Kurt Vile and the Violators

Tickets are $33 in advance, $38 day of show (including all service charges). They are also available by phone through Hold My Ticket at 505-886-1251.

Travel can inspire in surprising ways: Kurt Vile discovered as much making his first record in three years, the eclectic and electrifying Bottle It In, which he recorded at various studios around the country over two very busy years, during sessions that usually punctuated the ends of long tours or family road trips. Every song, whether it's a concise and catchy pop composition or a sprawling guitar epic, becomes a journey unto itself, taking unexpected detours, circuitous melodic avenues, or open-highway solos. If Vile has become something of a rock guitar god—a mantle he would dismiss out of humility but also out of a desire to keep getting better, to continue absorbing new music, new sounds, new ideas—it's due to his precise, witty playing style, which turns every riff and rhythm into points on a map and takes the scenic route from one to the next.

Using past albums as points of departure, Bottle It In heads off in new directions, pushing at the edges of the map into unexplored territory: Here be monster jams. These songs show an artist who is still evolving and growing: a songwriter who, like his hero John Prine, can make you laugh and break your heart, often in the same line, as well as a vocalist who essentially rewrites those songs whenever he sings them in his wise, laconic jive-talkin' drawl. These journeys took Vile more than two years to navigate, during which time he toured behind his breakout 2015 album b'lieve I'm goin' down, recorded a duets album with Australian singer-songwriter-guitarist Courtney Barnett, opened for Neil Young in front of 90,000 people in Quebec, famously became a clue on "Jeopardy," hung out with friends, took vacations with his wife and daughters.

Given all of their associations and tireless touring regimen, it can seem at times as if The Sadies are everywhere, all the time. Yet, they are a band that fans cling to like a closely guarded secret, with each new release fulfilling the promise to reach further. With their latest album, Northern Passages, the time has come to make room for more on this wild acid-folk-country-punk trip.

The Sadies first exploded onto the North American scene 20 years ago. Back then there was still something called "alt-country," a catchall for artists striving to carry on traditions with punk rock attitude. The Sadies certainly fit that description, but the breadth of their skills and musical knowledge was unparalleled since a group of fellow Torontonians left Ronnie Hawkins in the mid-'60s to take a job backing Bob Dylan.