ALL EYES WEST

>>> Friday, May 13

Chicago's All Eyes West make radio-ready pop-punk - an odd change of pace for a Tacoma show, I know. They seem to draw from the same well as bands like Rise Against. It's all about pummeling, yet tuneful, riffs and snarling vocals. The punk edges have been smoothed over on the record, but live those edges are bound to regain some of their jagged luster. That's one of the great things about punk rock: no matter how produced and polished it is in the studio, that energy comes spilling out when guitar gets hooked to amp and an audience pushes up against that stage. It can run, but it can't hide. Along with At the Spine and Pioneers West, this is a bill that's bound to give your eardrums a healthy workout. - Rev. Adam McKinney

[New Frontier Lounge, with At the Spine, Pioneers West, 9 p.m., Cover TBA, 301 E. 25th St., Tacoma, 253.572.4020]

DUSTY 45s, BRENT AMAKER

>>> Friday, May 13

Bobble Tiki once said of Seattle's rockabilly phenomenon the Dusty 45s, "Not only has this band perfected the art of rockabilly blues, enough so to make the artists of the '50s and '60s proud, but frontman Billy Joel Huels has a pyrotechnic side that Bobble Tiki can relate to." These are words we can all get behind, even while admitting Tiki's penchant for the third person has become a bit predictable over the years. On the same note, I once said of Brent Amaker, "There's more to this man than simple, old-school country machismo; and there's more to Amaker's music than the obligatory, alt-country nods to the likes of Cash, Williams, Haggard and so on." Both statements hold true to this day, which is just one of the reasons Friday night's show at the Royal in Olympia should be so epic ... even if epic is the most overused word of the moment. - Matt Driscoll

[The Royal Lounge, 7 p.m., 311 Capital Way, Olympia]

GRAVE BABIES

>>> Friday, May 13

Snippets of dialogue from George Romero's seminal 1968 film Night of the Living Dead act as connective tissue on Grave Babies' 2009 debut full-length Deathface, but it's the penetrating post-apocalyptic goth-rock in between these clips that have garnered the Seattle band fans from here to Copenhagen. Grave Babies is the brainchild of Danny Wahfeldt, an ironic-mullet-sporting Illinois emigrant who wrote, performed and produced Deathface entirely on his own. "I just had this shitty Yamaha PSR (keyboard)," Wahfeldt says, "and I took all the industrial-sounding beats off of it, and then just made it sound really exploded." - Jason Baxter

[Northern, with X-Ray Eyeballs, Unwilling Participants, Sick Jumps, 8 p.m., all ages, 321 Fourth Ave., Olympia, northernolympia.org]

IF BEARS WERE BEES

>>> Saturday, May 14

Every time you worry that If Bears Were Bees are becoming a little too precious, they go and do something fucked up, like on "I Don't Know What I Expected," which ends with a rousing chorus of people singing, "I've been making jokes about my dead friends!" This subverting of expectations is ostensibly what If Bears Were Bees are all about, really. They're about taking you to that saccharine cliff that looms over twee waters and pulling you back at the last moment. And even when they're being a little too sweet, the propulsive catchiness of the tunes is hard to deny, and even harder to resist. When you name a song "In Dog We Trust," you'd better have some damn good hooks to back it up - which If Bears Were Bees has in spades. - Rev. AM

[The New Frontier Lounge, with Tallest Tree, Skinny People Kissing, Valerie Warren, 8 p.m., $5, 301 E. 25th St, Tacoma, 253.572.4020]