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ARCHIVED REVIEWS  April 2006

Saturday April 1

BB King

A seminal influence on the likes of Eric Clapton, this is your last chance to catch the 80 year old blues legend before he packs Lucille away in her UK touring flight case for the last time so it’s a pretty fair bet that he’ll be retiring in style. leaving fans with a farewell run through some of his best known classics, among them Everyday I Have The Blues, Payin’ The Cost To Be The Boss, You Don’t Know Me, Three O’Clock Blues and, of course, The Thrill is Gone. It hasn’t, but it will soon.

Sharing the bill is somewhat sprightlier bluesman Gary Moore, another guitarist who owes King a fair debt. He’s just released the One Night In Dublin DVD (Eagle Vision), a tribute to Thin Lizzy that sees him teaming up with former band members Eric Bell, Brian Robertson, Scott Gorham and Brian Downey to run through such Lizzy greats as Jailbreak, The Boys Are Back In Town and Don’t Believe A Word as well as his own live staple instrumental Parisienne Walkways.

Highly unlikely he’ll be revisiting any of that tonight but you can guarantee that he will be drawing attention to impending new album Old New Ballads Blues (Eagle) which features five new self-penned cuts (of which the Celtic infused ballads Gonna Rain Today, No Reason To Cry and Flesh & Blood are the stand-outs) alongside covers of Willie Dixon’s You Know My Love and Elmore James’s Done Somebody Wrong as well as new versions of Otis Rush’s All Your Love, the song that hooked him on the blues in the first place, and Midnight Blues from Moore’s multi-million selling 1990 album Still Got The Blues.

7.30pm. £36. NEC

Sunday April 2/Friday April 14/Tuesday 18

Il Divo

It’s usually only the upper stratosphere of pop and rock acts that can summon an audience to warrant playing more than one NEC show per tour, so it says much about the following Il Divo have amassed in the past few years that they’re here for three, virtually sold out dates. Not bad going for four classically trained blokes who mostly warble romantic ballads in Italian, French and Spanish, accompanied by lush orchestrations, pianos and Spanish guitars. Their multi-million selling self-titled debut album broke Led Zeps record of being the only band to get a No 1 album without ever releasing a single while the stunning follow up, Ancora (Sony), has eclipsed even that, making its US debut in the No 1 slot and shifting copies by the truckload all around the globe.

They’re not a classical act, though doubtless that makes up a large percentage of their punters, rather, as with Ancora, they bring their assorted tenor and baritone voices to bear on original songs, classics like Ave Maria, Rodrigo’s En Aranjuez Con To 0Amor and O Holy Night and pop evergreens such as Unchained Melody, Mariah Carey’s Hero (here Heroe) and Eric Carmen’s Rachmaninoff based All By Myself.

It’s big, passionate stuff, capitalising on the market opened up some years back by the Three Tenors but cannily pitched at the dreamy female market, conjuring fantasies of sultry Latin lovers and sunkissed dusty hillside towns. How could they possibly fail.

Setting the mood and giving the chaps something to ogle, green-eyed 18 year old New Zealander Hayley Westenra will be opening up the show with her soaring crystal clear voice and a selection of numbers from debut international release Pure (the fastest selling classical album of all time, outstripping the likes of Russell 0Watson and Pavarotti) and its follow up, Odyssey (Decca). She’s been expanding her repertoire, so that the current album finds her doing the classical bit on tracks such as Laudate Dominum. O Mio Babbino Caro and Ave Maria (Caccini’s not Schubert’s, so you might get both tonight) but spreading her wings into the mist-covered folkier fields of Both Sides Now, She Moves Through The Fair, new single The Water Is Wide and Scarborough Fair as well as a haunting cover of Enya’s May It Be from Lord of the Rings.

Unlike her Welsh counterpart, she shows no signs of hanging out with bad boy DJs, smoking like a chimney, getting drunk and turning into a rock chick, but just in case I’d catch her while you can.

7.30pm. £35-£20. NEC

Monday April 3

Archie Bronson Outfit

There’s nobody actually called Archie Bronson in this West Country bluesy garage rock trio, but if there was he’d probably have been born somewhere in the American South, reared on swamp music and hung out in seedy bars drinking dubious alcohol out of jam jars while listening to albums by Dr John, The Cramps, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and, quite possibly, The Doors and Midnight Oil.

Debut album Fur crept out to little fanfare a couple of years back, but the follow up, Derdang Derdang (Domino), has been getting pretty hefty exposure now that bands like The Kills and Arcade Fire are cool. Not that ABO really sound like them, theirs a rather more primitive, bone exposed sound braced by dark, jittery riffs and voodoo rhythms while vocalist Sam’s throaty coarse voice is the sound of your handing rubbing across tree bark.

It’s not what you’d call a musically adventurous album, happy to plough through variations on much the same note, but then there’s no need to go off at tangents when you’ve got a clutch of blood burning, hooks driven alley cat rumbles like Cherry Lips, Kink, Got To Get (Your Eyes), Cuckoo, Ritual and Dart For My Sweetheart. That said, just in case you think they can’t see beyond their groove, they close up the album with Harp For My Sweetheart, a spare acoustic version of Dart with a guitar line that sounds like it was plucked from the Apocalypse Now soundtrack. You’ll be hearing a lot more from this lot.

7.30pm. £5. Barfly

Monday April 3

Bearsuit

Happily described as mix of Belle and Sebastian, Huggy Bear, Do Me Bad Things, and Sonic Youth, the six piece Norwich outfit are as musically eclectic as that sounds, as likely to erupt in a flurry of screaming art punk cacophony as they are the violin soaked galloping gypsy carousel fey pop of new single Steven F***ing Spielberg or the fragmented staccato rhythmic turmoil, squiggly shouting bits and guitar ulcers that is XXVVV XXVVV. Bearing a reputation for a stage show that involves a variety of strange costumes, they’ll be romping through the likes of Fears of Moonpilot Ben, Chargr, Busy Needles, Cookie O Jesus and Itsuko Got married from their two albums to date, the debut Cat Spectacular and last year’s Team Ping Pong.

 8pm. £5. Flapper & Firkin

Tuesday April 4

100 Reasons

Back in action after a year tied up in record label wrangles, you’d not be surprised to find new album Kill Your Own, their first for V2, bursting at the seams with angry, hard hitting rock n roll, the catharsis of pen up frustrations. Well, there’s certainly on roiling guitar riffery to be found driving along things like Feed The Fire, No Pretending, Live Fast Die Ugly and the title track while This Mess climaxes in ferocious yowls, but the prevailing mood is generally more considered and melodic, even veering towards more mainstream emo on Broken Hands, The Chance, The Perfect Gift and the epic losing Breathe Again with its booming organ outro.

Whether this is what fans have been patiently waiting for remains to be seen and there’s certainly been some sniffy reviews, damningly dismissed as sub Fugazi by one, but if it gets the exposure its radio friendlier tracks deserve it could well prove the breakthrough they’ve waiting four years to make.

7.30pm. £9. Carling Academy 2

Tuesday April 4

3 Doors Down

Formula American emo and bluesy swagger with the regulation raspy vocals, earnest heartfelt melodies, acoustic guitars and big soaring crescendos, the band do at least manage to stand out froma similar sounding crowd by stint of the quality of the material and the bruised catch to Brad Arnold’s voice. They’re over here giving belated support to last year’s Seventeen Days (Island) album, which, having had time to stew in its juices, should ensure plenty of calls for its stand-out numbers, Landing in London, Father’s Son (a bluesy song about a teenage prostitute), the muscular Let Me Go and swelling ballad Here By Me.

Support’s by Massachusetts outfit Waltham, an 80s influenced melodic rock band who sound spookily like forgotten Australian rock pop boy Rick Springfield, Cheryl (Come And Take A Ride) a close relative of Jesse’s Girl.

They’re here on the back of their current self-titled album (Rykodisc), which while unlikely to set the world on fire, is pretty much wall to wall packed with catchy chorus hooks and sherberty guitar lines designed to keep you on your feet. And, given that, in addition to Cheryl, there’s songs called Joanne, Maria Simeone, Nicole and Call Me Back it sounds like they have an interesting love life.

 7.30pm. £17.50. Wulfrun Hall

Wednesday April 5

Seth Lakeman

Nominated for the Mercury Music Award for 2004’s Kitty Jay, the Devonian fiddle and guitar playing Lakeman’s been compared to a young Richard Thompson, an accolade to which he continues to live up to with latest offering Freedom Fields (I-Scream). Like its predecessor and again recorded in his Dartmoor cottage kitchen, it’s drawn from the local tradition, this time exploring historical West Country tales of war and conflict rather than its myths and legends. Melding a rock sensibility with folk roots, he sings about the English Civil War (King & Country, Freedom Fields about a pivotal local battle), local Naval traditions (Lady of the Sea), the 19th century oppression of tin and copper miners (The Colliers) and, naturally, love (The Charmer) and sex (the gentle banjo driven The White Hare).

If there’s a quibble it’s that studio slickness means things like The Rifleman of War, Take No Rogues and The Band of Gold don’t quite catch the power of Lakeman’s live performance, that, however, is going to be more than compensated for tonight.

 8pm. £10. Glee Club

Wednesday April 5

The Concretes

The Swedish eight piece return for their own headlining tour, putting their weight behind In Colour (EMI) with its sunny sounding musically upbeat close harmony 60s pop, opening with the plinketty plonk piano of On The Radio before lead singer Lisa Milberg invites you to ‘spend some time in the shade with me’ on Sunbeams and hints at country flavours for Change In The Weather. And so it goes, cheery rippling keyboards and guitars bubbling on Chosen One, clip clopping through the drunken nursery rhyme As Four, jangling in crystal streams of guitars with Grey Days, inviting Dexys down the honky tonk saloon on Ooh La La and lazing through the pedal steel and string orchestral country pop that is Song For The Songs.

It doesn’t all work, the six minute Fiction spending far too long on its instrumental foreplay, but for the most, this should go a long way to cementing their chart status.

 7.30pm. £9. Carling Academy

Wednesday April 5

Cosmic Rough Riders

They’ve been away for a while, but frontman Stephen Fleming’s got the lads out of cold storage in Glasgow, heading out on the road for a series of showcase sets to spotlight next month’s new album, The Stars looks Different From Down Here (Korova). Advance copies weren’t available, but judging by the three track sampler little has changed in the interim, the trio still trading in big guitar harmony pop melodies and dreamy melancholia as evidenced on the twinkling early hours McCartneyesque moods of In Time, the crunchy swirls of Emptiness and the circling glorious uplifts of kick off single When You Come Around. Go and welcome them back.

Opening act is Elin Ruth, a Swedish singer-songwriter who’s already got a mantelpiece full of trophies back home where her second album topped the charts. Compared to KT Tunstall, Fiona Apple and, inevitably Joni Mitchell (though she sounds more akin to Gillian Welch or ) while citing the likes of Dylan and Bright Eyes among her influences, a self-titled UK debut’s due next month, presumably compiling the best tracks from her Swedish releases.

 It’s preceded by When It Comes To You’s jangling fine slice of tumbling folksy pop though it’s more likely that album tracks like the wondrous, emotive Song For Anna with its violin finale, the soft rumbles of Porcelain (with shades of early Janis Ian) and the slow building One Year are going to be the ones that will ensure that she’s guaranteed a place on the year end best of lists.

7.30pm. £6. Bar Academy

Wednesday April 5

Exist

Though rather over exuberantly dubbed the best new band in Britain by Steve Lamacq, the West Mids quartet do make a promising debut with The Fear (Fall Out), a ltd edition colour vinyl single chunk of psychedelic buzzing guitar rock groove that wears its Primals/Stone Roses influences on its sleeve. It’s early days to be talking of nation conquering, but with an album lurking in the wings, if the rest of the material lives up to the single then we could be talking a swift step up the next level of the touring circuit.

8.30pm. £1.50. Jug of Ale

Thursday April 6

Tina Dico

Formerly the voice of Zero 7, the Danish songbird’s already well established as a solo artist back home and is now rapidly making a name for herself over here with UK debut album In The Red (Finest Gramophone). Written after she relocated to London and suffused with songs about love, loneliness and embracing what life throws at you, it’s a heat-infused torchy set that’s been compared to Joni Mitchell with shades of Elliott Smith though opening track Losing sounds incredibly like Kiki’s Dee’s Amoreuse, a mood that sustains most of the album where you’re likely to find yourself also thinking Sophie B Hawkins, Judie Tzuke and Julia Fordham.

Lushly but never over orchestrated and making effective use of acoustic arrangements, despite never ranging too far from a basic melodic blueprint songs like Head Shop, Warm Sand, In The Red and Give In (which surely borrows from Morissette’s Ironic) slowly insinuate themselves in your head and blood stream until you wonder how you ever got through the day without listening to at least one of them.

 8pm. £7. Glee Club

Friday April 7

The Subways

With hyperactive bassist Charlotte touted as the new Kim Deal, the teenage trio head out on their first tour of the year, serving reminder of debut album Young For Eternity (Infectious) with its collision of 60s retro garage, snarling guitar riffs, hammering percussion and influences that embrace The Pixies, Vines, Pistols and Oasis along with a hint of English folk to go with its rock n roll credentials.

Crackling with the sort of energy that makes the White Stripes look comatose, they rattle though an armoury of amped up punky teen angst belters along the lines of the bulldozing Holiday, Rock & Roll Queen, a Stooges-like Oh Yeah, With You and the blazing title track.

However, as they prove with Lines of Light, She Sun and No Goodbyes they can do quiet balladry and lollopping pop with equal dexterity.

The intervening months should have thrown up a couple of new numbers for frontman Billy to grow out, but even if this sticks rigidly to the album there should be few grounds for complaint.

 6pm. £10. Carling Academy.

Saturday April 8

Sugababes

Their first live dates since Mutya quit and her place was taken by Amelle, prompting a re-recording of the Taller In More Ways (Island) album to replace the vocals, the UK’s currently longest serving girl group don’t seem to have been unduly affected by the shift in the line-up.

Cynics never really expected them to last beyond a handful of singles and a first album, but then the likes of Round Round and Hole In The Head came along and suggested there may be pop longevity there and, if anything, the current album’s hits, Push The Button, Ugly and Red Dress are even stronger while album cuts Follow Me Home, the cover of Obsession, Ace Reject, It Ain’t Easy with its Personal Jesus sample and the rocky Joy Division are all Grade A material, confidently driving home the girls pop and r&b styles.

If they’ve got the live set sewn up anything like as tight as the album, there’s no reason to suspect they couldn’t wind up giving Bananarama a run for their money in the most successful UK girl group record books

7.30pm. £21.50. NIA

Saturday April 8

The Answer

Ireland’s Zep, Free and AC/DC loving quartet continue their tour in support of new riff roasting goodtime rock 'n' roll single Into The Gutter (Albert Production), an already proven live favourite and useful taster for the forthcoming debut album of no doubt equally old school bluesy rock.

 7pm. £6. Bar Academy

Saturday April 8

Drive By Truckers

Just over ten years and six albums into their life, the Truckers have pretty much established themselves as the legitimate heirs to Lynyrd Skynyrd. Now, fairly snapping at the heels of Dirty South, comes their seventh release, A Blessing and a Curse (New West), an album that seems them expanding their sound beyond the Southern rock boundaries, venturing into straighter country rock territory with Little Bonnie, a bruised and weary stripped down Space City and the partly drawled spoken confessional A World of Hurt while, by contrast, the rock out swagger of Aftermath USA is lifted straight from the Faces songbook.

Tight as ever and teeming with catchy riffs, hooks and choruses, it’s less thematically driven than its recent predecessors, much more a set of songs that range over the various highs, lows and barrooms life throws at you. Opening in romping form with Feb 14th’s tale of love gone sour and sliding into the bluesy strutting Gravity’s Gone, Mike Cooley’s voice at its gravelly best, it keeps the pace surging with a rousing Neil Young-like Easy On Yourself before taking the tempo down on the soulfully wistful Goodbye and a countrified Daylight only to explode back with the racing, punk hued Wednesday while the title track’s another gritty Youngesque prowl.

All of which promises to make this their strongest tour yet, mixing in this album’s most muscular numbers with proven past favourites like Sink Hole, Deeper In, Careless, Shut Up And Get On The Plane and their whiskey fumed cover of People Who Died, for one hell of a kick ass night.

 7.30pm. £11.50. Wulfrun Hall

Sunday April 9

Placebo

Three years and a very low profile since their last album, you’d have been forgiven for thinking the band had faded away. But no, they’re back in potent form with Meds (Virgin), a prescription drug (though the songs tend to be more concerned with under the counter measures) of trademark jittery riffs, dark melodies, eerie ballads and dramatic swaggers.

Maybe it’s the fact that Michael Stipe’s duet on Broken Promise gives the chance to hear them side by side, but Brian Molko’s sounding increasingly like the REM singer, most notably so on the title track and Follow The Cops Back Home and the quivering warble of Infra-Red, and less like a falsetto Bowie.

It certainly serves to add an extra sheen to several of the tracks here, though something like the surgingly anthemic Drag, rumbling moody ballad Pierrot The Clown, the mountainous Blind and the chilling Post Blue (which sounds like brooding goth boys Bauhaus) don’t need the crutch of comparisons to blow you away. 0

Never shrinking violets on stage, the vibrancy of the material from the new album should also breathe a new lease of life into the old favourites, pretty much guaranteeing a mind-expanding chemical high.

7.30pm £21.50. Carling Academy

Sunday April 9

Anthrax

One of the original skatecore thrash outfits, Anthrax exploded on the New York scene in 1984, their fusion of rap, metal and hardcore establishing them as one of the era’s most significant acts, alongside Metallica, and Megadeath. However, things haven’t been quite as rosy for them in recent years, with audiences dwindling and album sales hardly comparable with their peak of success. Of course, labels folding under them and the band releasing re-recorded versions of their early material didn’t help.

In better days, they’d have been commanding arena gigs, rather than smaller venues like this, which is perhaps one reason why, for the first time in 13 years, the classic line up of Scott Ian, Charlie Benante, Dan Spitz, Joey Belladonna, and Frank Bello has reformed, taking to the road with Anthrology (Island), wittily subtitled No Hit Wonders, a compilation of the Joey Belladona years material from 85-91.

Since this includes band classics like I Am The Law, Efilnikufesin (N.F.L.), Caught In The Mosh, and Indians, not to mention their Bring Tha Noize collaboration with Public Enemy, and covers of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Anti-Social (including a French version), you can pretty much guarantee it’ll be these and their ilk rather than stuff associated with departed singer John Bush that’ll be on the set list. Which, if you happen to be an unreconstructed late 20s mosh pit veteran, should be reason enough to ditch the office suit and get in some stage diving practice.

7.30pm. £15. Wulfrun Hall

Monday April 10

Bonnie Raitt

Some 35 years into her career, Raitt’s music comes as naturally as breathing so it’s a surprise to realise that her current album, Souls Alive (Capitol), is the first she’s actually produced herself. Maybe that’s why, she sounds so invigorated, doing away with the slick grooves of recent releases in favour of a leaner, edgier sound to her funky blues. None of the material here is self-penned, but it’s clear she connects to the songs and their themes of broken relationships and the strength to overcome adversity while, in the wake of last year’s tragedy, the influence of New Orleans bluesy funk brings extra resonance to tracks like the slinky God Was In The Water, I Will Not Be Broken and the jazz structured Deep Water.

Raitt’s in fine vocal fettle while her slide guitar work has rarely been better, breaking out the solos on tracks like the Little Feat like Unnecessary Mercenary.

But if she cooks up familiar grooves with things like the greasy Love On One Condition and Two Lights In The Nighttime or the wistful country flavoured ballads of I Don’t Want Anything To Change and The Bed I Made, she’s stretching beyond her usual stylings too, Crooked Crown a fine example of an almost jammed experimental blues rock with shades of hip hop and even Broadway in the mix while Trinkets is a slouched, spoken off the shoulder, guitar funky, piano choogling memoir of a New Orleans childhood

She’s likely to be drawing deeply on the material here, fleshing out the set with proven past classics, and if she’s as limber on stage as she clearly was in the studio the night should really cook.

7.30pm. £27.50.Symphony Hall

Tuesday April 11

Christy Moore

It’s been five years since Moore last released an album of new material, so in some ways the fact that the recent Burning Tides (Sony) collaboration with Declan Sinnott was a set of covers was a bit of a disappointment. That said, it’s hard to be too disgruntled when the man brings that honeyed nicotine and whisky brogue to bear on the likes of Natalie Merchant’s Motherland, Richard Thompson’s Beeswing, Dylan’s The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll, Phil Ochs’ Changes and, one of the best things here, Joni Mitchell’s The Magdalene Laundries. He even serves up a marvellous tender version of Morrissey’s caustic America, I Love You.

It’s not all the work of such well known names, indeed there’s two great tunes from The Handsome Family while the eco themed title track, peppered with references to various goddesses from mythology, stems from Charlie Murphy. Even so, fans will be hoping there’ll be more of his own material and past favourites tonight which, as it happens, coincides with the release of Live From Dublin 2006, a double set recorded at the end of last December and the start of January. It features a handful from the covers collection but, likely to prove the basis for the set, also such staples as Ride On, Ordinary Man, Sonny’s Dream and Yellow Triangle while, fingers crossed, he’ll also be keeping Faithful Departed, Strangeways and old Moving Hearts classic Hiroshima Nagasaki Russian Roulette on the touring programme.

7.30pm. £27.50/£24.50. Symphony Hall

Tuesday April 11

Story of the Year

The St Louis hardcore quintet return to plug Take Me Back, a post-Iraq ignorance is bliss lament for America plucked from recent album In The Wake of Determination (Maverick), for the new single.

The album’s a punchy collection of songs about taking control of your own life, selling out your music, addiction, and living as corporate life zombies and, as with Like We Don’t Care Anymore, mostly belted out with staccato riffing rhythms, growl n howl vocals and, on Meathead especially, punk rock full throttle. However, they’re capable of wielding the melody stick too with Five Against The World suggesting a few Bryan Adams licks and Wake Up The Voiceless proof they’ve got a copy of Eye of the Tiger on the iPod.

Support’s South Carolina quintet Stretch Armstrong who’s just released Free At Last (We Put out) album hammers together hardcore, punk and big pop choruses with thumping riffs, pumping guitars and howled vocals put to the service of surprisingly upbeat material. They close up the album by wheeling on the piano for acoustic ballad A Time For Peace, but it’s unlikely to find its way into a set more determined to slam the ears and stomach muscles hard with numbers like Every Last Minute, Hearts On Fire and the possibly aptly titled (This May Be In Fact) As Good As It Gets.

7.30pm. £12. Carling Academy

Tuesday April 11

The Spinto Band

Hailing from Delaware and featuring two sets of brothers, this youthfully bubbling six piece have been making considerable waves with their debut album, Nice and Nicely Done (Virgin), a catchy cocktail of nu-indie guitar pop that casts its net over such apparent influences as Brian Wilson, Talking Heads, XTC, Yo La Tengo, the late 60s pop of the Turtles and The Flaming Lips.

The vocals can be a bit shaky at times, but there’s more than enough quirks among the instrumentation and arrangements going down on tracks such as Brown Boxes (hear that kazoo), the lovelorn Oh Mandy (a bit 10cc this one), Trust vs Mistrust ( glockenspiel and ah-hoo chorus yelp), synth pop Spy vs Spy, dreamy Devo meets Barry Manilow skewed summer ballad Direct To Helmet and the Beach Boys go disco Crack The Whip to find yourself distracted by the itch in your feet.

7.30pm. £6.50. Barfly

Thursday April 13

Corrine Bailey Rae

Arriving pretty much out of nowhere to storm the top of the album charts, raised on a diet of church and Led Zep the torchy Leeds singer-songwriter daughter of West Indian dad and Yorkshire mom has been variously likened to Macy Gray, Erykah Badu and Billie Holiday. Despite the success of Good Groove (EMI) it might be a little premature to bandy such comparisons too freely until the second album shows the staying power and a little more variation, but certainly given the assured intimate warmth of her voice and the almost casual ability to pen things like the infectious jazzy soul dance Put Your Records On, the summer breeze of Like A Star or the delicious Choux Pastry Heart, there’s plenty of reason to get excited about for this year’s Norah Jones at least.

7.30pm. £11. Carling Academy

Friday April 14/Tuesday 18

Il Divo

It’s usually only the upper stratosphere of pop and rock acts that can summon an audience to warrant playing more than one NEC show per tour, so it says much about the following Il Divo have amassed in the past few years that they’re here for three, virtually sold out dates. Not bad going for four classically trained blokes who mostly warble romantic ballads in Italian, French and Spanish, accompanied by lush orchestrations, pianos and Spanish guitars. Their multi-million selling self-titled debut album broke Led Zeps record of being the only band to get a No 1 album without ever releasing a single while the stunning follow up, Ancora (Sony), has eclipsed even that, making its US debut in the No 1 slot and shifting copies by the truckload all around the globe.

They’re not a classical act, though doubtless that makes up a large percentage of their punters, rather, as with Ancora, they bring their assorted tenor and baritone voices to bear on original songs, classics like Ave Maria, Rodrigo’s En Aranjuez Con To 0Amor and O Holy Night and pop evergreens such as Unchained Melody, Mariah Carey’s Hero (here Heroe) and Eric Carmen’s Rachmaninoff based All By Myself.

It’s big, passionate stuff, capitalising on the market opened up some years back by the Three Tenors but cannily pitched at the dreamy female market, conjuring fantasies of sultry Latin lovers and sunkissed dusty hillside towns. How could they possibly fail.

Setting the mood and giving the chaps something to ogle, green-eyed 18 year old New Zealander Hayley Westenra will be opening up the show with her soaring crystal clear voice and a selection of numbers from debut international release Pure (the fastest selling classical album of all time, outstripping the likes of Russell Watson and Pavarotti) and its follow up, Odyssey (Decca). She’s been expanding her repertoire, so that the current album finds her doing the classical bit on tracks such as Laudate Dominum. O Mio Babbino Caro and Ave Maria (Caccini’s not Schubert’s, so you might get both tonight) but spreading her wings into the mist-covered folkier fields of Both Sides Now, She Moves Through The Fair, new single The Water Is Wide and Scarborough Fair as well as a haunting cover of Enya’s May It Be from Lord of the Rings.

Unlike her Welsh counterpart, she shows no signs of hanging out with bad boy DJs, smoking like a chimney, getting drunk and turning into a rock chick, but just in case I’d catch her while you can.

7.30pm. £35-£20. NEC

Tuesday April 18/Monday April 25

Lou Rhodes

Formerly lead singer with underrated duo Lamb, Rhodes now strikes out solo, ditching the electronica for acoustic leafy, earthy new agey folk accompanied by ethnic instruments, hand drums and guitar. Released on her own Infinite Bloom label, Beloved One plays to the strengths of her hypnotic voice and seductive, never over emphatic arrangements that weave behind her as she sings about love, life, heartbreaks and the paradox of feminine resilience and vulnerability. She calls its post-dance, and there’s a definite chill out factor that would go down well in the Glasto tent to songs like Fortress, Inlakesh with its double bass, Each Moment New (the one that gets the obligatory Nick Drake comparison) and the staccato jazzy Treat Her Gently.

It’s quietly lovely stuff, full of passion and pain seen through reflection, reaching its peak in the closing Why which builds to something of a crescendo compared to what’s gone before, Rhodes’ voice gathering power until she almost sounds like Melanie. You’ll need to sit without chattering for this set, but it’ll be worth it, especially if she decides to throw in the a capella number she’s hidden away after the album’s last track.

 8pm. £10. Glee Club

Tuesday April 18

Panic! At The Disco

Emo’s answer to The Killers and with comparisons to Fall Out Boy, Sparks and Green Day not too inaccurate, the Vegas five piece recently played a hit and run raid on the UK with The Academy Is, leaving audiences suitably battered and demanding more.

And here it is, this time on the back of the recently released A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out (Fueled By Ramen), a debut album of brash, adrenaline driven, danceable rock that splits itself two halves, part futuro synth n beats and - divided appropriately enough by the instrumental Intermission which switches styles mid way (complete with announcer’s voice) from to skittering electronica to silent movie piano accompaniment - part ‘nostalgic’ with plinketty piano, accordion and trumpets.

Whichever side of the fence you fall, there’s no getting away from the fact that these guys know their way around the musical map from vaudeville to disco and mariachi and teen bubble angst and have a strong line in wry, slightly psychotic lyrics to match. "Haven’t you heard that I’m the new cancer, I’ve never looked better and you can’t stand it" sneers Brendon Uri on the deliciously catty Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered Honey, You Just Haven't Thought Of It Yet.

Elsewhere I Write Sins Not Tragedies details vicious gossip at a wedding complete with pizzicato plucked strings, a frenetic but tumblingly melodic The Only Difference Between Martyrdom And Suicide Is Press Coverage addresses the desire for attention, while such snappy titles as Build God, Then We’ll Talk, London Beckoned Songs About Money Written By Machines and Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off all repay close scrutiny. One for those end of year best of lists.

 Men, Women & Children

Fronted by former Glassjaw guitarist Todd Weinstock, support’s provided by Men, Women & Children previewing their imminent self-titled debut album (Warners), a solid fist of 1970 and early 80s influenced gay disco pop that borrows from Duran Duran, early Prince, Earth, Wind and Fire and Sylvester alike on such amped up hips shifters as Dance In My Blood, Who Found Mr Fabulous?, Time For The Future and Lighting Strikes Twice In New York. Sales of mirror balls seem likely to enjoy a revival.

7.30pm. £8. Carling Academy

Tuesday April 18

Kubb

It’s taking slightly longer than anticipated to climb up the ladder venue to the size of halls their sound deserves, but they’re getting there. With frontman Harry Collier sounding like Jeff Buckley fronting Coldplay, debut album Mother is truly rather special, a love of old school soul apparent in Somebody Else and Wicked while Without You harks to U2 and Alcatraz and Burn Again both fine examples of songs plucked from bruised hearts. Reissuing last year’s good but not special single Remain probably isn’t going to take them to the next level, but their time will undoubtedly come.

7.30pm. £11. Wulfrun Hall

Wednesday April 19

Teddy Thompson

He’s becoming a bit of a regular around these parts. Richard’s little boy returns for another dose of current album Separate Ways, a warm affair that moves the heart on numbers like barroom shuffling lost love lament Sorry To See Me Go where he croons like a bruised angel, the dreamy countrified pop of Everybody Move, a back porch lonesome Think Again, You Made It and the bluesy moods of the title track. He also kicks up a pair of rocking heels on That’s Just Enough For You, that offers further proof the family tradition is in safe hands.

8pm. £10. Glee Club

Wednesday April 19

Arctic Monkeys

Their first headlining tour in the wake of the media frenzy that surrounded their debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not will doubtless see the sold out notices posted all over, but now the smoke from the hype’s clearing it’s more readily apparent that while there’s some wry observations on modern British life, the music itself is a fairly repetitive set of Strokes and White Stripes influenced numbers with choppy Franz Ferdinand funking ragged and fuzzed guitars.

Frontman Alex Turner spits out angry invective in his Yorkshire accented observations of the lager life culture but there’s little real wit behind the bite, just as the throaty guitars hide a lack of real melodies.

‘Anticipation has a habit to set you up for disappointment’, he sings on The View From The Afternoon and, while Fake Tales Of San Francisco, Mardy Bum, You Probably Couldn’t See For The Lights But You Were Staring Straight At Me all hit between the eyes and A Certain Romance demonstrates an ability to vary the light and shade, ultimately there’s more truth in the line than intended. For now, they’re unstoppable and forthcoming EP, Who The F**k Are Arctic Monkeys another likely No 1, but next year might be another story.

Trying to persuade punters out of the bar will be Eva Petersen fronted Liverpool five piece Little Flames taking a breather from putting the finishing touches to their debut album and giving a showcase of what to expect from their mix of leafy folk and garage rock n roll.

7.30pm. £14. W’hampton Civic Hall

Thursday Apr 20/Friday Apr 21

Him

The Finnish rock boys have had a remarkably successful couple of years, rising from cult heroes to conquering champions on the back of their Love Metal album of 80s riff gothy rock and big pop ballads. After a gathering together of their best work to date on And Love Said No, they enter 2006 armed with long awaited new album Dark Light already a massive hit and sold out signs plastered across the tour.

Not surprising really given the fact it’s overflowing with tightly played radio friendly, hook heavy melodic yet dark tinged songs aimed straight at the heart of mainstream audiences. You can certainly hear the influence of U2 producer Tim Palmer all over the anthemic The Face of God while those Bon Jovi meet The Sisters of Mercy references burrow closer to the surface on the opening Vampire’s Heart, a soaring Rip Out The Wings of a Butterfly and a surging and swirling Behind The Crimson Door.

Arena ambitions ring clearly throughout, striding across the speakers on Under The Rose and reaching out to those waving cigarette lighters on the dreamily swaying title track and piano dripping Play Dead before riding off into the sunset with the chugging, moody big sound gothrock In The Nightside of Eden where you begin to suspect that a few years down the line they might have mutated into a cross between Nickleback and The Moody Blues. By then, of course, they’ll be needing to book a week of football stadiums gigs just to keep up with ticket demand.

7.30pm. £18. Carling Academy

Saturday April 22

The Ordinary Boys

Back to continue their quest to be the new Madness with another skank through current album Brassbound (b-unique). The Jam flavours of their debut are still present on Thanks To The Girl and Life Will Be The Death Of Me, but it’s the jerky ska beats that dominate on the likes of Boys Will Be Boys, On An Island, and the nightboat to Cairo that sails through Don’t Live Too Fast. Just in case you missed the point, they even throw in a cover of the old Locomotive hit Rudi’s In Love.

It’s hardly bursting with original ideas, but it’s also an infectiously breezy jogalong, the sheer exuberance spilling over the sides of One Step Forward (Two Steps Back) and the title track. Nutty and no slack.

7pm. £13.50. Carling Academy

Saturday April 22

Breaks Co-Op

A collaboration between Radio One’s current hotshot DJ, Zane Lowe, fellow New Zealander Hamish Clark and singer Andy Lovegrove, debut album The Sound Inside (Parlophone), is a throwback to the vibes of the summer of love with its blissed out grooves, new agey ambience and dreamy CSN&Y harmonic vocals. Taking influence from Sebadoh and Marvin Gaye alike and melding that to their roots in hip hop beats, it’s a shuffling, scuffling set of lo fi folk acoustic lopes with an easy going groove that shines through the gospel falsetto of The Otherside, slow pulsing ballad Last Night’s wash of REM flavours, Too Easily’s early hours homage to jazz man Chet Baker, the ‘67 psychedelic clouds of Too Easily with its hippie Indian colourings.

Wonder kicks up the momentum slightly with its percussive rhythmic spine and Question of Freedom boasts some improv style acid jazz workouts but, with arrangements and instrumentation that come with a free bottle of patchouli, feelgood lyrics the dominant mood is designed to get you closing the eyes and drifting away into their soulfolk ether.

7.30pm. £6.Bar Academy

Saturday April 22

Julia Biel

Described as a meeting between Billie Holiday and Bjork and likened to everyone from Nina Simone and Rickie Lee Jones to Alison Goldfrapp and, er, Sting and Thom Yorke, Biel’s part of the F-IRE collective of London based experimentalists but arrives here firmly in solo career mode with last year’s acclaimed debut album Not Alone (Rokit) in her suitcase.

Nu folk jazz with a smidgen of Latin would be the easiest tag to tie round the handle for this acoustic collection of often intoxicating numbers over which Biel’s smokily ethereal pure vocals float like summer clouds, weaving through the snake charming Bedouin tents of Uncomfortable Somehow, the pizzicato sunbeams fluttering across the reggae meets kwela rhythms of By The Light of You, a samba shimmering, flute flavoured Shhh and the pop flavours of Souvenirs likely to catch the ear of the Dido audience thirsty for new blood.

Joined by a band that will feature Ben Davis on cello, woodwind player Idris Rahman, double bass man Jasper Hoiby, drummer Seb Rochford and co-writer guitarist Johnny Phillips, the gig promises to be a refreshing as the sampled streams bubbling through By The Light of You, as light and airy as a summer’s day in the meadows.

8.30pm. £10. Warwick Arts Centre

Sunday April 23

Eddy Morton

Former founding member of the Bushbury Mountain Daredevils and until recently frontman for their Bushburys incarnation, Walsall boy Morton also maintains a parallel career running Stourbridge’s ace roots venue Katy Fitzgerald’s and working as a solo singer-songwriter. It’s this head he’s wearing tonight for what is, essentially, a launch gig for new album The Singing Tree (New Mountain Music), as fine a piece of work as anything he’s recorded in the decade or so since the demise of the undervalued Adventure Babies.

Evocative of a Celtic hued Martyn Joseph (their warm voices are similar, though Morton’s got more of a nasal twang), Ralph McTell and Mike Peters with clear touches of Dylan influence (and, on Travellin Man, tipping the lyric hat to Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock), his songs are strongly veined with a social, political and environmental conscience, couched in muscular memories and swelling choruses. Brother Can You Hear Me is a good example, a perspective on the human race from the point of view of the whale while the jangling slow march Back To The Land is a lament for the distance that’s grown between the natural world and those who live in it and the simple strummed Ordinary Man, Ordinary Woman a sort of working stiff Universal Soldier for the Blair and Bush era.

America comes under the microscope on the gently rolling piano backed Liberty Falls, a literal and metaphorical road trip across the USA through identical smalltowns and empty soul cities filled with the out of luck nursing their broken dreams as they wait for the bus to anywhere better.

But perhaps its the more intimate, personal songs that work strongest, none finer than the resigned but affectionate Father’s Son about accepting who you are, the reflective Sea of Changes and Hey Joe, a poignant blues memoir of his grandfather. He closes up the album in almost hymnal form, piano swelling in understated anthemic mood for the steadfast rock in troubled waters that is Lighthouse, a song you feel you’ve had in your heart all your life and pretty much guaranteed to be the highlight of the live set.

Morton’s never really had the wide exposure he deserves, but while the chances of doing a David Gray are probably unlikely perhaps finally, with this album, he’ll be recognised as one of the finer songssmiths and singers we have on offer.

7.30pm. £9.25. mac

Monday April 24

Flaming Lips

For many the best band in America, after two decades of critical praise and minor cult success, the Lips have morphed into one of the biggest and most influential names around, finally catapulting into global consciousness with 2002's Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and its accompanying live shows.

Now Wayne Coyne, Steven Drozd and Michael Ivins return as conquering rock band heroes with At War With The Mystics, another experimental journey into the psychedelic cosmos of Coyne’s imagination, a world that often makes Brian Wilson seem like Chas n Dave.

Don’t be put off by the first two numbers, of which Free Radicals sounds like some early Prince pastiche while The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song is basically the band mucking about in the pop playpen. Once these are out of the way, things take off into the gargantuan stratosphere with the trademark blend of perfect pop and barking quirkiness that is The Sound of Failure and My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion with its twittering electronic birds and spacey burbles. This is big music stuff, teeming with surging grand guitars and huge electronic washes, the sound of band who’ve been given the licence - and the money - to pain on a grand canvas without worrying about poking a hole in the fabric.

Druggy, surreal, warped and patently the illegitimate offspring of the Mothers of Invention, Todd Rundgren and Yes, they’re getting pretty funky by the time they reach The W.A.N.D and Haven’t Got A Clue while Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung is everything excess the title suggests, and then adds some Pink Floyd too.

The soft soul Mr Ambulance Driver and the closing Goin’ On are reminders that they can also make simple, crystalline pop that doesn’t feel the need to shake the galaxy with things like the excessively titled prog rock flute driven instrumental The Wizard Turns On...The Giant Silver Flashlight And Puts On His Werewolf Moccasins. But I suspect no one’s going along tonight in the hope of seeing a low key show of restrained balladry.

7.30pm. £19.50. Carling Academy

Monday April 24

The Brakes

Now apparently a full time gig rather than a side project from the day jobs, the ramshackle strumming trio gathering of former members from British Sea Power, Electric Soft Parade and The Tenderfoot return with gathering indie-pop dancefloor hit All Night Disco Party (Rough Trade) and the short but snappy songs from debut album Give Blood as they cheerfully bounce from Roxy Music to country bumpkins and the Velvet Underground.

7.30pm. £8.50. Carling Academy 2

Tuesday April 25

The Storys

Having apparently abandoned solo career ambitions after his first album stiffed, Welsh pop songster and former Jesus Christ Superstar star Steve Balsamo is now one quarter of the vocal and songwriting power behind this South Wales sextet whose eponymous debut album (Korova) leans heavily towards the rootsy pop flavours of Southern California and such influences as The Eagles, CS&N, the Byrds and Fleetwood Mac.

Originally released last year and now revived for its new major label home, it’s lush, sunny soaring pop rich in rippling melodies and radio friendly choruses with songs like the scarf-waving I Believe In Love, country stroller Be By Your Side, power ballad Journey’s End and Westlife wannabe Is It True What They Say About Us destined to be saturating Radio 2’s airwaves for the foreseeable future.

The show’s opened by Barnsley reared Rosalie Deighton, erstwhile member of the Indonesian/Yorskhire string band Deighton Family. It’s been a while since the release of her impressive rootsy pop solo debut, Truth Drug, so she’ll be reaquainting you with such songs as Crazy World Tomorrow and Ideal Me as well, one would hope, as previewing new material from its long awaited follow-up.

 8pm. £7. Glee Club

Tuesday April 25

Hilary Duff

It’s the first time actress cum pop star Duff has graced the touring stages over here, so it can be safely assumed that her massive tweenie audience of young girls and drooling prepubescent boys will be out in force. Originally best known from kids tv series Lizzie McGuire, the square jawed blonde Texan became the queen of teen movies with such offering as Agent Cody Banks, Cheaper By The Dozen, A Cinderella Story and, obviously the Lizzie 0McGuire movie itself.

Although Raise Your Voice, where she played an aspirant singer, failed to get a UK cinema release, she bounced back with The Perfect Man and Cheaper By The Dozen 2 but it’s her vocal talents on display tonight. Fairly massive in the States, here’s she’s had four Top 20 singles but curiously her self-titled debut wasn’t released in the UK and the follow-up, Metamorphosis failed to chart.

Looking to put matters to rights a somewhat premature greatest hits collection, Most Wanted (Hollywood) appeared at the end of last year, just struggling into the Top 40. Hard to explain the reticence of her English fans to climb aboard the pop star wagon since, while she’s not got as robust a belting voice as rival Lindsay Lohan, she’s a perfectly acceptable pop singer and there’s a fair number of superior quality songs in the collection too.

Brit Top 10 hits So Yesterday and Wake Up are both included alongside past singles Fly and Come Clean (in a new remix) while pouty ballad The Getaway, rock chick strutters Girl Can Rock, Mr James Dean and Metamorphosis and her cover of Our Lips Are Sealed should guarantee an energy packed live show as she bounces from one end of the stage to the next. Disappointing though that the compilation misses out The Math, a blindingly catchy slice of Avril-esque teen pop that inexplicably failed to get lifted as a single off the last album but which really should find its way on to the set list.

7.30pm. £22.50. NIA

Tuesday April 25

Babyshambles

Celebrity junkie Pete Doherty finally got an album together with his new band, but don’t expect a second, even if he stays alive long enough to record one. Down In Albion is as erratic, ramshackle and unfocused as you might anticipate with more folk influences than might be imagined, La Belle et al Bete promises much with its cabaret inclinations and vague hints of Jonathan Richmanesque reggae chops but A’rebours marks it out as a poor Smiths, Albion desperately wants to be Ray Davies and pretty much all the rest bears far too much imprint of producer Mick Jones. Which means it sounds like Big Audio Dynamite outtakes with baby faced Doherty under the impression he’s a mumbling Joe Strummer.

And let’s not even mention the droney Pipedown or ill advised rap Pentonville by his former cellmate. There’s a couple of decent songs among the mess, but directionless, scrappy and often unfocused certainly nothing to justify claims that he’s one of the best new writers on the British rock scene or some self-destructive musical genius. If he bothers to turn up, you can ask him yourself.

7.30pm. £15.50. W’hampton Civic Hall

A happy collision of Mott The Hoople, T Rex, Roxy Music, Pulp, Blur and everything that was good about BritPop, winner of the year’s Brits for Best British Group and Rock Act, the Kaisers are the most deliriously enjoyable around at the moment, their Employment album happily embracing 60s doo wop, sea shanty, glam and Two Tone skank with exuberant abandon while still laying down some sharp, often dark lyrical observations.

The Sparksy Na Na Na Na Naa, binge-drinking punky-pop bouncer I Predict A Riot, Saturday Night’s pub rock knees up and the jerky stabbing neurotic anti-romantic Everyday I Love You Less and Less are the most direct assaults on the commercial senses while You Can Have It All makes a fair stab at laying claim to the new Madness tag. But it’s the less obvious numbers - the oddball rockabilly folk of Time Honoured Tradition, the creeping bent to What Did I Ever Give You? and the country lollop of the Beach Boys alluding Caroline, Yes that underline the band’s musical strengths and likely longevity. 

7.30pm. £17.50. NIA

Wednesday April 26

Waterson Carthy

The country’s leading traditional folk artists, Martin Carthy and wife Norma Waterson show little sign of slowing down as the years creep on. To prove the point, they’re here tonight with fiddler daughter Eliza Carthy and melodeon player Tim Van Eyken on the back of current album Fishes & Fine Yellow Sand (Topic).

A breezily eclectic collection of shanties, ballads, jigs and the like, it cheerfully embraces tales of condemned pirates (Captain Kidd), dying emperor’s (Napoleon’s Death), prisoners (the pub swingalong Twenty One Years on Dartmoor), singing fishes (Goodbye Fare You Well) and, of course, murder (The Oxford Girl) and ne’er do wells (Newry Town). And, just to show they don’t only do songs older than Jimmy Tarbuck’s jokes, there’s also their version of the Grateful Dead’s0 Black Muddy Water taking the link from English trad to American country.

With umpteen albums not to mention several hundred years of folk song heritage to choose from, you’re only likely to get a couple of samples from the album but then this isn’t about selling your latest product but keeping alive an entire genre.

 8pm. £13.50. mac

Wednesday April 26

Primal Scream

A bit of a low key one this, a warm up showcase for their upcoming June released Sony album, Riot City Blues and Isle of Wight fest. It also coincides with Country Girl, their first single since Some Velvet Morning three years back, and very much a country rocking swagger in the Stones vein, while extra tracks will include their covers of Lennon’s Gimme Some Truth and, suggesting they’ve gotten quite into this roots thing, Townes Van Zandt’s To Live Is To Fly. Could prove an eye-opening gig.

 7.30pm. £20. Wulfrun Hall

Wednesday April 26

Jose Gonzalez

Following his recent Heartbeats hit in the wake of the BRAVIA ads, the Swedish-Argentinian songsmith takes a step up to bring his hushed balladeering and acoustic classical guitar to larger venues. Clearly influenced by both Nick Drake and John Martyn, he’ll doubtless by featuring that song alongside material from the current Veneer album and hopefully his sad-eyed folk deconstruction of Kylie’s Hand On Your Heart.

7pm. £13.50. Alexandra Theatre

Wednesday April 26-Friday April 28

Take That

Probably not back for good, but certainly back for the cash after less than spectacular solo careers (Robbie, not needing to boost the bank account, declined), the reunion didn’t come as too much of a surprise, but the response certainly has with sold out shows and truckloads of copies of Never Forget: The Ultimate Collection (Sony) CD and DVD flying out of the stores.

So, here we are Messrs Barlow, Orange, Donald and Owen, a little older and perhaps with not quite as many dance moves as they once had, but primed to plough their way through what remains a very impressive hits collection. So yes, there’ll be nostalgia in the air as you struggle to remember how the likes of Sure, I Found Heaven, Why Can’t I Wake Up With You and Promises actually went, while enthus0iastically singing along to Never Forget, Everything Changes, Babe and Pray. And at least this time, they won’t be drowned out by hundreds of screaming tweenies.

Lulu won’t be along for Relight My Fire, but the band will have it in the set, her part being taken by special guest support act Beverley Knight, the Wolverhampton soul pop star going through her own greatest hits collection, Voice (Parlophone), with the likes of Come As You Are, Made It Back, Shoulda Woulda Coulda, Flava of the Old Skool, Gold (her only top 10 entry) and her current cover of Piece of My Heart which takes the original Erma Franklin template and gives it a run for its money.

7.30pm. £35/£25. NEC

Thursday April 27

The Datsuns

Last time around they were trying to convince punters that there was something special about Outta Sight/Outta Mind’s loud but tired trudge through the Stooges, Saints back catalogue with chunks of Led Zep riffery and AC/DC dumb beered up rock n roll. This time, the New Zealand garage boys are tooling up a new album, preceding it with a taste of what’s in store with the Stuck Here For Days (V2) EP.

There’s no departure from the basic framework but they do sound a lot more poked up and convinced about what they’re doing, the swamp blues slide guitar title track calling to mind the snake-eyed, leather trousered days of Jagger circa Exile On Main Street while Kick & Bang does pretty much just that and, to ring the changes, One Eye Open plays out as a six minute psychedelic lurch that you kinda hope they decide to keep off the set list. I daresay much lager will be sunk and even more spilled.

7.30pm. £9. Carling Academy 2

Friday April 26

Towers of London

Here we go with more rowdy punk pop from those naughty monkeys with the Pistols/Ramones/Angelic Upstarts fetish, circling guitars blazing away in the cause of imminent debut album Blood, Sweat & Towers (TVT). They’ve not let the side down yet with anything they’ve released and, to judge by advance samples of the thumping Kill The Pop Scene and a ridiculously catchy leap about and shout Air Guitar, they’re not about to start now.

7.30pm. £7. Barfly

Fuzzing up their old whispered slowcore melancholia with some serious rock freak out sonics, the Duluth trio might not have, as they sing on Death of a Salesman, burned their guitars in rage but they certainly seem to have ignited them for current album The Great Destroyer (Rough Trade).

It may well come as something of a heart-attack to those who fell in love with the minimalist intimate beauty of the band’s earlier albums, but, rather like discovering Rust Never Sleeps when all you’ve known is After The Gold Rush, once you’ve got over the initial shock it’s hard to figure how you might live without it.

The melodies and harmonies are still there beneath the rumbling noise and distortions, the stunning desert night moods of Monkey conjuring those old Cowboy Junkies comparisons. California and Just Stand Back soaring Byrdsian folk-rock while Walk Into The Sea just spills all over with the spirit of Phil Spector. There’s a couple of missteps (the Tommy James-like Broadway is considerably overextended at seven minutes) but the big picture is overwhelmingly exhilarating, though when it comes to the live set it might be an idea not to cut the old fans too much adrift by cranking up the volume on cherished back catalogue memories.Support comes from Greenock post rock folksters My Latest Novel whose debut novel album has been deservedly greeted with glowing praise for its silvery melodies and tempo shifting arrangements that embrace cello, violin, chants and, on Learning Lego, children’s choir in a web of dark, poetic, sometimes fey leafy modern folk imbued with shadowy fairy tale moods and, on The Reputation Of Ross Francis, sounding like a happy meeting of Arcade Fire and the Incredible String Band.

They’re capable of surging fire on Ghost In The Gutter but it’s the more sinuous moments that really see them shine on the likes of the tremulous Pretty In A Panic, the handclapping shuffle of The Hope Edition, and the shivering menace of When We Were Wolves which mostly consists of some three minutes of the band chanting the title over a steady slow military beat before the gathering climax.

7.30pm. £15. Carling Academy

Saturday April 29

Help! She Can’t Swim!

Noisy indie popnicks from around Brighton way (4 lads, female kybds/co-vocals), they’ve been bubbling for a while, javing already released one album and a clutch of singles. They’re gearing up for album number two, throwing in showcase material on the current tour, but primarily this jaunt’s to promote new single Midnight Garden (Fantastic Plastic), a spiky, jerkily staccato little wailing number that calls to mind X-Ray Spex without the greasy sax and a touch of Siouxie circa Hong Kong Garden. Their fondness for 80s sounds is also evident on the darker punky clatter of Mind Game Girl which wouldn’t have sounded out of place in the heyday of The Vortex. Twilight Mountain shows their more arty side with shards of post rock psychedlia, but it’ll be more likely a night for banging off the walls.

 8pm. £4. Barfly.

It’s 40 years since Ian first caught the world’s ears with her then highly controversial interacial love song Society’s Child, fading into the wilderness as fads for precocious young folk singers passed before making a sensational comeback as confessional singer-songwriter with a direct line to the heart with the classic tale of adolescent ugly duckling angst At Seventeen and a clutch of emotionally wrenching albums in the shape of Stars, Between The Lines and Aftertones and songs like Jesse, In The Winter, and Tea and Sympathy.

She’s been going strong ever since, musically expanding horizons to embrace funk, blues and jazz across her steady output of albums, the most recent being the stunning, inspirational Billie’s Bones and its return to her folk roots.

She’s stuck around those parts for her latest album too, Folk Is The New Black (Cooking Vinyl), her first all-original collection in a quarter of a century and, while things like the funky swamp grooved Danger Danger oozes an air of menace in its snapshot of American racism, also a rare example of her veining the material with humour, most notably on the title track’s witty skewering of fad and fashion bandwagon jumpers.

It’s not a folk album per se, and though working with just guitar, bass, brushed percussion and organ, she musically still embraces various styles and genres (Standing In The Shadows Of Love all gospel r&b, The Crocodile Song loose limbed finger clicking jazz), but it’s the more hushed songs that strike with the most power.

Here you’ll find the social protest against America’s class chasms in The Great Divide that may well have been inspired by events in New Orleans, The Last Train that talks of the Vietnam war but clearly has its sights on Iraq, My Autobiography’s witty self-deprecating stab at the me-centred celebrity culture, the despairing drunk of The Drowning Man and the poignant portrait of an LA traffic victim in the moving Jackie Skates.

And, coming full circle back to her first renaissance, those early cracked broken heart songs about emotional betrayals are conjured with the aching All Those Promises sitting alongside the tenderly forgiving contemplative acceptances of Home Is The Heart and Joy.

Here, in this intimate setting, with old classics joining these future ones, this promises to be one of the shows of the year.

7.30pm. £19.50. Glee Club