The Flyer's music writers tell you where you can go.

At a recent performance by local band Deathray, frontman Nick Diablo called for the lights to be dimmed. This so that the colored sheets of transparent plastic on the overhead projector could more effectively cast the band in a hypnotic, cavernous glow.

Deathray

Now, I don’t know if Diablo expressly aspires to be Tav Falco, but given his attention to theatrical detail, he might be well on his way, whatever his intentions. And it’s not just the lighting. The current Deathray lineup — which includes Brad Pounders of the Clears on cocktail drums and Kim Koehler, formerly of the Pump Action Retards and lately a solo performer, on guitar and organ — traffics in the sort of swanky fuzz that made Falco famous. From spy-theme-inspired bass-lines to Box Top covers, Diablo et al. mine the garage with a minor touch of class and a large dose of velvety (yes, as in Underground) guitar crashes. They will certainly be in their element, lighting and all, this Saturday when they appear at the downtown boho crash-pad that is the Parallax Theatre. The night will also feature the debut of the Lost Sounds, an intriguing enough venture featuring Alicja Trout, of the Clears and the Ultracats, and punk prodigy Jay Linsey a.k.a. Reatard. — Jim Hanas

Vancouver-raised, Toronto-based Suzie Ungerleider, known on stage as Oh Susanna, seems far removed from the gloomy, rain-soaked foothills of Appalachia, but her music knows the terrain well. Though she never gets too bogged down in specifics, her sparse, minor-key ballads conjure the beat-up towns and even more beat-up people of the region’s hard-life Coal Belt, the kinds of lives that Maybelle Carter and Jimmie Rogers used to sing about so effectively and that are well documented on Ungerleider’s self-titled seven-song debut CD.

Since that record came out, Ungerleider has scored impressive gigs on Lilith Fair’s Canadian dates, the Scrappy Bitch Tour, and opening slots for Wilco, Blue Rodeo, Gillian Welch, and Steve Earle. Her follow-up CD, Johnstown, on Square Dog Records was due to be released on March 2nd and promises more of her refreshing, almost old-fashioned perspective — hard-scrabble, fatalistic, but oddly nostalgic.

Ungerleider is on her way now to Austin for the annual South By Southwest music conference, but she’s making a stop at the Map Room this Wednesday, bringing her music, if not herself, a little closer to its home. — Mark Jordan