New Year’s Eve Concert Guide

DIIV

South Williamsburg’s latest crowning achievement, Baby’s All Right, the sort of fun, unpretentious bar/restaurant/concert venue that the neighborhood deserves, is hosting a party filled to the brim with recently popular and consistently good dream-pop and rock acts — DIIV, Perfect Pussy, Potty Mouth, and Nothing — to ring in 2014 in the noisiest way imaginable. Recommended if you’re not afraid to get rowdy. At 7:45, Baby’s All Right, 146 Broadway, Brooklyn, facebook.com/babysallright, $35–$40 MARIA SHERMAN

Jill Scott

Jill Scott‘s music is generous and contains multitudes: scorching brushfires of soul tracks with the Roots and (in her best spot this decade) Eve, plus 13 years’ worth of post-r&b flecked with spoken word and inhabited by one of the genre’s warmest voices. She’ll be at Radio City Music Hall this New Year’s, promising emotions that transcend the season’s glitz. Opening are Danja protégé and Beyoncé-beloved Luke James (song to look up: underrated r&b edifice “I Want You”) and Gang Starr mastermind DJ Premier. At 9, Radio City Music Hall, 1260 Sixth Avenue, 212-247-4777, radiocity.com, $70–$255 KATHERINE ST. ASAPH

Mykki Blanco

Mykki Blanco recently posted the Facebook status update, “I’m over gender. I’m into species,” and paired it with an Apple Store selfie of the rapper looking like a silver-haired elfin space magistrate. Accordingly, La Blanca has assembled a merry band of cosmic mutants for a New Year’s bash at the Gramercy Theater: Expect post-sexual singer Ian Isiah’s cyborg r&b, juke wizard DJ Rashad’s Chicago futurism, Junglepussy and Princess Nokia’s tentacled raps, and intergalactic ferocity from DJ Larry B, T.E.A.M.S., Boychild, and Michael Magnan. At 8, Gramercy Theatre, 127 East 23rd Street, 212-614-6932, thegramercytheatre.com, $30 ALEXIS STEPHENS

The Bad Plus

There has always been a dollop of ceremony in the esteemed trio the Bad Plus‘s rerouted pop tunes and noble-nasty originals, so when they spend New Year’s Eve at our most venerable jazz club, there’s some version of extraordinary in the air. Plus, they’re smitten with surprise, and it’s always nice to feel that anything can happen on the cusp of a new 3-6-5. At 9:30, Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, villagevanguard.com, $150 JIM MACNIE

Andrew W.K.

An Andrew W.K. show is less concert than purification ritual. The band is hairy and huge in sound, its frontman a case of Red Bull distilled into sneakers, denim, and a tight white T-shirt. Tunes like “Party Hard,” “Long Live the Party,” and “Party Til You Puke” are moronically marvelous. (He also sings about girls, cars, and getting high, but with somewhat less gusto.) And for New Year’s Eve? Imagine a party going to a party. At 8, Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place, irvingplaza.com, $40 RICHARD GEHR

Antibalas

Since forming in 1998, a year after the death of Nigerian afrobeat creator Fela Kuti, Brooklyn-based 12-piece Antibalas has built on the sound’s elastic formal perfection, polyphonic pleasures, horn-heavy arrangements, and rabble-rousing lyrics. Having worshipped at Fela’s musical temple in Lagos, singer Sifu Amayo is a charismatic conduit of deep Yoruban soul and spirit. And as longtime members of the Daptone stable, Antibalas definitely know how to throw a party. At 8, 10, and 12:30, S.O.B.’s, 204 Varick Street, 212-243-2940, sobs.com, $40–$160 RICHARD GEHR