E-Mail This Article to a Friend Summer songs Saturday Looks Good to Me bring in the big guns, plus Jimmy Buffet takes over Fenway and more

Summer songs

All Your Summer Songs (Polyvinyl), the latest album by the Detroit indie-pop group Saturday Looks Good to Me, was recorded over a span of two years in six cities with a cast of 17 musicians and 11 singers, including members of Ida, the Secret Stars, His Name Is Alive, Fred Thomas (the 25-year-old Detroit native who records as Saturday Looks Good to Me), Outrageous Cherry, and Retsin. And though the disc played like an homage to vintage Motor City pop (imagine the Coasters covering Neutral Milk Hotel), the album’s detailed arrangements were pretty much abandoned when Thomas brought a stripped-down trio to town last year. In truth, that set kinda sucked. But just in time for spring, Thomas has corralled an 11-piece band to back him on a new tour that we hope will replicate all the heavy backbeats, sloshing tambourines, punchy sax duets, reverb-drenched guitars, roller-rink organ, playful flute filigrees, and nursery-rhyme vibraphone chimes that made Summer Songs such a charm. The expanded SLGTM ensemble plays the Middle East, 480 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square, on May 24; call (617) 864-EAST.

Curse of the Coral Reefers?

Sure, it’s all Grady’s fault. But let’s not forget the other culprit in last year’s game-seven meltdown: the Boss, whose twilight doubleheader, it’s now clear, failed to dispel the demons from Fenway Park. So who’ve we got in the rock-and-roll bullpen this year? Uh, Jimmy Buffett. You might as well cancel your playoff-ticket reservations now. The specter of Parrotheads parading down Lansdowne Street and Brookline Avenue failed to dissuade the municipal Powers That Be that Jimmy was a bad booking; is it too late to plead that inviting in the Coral Reefer Band is bad baseball karma on the level of bat corking? Apparently so: tickets (at $81 a pop) for Buffett’s September 10 and 12 concerts at the yard go on sale Saturday at 10 a.m. Call (617) 931-2000.

Bohemian rhapsody

Dropping like an A-bomb into the Theater District’s lazy, hazy summer off-season, the late Jonathan Larson’s Tony-, Obie-, and Pulitzer-winning blockbuster rock musical Rent returns to the Wang Theatre, 270 Tremont Street in Boston, for eight shows, June 15 through 20. Tickets are $35 to $65; call (800) 477-7400.

Bump and grind

The burlesque invasion continues later this month as former Milky Way booking agent Darcey Leonard, now shaking her money maker as Missy Conundrum in Los Angeles, returns home to head up a bi-coastal "Banned in Boston" revue featuring local gals — Black Cat Burlesque’s Miss Firecracker; baton twirler Miss Dominica K, fresh off an appearance on HBO’s Real Sex — as well as current NYC sensation Dirty Martini. Local strip-jazz combo Beat Circus provide the bump to the girls’ grind. They’ll all be on hand Friday May 28 at midnight (that is, first thing Saturday morning) at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard Street in Brookline. Tickets are $10, or $20 for what’s being referred to as a "tits-eye view" down front; call (617) 734-2500.