A celebration of one of the most popular and influential recording artists of all time coinciding with the artist's record-breaking "Eras" tour, Burning Red: A Tribute to Taylor Swift will return to East Moline venue The Rust Belt on May 3, this exhilarating event "by Swifties and for Swifties" taking fans on a journey through all of Swift's own eras from her pop hits to folk, country, dance, and back again.

With his most recent release Silently, the Mind Breaks hailed by No Depression as an "unsettling yet invigorating album" that blends "banjo, acoustic guitar, and kick drum with gritty, determined vocals," folk, blues, and alt-country singer/songwriter William Elliott Whitmore headlines a May 4 concert at Maquoketa's Codfish Hollow Barn, the artist's latest also inspiring Everything Is Noise to state that the artist "sings with a gravitas indictive of the very best blues and folk singers."

On May 4, San Francisco-based guitarist and composer Bill Orcutt lands at Rock Island venue Rozz-Tox to present his latest project: an all-electric Guitar Quartet performing the music from Orcutt's 2022 Music for Four Guitars, and an ensemble that Pitchfork lauded as “a rigidly structured quartet that weaves tiny rhythmic phrases into expansive tapestries."

Two acclaimed hard-rock and metal bands touring in conjunction with their 2024 album releases will team up for a co-headlining concert at The Rust Belt on May 4, with the East Moline venue hosting the Billboard sensations of Wage War, whose Stigma is set for release mid-June, and the chart-topping Nothing More, whose Carnal will debut later that month.

With the singer/songwriter's March release Plunge lauded by Paste magazine as "mellow and moody, rife with vibrant chords" and the artist's "trademark, dreamy vocals" indie-rock and psych-pop musician Sam Evian headlines a May 5 concert at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, Uncut adding to the Plunge praise by calling it "a loose, luscious listen, with a timeless sound."

Currently touring in support of their second album Narrow Line, a recording that received a Canadian Folk Music Award nomination for Vocal Group of the Year and a Juno Award nomination for Traditional Roots Album of the Year, folk musicians Amy Lou Keeler and Lisa Maria bring their outfit Mama's Broke to Davenport's Raccoon Motel on May 6, the artists also the winners of the Canadian Folk Music Award for Ensemble of the Year with their debut recording Count the Wicked.

P.O.D., May 7

Three-time Grammy Award nominees who boast a half-dozen chart-topping albums, the Christian nu-metal and frap-rock artists of P.O.D. headline a May 7 concert event at East Moline's The Rust Belt, the artists touring in support of their May 3 release Veritas as well as massive Billboard smashes such as Testify, Murdered Love, and When Angels & Serpents Dance.

Delivering what The Big Takeover described as "brilliant weavings of the sound that has made Joy Division and The Cure so loved," the post-punk goth rockers of Vision Video headline a May 4 concert at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, with Pitchfork raving that the group "exhibits a radiance that distinguishes them from fellow black-lipstick aficionados."

An Oscar-winning smash that Rotten Tomatoes' critical consensus says "delivers a must-see experience for fans of thinking person's sci-fi," and presented by Filmosofia and the Socratic Society, Denis Villeneuve's acclaimed 2016 film Arrival enjoys a special May 2 at Rock Island venue Rozz-Tox, its raves including The Telegraph deeming the work an "introspective, philosophical, and existentially inclined" work that "unfolds in an unwavering tenor of chest-tightening excitement."

Currently standing with a 97-percent "freshness rating" on Rotten Tomatoes and hailed by the Web site as "beautifully bittersweet," director Alexander Payne's Oscar-winning comedic drama The Holdovers enjoys a May 9 screening with the Rock Island Public Library's downtown-branch Downtown Movie Club, with the New York Times raving that "even as the story accrues the heft of personal tragedy, each scene seems to float or bob."

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