The Hold Steady, serpentwithfeet, and Young M.A. Top the Best Shows This Week

Now that the blissfully empty streets of the holiday weekend have been replaced by the city’s standard-issue hustle-and-bustle, it’s time to get back to business, and nothing soothes a work week malaise like live music.This week, we’ve got a bowling alley coronation for Brooklyn’s favorite transplant bar band, a new party from Boiler Room with one of hip-hop’s biggest producers, and an exhaustive performance from one of indie pop’s most prolific songwriters.

11/30
The Hold Steady
Brooklyn Bowl
6 p.m., $45
It’s been ten years since Craig Finn & Co. released The Hold Steady’s third LP, making the requisite nostalgia ripe for commodification. To celebrate the anniversary of Boys and Girls in America, the band is hosting a three-night residency (through 12/2) at Brooklyn Bowl, complete with to-be-announced special guest openers. Advance tickets are sold out, but a limited number of cash-only tickets will be available at the door.

12/1
Just Blaze, Young M.A.
Highline Ballroom
9 p.m., $20
Superproducer Just Blaze is a regular on the NYC club DJ circuit, and The Remedy is his new monthly party, in collaboration with the folks at Boiler Room. For the first edition, he’ll bring out the ascendant Brooklyn MC Young M.A., who’s been turning heads in recent months with an infectious baritone flow and jams like “OOOUUU.” If you get hooked, catch her headlining set at Knockdown Center on 12/3.

Lizzo, Dizzy Fae
Bowery Ballroom
8 p.m., Sold Out
Minneapolis MC Lizzo flipped a breakout LP—2015’s Big Grrrl Small World—into a contract with Atlantic and an MTV VMAs co-hosting gig, and hasn’t looked back since. Her Bowery Ballroom show is sold out, but for a taste, check out her bouncy flow on Coconut Oil, her major-label debut from October.

serpentwithfeet, Rusalka
Baby’s All Right
Midnight, $10
Josiah Wise shaped his Soundcloud musings into fully formed emotional journeys on his debut EP blisters, a collaboration with the Haxan Cloak. And it doesn’t get much more intimate than the newly-renovated friendly confines of Baby’s All Right, where he’ll share a stage with Rusalka, named after a Slavic water nymph.

Pool Cosby, Ximena Borges, Kat Rodriguez
Pianos
7 p.m., $10
This eclectic bill features a handful of up-and-comers, but pay close attention to Ximena Borges, a Venezuelan transplant who shapes loops and effects into live sound collages with graceful ease.

12/2
The Magnetic Fields: “50 Song Memoir”
BAM
7:30 p.m., $30

The Brooklyn Academy of Music feels like the natural habitat for Stephin Merritt’s songs—witty and sardonic, they’re cultured, but just a bit dressed down. His latest project is the “50 Song Memoir,” an album featuring a song for each of his fifty years of life. He’ll bring a seven-piece band to play the album over two nights, using fifty instruments from his own collection. Tickets are sold out but available on the secondary market.

12/3
Mannequin Pussy, IAN SWEET, Haybaby
Brooklyn Bazaar
7 p.m., $12

Mannequin Pussy’s 2016 take on emo can veer from the romantic to the sludgy, from shoegazey riffs to gut-punch drum licks. Since their inception, they’ve fled the city for the friendlier (and more affordable) scene in Philadelphia, but they’re not too far for a one-off in Greenpoint in support of their latest LP, Romantic—catch them before they come back, at what will almost certainly be a bigger venue.