Thompson - His show was a bit bogged down.

Every two to three years, veteran guitar whiz and witty Celtic folk-rocker Richard Thompson shifts from solo concerts to a tour with a full backing band. The Richard Thompson Band has in the past been a huge-sounding five-piece group, but the line-up in recent years has slimmed to a still fairly beefy four-piece. The current live configuration supporting Thompson has included bassist Danny Thompson, drummer Michael Jerome and superhuman multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Pete Zorn. Tragically, Danny had to leave the tour abruptly right before the Cleveland stop due to a death in his family. So for this show, Zorn assumed bass duties, except for a few cases where Thompson's roadie handled bass while Zorn played horns. Since Danny Thompson performs bass alongside Richard fairly constantly (even on the "solo" tours), his absence was a noticeable loss. Still, the band mustered admirable professionalism to minimize anything that went wrong onstage.

As expected, songs from the new Sweet Warrior CD were prominently featured and well-performed. But the set generally felt bogged down, overly weighted toward long, slow, minor-key numbers. One big treat of Thompson's full-band tours is hearing driving rockers from Thompson's extensive back catalog. The fantastic but underplayed firecrackers "Wrong Heartbeat" and "Read About Love" were two of the evening's highlights. But most songs would have worked equally well as solo performances. The last tune of the evening was the perennial audience-rousing upbeat favorite "Tear Stained Letter." But the preceding song of that two-song encore was an odd choice: the plodding "Gypsy Love Songs," which is musically too similar to "Hard On Me," an earlier recipient of a marathon extended-jam treatment. Correspondingly, while typically a hilarious guy, Thompson this time had minimal funny in-between-song banter. The tiring pacing and somber mood could reasonably have stemmed from the band sharing buddy/peer Danny's loss. But also quite possibly, the slow, brooding set list may have been an emergency selection for Zorn and the roadie to confidently cover the bass parts without much rehearsal. The audience was similarly subdued, but like the performers onstage, seemed quite pleased to be there despite unfortunate circumstances. n

The Fray, OK Go

Time Warner Cable Amphitheater

Playing its largest local show to date, the Fray didn't quite fill Time Warner Cable Amphitheater to the brim. And it curiously got little response when singer Isaac Slade asked the audience who had been to the other two sold-out shows it played at the House of Blues and State Theatre on previous trips through town. It could be that its 15 minutes are starting to wane. That certainly seemed the case when it took to the stage after a lengthy wait. Sure, the young women in the crowd let out a scream, but the music was more of a whisper as the band sounded like a lighter version of Coldplay, especially with Slade sitting at the piano for most of the show. With a large backlit screen behind it, the band tried out a few new tunes (the track it introduced as its "country tune" was the best of the bunch) that led to the soaring "How to Save a Life," the number that made the Denver band an overnight sensation. That track was delivered with a degree of grace and emotion that made the other songs pale by comparison.

While a much smaller portion of the audience was there to see them, openers OK Go delivered a terrific opening set that began as the sharply dressed group threw Day-Glo tambourines out to the audience. Telling the crowd it was far superior to the audience it played to the previous night in Buffalo only helped the band's snappy power pop go over all the better. And while much of the underage audience was probably not familiar with the ELO cover it played, the tune was given the OK Go treatment and came off perfectly. And for an encore, the band appeared with the women who had won a MySpace contest and conducted a "dance off" to its tune "Million Ways," which made for a great visual display and showed the degree to which the band doesn't take itself too seriously. That certainly wasn't the case for Mae, which began the show with a collection of by-the-numbers emo tunes from its forthcoming album. The songs were stereotypically whiny and ultimately forgettable. - Jeff Niesel

Wynton Marsalis

Allen Theatre

When jazz gets up on stage in a big concert hall, it's easy to talk about the music as museum piece. But if ever a jazz composition belonged on a big stage, it's Wynton Marsalis' Congo Square. Marsalis came with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and the African percussion and vocal ensemble Odadaa to the Allen Theatre last week to perform the suite in tribute to the place where slaves laid down the roots of blues and jazz. Both bands tore the roof off the joint.

Congo Square felt something like a day in the life of that New Orleans plaza, with the people wandering in on Sunday 250 years ago, like to church, but to talk and play and sing, and keep a culture alive, and in the process build a new one. After the procession on stage, the first thing was spoken prayer, the music of Odadaa's African language, captivating in its rhythm and the unfamiliar phonics of the tongue, as it was in songs throughout the performance. For the rest of the night, the JLCO and Odadaa took turns in the spotlight working together. There were interludes of big band refinement in carefully controlled moods, but most of the concert was unbridled exuberance that felt spontaneous.

Marsalis spent most of the performance conducting or simply letting the bands play. His big-band orchestration was rich and thorough, which showed its ample finesse. Marsalis didn't really play until halfway into the second set. After a sweltering song called "It Never Goes Away," while sitting quietly with the other trumpets in the back row, he lit into a blazing blues solo, hot and brash with expression, the boldest sound yet that night. Near the end he soloed from the front of the stage, playing faster and with even more dynamic range. Throughout the concert, high energy and explosive talent filled the big room and had the audience whooping, laughing and dancing. - Michael Gill

Peanut Butter Wolf

B-Side Liquor Lounge

If you're an internationally recognized DJ and label owner, you can pretty much traverse the globe and command a hefty fee for spinning records. That was the case for this rare local appearance by Peanut Butter Wolf. As usual, the space beneath the Grog Shop was dark and chilly. With the crowd growing as the Wolf's stint on the turntables grew nearer, audience members became anxious. Early in the set, a rather rambunctious listener decided to become active and encourage the deejay to play selections more to his liking. Wolf then began a musical discourse with the crowd that would find dancers responding in different ways than the DJ might have anticipated. After a hip-hop-oriented beginning, he catered to the crowd by spinning the Doors' tune "Peace Frog." With the drum break and the funky guitar of the band entertaining the crowd, Wolf finally looked like he was beginning to enjoy the gig. From that point on, funk flowed more frequently.

Of course, "funk" encompassed everything from the Rusty Bryant tune he spun to the '80s-sounding Michael Jackson clones. Hip-hop was dispersed readily, but only in small doses and the inclusion of Joe Cocker's "Woman to Woman," a tune made famous when 2Pac sampled it for "California Love," so pleased the crowd that Wolf seemed distracted and fell off his game a bit. As a result of his ability to work with a diverse crowd of listeners, Wolf's own talents have been elevated. DJ sets aren't always fun to watch, but when the performer can bring you into the process of creation like Peanut Butter Wolf did, it's an unforgettable experience. - Dave Cantor