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THURSDAY

Good indie-rock drama doesn’t come around too often. Bits of pomp mystery and ornate glam are usually left up to old whip-crackers like Tom Waits and Nick Cave. Depending on your appetite for this stuff (clanging piano, something called “guitar percussion”), Wovenhand doesn’t so much craft songs as deliver these old masters’ sense of tension. The production on its latest album, Consider the Birds, is very Lord of the Rings, if Devendra Banhart played Frodo and had no problem declaring himself a guitar percussionist. It’s gothic, warbly, and so over-the-top that it’s over-the-forest. And when singer David Eugene Edwards does his best Nick Cave pose—“We will weave our hands together to make a ring”—you can almost feel some 15-year-old cribbing it for a mash note. Wovenhand plays with Brother Danielson at 9 p.m. at Iota Club & Cafe, 2832 Wilson Blvd., Arlington. $12. (703) 522-8340.