P I C K S January 31 to February 16
February 4
Mamma Mia!
(Swae Lee and Tyla Yaweh)
PART Crossroads Mall
Performing Arts Repertory Theater continues to impress local audiences with their modern and well-chosen seasons. They’re kicking off this new year with the show more than 60 million people worldwide have fallen in love with, Mamma Mia! ABBA’s feel-good hit musical is set in idyllic Greece and tells the story of Sophie, a young woman searching for her birth father, and Donna, her mother with an exciting past. Donna relives that past when three men, each claiming to be Sophie’s father, show up the night before her wedding and emotions and notes run high. Shows run Thursdays to Saturdays at 7 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. Ticket prices are $35 general, $30 for seniors and $25 for students. Call 402-706-0778. —Beaufield Berry
Post Malone CHI Health Center
There are two prominent artist portraits tattooed on Austin “Post” Malone’s left arm. The first is of Johnny Cash, head balanced on the palm of his hand, staring off pensively into the distance. Below that is the late Lil’ Peep, Malone’s fellow Soundcloud upstart who rose to fame for his combination of emo sensibility mix and trap production. Over the past four and a half years, Malone has conquered the pop world by trying to split the difference between the two. Since he burst onto the scene with “White Iverson,” the Dallas-bred pseudo-rapper has become famous for his ability to weave his lean-glazed warble into everything from disco (“Circles”) to bubblegum pop (“Sunflower”) to bare-bones country balladry (“Stay”). Like Drake, he succeeds not because he is able to master each of these genres, but because he can’t. Instead, he’s got an incredible knack for pulling out the most easily digestible bits, crafting mind-numbingly catchy hooks
around them, and then slathering on a layer of his signature bleary-eyed haze. By most metrics, the formula is working. On Spotify alone, he raked in 6.5 billion (yes, billion with a b) streams in 2019. Omaha is lucky enough to have the kickoff date to the second leg of his Runaway Tour so Posty should be fresh and ready to give his rabid fan base (Postmates? Maloners?) one hell of a show. —Houston Wiltsey
February 5
Jacquees
Sokol Auditorium
Jacquees is a chameleon. I’m not able to describe his style because, frankly, I don’t think he has one. The R&B artist from Decatur, Georgia, has been cranking out mixtapes for the better part of the decade, each of them distinct in their own way. On Round of Applause, he does a serviceable Usher impression over beats that sound like they were produced by The-Dream (they weren’t). A half-decade later, he’s ceding the spotlight to Dej Loaf on their collaborative mixtape, Fuck a Friend Zone. More recently, Jacquees has turned himself into an R&B singer modeled after his fellow Atlanta stars. His croon has been clipped to fit within the still-popular triplet flow, and you can hear the requisite ad-libs floating in the nether-regions of the production. Not to say that this is bad — in fact, some of the tracks accomplish 80 percent of the artists he’s lifting from — it’s just not original. Considering how few R&B concerts Omaha gets, this show should still scratch the itch. —Houston Wiltsey
FEBRUARY 2020
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