Sound Bites

Thursday

Buckethead — The way I see it, Buckethead has two marketable skills. First, most importantly and most obviously, is branding. In a more-than-15-year career, Buckethead has made himself an almost-icon with his raised-by-chickens mythology and, well, the whole bucket on his head thing. Aligning himself with big-name acts the likes of Axl Rose and a short-lived incarnation of G’N’R, and System of a Down’s Serj Tankian, Buckethead kept his name on people’s tongues. His clipped rhythmic sensibilities and industrial-tinged, post-nu-metal licks — admittedly a distinctive style within a largely homogenous genre — come second, riding shotgun as his ability to craft an image takes the wheel. With That One Guy. B. Reed
Headliners: 8 p.m., $20 ($17 advance); 796-2333, headlinerscolumbia.com.

Friday

Blinded By Underpants, 
The Gadgets — An indie rock show in the classic sense, this local double-bill is audibly indebted to indie rock’s formative years. The Gadgets marry Replacements-punk to Eva Moore’s detached vocals — somewhere between Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus and Beat Happening’s Heather Lewis — and provide a fitting dance partner to Blinded By Underpants, a duo whose ’90s-reverent style carries an R.E.M. jangle, a Pavement shuffle and the sweet-tea jitters of Archers of Loaf. (Full disclosure: Free Times music editor Patrick Wall fronts Blinded By Underpants.) This is the release party for Wolves, BBU’s latest affair, which has enough divebomb guitars and old-T-shirt familiarity to please just about anybody with functional ears. B. Reed
Hunter Gatherer: 11 p.m., $5; 748-0540, 
myspace.com/huntergathererbrewery.

Free Times, 10/15/08