Friday @ Paradise Rock Club

Do you believe in a thing called reunions? After spending the past few years in new throwaway side projects like Stone Gods and Hot Leg, the beloved — or much-maligned, depending on your tolerance level for camp — UK glam-rock revivalists announced their comeback nearly a year ago. But the Darkness finally bring their spandex, ridiculousness, and relentless pomposity to our hungry, relaxed-fit-jeaned shores as the band readies their third studio album for ’12. Career definer “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” came out nearly a decade ago? Good freakin’ lord. Reyan Ali talked with singer/guitarist Justin Hawkins about the band's revival, check it out Read more

Friday @ House of Blues

Now that Jack’s Mannequin’s Andrew McMahon has officially beat cancer (well done, him) will his introspective, heart-string-tugging music continue to carry the same emotional heft? We think so, at least if this fall’s People and Things(Sire/Wea) is any indication. The redemptive third installment in a series of albums chronicling the 29-year-old’s battle with leukemia (starting with his 2005 debut Everything in Transit) finds McMahon fighting his way back from a dark place. Weighty enough. Back in town following an opening gig for Guster this summer at the Pavilion, Jack’s Mannequin is joined by Jukebox The Ghost and Allen Stone. Read more

Friday @ Royale

The upside to the Dead Weather’s indefinite hiatus is that it left Alison Mosshart free to reunite with Kills bandmate Jamie Hince and record last spring’s Blood Pressures (Domino). The follow-up picked up where 2008’s critically-lauded Midnight Boom left off — namely, serving up hefty portions of searing dark rock with an almost impossibly big sound for a two-wo/man band. The duo are joined by Jeff The Brotherhood and Hunters for a sold out show at Royale. Read more

Friday @ YMCA Theatre

There are those who say that it’s a man’s world, but it’s a LADYFEST this weekend here in Boston. At long last, the hotly anticipated, community-driven festival hits town with three days of music, art, workshops, and a fair amount of grrrl power. The fest kicks off Friday night with a potluck dinner and a show with local act Shepherdess, NYC’s Waxahatchee, and more. Also on the weekend’s bill: music by Girlfriends and Hilly Eye, Alice Bag reading from her book Violence Girl, and much more. Read more

Friday @ Institute of Contemporary Art

For those upon whom the words “chamber orchestra” work as an instant sedative, consider this your wake-up call. Tonight’s edition of the ICA’s New Music Now Series is a presentation of Georg Friedrich Haas’s In Vain — a progressive, 70-minute piece that plays upon elements of sound and light — performed by a 24-piece chamber orchestra, conducted by Jeffrey Means. The immersive multi-sensory experience — which utilizes both silence and darkness, crashing crescendos and blinding light, to dramatic ends — will have you doing anything but snoozing. Read more

Friday @ MASS MoCA

Avant garde New York sound-collagists the Books might be on the skids (after four sporadically released but excellently bizarre albums, the word is that the band has penned their final chapter) but frontman Nick Zammuto’s story is far from finished. He’s formed a new band, Zammuto, which makes its live debut tonight at the Mass MoCA. The flagship performance is preceded by a screening of Achantè (a short film about Haitian Vodou) for which Zammuto wrote the score. (Zammuto reprise this show at the Brighton Music Hall on Monday.) Read more

Saturday @ Somerville Theatre

Now that you all know how cool silent movies can be after watching the Oscar Best Picture nominee The Artist (if you haven’t yet seen it, you must), take it up another notch by experiencing the Alloy Orchestra’s “Wild And Weird,” a compilation of classic silent shorts accompanied by the legendary ensemble performing their own original soundtracks. The selections range from the Dadaist Filmstudie (1926) by Hans Richter to the hallucinatory Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend (1906) by Edwin S. Porter. As you probably already deduced after watching Hugo, those early filmmakers were some freaky dudes. Read more

Saturday @ Poe's Kitchen at the Rattlesnake

Patriots? Giants? Who could be bothered to take a side when there are burritos to be devoured? We’ll be rooting for team beef and cheese today, when Chef Brian Poe of Poe’s Kitchen brings ”Burrito Bowl II” to the Rattlesnake. Local chefs of note square off to create burritos themed for the city of their favorite NFL team. And you get to taste ’em all. More discriminating votes will be cast by the palates of guest “refs” that include our own Scott Kearnan, Editorial Director of Stuff. We just hope the halftime show includes a surprise tequila appearance at Poe’s Kitchen at the Rattlesnake. Read more

Saturday @ Paramount Theatre

A nightmare circus, set to a score of tango and Tuvan throat singing, comes to town in the Boston debut of Oyster. Read more

Saturday @ YMCA Theatre

LADYFEST continues today with a workshop on making autobiographic comics, a potluck dinner, and two shows (1 pm + 5 pm set times) with bands including Whore Paint, Tunabunny, Libyans, and more. Read more

Saturday @ Lyric Stage Company of Boston

A favorite on Boston stages for decades, Will LeBow stars in Lyric Stage’s new production Superior Donuts, a story of a down-and-out donut-shop owner (LeBow) who hires a bright young writer to work in his shop . . . inevitably lifting both owner and establishment out of their slump. A positive and relevant message for small-business owners in these troubled times, indeed. Written by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Tracy Letts, the play co-stars Omar Robinson. Read more

Saturday @ Paradise Rock Club

Thanks to the fans, the Sheila Divine were able to fund their long awaited new album The Things That Once Were through Kickstarter (they officially reached — and exceeded — their goal in October). The people have spoken and what the people want, the people get. They’ll get it live tonight, when the veteran Boston band celebrate the release of the album at a WFNX-presented show, with Hurricane Bells and the Field Effect. Read more

Sunday @ YMCA Theatre

LADYFEST concludes today with a brunch followed by a show with Hilly Eye, Big Nils, Girlfriends, Thick Shakes, and more. Also on the agenda: a special performance by Donna Lethal, a reading by Alice Bag from her book Violence Girl, and more. Read more

Sunday @ Lily Pad

The pianist and composer Satoko Fuji hit Boston like a hurricane when she was a denizen of Berklee and NEC back in the ’90s. She hasn’t played Boston since 2002, but she returns this afternoon with her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura. Great avant-jazz warm-up to the Super Bowl! Read more

Monday @ Charlie's Kitchen

Comprised of former members of Doomstar! and Ketman, Creaturos pulled the best elements of both bands into their patchworked rock n' roll. Check 'em out, with Trabants at Charlie's Kitchen tonight, but first, check out the result of P. Nick Curran's recent sit-down with the band. Read more

Monday @ Church of Boston

What do you get when you mix God and comedy? A bunch of really ticked off religious zealots, for one. Also, a first-person account of the Creation and all the shit that followed as told in former Daily Show producer David Javerbaum’s The Last Testament: A Memoir By God. Javerbaum’s book is an irreverent, off-color “autobiography” of the Dude upstairs, in which He sets the record straight on a few things. Like the fact that the first human beings were a gay couple named Adam and Steve. And other stuff like that. Javerbaum discusses the holy tome in conversation with comedian Lauren Antler tonight at Church, followed by a set by Zhe. Read more

Tuesday @ Paramount Theatre

Sir Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 Trans-Antarctic Expedition is noted in the annals of history as one of the greatest survival stories of all time. Shackleton and his men survived upon an ice floe for more than two months after their ship went under. That incredible story is told through live performance, dance, marionettes, puppeteers on stilts, visual art, and film in the ArtsEmerson-presented 69°S. [The Shackleton Project]. The unique, evocatively inspirational performance is staged by New York theater company Phantom Limb and runs for six nights only. Read more

Tuesday @ Shubert Theatre

Boston isn’t privy to the abundance of first-run productions with which New York is glutted, something theater-heads sometimes bemoan. In the case of the The Addams Family, however, second-time-around’s a charm. After the tepid — and some downright cool — reviews given to the original Broadway production featuring America’s favorite anti-happy little family, the show was re-worked, re-cast, and re-vamped . . . to successful ends. See for yourself tonight, when Morticia, Gomez, and company bring their morbid delights to the stage. Read more

Wednesday @ John F. Kennedy Library and Museum

Based on actual occurrences, Peter Maxwell Davies’s gripping and distinctly unsettling opera The Lighthouse — which tells the chilling story of three men who vanished from a Scottish lighthouse in 1900 — hasn’t been staged here in Boston since Peter Sellars and the Boston Shakespeare Company presented it back in ’83. Tonight, the operatic mystery (Davies’s most famous) is staged in the most fitting venue imaginable, overlooking Boston Harbor at the JFK Library and Museum. David Angus conducts. Read more

Wednesday @ T.T. the Bear's Place

And now for something completely different? Not quite, as there's something pleasantly familiar about Welsh folk songstress Cate Le Bon's new music. Jonathan Donaldson explains as much in his recent piece after chatting with Le Bon in this week's issue Read more

Wednesday @ Brookline Booksmith

Not many authors imbue their work with the sort of gnawing sense of psychological distress as does Oberlin prof dan chaon, who recently released a new collection of haunting short stories, Stay Awake (Ballantine). Many a reader just might find themselves wide awake, mind racing, after indulging in a few. The title story tells the tale of a young couple whose baby is born with a partially-formed conjoined twin still hanging on. And it only gets better from there. Chaon reads from the new collection tonight at the Brookline Booksmith. Read more

Wednesday @ Regattabar

Cellist Matt Haimovitz and pianist Chistopher O’riley are known for bringing their classical repertoire to unusual locations (if we recall, Haimovitz unloaded some Bach at T.T. the Bear’s Place a few years ago), and they both like to mix up their Stravinsky with a dab of Radiohead. Now, Haimovitz along with O’Riley (host of NPR’s From the Top) bring the double-disc Shuffle.Play.Listen (Oxingale), with its mix of the great composers and the Cocteau Twins, Bernard Herrmann, Blonde Redhead, Astor Piazzolla, Arcade Fire, and more, to the Regattabar. Read more

Wednesday @ Paradise Rock Club

The term “girl band” has long been bandied about in reference to candy-coated pop-rock peppered with flimsy girl power sentiments. Luckily, there are bands like Dum Dum Girls out there that are willing and able to kick through those barriers with steel-toed boots and stomp all over the term. The Dum Dums bring their retro, bad-ass vibe to the Paradise, along with Widowspeak and Punks On Mars. Read more

Thursday @ Opera House

The Boston Ballet opens its Spring 2012 season with not one, but three fine ballets in one program. Simply Sublime is indeed a rather sublime way to kick off the ballet’s new season, including George Balanchine’s intricate and exhilarating Symphony in Three Movements, Christopher Wheeldon’s Polyphonia (a romantic comedy of sorts set to ten Ligeti piano pieces), and Michael Fokine’s one-act, non-narrative romantic work Les Sylphides. Read more

Thursday @ Scullers

Dominique Eade has long been one of Boston’s finest, most imaginative jazz singers. Here’s a chance to catch her artistry at its most intimate, in a trio with guitarist Brad Shepik and bassist John Lockwood. Read more