Ryan Werner, Beverly Beverly Beverly. This 21-minute micro-masterpiece is loaded with more hooks, riffs and guitar harmonies than most albums twice its length. 13 rock songs shrunk down in a microwave for mass consumption, bubblegum hooks written by a literary-minded metal-head clever enough to drop lines about “circumstantial feasts.” There's more emotion here than meets the ear; repeated listening is mandatory.

Currently touring after the release of his Netflix special The Great Average American, an hour of comedy that Paste magazine called “full of sharp observations and hilarious insights into regular life,” standup sensation Nate Bargatze plays Davenport's Adler Theatre on January 16, the funnyman also noted for his Comedy Central Presents special and his multiple appearances on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

On January 16, no fewer than 17 gifted Midwestern musicians will perform in Davenport's Redstone Room as featured guests in Polyrhythms' Third Sunday Jazz Series, with Mike Conrad & the Iowa Jazz Composers Orchestra proving that jazz lovers don’t need to look to New York City or Chicago for beautiful, creative, high-quality music.

Performing in support of their second album Tell Tale Heart – which debuted at number seven on Billboard's Blues Albums chart this past fall – the Quad Cities musicians of the Avey Grouws Band play a January 7 concert at Davenport's Rhythm City Casino Resort Rhythm Room, demonstrating why Goldmine praised their 2021 release for its “adept arrangements, clear confidence, and a decidedly agile approach as far as the shifts in style.”

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Welcome to my 21 for '21 – a list of 21 cinematic favorites from 2021 (even if they were technically 2020 releases, and even if they didn't literally play at cinemas), along with 21 runners-up, and, because I'm only in half-bitchy critic mode these days, 10-and-a-half citations for the most egregious offenders of the past 12 months.

With The Telegraph reviewer Tim Walker stating, “I have seldom, if ever, heard louder or more sustained laughter in a theatre,” the object of that praise – the Tony-winning slapstick farce The Play That Goes Wrong – makes its area debut at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse, the show's January 19 through March 12 Rock Island run sure to demonstrate why the New York Times deemed it “a knockabout farce” whose audience “roared as loudly as the crowds at any wrestling match.”

Touring in support of his forthcoming album Frayed at Both Ends, scheduled for release on January 28, chart-topping outlaw-county singer/songwriter Aaron Lewis headlines a January 14 acoustic concert at Davenport's Adler Theatre, treating fans to a repertoire that inspired Saving Country Music to rave, “Aaron's voice comes with a familiarity and richness of tone that endears itself to the songs he writes.”

Celebrating its return from a two-year hiatus, Opera Quad Cities rings in 2022 with a special presentation of Franz Schubert's Die Schöne Müllerin, a January 9 recital being held at Davenport's Great Hall at Trinity Cathedral, and a song cycle performed by Davenport native Nicholas Fahrenkrug and Greek pianist Eleonora Apostoldi.