Charlie Puth
Singer, songwriter and producer Charlie Puth is a serial collaborator. He’s worked with Maroon 5, Trey Songz, Livingston Taylor, Pitbull and One Direction’s Liam Payne. Puth, 26, majored in music production at Berklee, and he’s done a masterful job of replicating the bass-heavy sounds of late-’80s R&B in his songs. (Boyz II Men appear as guests on Puth’s new album, “Voicenotes”.)
You’ve probably heard his megahit “Attention,” with its catchy rhythmic layers of backing vocals. Puth is suave and his productions have a velvety soul. Expect subdued crisped, ticking snare sounds and rimshots or even finger snaps instead of booming backbeats. Warm Fender Rhodes and round-sounding synth sounds give his songs a billowy feel. Bands like LANY and even Francis and the Lights are doing something similar to Puth, mining the style of New Edition and “Higher Love”-era Steve Winwood as a sonic template.
Charlie Puth performs at Mohegan Sun Arena, 1 Mohegan Sun Blvd., Uncasville, on Thursday, July 19, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $29.50 to $49.50. 860-226-7711 and mohegansun.com
Miranda Lambert With Little Big Town
“I’m bent, but I’m not broken,” sings Miranda Lambert on her single “Keeper of the Flame.” Lambert released “The Weight of These Wings,” a double album and her sixth studio release, in 2016. The country singer and songwriter focused a lot on heartbreak and how sometimes a little excess was just the thing for coping with the bruises caused by romantic turmoil.
When partying and doing shots don’t do the trick, sometimes leaving town and cruising down the interstate is the next best way of coping. Good thing that hanging out in bars and burning fossil fuel are part of the job description for someone like Lambert, a country star with a rocker’s attitude. Lambert basically distilled all the pain and sadness of her high-profile divorce from fellow country star Blake Shelton into her music. She did the rare thing of not participating in interviews about the record, since she’d channeled all of her feelings into the music already.
Lambert is said to be working on a new record or on material for a forthcoming release by Pistol Annies, a trio side project.
Miranda Lambert and Little Big Town perform at Xfinity Theatre, 61 Savitt Way, Hartford, on Friday, July 20, at 8 p.m. Tickets start at $33. livenation.com
Nas
New York rapper Nas released his defining debut “Illmatic” in 1994. The record depicted life in New York City in a period when the city still had plenty of menace. Everything about Nas’s style seems in contrast to much of today’s hip-hop, the force of the beats, the power of the narrative, the dexterity of his rapping and the general thrust of syllables.
In June Nas released “Nasir.” (Nas’s birth name is Nasir Bin Olu Dara Jones; he’s the son of Mississippi jazz and blues musicians Olu Dara.) The record, produced by Kanye West, is Nas’s twelfth studio album. It tackles the subjects of police violence and wanders into zones of paranoia and swagger. West’s touch is evident in the thick and abstract samples that serve as the musical backdrop for Nas’s rapping.
Nas was also involved in the multipart Neflix hip-hop documentary series “Rapture.” Nas is engaged in helping a new generation of hip-hop artists see their connections to the past. Blunt honesty and striving has always been central to Nas’s rapping and his philosophy. He uses a focus on artistry as a way of combating the pitfalls of an unchecked ego.
Nas plays the Grand Theater at Foxwoods, 350 Trolley Line Blvd., Mashantucket, on Friday, July 20, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $68. foxwoods.com
Body/Head
When the pioneering avant-noise rock band Sonic Youth broke up, its members dispersed to other projects. Bassist and vocalist Kim Gordon set to work on Body/Head a duo that digs even deeper into excavating the terrain of sound, leaving songform, melody, rhythm and harmony mostly in the background and focusing on texture. Some people find radio static, slow-blooming distortion, the murmuring drone of lawn mowers and leaf blowers, and the abstract sound of reverse tape loops to be thoroughly transfixing, and this is music for those listeners.
Body/Head can be almost soothing, but never quite so, with shrill high notes and rippling echoes evoking a cavernous space, one part vast canyon, one part madhouse dungeon. One way to approach this music is to think of it more as abstract art made with sound. Stand in its presence and let it wash over you, come at you, assail or hypnotize you — whatever the case may be, and see where it takes you. The Gunn-Truscinsku Duo is also on the bill.
See Body/Head at The State House, 294 State St., New Haven, on Saturday, July 21, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15. statehousepresents.com
Beach House
The Baltimore duo Beach House released “7,” its seventh studio album, in May of this year. Parts of the record were recorded in Stamford. The music is in keeping with the band’s dark and dreamy sound. There’s a languidness to these songs, with slow tempos, murky shoe-gaze-y textures and vocals that often sound sighed as much as sung. Everything sounds awash in a haze.
But some of those signals are misleading, because there’s an underlying violent energy that one can feel welling up in these throbbing songs. Sometimes the songs have the quality of electronic incantations or conjurings. There might be something in common with bands like My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins, in the brooding atmosphere, but there’s also a little more focus and potential bite.
The band’s album art has sometimes — like on the new record — veered toward the realm of op art, with patterns and disjunctions that can confuse the mind, creating a sense of hypnotic depth or altered perspective. Its music is like that too; it might be rocking you to sleep or grabbing you by the throat.
Beach House plays College Street Music Hall, 238 College St., New Haven, on Tuesday, July 24, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $29 to $35. collegestreetmusichall.com
Devon Allman Project
Devon Allman may have been born to rock and ramble. The singer and guitarist, son of legendary rocker Gregg Allman, will be touring for most of July, August, September and October. That’s a grueling schedule, but it might contribute to the this-is-what-I-do aspect of Allman’s music.
Over the years Allman, 45, appeared as a guest in his father’s band. He also fronted his own projects, Honeytribe and Royal Southern Brotherhood.
Blues rock and bar boogie, and snarling guitar solos are at the core of what Allman does. But Allman does slow-burn soul too, amped up with a little guitar firepower, in the style of later Carlos Santana ventures. Listen to Allman’s cover of the Spinners’ hit “I’ll Be Around.”
Allman embraces the role of rock entertainer. He makes each show a little bit of theater. See the Devon Allman Project at Infinity Hall, 32 Front St., Hartford, on Wednesday, July 25, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $49. 866-666-6306 and infinityhall.com
Greater Hartford Festival of Jazz
The Greater Hartford Festival of Jazz is an example of how a venerable live-music series can spawn a venerable festival, and how each can ultimately bolster the other and the city that hosts them. The jazz festival was launched over 25 years ago by Paul Brown, who had been organizing and producing the Monday Night Jazz Concerts in Bushnell Park.
The three-day festival has bloomed into something spectacular. It’s now the largest free jazz event in New England. Last year over 70,000 music fans made their way to the scenic park to enjoy the music in the open air. This year, as in years past, the festival does an impressive job of bridging the worlds of jazz and some of the genres of music that are in conversation with the jazz tradition, including New Orleans brass music, reggae and more.
Hartford-born guitarist Andy Bassford, who got his start playing at the West Indian Social Club and went on to record in Jamaica and work with Toots and the Maytals, will bring his Jazz Conspiracy project to the festival on Saturday night. Spyro Gyra, the long-running band that blends elements of fusion and smooth jazz, will play the closing set on Friday night. Saxophonist Azar Lawrence plays the final set of the festival on Sunday night. Lawrence has played with McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, Miles Davis and with pioneering Ethiopian jazz musician Mulatu Astatke. Lawrence plays in the ecstatic tenor powerhouse tradition of John Coltrane, and his most recent release, “Elementals,” is steeped in that explorative and mystic feeling.
The Greater Hartford Festival of Jazz takes place Friday, July 20 through Sunday, July 22 at Bushnell Park in downtown Hartford. hartfordjazz.org
