Lee Ritenour

Tint/[Black] 25%25Wednesday, August 21—Sunday, August 25
Guitarist Lee Ritenour has become a contemporary jazz institution unto himself. To date he has managed to amass 17 Grammy awards while charting 35 times. Ritenour got his start working as a session guitar player in the 1960s and all told is said to have performed on about 3,000 different recordings with artists as diverse as Pink Floyd, Joni Mitchell, Frank Sinatra and Dizzy Gillespie. For as diverse as his session career has been, his true love is and always has been jazz, and he plays his brand of the genre with a technicality and skill that is nearly unrivaled by his peers. Wednesday won’t be the first time Ritenour has played Jazz Alley, but it’s a stage and an environment that is entirely suited to his style. Jazz Alley, 2033 6th Avenue, 441-9729. 7:30 p.m. (Additional 9:30 p.m. performance Friday and Saturday.) $26.50. CORBIN REIFF

Atlas Sound

Wednesday, August 21

For Deerhunter fans, frontman Bradford Cox’s solo project Atlas Sound is an invitation to the back of the workshop, a place where Cox’s eerie inventions sit in various states of completion or disrepair. Some ideas don’t pan out; others possess a pure, raw charm that makes you think you’re listening in on a prodigious middle-schooler stuck in Georgia with a song in his head and a karaoke machine in his room (Cox created Atlas Sound when he was in sixth grade under these very conditions). While Deerhunter’s catalog is more fully realized, that band’s only upcoming visit to Seattle will be as a small part of the sprawling Bumbershoot festival, making Atlas Sound the Cox performance to see. His bizarre stage banter and antics are the stuff of legend. Last year in Minneapolis he led Atlas Sound in an HOUR-LONG cover of “My Sharona” to teach a heckler to be careful what he asks for. Seattle audiences are too passive and polite to bring that upon themselves, but that doesn’t mean Cox will behave himself. And why should he? You’re in his workshop. With Pony and Pollens. Neumos, 925 E. Pike St., 709-9442. 8 p.m. $12. DANIEL PERSON

Brandi Carlile

Thursday, August 22—Friday, August 23

Though it’s been almost a decade since she broke into the music business, blowing everyone away with her self-titled debut album, not much has changed for this folk rock singer-songwriter and local gal. She’s still performing with twin brothers Tim and Phil Hanseroth, the duo she played Seattle clubs with before signing to Columbia Records in 2004. She’s still using her platform to help others, donating a portion of ticket sales to the Looking Out Foundation, the organization she created in 2008 to support humanitarian outreach efforts through music. And, perhaps most notably, she’s still infusing each and every lyric with an incredible amount of emotion, her bluesy vocals often cracking slightly as the song peaks. From that 2005 debut to last year’s Bear Creek, Carlile has proven that sticking to what you know is sometimes all you need to have an enduring impact and a lasting career. Woodland Park Zoo’s North Meadow. 601 N. 59th St., 548-2500. 6 p.m. SOLD OUT. AZARIA PODPLESKY

Black Sabbath

Saturday, August 24

Tony Iommi isn’t quite the household name Ozzy Osborne is, but the guitarist who launched a thousand metal riffs certainly is the star of the current Black Sabbath tour. Fittingly, it’s a simple show. Iommi and Osborne, alongside fellow founding member, bassist Geezer Butler, and drummer Tommy Clufetos from Ozzy’s solo act, just play their songs in front of a big screen. Ozzy is good for a maniacal laugh and wild glare here and there, but you probably already know his voice and presence have diminished in power. Not so with Butler and Iommi, whose musicianship now exceeds the recordings of the band’s early ‘70s classics and shines on tunes from their June release, 13. Donning shades and dressed all in black, content yet imposing on stage, Iommi embodies the spirit of the band and the often misunderstood but not ignoble genre it summoned to this world. With Andrew W.K. (DJ set). Gorge Amphitheatre, 754 Silica Road, Quincy, WA. 7:30 p.m. $60 – $150. JASON SIMMS

Pinback

Monday, August 26

For all its surface beauty, a darkness lurks in San Diego. When I lived there, I found the city’s hyper social culture and constant sun so oppressive I fled to the Pacific Northwest, where the weather and attitudes are a bit more moody. There’s a sense that Rob Crow and Zach Smith, the two mainstays of SoCal alt-rock group Pinback, totally understand the feeling. Over the course of now five albums—their latest being last year’s Information Retrieved—they’ve mined a style of well-crafted, somber pop like Modest Mouse or Built to Spill, with Crow and Smith alternating tough-and-tender vocals that add muscle to the mix. Smith’s murky basslines alongside the dirgy tempo of a song like “Charborg,” from the excellent self-titled debut, make it sound like tracks have been melting on the dash in a heat wave, warping into something beautiful, but far from perfect. With Survival Knife. Showbox at the Market, 1426 1st Ave., 628-3151. 8 p.m. $18.50-$22. GWENDOLYN ELLIOTT