Tonight.Popular music. Sometimes it’s easy to take a local band for granted when it is playing once a week for months on end. But when a group hides in the studio or takes a couple of months off, we start to miss them, making for an excellent opportunity for a comeback. Tonight’s bill at the Larimer Lounge is doubly exciting as two bands that have been holing up in the studio — Swayback and Laylights — are coming out of hibernation. Joining them is the solid Blue Million Miles, a group that’s getting ready to go into the recording studio. More information: . Ricardo Baca
Tonight. Classical music. Olivier Messiaen’s evocatively titled “Quartet for the End of Time” stands as one of the seminal chamber works of the 20th century. Composed while the French composer was held in a German prisoner-of-war camp in World War II, it speaks to that experience but also to hope and spiritual transcendence. It is oddly scored for violin, clarinet, cello and piano, because those were the musicians Messiaen had available to him. The work will be the centerpiece of a Colorado Chamber Players concert at 7:30 tonight at St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral, 1350 Washington St. $16, $12 seniors and students and $10 children younger than 12. 866-464-2626 or . Kyle MacMillan
Thursday. Film. Cornography: OK, it’s not likely to catch on as a genre, but Aaron Woolf and Ian Cheney have made the first — maybe only — example with “King Corn.” After learning from a lab analysis of a strand of hair they were as corny as Kansas in August — or Iowa from late spring to late fall — the two college buddy-filmmakers leased an acre of land in the Hawkeye State to grow the crop and follow it to your table. It makes it there, but not in the way you might hope. The great bit of wisdom, conflicted as all get-out, comes from a guy munching a burger outside a McDonald’s near Greene, Iowa, and talking about the fate of corn-fed cattle. Director Woolf is in town for a one-night only showing at Starz FilmCenter’s DocNight at 7 p.m. Thursday. $5.75-$8.75.
Lisa Kennedy
