Shows of the Week: Erykah Badu’s Songs Remain Canonical

Thursday, Feb. 20

Ashley Monroe approaches country music with a quiet intensity. The Nashville singer-songwriter (and one-third of Pistol Annies) skews toward the pop end of the neotraditional country spectrum, with 2021’s Rosegold embracing an almost trip-hop sheen and sending purists into a provincial frenzy. Yet there’s a mystical, almost epic quality to her songwriting, a sense that she’s drawing less from the Nashville playbook than from the same well of haunted Americana from which country music itself was birthed. Polaris Hall, 635 N Killingsworth Court. 7 pm. $30.15. 21+.

Friday, Feb. 21

Erykah Badu has put out just four studio albums and two interstitial projects since 1997, but they’re all canonical. Her spaced-out hippie persona conceals a razor-sharp wit, and though the kicker on “Tyrone” should make any list of the best mic drops in pop history, she’s just as funny on “Turn Me Away,” from 2010’s New Amerykah Part Two, explaining why you should marry her even though she doesn’t love you (“I look like a model,” she sings). Expect to laugh, expect to cry, just don’t expect her to play “Tyrone.” Moda Center, 1 N Center Court St. 8 pm. $95. All ages.

Tuesday, Feb. 25

Ty Segall stands in for an entire era of garage rock history. Emerging in the late 2000s and filling the power vacuum left by the passing of the great Jay Reatard, the California fuzzbox auteur has been on an unrelenting tear for 15 years. His two releases from last year show off the breadth of his sound: an avant-garde percussion album called Love Rudiments and a folkier affair called Three Bells. He performs solo acoustic on his most recent tour in support of the latter, with fellow introspective punk King Tuff opening. Alberta Abbey, 126 NE Alberta St. 7 pm. $35. All ages.