Birmingham 101 Gig Guide for the Midlands

Previews by Mike Davies

It doesn’t seem like 10 years since I first started writing the 101 gig guide, during which time I’ve reviewed hundreds of albums and previewed 1000s of Birmingham and the West Midlands gigs. But all things come to a close and with Birmingham101.com shutting up shop at the end of March, the gig guide is moving on to a new home. My thanks to 101 for hosting the guide for the past decade and from April it and I can be found at My Brum as part of the My Village websites. Bookmark the new site now at www.mybrum.co.uk and hopefully I’ll see you there.

Sunday March 27

Jesca Hoop

At the club last year promoting Hunting My Dress with its skewed folk stew of Brit trad, blues, Celtic jigs, Americana, gospel, 60s pop and nursery rhyme, Tom Waits’ former babysitter returns now with a new mini-album, Snowglobes (Last Laugh). Although written and recorded after her move to Manchester from California, its cigarette smoke pastoral ambience sounds as though it could have been born around the boulevards and pavement cafes of Paris.

Stemming for her three years living in downtown LA, lead track City Bird is a gentle, sparsely finger picked acoustic folk blues waltzer about lost souls, the fears of isolation and ‘the dread of drinking alone’ that might well have come from a Francois Hardy and been covered on an early Scott Walker album. It’s a mood sustained throughout with the echoey multi-tracked vocals of While You Were Away, the wintery delicacy of family portrait Snowglobe with its choral backing vocals and handclap, almost tribal rhythm, vocal refrain which refracts Kate Bush through a glacier and the unaccompanied Storms Make Grey The Sea highlighting the old as the hills colours in her voice

Bonus tracks not included on the commercial release, Silverscreen teases in her jazz influences with a breathy, playful acoustic version of the song off her 2007 Kismet album that channels Bjork through the Smoke Fairies while, if you thought the Gallic comparisons were fanciful, the six minute Reves Dans Le Croux is a French version of Dreams In The Hollow, also from Kismet, that conjures images of a Gitanes filtered airy pizzicato wander through Provence fields.

The limited edition full version is currently only available online and at gigs, but frankly that’s even more of an incentive to grab a ticket. 7pm. £8. Glee Club

Sunday March 27

Tir Na nÓg

Named for the most famous of Irish mythical lands, Dublin folk duo Leo O’Kelly and Sonny Condell got together back in 1969 to become one of the first of the era’s progressive folk movement, marrying close harmonies and intricate acoustic guitar work on self-penned songs drawn from the Celtic tradition with Eastern influences.

In the three years before they split in 1974, they released three critically well received but commercially underperforming albums, their eponymous debut, A Tear And A Smile and the more electric and conventional Strong In The Sun. After eleven years pursuing solo careers, they got back together and have been touring on and off ever since, releasing three live albums, one of them, Hibernian, recorded in Birmingham in 1995, although it took another five years to come out.

They are, to be honest, something of a footnote in folk music history, but they made some interesting music and the gig deserves to see more than just the long serving fans among the audience. 8pm. £10. Kitchen Garden Cafe, Kings Heath

Monday March 28

Cee Lo Green

With a powerful tremulous soul voice reminiscent of Seal at his best, Thomas DeCarlo Callaway first came to wide public attention as half of Gnarls Barkley whose Crazy was a well deserved chart topper, as indeed was the debut album, St Elsewhere. Following that up, however, has proven harder than might have been expected and the duo’s current status is rather in limbo.

In the meantime, Green’s solo career took a massive leap with the release of the Bruno Mars co-penned kiss off to an ex-lover, **** You and its radio friendly alternative Forget You, which made its debut at #1, holding off the Robbie Williams and Gary Barlow opposition. But, history seems to be repeating itself with 60s Motown flavoured Follow Up single stalling at No 20.

Of course, it’s often the case that an artist may score a massive hit but simply not have material of the same quality to sustain a career beyond it. But that’s certainly not the case here. The Ladykiller (Elektra), his Top 3 album and the first to make the UK charts, was without doubt one of the best soul albums released last year. Marrying r&b feel and hip hop energy with strings and brass on a string, it features such knockouts as the soul pop Wildflower, a Motownesque Satisfied, dreamy Curtis Mayfield groove I Want You, Solomon Burke-like soul ballad belter Old Fashioned, his terrific Philip Bailey duet Fool For You and a remarkable transformation of Band of Horses' No One's Gonna Love You into a slow soul burn.

He comes to town in advance of new single, Bright Lights, Brighter City, which, again drawing on Stevie Wonder influences deserves to be as huge as the man’s personality and on stage presence. But, regardless of chart fortunes and the fact many will be there simply to shout back THAT chorus, the man is a true soul star who’ll hopefully be making albums like this for years to come. 7.30pm. £23.50. O2 Academy

Wednesday March 30

King Blues

Drawing on such templates as The Clash and the rather lesser known but no less influential King Prawn, next month sees the politically angry London punk n reggae outfit release Punk & Poetry, the follow up to Save The World, Get The Girl.

Between times, there’s been a few upheavals. Dropped by their label they’re now signed to Transmission and have also undergone a radical line-up change with the controversial departures of Fruitbag, Johnny Rich, Al Gunby and Jim Parmley and the arrival of Josie Dobson on keyboards and Kat Marsh introducing a female element into the sound.

Advance copies of the album weren’t available, but it will feature recent single Headbutt along with Five Bottles of Shampoo, The Future's Not What It Used To Be and bouncily big chorus new single Set The World On Fire, all of which they’ve been previewing on recent tours. 7.30pm. £15. O2 Academy 2

Thursday March 31

Emily Baker

Billed as the Lost Highways tour, this has nothing to do with the Americana label but does provide a useful package opportunity to catch three diverse singer-songwriters. Winner of 2009’s Arts Foundation Songwriting Award, Brighton born Baker was apparently the person who first influenced Pete Doherty to pick up a guitar. Don’t hold this against her, though, because her debut album House Of Cards (Little Love Records) reveals a talent whose work harks back to the classic days of Carole King, streaked with hints of folk and rootsy country, the latter notably so on the strummed, banjo accompanied Don’t Look Down and the presence of pedal steel.

Rich Man’s Weekend harks to the 70s Laurel Canyon sound, Never Thought I’d suggesting a female James Taylor while, House Of Cards skips along like vintage Stevie Nicks and One Of Those Days and Half In Bits wouldn’t be too out of place filed alongside Tapestry. How she fares playing solo, without the arrangements and fuller sound remains to be seen, but there’s quality here.

If you still like the idea of Robbie Williams but wonder where he lost the song plot, then Will Kevans could be the answer to your prayers with the likes of Believe, Bye Caroline and soaring ballad Shoot You Down off debut album Everything You Do (Stunt Dog). Also bringing together jangly Americana with classic British suburban pop, he equally calls to mind the breezy countrified best of Beautiful South on things like Sand Makes A Pearl, the shuffling Dialling Tone, Picking Up The Pieces and Velveteen.

Sharing the bill is the alliteratively named Christian Cuff, a smoky, hush voiced American whose Chalkboard album offers a moody acoustic, jazz, blues and soul inflected collection that’s had him compared to Tom Waits and Dave Matthews with such numbers as Hobo Island, Red Rum and the late night title track prowl. 7.30pm. £5. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Thursday March 31

Erland & The Carnival

Barely a year after their debut album, Gawain Erland Cooper, Simon Tong and drummer David Nock crew are back with Nightingale (Full Time Hobby), a second excursion into retro psych folk that, recorded in the deptsh of an old warship, is, if anything, even more cobwebbed and darkly otherwordly than before, conjuring an ancient rural atmosphere that blends Cooper’s Orcadian roots with the bass and keyboard rumbles of The Stranglers and the didecoi gothic of cult acts like And Also The Trees and The Dancing Did.

Last time they put William Blake through the mixer with their folk beats reprocessing of The Echoing Green, but here they reach further back in time for a clock ticking, sickbed spooked interpretation of Anglo Saxon poem Dream of the Rood. But that’s almost contemporary when compared to Wealldie which takes inspiration from The Egyptian Book Of The Dead, opening with icy keyboard fingers and spaghetti western guitar stabs of deranged punk flamenco before mutating into something that might have come from Floyd’s Ummagumma.

They’re not the only indications of the outfit’s literate bent. With its sinister fairground intro, the rocky Map Of An Englishman was inspired by artist Grayson Perry’s titular work while the disturbing stand out Emmeline, a musically woody song about a missing girl, draws on AA Milne’s Before Tea and Alice In Wonderland with an intro right out of some Tim Burton horror.

Some of the synth and keyboard frills are jarring, notably the shrill stabbing intro to the angular rhythms of This Night, but there’s much more here to praise than fault, the swirly acoustic ballad East & West, the cosmic haze of I Wish, I Wish,, The Trees They Grow So High’s pagan bacchanal all fine examples of the trio’s musical imagination. And very strong arguments for making sure you catch them live. 8pm. £7. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Wednesday March 30

The Crookes

Not an example of poor spelling but rather named for a suburb of hometown Sheffield, the four piece’s debut album Chasing After Ghosts (Fierce Panda) reveals them to have a big thing for both The Smiths and the 80s Postcard pop of Orange Juice with fluttery, jangly guitars and Scottish soul rhythms.

You’ll hear the better moments of The Libertines in there too, singer George Waite sometimes sounding like a substance-free Pete Doherty while Bloodshot Days has echoes of 60s Spector girl group doo wop filtered through the breezy pop of The Bluetones though could have done without the military tattoo drum snaps. That they have a track called Carnabetian Charms (the only time I’ve encountered the word outside of Dedicated Follower Of Fashion) suggests they might have an affection for The Kinks too.

Lyrically, they frequently have a poetic way with words that reveals the souls of bruised romantics and they can knock together a melody that’ll have you gently swaying on the dance floor. But, while Godless Girl does a nice line in choppy Rip It Up guitar and Chorus Of Fools jingles merrily along, the album doesn’t have the song to embed them into the national consciousness or move them to bigger venues. The Crookes Laundry Murder, 1922 should go down a storm with those who wish Morrissey had never moved beyond Every Day is Like Sunday. 7.30pm. £5 HMV Institute

That’s all from here folks. See You at My Brum next week