls it “great” and both Lou Reed and Lucinda Williams echo U2’s singer. Little Steven – you may know him as the late Sil in “The Sopranos” – Ian Hunter and Graham Parker are all aboard the Nile train too. And Nile himself is pretty much looking at where he is now as a career renaissance point. “This record did really well,” he says, “and was really fun to make. In those days with all the hype – the next big thing – it’s so unrealistic. My interest is not in being an American Idol. It’s writing songs and having enough people hear them to allow me to keep making records. And as an independent, the advantage is what majors see as a failure can be a great success. You can make more money going your own way.” The powerful songs he’s coming up with? “Could be the seasoning, as you learn and grow. Songs are flowing more than ever. That’s not the case with a lot of artists we know and respect. Not everybody can maintain.”
Nile, who played a terrific gig last year here, returns to Club Passim Sunday Nov. 23 with drummer Frankie Lee. Nile says at this point in time, in his mid-50s, he’s “having such good fun. The show is pretty raucous, totally rocking.” Which is to say that, although the album is electric and the show will be acoustic, Nile will be bringing the fire. He's touring behind a live album, "Live From the Streets of New York." Starts at 7:30 p.m., $20 show.

Fri. Jan. 27

Dave Wakeling formed the Beat in Birmingham England in the late 1970s. It was one of the leading bands of the ska-punk, two-tone movement – two-tone meaning blacks and whites playing in the same band. The Beat, called the English Beat in America for legal reasons, has broken up, re-formed, and taken different shapes over time. Several members went off to form Fine Young Cannibals.  Wakeling has long been based in California and it’s a US band he brings to Lupo's in Providence Friday jan. 27. . We’ve known Wakeling going back to when the Beat first hit Boston, around 1979; we saw them play a great show last year; and we caught up with him again for a chat about then and now. The English Beat play What struck us - 2007 in a club, then at Earth Fest -  was how fresh, how pertinent old material like “Save It for Later,” “Twist and Crawl,” “Mirror in the Bathroom” and others seemed now, and we asked him about it.

 Does the music change its meaning over time?