Shaking Winter Doldrums Musically

Well it’s officially that time of year. The boring, blah, depressing, post holiday, resolution abandoning, cold and grey, God-help-me-if-I-don’t-get-out-of-this-house time of year.

One way to counter this humdrum and glum time presents itself this Friday, at the Wind Up Space. Local band Microkingdom is celebrating their record release alongside Violet Hour and Witch Hat. The album, available from Baltimore label Friends Records, is titled "Three Compositions of No Jazz."

Microkingdom doesn’t really have a genre pinned to them, but I think Pitchfork came the closest to nailing their sound down in a review of their debut album in 2008 by deeming it “jazz spazz”.

I would’ve flipped it around a bit, I think “spazz jazz” is a more accurate description, but I won’t let this get bogged down in semantics. This band is not for everyone, which is a blessedly good thing. If you like psych, electro, or freeform jazz at all, they will appeal to you.

If you like guitar riffs pasted over meandering distortion with haunting dulcet tones, staccato clarinet, and wandering yet forceful sax  they will appeal to you. In short, they are different yet very Baltimore.  The show is 21-years-old and over, $7 and doors are at 9 p.m.

Keeping along the same vein of the indefinable, Chicago’s Joan of Arc is playing Saturday, at Golden West. With a revolving door of members that have been in countless other bands, Joan of Arc has been together since 1995 (however only Tim Kinsella has remained throughout) and have released an impressive 14 albums since their inception.

Alternately lauded and laughed at by critics for their avant garde approach to traditional acoustic, their album "The Gap" consists of only perceived songs within one long, roaming length of music. For their 2008 album "Guitar Duets" past members of the band were called back, paired up by drawing names out of a hat, and then recorded what resulted. Though Kinsella is not a fan of being classified as emo that’s probably the genre where they fit best, without getting mired down in the subgenres of math rock and indierock. Also playing are Soft Circle and Algernon Cadwallader, doors  open at 10 p.m., $8, all ages.

If all of this artsy fartsy emo stuff isn’t for you no worries, the Ottobar is here to save you. The club will host the Hair Ball on Saturday. The event will feature a bunch of cheesy sleaze metal. Maybe a night of Natty Boh and Night Ranger, shots and Skid Row, will pick you up.

Fight the tedium of late January by checking out some other things going on in North Baltimore this week:

• Saturday Benefit Show at Charm City Art Space with How Tragic, Monteclair, American Womanhood, A Spike Lee Joint, and the Kindness of Strangers. The only way you can feel charitable while delivering punches to the back of someone’s head, the benefit show.
• Sunday at The Ottobar, take your choice of three shows going on there that day. Early all ages show The Sea Life, Ivy Rose, and The Garret Gleason Trio; doors at 3 p.m. Percy Shaw, Caulfield Rebellion, The Pipe Smoking Rabbits, and Trashkanistan; doors at 8 p.m., all ages. Upstairs $5 show, Mind as Prison, Cokskar, Chainsaw to the Face, and Backslider. Must be 21-years-old.