This Weeks Concert Picks: The Decemberists, Smashing Pumpkins…

• The Last Shadow Puppets | Monday, November 3, 2008 | 8:00 pm | $28.00 | The Mayan Theater – Los Angeles, CA – Map | The Last Shadow Puppets, a collaborative guitar-centric effort from The Arctic Monkeys’ front man Alex Turner, The Rascals’ Miles Kane, set to the drum beats of Simian Mobile Disco’s James Ford, will be live and in the flesh in all shades of Brit-pop glory. Click here for tickets, or call (213) 746-4287.

• Lykke Li | Monday, November 3, 2008 | 8:00 pm | $19.00 | The El Rey Theater – Los Angeles, CA – Map | Lykke Li will be gracing the stage at the standing-room-only venue, hopefully to drop the latest single from her album, “Youth Novels”, during the last stop of her current US tour. Click here for tickets (if they’ve not already sold out), or call (323) 936-6400.

• Election Night Live | Tuesday, November 4, 2008 | 7:00 pm | Free – 18 +| Metro – Chicago, IL – Map | Local DJs Bald Eagle & Mother Hubbard, DJ A-Cup, and DJ Derek Berry are few of many crunk/nu-jazz talents that will be spinning into the evening as the tallies are taken and the results are gathered. While the fate of our nation’s next four years are being decided, might as well be at a party. For more info, call (773) 549-0203.

• The Decemberists | Wednesday, November 5, 2008 | 7:00 pm | $31.00 | Terminal 5 – New York, NY – Map | This influential unconventional indie band inspired themselves with Japanese folklore and recognized that darkness is merely another form of light, having compiled their efforts into such albums as “Her Majesty, the Decemberists”, and “Picaresque”. Click here for tickets, or call the box office at (212) 582-6600. (Also playing on Thursday, November 6th at the Orpheum Theater in Boston, MA - call (617) 679-0810 for tickets.)

• The Smashing Pumpkins | Thursday & Friday, November 6 & 7, 2008 | $49.00-$89.00 | United Palace Theater – New York, NY – Map | The Pumpkins cap off twenty years of contribution to the music scene with a five-week tour across the United States and Canada. Try your luck at tickets here (or make haste on Craigslist or eBay), but considering this will only be their third stop, there will be plenty opportunity to catch them in your town. Click here for a list of dates.

Photo by matthewf01