music

The Columbus "garage soul" band will play the Essence Festival in New Orleans.

Two big gigs at the Newport this October, plus a buzz band at The Basement.

Two humongous concert announcements plus a reasonably large one.

Iconic performance was fine start to summer

Show was one of summer's early highlights for writer

Columbus folk band joins the label home of Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Neko Case and more.

When Chapel Hill guitarist Jenks Miller isn’t plumbing Greek mythology with his metal project Horseback, he’s naming his dusky, female-fronted alt-country band after a mountain from the Bible. The guy got a lot out of his comparative religion courses.

Joseph and Kay Barker got married last year then instantly uprooted from Minneapolis to Columbus. The idea was to move closer to Kay’s friends and family (she’s from Cincinnati), but also to plant themselves in a central location to take their folk-pop band Bella Ruse on the road.

What a ruckus and uplifting year Alabama Shakes have had; this fuzzed-out, Southern rock group has garnered three 2013 Grammy Award nominations and a “Saturday Night Live” appearance earlier this year.

This band’s name is indicative of the sound it produces.

Rumba Cafe is the place most upstart roots-rockers perform when they blow through Columbus (like tumbleweeds, obviously). The tiny Summit Street bar breeds loyalty, so even when bands outgrow the space, they keep coming back. Fortunately, a partnership with The Bluestone means Rumba can keep reeling in acts like Justin Townes Earle and Lucero even when stuffing them inside Rumba becomes a fire hazard.

Guilty pleasures arise!

From the same suburban New Jersey scene that bred Real Estate and Titus Andronicus sprang Wisconsin-based academic Julian Lynch, either one of today’s most approachable experimentalists or among the most experimental pop acts depending on how you tilt your ear. Lines, Lynch’s latest, presents electro-orchestral psych-folk built to mesmerize.

When you have a group of women crowded up front dancing together, each of them filming Vines of you and repeatedly singing a coordinated chant about your months-old band, it’s safe to say you are off to a head start.

By now, listeners know what to expect from The National. Nobody does downcast-yet-uplifting elegant midlife crisis rock better — or more singularly — than the Brooklyn-based Cincinnati natives.

The Revivalists are a hard act to pin down.

Grab an OYO cocktail and rock with Mount Carmel and Forest & the Evergreens

Artists include Kendrick Lamar, Bassnectar, Empire of the Sun, Twenty One Pilots

Two big shows, one big night.