In this busy music week, Weezer, the War on Drugs, the National, and PJ Harvey head to Philly

This week’s Philly music includes a hometown show for the War on Drugs, an old-school alt-rock triple bill at the Wells Fargo Center, and the always riveting British songwriter PJ Harvey coming to Philadelphia for the first time in seven years.

But let’s start with a busy Thursday night, with James McMurtry playing Ardmore Music Hall. The Texas songwriter is one of music’s sharpest lyricists, with a knack for novelistic detail that just might just be in his DNA; Lonesome Dove author Larry McMurtry is his father. James McMurtry’s infrequent albums — the most recent is 2021′s The Horses and the Hounds — are all stellar. Fellow Texas tunesmith BettySoo opens.

Australian garage rock and power-pop band Hoodoo Gurus are best loved for 1980s albums like Stoneage Romeos, which they will perform in its entirety at Underground Arts. But the band, which plays on Thursday, has remained consistently creative up to and including 2022′s Chariot of the Gods.

Meanwhile, also on Thursday, Mary Gauthier and Robbie Fulks team up for a bill of stellar Americana songwriters at the Sellersville Theater. At the Mann Center, the beats-per-minute will be substantially quicker when electronic producer Porter Robinson brings his tour for his hyper-pop album Smile!: D. And British guitarist and now South Jersey resident Nigel Bennett of the Vibrators headlines a “punk rock acoustic concert” at Kung Fu Necktie with Pete Pretender and Sydney Jones.

On Friday, PJ Harvey comes to the Met Philly for her first local performance since she played the Fillmore in 2018. This will also be the second Friday in a row that the Met will be headlined by a fierce female singer and guitarist, after St. Vincent memorably surfed the crowd and dangled from the venue’s balcony last weekend.

Harvey is on tour for the first time since releasing her 2023 album, I Inside the Old Year Dying, that draws on Orlam, the epic poem that tapped into the mythology of England’s West Country, where she grew up on a sheep farm. Expect a career-spanning show that includes a substantial dollop of the bone-rattling music with which she made her name in the 1990s.

Also on Friday, Weezer sings the blues. Or at least, the River Cuomo-fronted veteran alt-pop band will be celebrating the 30th anniversary of its self-titled debut — known as The Blue Album — by playing it in its entirety at the Wells Fargo Center. Yes, that’s the one produced by Ric Ocasek that includes both “Buddy Holly” and “Undone (The Sweater Song).”

The tour is called “The Voyage to the Blue Planet,” so that’s why the band is dressed like astronauts. It’s an alt-rock extravaganza with always reliable Dinosaur Jr and the Flaming Lips, whose leader Wayne Coyne will undoubtedly walk on top of the crowd in a giant breathable bubble.

Marty Stuart, the stylish band leader from Philadelphia, Mississippi,fronts the Fabulous Superlatives, whose members show off their fancy suits and dazzling country-and-so-much-more musicianship on Friday at the Colonial Theatre in Phoenixville.

Speaking of alt-rock survivors, Evan Dando and the Lemonheads do two shows at Underground Arts on Saturday and Sunday. They’ll play both It’s A Shame About Ray and Come On Feel the Lemonheads from start to finish. Lake Street Dive brings its “Good Together” tour to the Mann Center on Sunday.

That same night Shovels & Rope, the instrument-switching husband-and-wife duo of South Carolina musicians Michael Trent and Cathy Ann Hearst, is at Ardmore Music Hall, Old 97′s play Concerts Under the Stars in King of Prussia, and blues man Selwyn Birchwood plays the Loft at City Winery.

Bright Eyes — that’s the band fronted by Conor Oberst, with his Omaha, Neb., mates Nate Walcott and Mike Mogis — is playing the Music Hall at World Cafe Live on Monday. The show had previously been announced under the alias Henry Doorly Zoo Explosion, but now the true name is being revealed. Neva Dinova opens.

The War on Drugs arrive at the Mann on Tuesday on the “Zen Diagram Tour” in tandem with the National, the Matt Berninger-fronted band whose members include Bryce and Aaron Dessner, the latter of whom is a chief Taylor Swift collaborator.

The Drugs is releasing its second in-concert album — appropriately titled Live Drugs Again — which includes a selection of songs from the band’s catalog brought vividly to life on tour dates in 2022 and 2023 with a seven-member lineup that includes recent addition Eliza Hardy Jones, who recently released an excellent solo album of her own called Pickpocket. Lucius, the duo of Jessica Wolfe and Holly Laessig, a frequent TWOD collaborator, is sure to join the band on stage at the Mann.