The Black Heart Procession’s music is often described as bleak, yet still beautiful. Not unlike Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds or Tindersticks, the Black Heart Procession provides a soundtrack for desperate times filled with isolation and heartache. Its chilling sound is made all the more compelling with the incorporation of piano, violin and musical saw into the more traditional lineup of guitar, bass and drums. Formed in San Diego in 1997, the band came out of the ashes of the criminally overlooked Three Mile Pilot. After signing to Cargo Records for their first recording, the band moved to the influential Touch and Go label where they began to receive a wide variety of critical acclaim. Two years ago, with the release of Amore Del Tropico, the band began to delve into lounge music and traditional blues, which widened their pallette, as well as their audience. Scaling back a bit after that successful experiment, 2006’s The Spell (Touch and Go) is a torrid song cycle filled with lyrical meditations of loneliness and despair. With slow-moving rhythms, delicate instrumentation and deeply honest and moving baritone vocals, The Spell may well be the Black Heart Procession’s second consecutive masterpiece. Also performing are the Devices and the Castanets.

Fans of Western New York’s architectural heritage can do the Wright thing by attending the fifth Larkin Exposition—a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the completion of Frank Lloyd Wright’s sadly missed Larkin Administration Building on Saturday, August 5, 12-5pm at the Larkin at Exchange Building, located at the corner of Van Rensselaer and Exchange Street. Admission is $15, or $12 for seniors and students. Children under 12 are free. This is a rare opportunity to see private collections of Larkin Soap Company items ranging from china to furniture, soap, pharmaceuticals and old company catalogs gathered from as far away as Connecticut, Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky. Related activities will include the dedication of a new pocket park at 6pm on Friday, August 4 at the Larkin Administration Building Pier, the only remaining element of what was widely considered one of the most innovative commercial office buildings of its day. Notably, in 1906 it was the first entirely air-conditioned building of its kind. Proceeds from the Larkin Exposition will benefit the Graycliff Conservancy—a not-for-profit organization dedicated to restoring and preserving the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Graycliff Estate as a publicly accessible landmark. The Wright-designed Graycliff was the summer estate of Darwin D. Martin, a Larkin company executive. (Photo: Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society.)

Back in the day, the Pine Grill Nightclub was the place to be, for many Buffalonians. Though it has long since been demolished, it remains legendary as a nostalgic hotspot. So much so that in 1989 a group of community leaders held the first Pine Grill Reunion, to reunite some of the nightclub’s favorite acts. Ever since, the event has happened annually on the first two Sundays in August, and has begun to showcase lucky new talent as well as the old-timers. This year’s cast of performers includes Harlem native Ghanniyya “G-G” Green, whose ardor, sophistication and powerful voice exemplify the contemporary jazz scene; gospel-rooted singer and prolific recording artist Ernie Andrews (pictured); Nathan Lucas, the organ-playing son of Max “The Sax” Lucas, who carries the enthusiasm for traditional jazz through generations with his vibrant, Hammond B3 stylings; and Winard Harper, leader of his own six-piece band and one of jazz music’s most celebrated drummers. This reunion promises an afternoon of talent, culture, art and dancing. Next week (Aug. 13) features Rhapsody, Evolution, Confidential and the Old School B-Boys. For more info contact the African American Cultural Center at 884-2013.

In the arena of enigmatic rock-and-roll genius, Mayo Thompson’s sustained relevance stands in stark contrast to the imploded brilliance of Syd Barrett’s brief career, or the isolation that defined Captain Beefheart’s retreat into memory. Initially known for making incomprehensible sounds and anti-music gestures like soundtracking a melting block of ice, Thompson and his group the Red Krayola are variously hailed as psychedelic pranksters, proto-punks and “post-rock” pioneers who pursued abstruse art-music decades before anybody else realized “rock” was not enough. With no fixed lineup and no real “hits” to canonize, Thompson mutates the Red Krayola according to the energies of its revolving members, insuring constant reinvention. In the late 1960s the group played seemingly nonsensical noise with the likes of avant-folk legend John Fahey and psychedelic burnout Roky Erikson. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Thompson pushed pop music’s verbal potential to the limit, in collaboration with the avant-garde media collective Art and Language, and also accepted an invitation to join art-punk luminaries Pere Ubu. The most recent phase of Thompson’s career commenced in the mid 1990s, when avant-rockers Jim O’Rourke and David Grubbs brought Thompson to Chicago to record with members of the city’s acclaimed post-rock scene. Check out this fascinatingly skewed group—which this time around includes Tortoise drummer John McEntire and bassist Noel Kupersmith of Brokeback .