LIKE Yo La Tengo, Low is a trio with a husband and wife – who, in this case, are guitarist and singer/songwriter Alan Sparhawk and drummer/singer Mimi Parker, who are also Mormons.
“Just Stand Back,” one song from the rock group’s harmony-layered, punk-flavored latest disc, “The Great Destroyer,” warns “I could turn on you so fast,” and features lyrics about throat-slitting and the like.
The dark disc was written when Sparhawk was struggling with depression. He took to music as a means to cope, in the same manner the Eels’ disc “Electro-Shock Blues” dealt with the death of some of singer/songwriter E’s family members – honest, yet uplifting.
Low performs at Southpaw (125 Fifth Ave., Brooklyn; [718] 230-0236) tonight and the Bowery Ballroom (6 Delancey St.; [212] 533-2111) on Monday.
TOMORROW: Juan Maclean, founder of the Kraftwerk-inspired electronic dance-music act the Juan Maclean, was a guitarist and synth player for Six Finger Satellite, a New York synth-punk band. But he left the city in a blaze of drug addiction and moved to New Hampshire where he switched gears. He quit drugs, taught English and recorded “Less Than Human.” Maclean performs at the Bowery Ballroom.
SUNDAY: Pete Galub and the Annuals, a pop-rock singer/songwriter with a band, kick off a February Sunday residency at the Lakeside Lounge (169 Avenue B; [212] 529-8463) with guest Steve Wynn (ex-Dream Syndicate). Test drive Galub’s tracks at myspace.com/petegalub and you’ll be convinced.
TUESDAY: Matthew Caws, lead singer for New York threesome Nada Surf, emerged from a personally tumultuous 2004 to write a rejuvenating pop disc, “The Weight Is a Gift,” which includes the life-affirming yet not naive track “Always Love.” The trio performs at the Mercury Lounge (217 E. Houston St.; [212] 260-4700).
WEDNESDAY: The music of guitarist Elizabeth Cotton (1893-1987), a finger-picker from North Carolina who turned her guitar upside-down to play it left-handed, will be featured as part of New York Guitar Festival’s “Blues Fallin’ Down Like Rain” series at Merkin Hall (129 W. 67th St.; (212) 501-3303). You may know her 1907-penned tune “Freight Train,” which Cotton wrote when she was 12.
Blues players Taj Mahal, Jolie Holland, Tin Hat Trio guitarist Mark Orton, and violinist Karla Kihlstedt will bring their own stylings to Cotton’s song’s and display her styling on their originals.
SATURDAY: Man about downtown, Lou Reed, will go uptown to the Gallery at Hermes (3 to 5 p.m.; 691 Madison Ave.) to sign copies of his new photo book, “Lou Reed New York,” which captures the “everyday” beauty of the city’s “the majestic flowing sky and waters.”
THE WHITE STUFF: Detroit boys Jack White of the White Stripes and power pop guitarist/musician Brendan Benson are readying the debut of their band, the Raconteurs, which features the rhythm section from the Greenhornes (which also played on the White-produced Loretta Lynn disc “Van Lear Rose”).
You can stream a preview of their ’60s throwback rock – punky power pop – and the first single, “Steady, As She Goes” at the retro-fitted site, theraconteurs.com, for an idea of what White’s music could be with full band.