The Big Gigs: Our critics' music picks

Halloween, Alaska and Haley Bonar share a guitarist (Jake Hanson) and a soft spot in the sleeve-worn hearts of local indie-rock fans. In the spirit of a family-style Thanksgiving meal they will now share the stage over two nights, trading out as headliners starting with H,A atop the bill first. The ambient whir-rock band -- featuring ex-Love-cars James Diers out front and Happy Apple's Dave King on drums -- handed over six songs from its latest album to local acts such as Lookbook, Alpha Centuri and Tarlton, resulting in the new "Occasion: Remixes EP." Bonar has been living in Portland, Ore., since this summer while working up songs for her next album. Hildur Victoria opens the first show, replaced by Alpha Consumer. (8 p.m. Fri.-Sat., Cedar Cultural Center. All ages. $18-$20.) (C.R.)

Big news to a very small but obsessive U.S. audience: Nitzer Ebb is back. British co-founders Bon Harris and Douglas McCarthy reunited their industrial/techno band in 2006 and are working on a new album, "Industrial Complex," which should be done by the time they tour as Depeche Mode's opener early next year. (9 p.m. Fri., Varsity Theater. $20.) (C.R.)

Last year, Twin Cities guitar god Leo Kottke started a new tradition for his annual post-Thanksgiving concert: a rare delectable appetizer. Dos Lobos (David Hidalgo and Louie Perez) opened in 2008, and this time it's the DeVotchka Duo -- singer/guitarist Nick Urata and violinist/accordionist Tom Hagerman -- doing stripped-down treatments of their multi-ethnic rock. As for Kottke, he'll dazzle with fast and fancy fretwork and dizzying and daffy stories. Always recommended. (8 p.m. Sat., State Theatre, $30-$42.) (J.B.)

Best known for the weepy rock-radio hit "Saying Sorry," and for a nasty legal rift with its label Victory Records, Ohio emo band Hawthorne Heights is out on its Never Sleep Again Tour, previewing tracks from a new album due out early next year, titled "Skeletons." Just Surrender and three similar bands open. (6 p.m. Sat., Triple Rock. All ages. $13.) (C.R.)

Four months since he headlined the Finnegan's ShamRock fest, Lennon-esque Ohio singer/songwriter Joseph Arthur is back to play a pair of solo shows. (7 & 10 p.m. Sat., Bryant-Lake Bowl. $20.) (C.R.)

Dolores O'Riordan put out her second solo album, "No Baggage," this year but promptly canceled her fall U.S. tour because the Cranberries decided to reunite instead. This is the Irish band's first tour in seven years (they said it was a hiatus, not a split) but their 1990s dream-pop hits, "Linger" and "Zombie," still ring in our heads, in our heads. With Griffin House. (7 p.m. Sat., First Avenue, sold out.) (J.B.)

Gospel Gossip doesn't like to sit on songs for very long. Just five months since issuing its six-song "Dreamland" CD, fuzzy-guitar-wielding shoegazer frontwoman Sarah Nienaber and her Northfield-reared trio has another EP to tout, "Drift," anchored by the short and bursting would-be radio hit "Sippy Cup" plus three longer, stormy jams that show a penchant for wigged-out psychedelia. Now, what's on for the spring, gang? Red Pens and Zoo Animal open. (10 p.m. Sat., Sauce Spirits & Soundbar. $5.) (C.R.)

Ten-piece Los Angeles ensemble Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros return on their second go-round behind "Up From Below," a collage of psychedelic soul-rock bound for year-end lists that truly is magnetic. Never mind there's not actually anyone named Sharpe in the band. Of equal note this time is the Zeros' fellow Angeleno big band Fool's Gold, whose Afropop-laden eponymous debut is earning loads of Vampire Weekend comparisons. Local Natives also perform. (8 p.m. Sun., Varsity Theater. Sold out.) (C.R.)

Friendly Fires' 2008 debut earned the British dance-rock band a Mercury Prize nomination and lots of blogger attention. Never mind that singer Ed MacFarlane sort of sounds like Michael McDonald when he goes up high, and the New Wavey synth-pop arrangements aren't anything new. Thus, much of the buzz for the current tour is over London-reared openers the XX, a band of gloomy but romantic 20-year-olds with dueling boy/girl vocals and a cool, blurred, snarling dance-rock sound as heard in the Current-rotating single, "Crystalised." (10 p.m. Mon., Triple Rock. Sold out.) (C.R.)

Fresh from getting thrown in jail in Kentucky for having psychedelic mushrooms -- no kidding -- German/Canadian freak-out rocker King Khan is coming back to town (that's still the word at press time) with the BBQ Show, the rawer counterpart to his better-known garage-rock act, King Khan & the Shrines. Onstage, Khan comes off like an awkward but inspired James Brown impersonator and he's better at reviving the classic psychedelic sounds of "Nuggets"-era bands (13th Floor Elevators, Electric Prunes, etc.) than many bands who, well, don't get arrested on drug charges. Tennessee's sweet young country-rockers Those Darlins open. (10 p.m. Sun., Triple Rock. $15.) (C.R.)

While its namesake FDR-era program was all about creating jobs, the new all-star Americana/folk group Works Progress Administration has plenty of gigs. Its core trio comprises Nickel Creek's Sean Watkins, Toad the Wet Sprocket frontman Glenn Phillips and fiddler wiz Luke Bulla (Jerry Douglas, Lyle Lovett). Their just-issued, hearth-warm, song-driven debut album also features Sean's sister Sara and sidemen for Tom Petty and Elvis Costello, but the band on tour is rounded out by Soul Coughing's Sebastian Steinberg and drummer Jerry Roe. Boston songwriter Antje Duvekot opens. (7:30 p.m. Wed., Cedar Cultural Center. $18-$20.) (C.R.)

Touring to support her self-titled second national album, Twin Cities piano popster Keri Noble is finding herself. She's never been afraid to share her emotions in song, but now her personality is blossoming onstage, which has endeared her to an ever-growing fan base of Noble Nuts. She's also expanding her annual holiday tour, this year playing Duluth (Dec. 4), Detroit Lakes (Dec. 5) and St. Cloud (Dec. 6) as well as two gigs in Minneapolis. (7:15 & 9:45 p.m. Thu., Varsity Theater. Early show is all ages, late show 21-plus. $20.) (J.B.)

After baring all their goals and frustrations in 2006's "The Road Less Traveled," it seemed like Unknown Prophets had come to the end of one road. No surprise, then, that northeast rappers MaD SoN and Big Jess are on a whole other path on the follow-up album "Le System D," mostly written with guitar, drums and organ, and featuring a dark, frazzled, fiery sound that's equal parts Jay-Z and Limp Bizkit. From the seething, adulterous story "Hate Face" to the Rocky-running-up-the-stairs rocker "No More Hell," these local vets have a whole lotta fight still in them. Seattle wordsmith Grieves, who appears on the album, will open the show along along with Kentucky's coy rap trio Cunninlynguists. (6:30 p.m. Thu., First Avenue. $10.) (C.R.)

Cajun music great Zachary Richard has had a low profile in the States in recent years while maintaining a thriving career in his ancestral homeland of Canada. This year, however, he released "Last Kiss (Artist Garage)," his first English-language album in 17 years, and Sunday's concert with pianist David Torkanowsky and guitarist Shane Theriot will be his first Twin Cities appearance in at least that long. See an interview with Richard in Sunday's Variety A+E section. (7 & 9:30 p.m. Sun., Dakota, $20-$25.) (R.M.)

On her latest release, "All in One," sultry Brazilian singing star Bebel Gilberto covers everyone from Bob Marley ("Sun Is Shining") to Carmen Miranda ("Chica Chica Boom Chic"), plus revives a cool song Stevie Wonder wrote for Sergio Mendes, "The Real Thing," coming off like a Rio de Janeiro Diana Ross. (7 p.m. Thu., Dakota Jazz Club. Sold out.) (T.S.)

St. Paul-bred sax savant Pat Mallinger has long been a mainstay of the Chicago scene, working everywhere from the fabled Green Mill (once a hangout of mobster Al Capone) to the Ravinia Festival, co-leading the groovy band Sabertooth and fronting a quartet with another Minnesota expat, pianist Bill Carrothers. (9 p.m. Fri-.Sat. Artists' Quarter. $12.) (T.S.)

Guitarist Tim Sparks has made some terrific albums for John Zorn's Tzadik Records label, the latest being "Little Princess," a trio date that revives and recasts the music of Naftule Brandwein, the 1920s "king of the klezmer clarinet." You can expect to hear several of those tunes, all composed nearly a century ago yet sounding quite fresh and downtown hip, at a gig for night owls. (11:30 p.m. Sat., Dakota Jazz Club. $5.) (T.S.)

On her seventh album, the outstanding "The Lovers, the Dreamers and Me," vocalist Jane Monheit does wonders with Fiona Apple's "Slow Like Honey" and Corinne Bailey Rae's "Like a Star" and, as always, impresses on standards by Cole Porter, Leonard Bernstein and Burt Bacharach. The new, first-time mom also does a memorable reading of "Rainbow Connection." (7 & 9:30 p.m. Mon.-Tue., Dakota, $25-$40.) (J.B.)

German pianist and conductor Christian Zacharias appeared with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in 2008, when he played the Chopin F-minor Piano Concerto "masterfully," according to our reviewer. He's back, this time in his first show as the orchestra's new Artistic Partner. Hear him play, in Poulenc's Sextet for Piano and Winds, and see him conduct, in music of Bizet ("L'Arlesienne" suite). The French-themed program also includes music of Ravel and Honegger. (10:30 a.m. & 8 p.m. Fri., 8 p.m. Sat., Ordway Center. $11-$59. 651-291-1144.) (C.P.)

Contributors: Staff critics Jon Bream, Chris Riemenschneider and Claude Peck, and freelancers Tom Surowicz, Larry Fuchsberg and Rick Mason.