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ARCHIVED REVIEWS April 2008 Previews by Mike Davies Tuesday April 1 Eileen Rose
Following on from debut album Shine Like It Does and the ever more impressive follow-ups Long Shot Novena and Come The Storm, the Irish-Italian American singer-songwriter returns with her fourth outing, At Our Tables (Evangeline), an album of love and loss, life and death, steeped in the sound of Detroit, from Motown soul to White Stripes rock. Those looking for her earlier country roots will be pleased to discover the Gram-like swaggering $20 Shoes, a scuffed and skittering bluegrassy Blue Mood Words, two step swayer Jeannie Steps Out and the turning train wheels rhythms of Failure To Thrive. But even these have a sharper edge while Seven Winds is pure dreamy pop, Doesn’t Mean A Thing heads down a rock n soul path, Will-O-The Wisp offers a bluesy gospel country duet and The Day Before sees the album climax with a slow building, organ-backed heart-tearing Maria McKee meets Lucinda Williams ballad. It’s taken a while for the word to spread, but, coupled with her solid live performances, this should finally get everybody talking. 7.30pm. £8. Barfly Tuesday April 1 Malcolm Middleton
Having skewed the Christmas pop market with his chirpy single We’re All Going To Die, the former Arab Strap singer takes to the road now with new album Sleight Of Heart (Full Time Hobby). Middleton’s deft guitar work augmented by piano, violin and double bass, it’s a more acoustic minded and subdued collection than the previous A Brighter Beat that also finds him reverting to his more familiar blackly humoured self-doubt, self-loathing and general glass half-empty view of the world. There’s an interesting set of covers in the shape of a stripped back folksy arrangement of Madonna’s Stay with Middleton’s Falkirk accent fully loaded with loam, nicotine and whisky, a stomp along version of King Creosote's Marguerita Red and, showing he has a rather fine record collection, the downbeat loveliness of Jackson C Frank’s obscure Just Like Anything. Not exactly a cover, but there’s a definite borrowing from Iggy Pop’s The Passenger to the self-penned Week Off, a tale of writer’s block and weariness that’s swiftly followed by Blue Plastic Bags images of a nation holing up at home and getting plastered on Jacob's Creek, Stella and fags. There’s not a great deal of musical variation and, tongue in cheek or not, the constant self put downs and self-failure laments can feel bit overdone after a while, but if you’re going to spend the night wallowing in melancholy, depression and fallibility then, with songs like the strummed simple folk of Follow Robin Down, the witty self-flagellation of Total Belief and the glorious dashing of romance in Love Comes In Waves are probably some of the best company you could find. 8pm. £10. Glee Club Tuesday April 1 Reuben
With In Nothing We Trust (Hideous) finding the Camberley trio in harder form than ever with the throat lacerating pummelling of numbers like Cities On Fire, We Are All Going Home In An Ambulance, and Blood, Bunny, Larkhall, it also underlined their sense of a solid melody and pop vision with such numbers as Agony/Agatha, An Act of Kindness and the veritable soft skinned balladry of Good Luck. Although mainstream success seems further off than ever (their last chart single, Every Time A Teenager listens to Drum & Bass A Rockstar Dies, peaked at 219!), they did score a Rock Chart No 1 with Deadly Lethal Ninja Assassin, firm proof that their fan base is back t o full strength. The tour coincides with a new joint EP that features Cities On Fire and an extended version of Shambles from their debut EP plus tracks from the two other bands in the gigging package, hardcore punk thrashters The Ghost of a Thousand with Black Art Number One and Up to You, and Southend’s neck-whipping Baddies with the piston driving juddery Battleships and Tiffany I’m Sorry. 7.30pm. £8.50. Carling Academy 2 Wednesday April 2 The Teenagers
A Parisian answer to the Velvet Underground crossed with Depeche Mode and a typically Gallic no compromise line in sexually forthright lyrics, the trio have been winning friends and influencing people with debut album Reality Check (Merok) and its speak sing sardonic snapshots of adolescent emotion. Recent single Starlett Johansson sang the praises of the actress to a bubblegum and acid melody line and follow up Love No keeps up the synth pop and the band’s line in pubescent angst, culture and romantic jealousy. Elsewhere they’ll be offering the fuzzy shimmers of Wheel Of Fortune, the fizzy punk-pop in cool shades and tight leather that is Feeling Better, the chiming softly breathed smoked melancholia of Make It Happen, a 70s New Wave reprising Streets of Paris and the hormonal euphoria stretching out on Sunset Beach. Grab a Gauloise and celebrate youth. 7.30pm. £7. Carling Academy Thursday April 3 Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly
Following Chronicles of a Bohemian Teenager, Southender Sam Duckworth’s folktronica alter ego gets a second outing with Nitin Sawhney helping out behind the desk for Searching For The Hows And Whys (Atlantic), but the results just don’t have the same charm or bite as the debut’s portrait of contemporary Britain through the eyes of a confused kid looking for his place in the world. Now you get dance beats, synths and strings to flesh out his social commentary as he turns his eye on, among other things, consumerism and religious fundamentalism. Kate Nash puts in an appearance on the broody, flamenco and folk feeling kiss and tell critique Better Things, single Find The Time is a pleasantly summery let’s hit the road number slightly spoiled by overemphatic drum beats, and Postcards From Catalunya is a wistfully lovely track that sounds like a bucolic English Harry Nillson backed by Bert Jansch. But stretched over 14 tracks, the lack of stand out tunes and Duckworth’s overwritten lyrics begin to grind you down, The Children Are (The Consumers) Of The Future and I Could Build You A Tower sounding like some fifth-former awkwardly trying to sound politically sussed and indignant. Keep Singing Out suggests a promising hint of a possible Paul Wellerish direction and Moving Forward is a tinkling ripple of romantic modern folk, but I have the feeling there’s going to be a fair few feet shuffling off to the bar during the set. 7.30pm. £13.50. Wulfrun Hall Friday April 4 Elliott Minor
With recent single Still Figuring Out reinforcing their marriage of Green Day and ELO, former choirboys Alex Davies and Ed Minton and their three fellow classically trained cohorts prepare to unleash their much delayed eponymous debut album. Previous singles The White One Is Evil and Jessica will be among the tracks alongside revised studio versions of things like The Broken Minor and Last Call To New York City from their demo days as The Academy. There’s also a new version of their first single, the surging orchestral pop rush that was Parallel Worlds (Repossession) which, not willing to let a good thing languish overlooked, now kicks off the promo work as, that’s right, the new single. 7.30pm. £11. Sanctuary, Digbeth Friday April 4 Kate Doubleday
Former local resident, now domiciled in rural Wales where she doubles up as musician, organic gardener and educational environmental artist, the breathily reedy voiced thumb piano playing Doubleday made her recording debut five years ago with Renewal, earning warm reviews for its jazzy folk flavours and blend of African, Irish and Balkan influences. She returns to her old stomping grounds tonight to launch the follow-up, Belonging (Copper), again plying the same mix of influences but with the increased maturity, confidence and deepening of textures passing time has wrought. Again those looking for quick references points might light on Sally Oldfield, but you’ll also find shades of Joni, Janis Ian, Anne Briggs, the spidery aspects of Kate Bush, and a less darker voiced June Tabor while she’d be quick to point out the influence of the late poet Frances Horovitz on her work. Trevor Lines reprises his bass duties while this time round the musical line up welcomes percussionist Tom Chapman (who played reclaimed copper pots), guitarist and kora player Daniel Wilkins, producer Joe Broughton on violin and Pamela Pinnock and Tina Barnes providing backing vocals. Together they create an intoxicating brew, rich in layered and sinuously subtle arrangements hewn equally from the musical traditions of West Africa, Irish backwaters, the Mississippi and the hayricks of England. Adorned with images of flowers, her songs treat on the giddy rush of love (Do You Not Know, Sweet Dandelion), political hypocrisy (the heady chant hued Follow Through), fecund nature (Wild Poppies), grief and forgiveness (Watch The Flowers), her daughter (the pure tinkling trad folk In Full View) and the beauty but ephemeral nature of life (a tranquil watery Silver Blue). Songs like the hypnotic, sensual Eucalyptus (where she invokes Aboriginal vocalese) and the choral African hymnal title track (surely a number made to be sung into the Glastonbury twilight) curling through the blood, it’s an album that seeps inside you, taking root and blossoming into a spiritual soundtrack. Not a night to be missed, then. 8pm. £5. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath Saturday April 5 Adam Green
If you saw Juno (and if you didn’t, why not), you may well have been beguiled by the simple romantic love song Anyone Else But You. That was by Moldy Peaches, the anti-folk outfit of which Green founded alongside Kimya Dawson. Here, though, he’s out on his own, plugging new album Sixes & sevens (Rough Trade), a 20 track collection in the tradition of Jonathan Richman, peppered with quirky lyrics and faux naive delivery. However, this time round he’s fleshed out the sound considerably with strings, brass, keyboards and backing singers, digging into the 50s and 60s for a mix of crooners (Tropical Island), big band doo wop (Broadcast Beach), blues (Cannot Get Sicker), country (Drowning Head First), vaudeville (Sticky Boy Ricky) and classic soul (Twee Twee Dee). In parts, Morning After Midnight even recalls Billy Swan. Inevitably, someone should have suggested a little more quality control and there’s far too many numbers here that, like Grandma Shirley And Papa and That Sounds Like A Pony, while pleasant enough larking about whimsy really aren’t essential inclusions. Still, clocking in at around 40 minutes, he can probably breeze through most of it and still find room for favourites from past releases. Who knows, he might even feel like throwing in that Juno gem too. 7pm. £9. Carling Academy 2 Saturday April 5/Sunday April 6 The Enemy
Hometown heroes, the Coventry boys celebrate what’s been a cracking 12 months by packing out their hometown stadium to give full glorious vent to their debut album We’ll Live And Die In These Towns. Rowdy and heavily in thrall to the Jam perhaps, but you really can’t get enough of throwing yourself around to the likes of Had Enough, Away From Here You’re Not Alone, It’s Not OK, and 40 Days And 40 Nights. And, finally, their marvellously clunky stadium swayer dead end town dreams ballad This Song, gets the venue it deserves. 7.30pm. £16. Ricoh Arena, Coventry Sunday April 6 Serj Tankian The System of a Down frontman headlines his first solo tour in the cause of debut album Elect The Dead (Serjical Strike). As might be expected from the day job, it’s a flesh-lacerating beast with him bellowing and yowling like a banshee with a toothache through Empty Walls, Money and The Unthinking Majority as he laments the decline of the American empire. Unexpectedly though, as with new single Sky Is Over, he also takes off into the realms of operatic metal while Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition is an almost straight wedge of juddering rock and clutching Spanish guitar, Saving Us sees him fancying himself a bit of a Balkan emo balladeer. A little more conventional than SoD and a lot more accessible for the mainstream tastes. 7pm. £18.50. Carling Academy Sunday April 6 Frank Turner
A year on from releasing Sleep Is For The Week, the former Million Dead front man continues his reinvention as the new Billy Bragg with swift follow up Love Ire & Song (Xtra Mile). There’s no rewriting the blueprint here, just more rather good angry acoustic based songs of the personal and the political that explore themes of distance and optimism. He kicks off with I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous which, referencing TS Eliot’s poem, offers itself as a defiant anthem of the overlooked and underdogs, the ‘English boys with banjos’ and ‘resurrected spirit of Gram Parsons’ who never became the stars they were in their own dreams, but never gave up on their quests. The catchy invectives and upbeat singalongs keep coming; punk folk Reasons Not To Be An Idiot’s put down of the self-important, the out of touch, refusing to grow up moaners in the fiddles and mandolins bouncing Photosynthesis, Substitute’s song of taking refuge from romantic disasters in music, and the Pogues like arms-linked title track’s statement of political manifesto. There’s not a duff track here, ranging and raging from the furious punk pop of Imperfect Tense to the trad-folk To Take You Home, from Long Live The Queen’s upliftingly poignant tribute to a dead friend to the sentimental homesickness of St Christopher Is Coming Home, all rounded off with Jet Lag’s piano soaked balladeering sadness that seems set to provide the perfect last encore closing curtain to a damn fine gig. 7pm. £7. Bar Academy Sunday April 6 Kathryn Williams & Neill MacColl
Meeting at a concert during the BBC’s Folk Britannia season where they duetted on First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, written by his father Ewan for wife Peggy Seeger, the pair hit it off so well they decided to make an album. The result is Two (Caw), a beautifully old fashioned and intimate album of acoustic autumnal folk and sun dappled rustic country, conjuring thoughts of Gram Parsons on the sweetly sweary Armchair or Joni Mitchell on Frame, sung from the perspective of an empty picture frame. Their voices, her soft breathy warm and his aching baritone twang, blend perfectly while the songs waltz dreamily through lands of hope and heartbreak, of falling apart and putting yourself back together and making the most of the moment. There’s jazzy rays shining across Blue Fields, Grey Goes is delightfully spooked gothic backwoods folk while Come With Me is dreamily languid waltzing, but, not to diminish their own material in the slightest, perhaps the finest number here is the cover of Tom Waits’ lullaby Innocent When You Dream, a fragile, lovingly crooned version that sounds like it was plucked from a 30s old tyme country radio show. I guarantee it will be the highlight of the show. Unless, of course, they decide to reprise that old Ewan classic. 7.30pm. £14. Wulfrun Hall Tuesday April 8 Devotchka
As you might guess from the name, here’s another outfit ploughing Eastern European gypsy and klezmer roots into rock n roll. Based in Denver, the four piece derive their name from the Russian for ‘young girl’ by way of A Clockwork Orange, feature fiddle, trumpet, bouzouki, sousaphone and double bass along with the usual guitar, drums and piano and draw on Greek, Slavic, and Romany as well as Mexican Mariachi music, blending it with American folk and punk. Their big breakout came when they were asked to write and perform the music for Little Miss Sunshine, earning themselves a Grammy soundtrack nomination, boosting the exposure for new album A Mad & Faithful Telling (Anti). They apparently call their style ‘supermelodrama’, a term that fits perfectly once you hear the opening mazurka cum mariachi cum klezmer romp of Basso Profundo, the sweeping bolero and trumpets balladeering Along The Way, gypsy fiddle stomper instrumental Comrade Z and the drunkenly lurching Head Honcho. There’s a few surprise curves too, what with Transliterator opening on plincketty piano and brooding melody before erupting into rowdy rock guitar while Blessing In Disguise is a big carousel waltzer right out of the crooner 40s, the soaring mid-tempo The Clockwise Witness tinkles along on a toy piano sounding more like a balladeering Cure than anything and dreamy swaying closer A New World is the sound of Roy Orbison fronting Arcade Fire round a gypsy campfire. Expect magic and a lot of fiery Cossack dancing. 7.30pm. £8.50. Carling Academy 2 Tuesday April 8 City And Colour
The side project of Alexisonfire singer Dallas Green, this is light years away from their screamo speed metal as he reveals his softer, acoustic side on new album Bring Me Your Love (Hassle), a collection of intimate, hushed confessionals about love, life, insecurity and loss. Being Canadian, there’s an almost obligatory Neil Young influence, here manifested on the strumalong Body In A Box and What Makes A Man , but Green doesn’t have to rely on comparisons to make an impression. The celebratory The Girl, slow barroom swayer As Much As I Ever Could, reverb hued Forgive Me, a bouncy self-examining The Death Of Me, harmonica plaintive Against The Grain (very, er, Harvest) and the rousing handclappy singalong chorus Sleeping Sickness all afford engaging highlights, Green’s parched but honeyed voice warm and welcoming in way the day job most certainly never is. He should take time off more often. 8pm. £12.50. Glee Club Wednesday April 9 The Gutter Twins
Former Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan and ex-Afghan Whigs singer Greg Dulli join forces to give everyone spine-shivering creepy thrills with their Saturnalia (Sub Pop) album, a collection of black lined post grunge retro psychedelia gloom and menace that draws on Bowie (listen to The Stations) and Led Zep influences for an excursion into despair and redemption. Brooding and at times sinister, it lurks in the shadows, eyes red and piercing as they strip down the blues with murder ballad All Misery/Flowers and its nerve-twisted percussion and moaned vocals that make Nick Cave sound like Jason Donovan or delve into swampy voodoo riffs with Bete Noir and the steamrollering Idle Hands. Who Will Lead Us is U2 infused with Daniel Lanois gris gris, a Zep-blues infused Seven Stories Underground could well be played on the skulls of the dead as Dulli sings about the black dog on his tail, I Was In Love With You comes on like a Beatles croon aboard the devil’s carousel and Each To Each is tribal dance recast as electronica. Douse yourself in whiskey and nicotine before you get there and surrender to the beauty of their soul roasting splendour. 8pm. £16. Glee Club Wednesday April 9 Dorp
In town to run an afternoon workshop with local music students covering all aspects of being an artist in the today's industry, the London outfit (named after the Afrikaan word for a small village) will also be headlining a free gig with two student bands providing the opening sets. Though tagged as electro rock, while incoming single Rollercoaster (Caned & Able) opens with an scuffed electronic pulse and there’s some whippling here and there, it more readily shows them to be attuned to the American college rock of REM and the like. Elsewhere on the EP, Pigs Do Fly has a positive mix of jangle and brooding that recalls Wall Of Voodoo and, in keeping with the current vogue, a shadowy BoyGirl has definite Eastern European slow waltz tendencies. There’s something about these boys that suggests you get in on the ground floor now, because the elevator is definitely going up .8pm. Free. Hare & Hounds Wednesday April 9 Pete and the Pirates
Buccaneering out of Reading on the galleon captained by Pete Cattermoul, this rollicking rabble play ramshackle garage pop with more than a splash of loose-limbed shanty stompalong and folksy mosh to flesh out the noise. They sail into town with the colours flying for their Little Death debut (Stolen Recordings), cutlasses drawn and cannonballs flying through the main-brace splicing clatter and bounce of I’ll Love, Come On Feet, Lost In The Woods and the nervy stabbing Bright Lights. They don’t just deliver broadsides though, Humming, Eyes Like Tar and Song For Today all numbers to get you maudlin and teary-eyed as you drown your sorrows in a cask of grog. But it’s the jolly rogering of their more exuberant minor chord sallies that seem set to them and their audiences yo ho hoing into the night. 7.30pm. £7.50. Bar Academy Wednesday April 9 K.T. Tunstall
Is she rock chick now or still the mellow singer-songwriter for the Radio 2 brigade? Well, both judging by current album Drastic Fantastic (Relentless) which embraces the stomping Little Favours, choppy, handclapping and slide guitar blues Hold On, and the Sheryl Crow like new single If Only, but also the delicate folksy pop of White Bird, a chorus friendly Saving My Face and the easy flowing Beauty Of Uncertainty, Someday Soon and Paper Aeroplane. So there you go, two kt’s for the price of one.7.30pm. £22.50. W’hampton Civic Hall Thursday April 10 Elbow
You might not have noticed it but, without any flash, hype or tabloid grabbing headlines, Elbow have become one of the country’s best bands. They’ve also just released The Seldom Seek Kid (Fiction), the finest album of their career and a serious contender for the year’s best. Informed by Guy Garvey’s usual musings on love and loss but also the fact that fatherhood has embraced several members, it’s full of both big noise and quiet reflections, celebratory and melancholic in equal measure. Opening with the blast punctuated ripples of Starling’s overtures of romance, it slides into the cigarette smoke stained flamenco of The Bones Of You with its echoes of Gilbert O’Sullivan (in a good way), the whispering quietly pulsing love song to a new child that is Mirrorball and then the industrial beat work song chant of Grounds For Divorce that is exactly what you might have expected from a meeting between Pink Floyd, the Chilis and McCartney. And that’s just them warming up on the first four tracks. The spooked jazz flavours of An Audience With The Pope enfolds you in its alcohol fumed swaying arms like some exotic femme fatale, Weather To Fly reminds Athlete how late night worn down to the bone frayed nerve songs are written while The Loneliness Of A Tower Crane Driver slow dances round an empty ballroom with the ghosts on broken hearts. On A Day Like This invites strings in for a soaring anthemic stadium ballad that might have been plucked from some 40s Hollywood romance scored by Snow Patrol and, keeping the cinematic notes tunes, The Fix is a carnival cabaret lounge waltzer that Bobby Darin could have sung in a Herbert Lom noir. Crown all this with potential show closer Friend Of Ours, a heartbreaking elegy to a mate who passed away, rising to heaven’s gates and fading on a dying fall, and you’ve got more than enough choices to make this the potential gig of the month. Support comes from San Francisco’s Two Gallants, back promoting their current self-titled album with its love of early Southern blues, rustic Americana, Neil Young and Bob Dylan. , The tearstained heart-splintering likes of Trembling Of The Rose, The Hand That Held Me Down, and Ribbons Round My Tongue, should put you in the right emotional mood for the headliners with the rumbling Zep-like blues howl of My Baby’s Gone offering a chance to blow off steam. 7.30pm. £15. Carling Academy Thursday April 10 Jason McNiff
Born in Bradford of Irish-Polish stock, a graduate in French and Russian, and a former cross-country runner for Yorkshire, McNiff is quite open about his influences, basically early Dylan, Woody Guthrie and Ernest Hemingway. I don’t think he sounds much like Ernest, but you can certainly hear Bob's nasal tones in his vocals, guitar playing and songwriting. He’s out and about plugging In My Time (Snowstorm), a compilation of his previous three albums with a handful of new numbers. I can't say I'm much taken with gypsy folk stomper Bella Ciao, an Italian anti-fascist song from WWII but the Simon & Garfunkel like Pilgrim Soul, a Dylanesque live version of folksy hymn Hard Times and the John Prine sounding Lost My Way are welcome additions to his repertoire. He’ll doubtless by picking and choosing from the library, but hopefully will find space to include the Dylanesque Blow Up The Bridge, In Our Time with its traces of Heart of Saturday Night Tom Waits and Soho, a number that shows off his dexterity on the fretwork with strong echoes of John Fahey.8pm. £5. Tin Angel, Taylor John's House, Canal Basin, Coventry Friday April 11 Supergrass
Having been given a bit of a bruising by response to their musically low key and more rustic Road To Rouen, the lads head back to tried and tested ground with Diamond Hoo Ha (Parlophone), reprising their Beach Boys (The Return Of...) and Bowie (Ghost Of A Friend) influences, cranking back the Iggy glam rock (Bad Blood) and, on the likes of the title track and Whisky & Green Tea flirting with White Stripes fans. Rebel In You even presses the flesh with fuzzy guitar edged 70s pop soul while Butterfly heads off over the sun-kissed horizon, dragging the guitars in search of Phil Spector, the Brill Building and Polyphonic Spree. It’s hardly original, but, while they could do with curtailing the Supertramp influences evident on Rough Knuckles right now, it is the sound of a band who appear to be having fun again rather than considering their place in the list of serious musos. It promises to be infectious too. 7.30pm. £17.50. Carling Academy Friday April 11 The Tunics
The adenoidal nasal vocals can get a bit irksome, but this Croydon outfit have a definite air about them that makes you want to hear more. The first missive comes with Cost Of Living (Manta Ray Music), a jostling pork pie hat of a track that variously summons thoughts of Madness, Oasis, the Jam and lad rock with a semi-spoken barrow boy delivery and a hint of ska that’s picked up on slower accompanying track Turn Away. Enterprising souls, they’re planning to initially release their debut album, Somewhere In Somebody’s Heart, only in the town’s they’ve played gigs , and only in local independent music stores. And for just 4 quid. They’re also planning a university tour, preceded by six collectable limited edition promo singles exclusively for university and regional media. A canny, well targeted marketing campaign and a bunch of infectious tunes into the bargain; sounds like a winner to us. 7.30pm. £5. Barfly Saturday April 12 Angels & Airwaves
Forged from the aftermath of Blink-182 by Tom DeLonge with an eye to more anthemic pop-punk and shades of electronica, debut album We Don’t Need To Whisper as much hinted at U2 (The Adventure), Yes (Start The Machine) and Pink Floyd (The War) as it did his former outfit. Now comes follow up I-Empire (Geffen), and although the label declined to make promo copies available, chewy catch your breath Everything’s Magic and the stop star riffery Sirens are definite throw backs to the days of What’s My Age Again?. However, the pursuit of more serious shapes is also still evident with online tasters of the clarion cry stuttering beat Call To Arms, the Oriental hued prog inclinations to the electro forged Breathe and the musically ambitious synths and guitars soaring opus that is Love Like Rockets. A solid progression from the debut, their future is far from behind them.
Support comes from Surrey emo punk quintet You Me At Six whose If I Were In Your Shoes may sound a little generic with its snarly riffs and angsty vocals, but in the choppy You’ve Made Your Bed and earlier storming Panic At The Disco-ish single Save It For The Bedroom they can rest assured of having at least two personal classics under their belt. 6pm. £16.50. Carling Academy Sunday April 13 The Breeders
After six years silence you’d be forgiven for thinking they’d slipped quietly away. But no, Kim and Kelley Deal resurface as potent as ever with Mountain Battles (4AD), a fine mixture of swirling brash psychedelia (Overglazed), throaty bass throbbing indie funk (Bang On), echoey spectral balladry (Night Of Joy) and old time back pew country (Here No More). On Regalame Este Noche they even do a moody Spanish ballad that could have been lifted from some 60s soundtrack. Capable of fuzzing it up on No Way, smoothing it out on the late night Lynchian sounding Spark or simply letting it hang with the loose limbed indie raspy guitar pop It’s The Love and German Studies. They have a sense of humour too, as the winking Eastern rhythms and snake charmer vocals of Istanbul clearly indicate. It may be a shade or two away from their classic Last Splash triumphs, but when they hit the stage and weld the new material with established crowd rousers like Cannonball, Divine Hammer and Glorious nobody’s going to be splitting hair. 7pm. £15. Carling Academy Sunday April 13 4ft Fingers
The sound of old school punk-pop, the Cheltenham quartet have spent the last seven years and various line-up changes finding their feet over the course of three albums. They’re clearly standing solid now with New Beginnings Of Old Stories (Not On Your Radio), a belting rush of adrenaline that has no truck with sissy things like ballads, hitting the ground running with Where Did All The Legends Go?, the guitars shooting off sparks like all your Bonfire nights come at once. There’s no let up either, launching right into Thick As Thieves and hammering through the equally rowdy, air fisting, beer spilling anthemic celebrations of brotherhood and sticking together, memories of old arms-linked days that are Save Your Soul Tonight, Little Did We Know, A Place I Call Home, Deal Those Cards and, by way of a curveball, the sea shanty swaying The Tale Of Benjamin Lloyd, complete with penny whistle. Subtle they’re not, but for a sweaty, wall-slamming, shouty night they clearly are the business. 6.30pm. £6. Bar Academy Sunday April 13 Portishead
Formed in Bristol in 1992, Beth Gibbons, Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley quickly became the leading lights of the region’s trip-hop scene, releasing the critically and commercially successful 1994 debut Dummy, 1997’s Portishead and, a year later, the stunning Roseland NYC Live. Then in 1999, the trio called a halt with everyone going off to do their own things, the guys producing The Corals third album and recording a cover of Shadows hit Apache under the name of The Jimi Entley Sound while Gibbons hooked up with former Talk Talk member Paul Webb to record the Rustin’ Man album Out Of Season. The comedown soul-folk found there now resurfaces on the trio’s comeback single, Machine Gun which finds Gibbons in trad folk vocal mood to an insistent electronic trigger beat pulse that sounds like, well a machine gun actually. It’s lifted from their self-descriptively named third studio album, Third, but such has been the wall of secrecy surrounding it that the label has declined to make advance copies available for review to anyone except key media. In addition to the single, the track listing lines up as Silence, Hunter, Nylon Smile, The Rip, Plastic, We Carry On, Deep Water, Small, Magic Doors, and Threads, five of which the band premiered last December at All Tomorrow’s Parties. The album won’t be out until the end of the month, but I think it’s safe to say you can take it on trust that this is one gig you won’t want to be missing. 7pm. £30. W’hampton Civic Hall Monday April 14 Slaves To Gravity
Forged from the ashes of undervalued London combo The*Ga*Ga*s, the quartet have been making waves in the UK Rock chart with their Big Red and Meantime singles. Now comes the self-produced debut album Scatter The Crow (Gravitas) and further evidence that they have a big thing for the likes of Soundgarden, Creed, Alice In Chains and the like. It’s a big, rasping noise, packed with polished fulsome hard rock melodies and Tommy Gleeson’s Cobian like grunge vocals. They may not be delivering anything you’ve not heard before, but at least numbers such as the grinding Heaven Is A Lie, a soaring LG Halo, the pistol-whipping Burning Robe, a swellingly majestic Doll Size and the obligatory sensitive acoustic ballad that is Rose & The Ocean Blue have the strength to make you focus on the band playing them rather than those that came before. 7.30pm. £6. Carling Academy 2 Monday April 14 A Hawk & A Hacksaw
Having just played support to Portishead, Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost make a quick return to the West Mids for their own, more intimate headliner and another chance to savour the traditional Eastern European folk and jazz interlacing their own numbers on current mini album A Hawk And A Hacksaw and The Hun Hanger Ensemble as well as equally rich gypsy and klezmer influenced numbers from their earlier releases. 8pm. £9.50. Glee Club Monday April 14 The Fratellis
Having done surprisingly well for themselves with their pub floor laddy rock pop romping debut album Costello Music and songs about t sex and having a larf out on the town, it’s now time for the Glasgow trio to reveal whether they have the staying power to do it again. Are they going to reworking the same blueprint that spawned Chelsea Dagger, Flathead, Creepin Up The Backstairs, and Everybody Knows You Cried Last Night or will they be refining and progressing the sound? With new single Mistress Mabel not due until May and second album Here We Stand arrivinga month later, this affords an early opportunity to decide wteher to start saving up or looking round for your next bunch of heroes. 7.30pm. £17.50. Carling Academy Tuesday April 15 Long Blondes
The Sheffield indie five piece never seemed to be off the road when they released debut album, Someone To Drive You Home, so presumbably this is just the start of another endless series of gigs as they look to insinuate the follow up, “Couples” (Rough Trade), into the nation’s heads. It seems they’ve had a bit of disco awakening, new single Century opening the album with spacy electronica and a lithe Grace Jones rhythm while the reggae-pop lurching Guilt sees Kate Jackson invite Debbie Harry on to the dancefloor to groove with the Pet Shop Boys while I Liked The Boys and Here Comes The Serious Bit keeps her there after they make their excuses and leave. There’s an arty coolness in evidence that enhances the often futuro and sometimes robotic flavours they’re seeding into the recipe on songs that generally sashay around the dark fringes of relationships while tossing off references to the likes of Terry Wogan, Peter Sellers, Kenny Everett and, er, Clinique. They even have a song about Walsall born multi-millionaire model and self-styled freak of nature Erin O’Connor. Round The Hairpin nods to krautrock, I’m Going To Hell is a rush of Euro punk and electronics, Nostalgia borrows some louche from Bryan Ferry and the perhaps self-mockingly titled Too Clever By Half is like some glacial, spooked St Etienne after gargling with methodone. More than enough variety and shade to keep you guessing where they go next, if they can muster the same miasma for the live set the answer can only be onwards and upwards. 7.30pm. £11.50. Carling Academy Tuesday April 15 Ben’s Brother
An anodyne five piece whose debut album, Beta Male Fairytales, sounded like a watery Rod Stewart designed for playing in the background of unambitious wine bars, it comes as a surprise to find them on the verge of international breakthrough after having a new song used for an American chewing gum commercial featuring a frog. Storming the internet and i-Tunes, and climbing the US Radio charts, it’s apparently also had droves of people using it for their own mimed YouTube videos. As it happens, now being released as a single, Stuttering (Kiss Me Again), is no less pleasantly unexceptional than things like the Blunt-styled Rise or self-empowerment anthem I Am Who I Am from the album which is now being re-released with it as a bonus track. Chalk up another one for the triumph of the bland leading the blind. 8pm. £10. Glee Club Tuesday April 14 Black Tide
With their youngest member just 15 and the others still not old enough to legally,go drinking, this Miami quartet are being hailed as saviour of heavy rock and talked about in the same breath as Guns N' Roses, Iron Maiden, and Megadeth. A little perspective please. Their debut album, Light From Above (Interscope), is good, opening single Shockwave a raging piledriver that recalls the early days of Skid Row or WASP with plenty of burning fretwork from youngster Gabriel Garcia, while Shout and Warriors of Time with its Spanish acoustic intro, wear their Maiden influences on their sleeve. They’ve been working hard on emulating other people’s riffs, indeed they actually do a cover of Metallica’s Hit The Lights that would impress a tribute band convention while the sleazy swaggering Live Fast Die Young sounds like it was lifted from the Motley Crue archives and pasted on to an AC/DC hard drive. It’s a perfectly solid rock album, one that’s guaranteed to get the heads banging, the air guitarists frenzied and the devil signs jabbing the air, but it works so hard at being a perfect replica of 80s metal that it never really lets the band find their own contemporary identity. Still by the time you’ve thrown yourself into the Ozzy banging Let Me, the searing licks of Black Widow and the decidedly epic aspiring title track, you’ll be too exhausted to be worried about retro tags. 7.30pm. £5. Bar Academy Thursday April 17 Ocean Colour Scene
Having wound up their On The Leyline tour in their hometown before Christmas, OCS return for a stripped down acoustic night in the settings of the fabulously restored venue. It’ll be the full band, just without the electrics powered up. Which means they’ll be exploring material that wouldn’t normally feature on the set list, allowing Simon Fowler’s folksy quivering vibrato the full spotlight on things like I Told You So and It’s My Shadow while bringing different dimensions to numbers such as The Day We Caught The Train and The Riverboat Song. They did, of course, release a live acoustic album from the Jam House two years ago, though chances are the set list tonight’s going to be substantially different given they’re recording the gig for a future DVD release, hopefully finding space for Fowler to do his best Orbison on Daylight and show off his finest Barry Gibb for Golden Gate Bridge. 7.30pm. £20. B’ham Town Hall Thursday April 17 The Lines
The Wolverhampton boys keep heading in the right direction, totting up the road miles as they continue to plug debut riff flurrying single Domino Effect and honing material for the eventual album. Tracks from a recent gig at the Wulfrun Hall can be found on their myspace page (www.myspace.com/wearethelines ) where Loudmouth shows their explosive live delivery but, more to the point, both Over And Out and the fantastic Sirens point up their ability to craft emotionally swelling ballads that fully warrant those Verve comparisons. 7.30pm. £6. Barfly Friday April 18 We Are Scientists
Having lost drummer Michael Tapper somewhere along the way to their sophomore album, remaining scientists Keith Murray and Chris Cain have also shed some of the geeky exuberance and weirdness of their debut. So it is that Brain Thrust Mastery (Virgin) sounds like an album made by grown ups who realise that while partying may be fun, you can’t build a life on it. Thus there’s more radio friendly songs that borrow from the big noise pop of U2 (After Hours), the anthemics of James (Impatience could have been lifted from Gold Mother or Seven), the dancey melodies of Duran (Let’s See It, Lethal Enforcer), Weezerish punk pop (Altered Beast) and the rocking urgency of Killers (After Hours, Dinosaurs) as well as some 80s Bowie dance rock (That’s What Counts) and crunchy goth (Chick Lit) They still twiddle around with expectations, as with Spoken For which drifts along like tinkling Coldplay and then suddenly erupts in a brief sonic storm or the swirling electronica that curls around the pop core of the self-doubting Ghouls, but this is the sound of a band who want you to admire their quirks, but want you to love the heart of the music more. Luckily for them, it’s mostly hard to resist. 7pm. £14. Carling Academy Friday April 18 Captain
Their debut album, This Is Hazelville, never quite became the sound of summer 2006, but the boy girl electro pop quintet are looking to have another crack this year with their forthcoming sophomore release. However, you have to trust that there’s going to be better songs in store than lead off single Keep An Open Mind (EMI), which turns out to be fairly plodding stuff with none of the previous West Coast sparkle or dance friendly rhythms. If they don’t improve on this, then they look like being d emoted in the ranks. 7.30pm. £8. Barfly Friday April 18 Michael Weston-King
There’s a new live album in the offing, recorded during the recent US tour, and he’ll be getting down to the next studio album shortly, but in the interim here’s another foray to plug last year’s New Kind of Loneliness and such numbers as the Gram Parsons-like My Heart Stopped Today, the poignant It Will End In Tears and the quietly moving From Out Of The Blues as well as try out the newer material. The gig’s a bit of a glittering folk package too since it also features the collaboration between legends John Renbourn and Robin Williamson, as well as rising singer-songwriter Findlay Brown whose album, Separated By The Sea (Peace Frog), with its leafy acoustic 60s folk feel, bears the influences of Tim Buckley and Simon & Garfunkel. Worth ensuring you don’t miss hearing him do the Everlys-like Come Home and the country lullaby flavours of Tonight Won’t Wait.7.30pm. £12. Moseley All Services Club, Church Road, Moseley Friday April 18 Raymond Froggatt
First emerging in the 60s with his gentle, melodic country tinged pop and songs such as Anything You Want To, Teach Me Pa, Moving Down South and, of course, Callow la Vita or, as it’s better known, Red Balloon, Birmingham born Froggy never received the success or acclaim he deserved. However, the past couple of decades have seen him enjoying a reputation as one of this country’s most popular country performers. Now in his late 60s, he maintains a regular touring and recording schedule, his warm, cracked and husky voice still as potent as ever, with long time collaborator Hartley Cain still behind the pedal steel. He’s here now as part of his Birmingham Rain tour, promoting the album (RBM) of the same name. One of his best collections in recent years, his world weary romanticism is in fine form with Love Me A Lot, the reflective Autumn Rain, I’ll Be Seein’ You Tonight and A Matter Of Time while politics ripple gently through Running Out Of Time and the title track pays loving tribute to his hometown and the many fine musicians it spawned in the 60s. If the city ever has a hall of fame, Froggy fully deserves to be there in the roll call. 7.30pm. £12. Wulfrun Hall Saturday April 19 The Presidents of the United States of America
Forget Obama, Hillary and John McCain, this is the only presidential race you should be thinking about. Originally formed back in 1993 and soaring to fame with their hits Lump, Peaches and Kitty, they then called it a day in 1998 when Chris Ballew decided he wanted to spend time with his family. Two years and several side projects later, they reunited to record a new album, but never promoted it with live shows. Calling it a day again in 2003 they reformed a year later and are still going strong, albeit now effectively down to a trio with guitbass player Andrew McKeag taking over from the semi-retired Dave Dederer. They’re here plugging new album These Are The Good Times People (Cooking Vinyl), an ebullient set of melodic punk pop a la Mixed Up SOB and French Girl, perky fun power pop (Bad Times) and even country-funk dance in Ladybug with its lines about maggots in sour meat. The likes of the hoedown stomper Truckstop Butterfly, So Lo So Hi, and Loose Balloon are closer to Barenaked Ladies than Blink 182, but, as Deleter and Rot In The Sun show, they can still crank up the three chord pile-on when the need requires. Give them your vote. 6pm. £12.50. Carling Academy Saturday April 19 Simple Plan
Given they enlisted the help of producers who’d previously worked with Justin Timberlake, Avril Lavigne, Evanescence and Kelly Clarkson, you’d expect to find the eponymous fourth album (Lava) a bit of a genre-hopping affair. However, while there’s a bubbling beats hip hop style intro to When I’m Gone, this is still pretty much about guitar driven pop-punk with big choruses and hooks, spraying out on such numbers as Take My Hand, Save You, Generation (with its Ramones hey ho let’s go reference), What If and the punchily anthem Time To Say Goodbye. Maybe because it’s what they know best, but these tracks work far better than something like The End where they experiment with beats and Duran inclinations or the Timberlake styled r&b boy band pop of new single Your Love Is A Lie. Mind you, I Can’t Wait Forever does give good stadium power ballad. At the end of the day though, this is all really about audiences who wished Busted had never broken up. 7.30pm. £13.50. Wulfrun Hall Saturday April 19 Phosphorescent
Behind the nom de music hides one Matthew Houck, a lo fi Georgia singer-songwriter whose current Pride (Dead oceans) album with its slow core cosmic country, readily prompts associations with the likes of Sparklehorse, Low, Will Oldham and the sparser, slower moments of Flaming Lips as well as, on Be Dark Night, a chapel hymnal Brian Wilson. These are fuzzed and bleary songs of pain and praise, of prayers and pleadings, sickness and swooning. Mortality lurks in the shadowy corners of the woozy At Death, A Proclamation, the undulating slow waltz of The Waves At Night and the ukulele shaded hallucinatory drug fever of Wolves. But there’s no sense of fear, rather a quiet grace suffuses the album and Houck’s delivery, beautifully massaged through My Dove, My Lamb, the strung out Southern folk gospel revivalism of Cocaine Lights and A Picture of Our Torn Up Praise. The title track’s not easy to love with its wounded banshee ghosts, yelping ands howling at the hem of his soul, but chances are that won’t be figuring large in a set list more likely to call you to glory than call you to account. 7.30pm. £6. Tin Angel, Taylor John's House, Canal Basin, Coventry Sunday April 20 Edwyn Collins
Apparently he almost died recently. Which would have meant he’d probably only be remembered for being the bloke out of Orange Juice who had that nagging hit A Girl like You. Which would have been to him a disservice because Collins has always been about more than that, it’s just that he’s never really come up with anything else of the same memorable quality and no one’s ever really been persuaded to buy his records. It’s unlikely to be remedied with current release Home Again (Heavenly) either, despite the fact it’s the usual collection of classy soulful polished pop flipping between the easing on down ballads and more punchy rock. Ignoring the fact that One Is A Lonely Number owes a considerable debt to Nilsson’s One. Home Again is a leafy folk ballad, You’ll Never Know a ripple of Scottish kon-tiki lounge, Superstar Talking The Blues a rattling along countrybilly tune and Leviathan a suitably moody Orbison in space piece of psychedelic folk rock. Pleasant listening but, I’m afraid, there’s still nothing here to make him more than the bloke out of Orange Juice who had that nagging hit. 8pm. £17.50. Glee Club Sunday April 20 The Courteeners
More Manchester indie pop with ringing guitars and Smiths and Libertines t-shirts, Liam Fray and the chaps take their singalong set list shows on the road to launch debut album St Jude (A&M). That’s the patron saint of lost causes, but it’s unlikely they’ll have much need to call upon his services given the instant accessibility of such swaggery gems as past single What Took You So Long, the rowdy stomping If It Wasn’t For Me, Motown infused end of show slow swayer Please Don’t, and their swipe at fashion followers Fallowfield Hillbilly. Critiques of lad life and a concern with permanence and change inform much of the material here. How Come is wistful envy of the bloke who pulls all the birds but clearly has no depth to his commitments, there’s the book and cover themes of No You Didn’t, No You Don’t, the dangers of living fast and burning up to Not Nineteen Forever while both the shantyish Bide Your Time and the simple acoustic Yesterday, Today and Probably Tomorrow are love songs informed with resignation of inevitable break-ups. Not quite in the Morrissey class of tormented youth angst perhaps, but they seem set to soundtrack a fair few bedroom bouts of teen self-pity this year. 7pm. £10. Wulfrun Hall Monday April 21 The Kills
Alison Mossheart and Jamie Hince (Kate Moss’s new thang, donchaknow) are back to spread their stripped down garage rock cool around a little more with new album Midnight Boom (Domino) and a bundle more of Velvets, PJ and Patti rifferama. With a drum machine. The opening U.R.A Fever, is an unexpected excursion into sleazed trip hop with handclap slow march and strobe flash noise, but then Cheap And Cheerful reassures you that this is still about dirty, grunged lo fi rock n roll, a blueprint they work with detached nonchalance on Getting Down, M.E.X.I.C.O., Sour Cherry and Hook And Line. Their scuffed, wire-string ballad put in an appearance on the drum machine clopping Tape Song and, a bit of a standout, Velvet-like acoustic closer Goodnight Bad Morning while Hook And Line keeps the flag flying for New York Patti Smith punk even as Black Balloon seems to be wafting them away to more tropical Debbie Harry shores. It’ll be bleedingly loud when they play live, so take your leather skinnies, shades and throw yourself into their studied ennui with both ears.
Support comes from These New Puritans, plugging Swords of Truth (Angular), the latest single to be lifted from the Southend outfit’s Beat Pyramid debut album and, once again, painting them as a hybrid of New Order and Gary Numan with a dash of Talking Heads and keyboard player Sophie Sleigh-Johnson doing the Ron Mael straight-faced thing live. 7.30pm. £10. Carling Academy 2 Tuesday April 22 Gogol Bordello
Fronted by moustachioed New York based Ukrainian Eugene Hutz this lot have been whipping up a storm with their marriage of punk and traditional Eastern European gypsy music with its dervish fiddles and fiery accordions. They’re over here plugging Super Taranta! (SideOneDummy), an album that positively exudes the smell of vodka fumes, bowls of borscht and, as Hutz mentions on the satirical American Wedding, marinated herring. There’s no doubting the influence of bands like the Pogues and The Clash as Hutz and his rabble romp through the likes of the reggae tinted Tribal Connection, the lurching stomp of Ultimate, Forces of Victory, Wonderlust King, My Strange Uncles From Abroad and, a track that deftly encapsulates much of their thematic agenda, Alcohol. Played with breathless abandon, there’s a certain air of kitsch to the band’s approach with its deliberately overemphasised accents and culturally stereotypical melodies, but that only adds to the frenzied fun as Hutz thrashes about the stage prompting audiences into wild bouts of ungainly Cossack dancing. 7.30pm. £14. Carling Academy Wednesday April 23 Nizlopi
Having released the ExtraOrdinary mini-album a couple of years back, Luke Concannon and John Parker finally arrive with the full-length follow up to Half These Songs Are About You. Once again Make It Happen (FDM) is a folk-pop-hip hop-soul hybrid somewhere between Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison and The Streets, though, as on the opening to the gospel infused Start Beginning, a touch of Incredible String Band seems to have made its way into the mix too. Although they remain less convincing on their white boy raps, the hip hop influenced material and Parker’s human beatboxing are stronger this time around, notably so on the social protest driven I’m Alive. Their political conscience is particularly active here with Feel Inside and, preceded by a Rant from Benjamin Zephaniah, the clattery England Uprise and the eco themed If You Care About It all protest driven. The latter’s got a Marleyesque reggae rhythm to it and it’s interesting to hear African influences also making themselves felt on Find Me and Flooded Quarry while My Last Night In Dakar contains both kora and Senegalese vocals. When not addressing issues, the pair generally tend to be talking about matters of the heart, infusing Morrison soul into discovering or losing love numbers like Drop Your Guard, The One, Without You and the Celtic fiddled Part Of Me where they call on the likes of George Bush, Amy Winehouse, Tony Blair and Dr Dre to acknowledge their inner gay. They still tend to pitch the sound all at one note and the arrangements, with the double-bass, can be cluttered, but it’s fair to say they’ve finally put the novelty tag of the JCB Song behind them to be recognised as the inventive folk-soul artists they are. 8pm. £9. Glee Club Wednesday April 23 The Wallbirds
Punky country folk-pop from Doncaster, they released debut single The Avenue last year, a clattering meeting between Lonnie Donegan, the LAs and Blonde on Blonde Dylan passing around a jar of moonshine. The skiffle sound’s there too on Desperate and Lying At The Side Of You (with a hint of Beautiful South perhaps) while the slow waltzing 8 O’Clock Blues underlines the Dylan influences and Engine their slow dance in the honky tonk side. Worth a flutter. 7.30pm. £6. Barfly Thursday April 24 Bob Lamb Showcase
The local legend producer puts the spotlight on three of the acts with whom he’s currently working. Tom Bellamy’s a Birmingham singer-songwriter and acoustic guitarist, Ghost Songs showing a strong trad influence to his haunting work. Having played several support slots here, tonight gives him the chance to stretch out with his band.
Hailing from Wolverhampton, songs like Breadline have had multi-instrumentalist Ben Drummond tagged with the nu-folk revival but influences also embrace Steely Dan and, as witness Lar In Your Bed, the flamenco hip hop of Ojos de Brujo.
Finally there’s relative veteran Rob Tyler making a rare solo appearance with his blend of Neil Young and Nick Drake. 7.30pm. £5. Glee Club Friday Apr 25 Lykke Li
That’s Lykke Zahrisson, an ethereal voiced songstress from from Stockholm who’s recently signed to the indie cool Moshi Moshi label, her forthcoming self-confessional Youth Novels (LL) album produced by Björn Yttling of Peter Bjorn and John. Opening track Melodies & Desire lays out the stall with ice cave electronic soundscapes and spoken vocals, while recent skittering pop single Little Bit takes a chugging train rhythm and pulse to backdrop her coy little girl delivery before the sax solo pops in to say hi. Follow up I’m Good, I’m Gone is a little funkier in a Swedish working in a coal mine sort of way, a jerky clattering marriage of Tom Waits, Kate Bush and Massive Attack. Sporting stack heels and dance whirls, she’ll be featuring both in the set list as well as previewing such other skewed delights that lurk within the album,. Listen up for the elfin Lily Allen-ish Let it Fall, the celebratory infectious indietronica Dance, Dance, Dance, a moody piano-led Bush surging Tonight, the glacial 60s pop flavoured Hanging High (imagine the Shangri-Las visiting Tokyo with Phil Collins synths), the strobe staccato industrial-electro Complaint Department, Window Blues with its elephant plod beat and burst into Scandinavian operatics, and the rather lovely Everybody But Me. Get in early, it’s highly lykke li that she’s going to be something of a sensation. 7.30pm. £6. Glee Club Friday April 25 Billy Bragg
The first night of the city’s enterprising English Originals Weekend Festival sees the return of the Bard of Braking with a long overdue album of new material, Mr Love & Justice (Cooking Vinyl). To compensate for the wait, he’s actually recorded it twice, both as band version and solo acoustic depending on you prefer your Bragg sliced. Oddly, the band versions seems to have led him to sing with a slight American accent while the alternatives are more akin to the Bragg of yesteryear. Either way, as you’d hope the songs mix together the personal and the political in trademark manner, I Keep Faith (with horns in the fuller sound) a relationship pledge of fidelity and support and M For Me spelling out the need for Commitment and Love while The Beach is Free, the antiwar Farm Boy, the anti-terror legislation themed O Freedom with its references to extraordinary rendition, and the (frankly rather clumsy) tobacco industry bashing The Johnny Carcinogenic Show all wave the banners of protest high. Just to upset expectations, the title track’s actually a relationships song. Although there’s more balls to the band arrangements with solo Bragg occasionally sounding a bit sluggish and dull, it’s not really up to the standard of his earlier, angrier and more charged work, but it’s still good to have him back amongst us, especially with a set that seems likely to punctuate the new songs with some of the old classics. Prior to the concert he’ll also be reading from his book examining the idea of nationalism, The Progressive Patriot. 7.30pm. £22.50. B’ham Town Hall Friday April 25 ¡Forward, Russia!
With new album Life Processes (Cooking Vinyl), the noise mongering Leeds art-rockers have finally dispensed with giving their songs numbers rather than titles. They’ve also apparently embraced their inner emo and while frontman Tom Woodhead’s vocal contortions still sound like someone strangling a cat with wire, they now serve angsty neurosis rather than post punk jitters. Musically, it’s still angular and spiked with nervous itch melodies, the guitars served in thick slabs of exposed wires, at times (as on Gravity & Heat) even taking on hardcore stabbing dimensions. They don’t make for easy, comfortable listening, tracks like the metal-thrusting We Are Grey Matter, the fractured splintered carouselling A Prospector Can Dream and surging Cossack metal charge A Shadow Is A Shadow Is A Shadow all feeling like insects scurrying just under the skin. Even the swelling sway Spring is A Condition, the slower Fosbury In Discontent and the lengthy slow building Spanish Triangles with its anthemic arms waving finale Spring Is A Condition are hardly likely to send you home for a good night’s sleep. Soviet deconstructivism for the dance floor then. 7pm. £7.50. Barfly Friday April 25 Bjork
It’s been a while since the Chinese-baiting Icelandic pixie graced the region with her off-kilter genius, so even better than her visit happens to coincide with Volta (One Little Indian), her best album since Homogenic. Opening in explosive form with the marching percussion driven Earth Intruders and its breathless delivery, just one of the three beats energised Timbaland produced numbers, you get a 10 piece female brass section, two contributions from Antony Hegarty and a tumult of emotion and life-gulping exuberance. The pulse-punching Innocence is all tribal electronica, Declare Independence crawls around nu-rave innerspace like a marauding alien, Vertebrae By Vertebrae feels like a Broadway goth operatic show tune from the fourth dimension, My Juvenile has treated clavichord sounding like ice melting, I See Who You Are tinkles with Oriental water sculptures, Hope, a song about suicide bombers who may or may be pregnant, dapples with kora while the warm soaring ballad Dull Flame Of Desire sees her duetting with Hegarty as liquid brass washes over them. With the live show guaranteed to be a colourful visual spectacular (especially if she’s wearing those feathers) to match the aural kaleidoscopes, this has to be down as one of the year’s most unmissable nights. 7pm. £37.W’hampton Civic Hall Saturday April 26 Seth Lakeman
The second English Originals Weekend
Festival concert provides a strong line up, headed by
He’s joined by Oxford based Sharron Krauss whose Mr Fox’s Wedding draws inspiration from English and Appalachian folk traditions while completing the line-up is East London folktronica collective Tunng whose new album Good Arrows (Full Time Hobby), again marries Nick Drake, Incredible String Band, and John Renbourn on such fresh meadow breezes as Bricks, Hands, Spoons and the oompah beat Bullets. Their wyrd trad and mischievous experimentation finds expression too, Take and Strings very infused with a medieval feel, Soup sliding from Tubular Bells tinkling to sonic scratching metal while Secrets is all pagan spooky bewitchments. 7.30pm. £16.50/£13.50. B’ham Town Hall Saturday April 26 Tom McRae
Bringing the Hotel Cafe tour to town, headliner McRae will be highlighting current album, King of Cards, ranging from the Springsteenesque Set The Story Straight and Bright Lights to the in more muted, whispery Got A Suitcase, Got Regrets, double bass blues shuffle Keep Your Picture Clear and world weary gospel Lord, How Long? Sharing the tour bus, soft sepia voiced Philadelphia born singer-songwriter Catherine Feeny is currently opening ears to debut album Hurricane Glass (Charisma), her gently melodic introspective songs of romantic melancholy earning comparisons to Joni Mitchell, Aimee Mann, Sheryl Crow and Suzanne Vega. Listen put for the tinkling sweetly sad early morning love song Mr Blue, the bluesy political limned Unsteady Ground, the spiky Radar and swaggery handclappy title track.
Born out of the sudden collapse of his
marriage, Greg Laswell’s
Through Toledo (Vanguard) evokes thoughts of early Jackson
Browne with its mix of 70s rootsy folk and crunchy power pop,
smoothly switching from the mellowed melancholic warmth of Do
What I Can, Sing, Theresa Says and the loneliness hung piano
ballads of High And Low and the title track to the cranked up
fuzzed guitar noise of Worthwhile, Amazed and I’m Hit.
Finally, there’s Cary Brothers, a Nashville singer-songwriter who happily cites New Order and The Smiths as formative influences. Having had his song Blues Eyes included on the Grammy winning soundtrack to Zach Braff’s Garden State, Brothers is enjoying something of an enhanced profile. The song’s included on his current album, Who You Are (Procrastination), which gets a release here in July, preceded by the download title track single with its chiming Edge-like guitars and New Order rhythms. Numbers such as Ride and the circling Coldplay-like If You Were Here might be a little too soft rock for some, but those who live their lives to the sound of songs from The OC won’t be disappointed. 7.30pm. £14. Barfly Sunday April 27 The Kooks
Barrelling straight to the No 1 slot and kicking some sniffy reviews into touch, the Brighton boys’ second album has more bubble and fizz than a witch’s cauldron and contains even more charms. Bassist Max Rafferty may have departed, but musically there’s no great deviation of formula from the debut, with short and snappy songs filled with hooks and bouncy melodies and delivered in a Larndan accent. Again they cheerily wear the influences of early Bowie (Love It All), Madness (Mr Maker), Beach Boys (Shine On), Blur (Down To The Market) and, as you might expect from an album that takes its title from the Ray Davies studio where it was produced, The Kinks (Stormy Weather, the reggae inflected Tick Of Time). The opening of See The Sun even sounds like Billy Bragg while there’s surely a big touch of The Police to Luke Pritchard’s vocals on Gap. Surprisingly reflective in places (One Last Time) for their years, there’s a couple of filler plods, but, whether cranking up the indie guitar power on the sexual come on Do You Wanna, playing the acoustic sensitive side on All Over Town or romping along the seafront arms linked on the jaunty Mr Maker, the overall result is feelgood, handclappy, jig around riffery designed to send you home with a stride in your step.
Support comes from hometown mates The Rivers who follow up the choppy Strokesy Knock Me Down with the similarly inclined new single She Gives It Around (NoCarbon) and the vague Jam riffs of Fold For You. Competent but nothing to persuade you to get on stream. 7pm. £18.50. Carling Academy Sunday April 27 Angus & Julia Stone
A welcome return for the Aussie brother and sister duo, showcasing new album A Book Like This (Capitol), the heat hazed desert feel of opening track The Beast curiously calling to mind the druggy West Coast sounds of America’s Horse With No Name It’s all filtered through an acoustic aural prism of summer skies, fresh fields and lazy days by the river, floating on narcotic clouds through the tumbling Here We Go Again with Julia sounding like Victoria Williams chewing gum or the descriptively titled Wasted where she’s more Bjork in gingham and muslin. They’re at their folkiest with the dragonflies over glimmering pools mood of Bella, Hollywood’s disillusionment of wide-eyed innocence welcoming strings to her Melanie-like wide-eyed quiver, the title track a witchy web woven across clip clopping rhythms, Another Day a raggy piano and sleepy brass waltz, Silver Coin bringing the siblings’ voiced together for a breathy, exposed nerve, darkling folk ballad and cello rimmed ticktocking rhythm while Stranger introduces wailing harmonica to Angus’ country lope and a waltzing Soldier finds his sister at her little girl in the spider nursery best. And, if you want lazy jazzy blues, then they oblige with the whistling and woodwind Horse And Cart too. Interleaved with some of the best cuts from the Chocolates & Cigarettes and Heart Full Of Wine EPs, this is going to be an intoxicating evening. Worth noting too that the ltd edition of the new album comes with a bonus DVD featuring inventive videos of The Beast and 8 of the earlier tracks. 8pm. £8. Glee Club Sunday April 27 Daughters of Albion
A splendid finale to the English Originals Festival, things brings together some of the country’s finest female folk voices ina night of solos, duets and collaborations with a backing band that features Martin Carthy and Tim Van Eyken. Sharing the stage with material ranging from 19th century gypsy songs to trip hop, will be June Tabor, Norma Waterson, Kathryn Williams, Folk Horizon nominee Lisa Knapp and sitar playing singer Bishi, but perhaps the most welcome appearance will be that of former Lamb singer Lou Rhodes. Tragic family circumstances forcing her to cancel her last solo tour in support of her Beloved One solo debut, this brings her back showcasing the similarly relationship/love centred follow-up Bloom (Infinite Bloom). It’s an album that evokes the folkier, more elemental aspects of Kate Bush, notably so on the heady opening track Rain. But if that is a full-blooded sonic swirl, Chase All My Winters Away builds to turmoil storm and They Sway’s a tribal groove that suggests Buffy Sainte-Marie crossed with Peter Gabriel, the dominant mood is that of gentle acoustic and seductive sensual vocals, breathing like a dark whisper across Never Loved A Man (Like You) and the finger-picked, rainy day fragility of They Say and the title track. The evening may not afford time to spotlight many of the songs, but whatever treasures there are in store will be worth the visit, and hopefully she’ll be back soon for a night of her own. Prior to the main event, Birmingham's answer to the Be Good Tanyas, Little Sister, will be playing a free show at 6.30pm in the Level 3 Bar of Symphony Hall. 7.45pm. £17.50. B’ham Town Hall Sunday April 27 Luka Bloom
Brother to Christy Moore, Bloom’s out on the road servicing new album Tribe (Big Sky) recorded in collaboration with Irish muliti-instrumentalist Simon O'Reilly. It's a lot more musically ethereal in mood than his past folkier offerings, variously (as on I Am A River or Peace Rains) conjuring nights under open skies, ploughing earthier bluesy furrows (Change) or, as on the instrumental Star Of Doolin, shimmering with a spiritual Celtic transcendence. But Bloom's hushed vocal warmth is as soothing as ever, just as his songs continue to explore such thoughtful themes as the nature of patriotism in a global village (Tribe), mankind's interconnectivity (I Am A River), the situation in the Middle East (Lebanon) and, more than a hint of irony on the spoken Homeless, the fact that the homeless are model urban citizens with their low carbon footprints. I'm not sure it's an approach I'd care to see repeated next time Bloom's contemplating a new studio album, but as a one-off musical diversion it has a beguiling luminescence. 7.30pm. £14. Warwick Arts Centre Tuesday April 29 Envy & Other Sins
In a world where there’s numerous pretenders to the Squeeze crown, the Birmingham boys have a better claim than most. Listen to Morning Sickness on debut album We Leave At Dawn (A&M) and you’ll hear the sound of classic Difford & Tilbrook, likewise on the witty pop of Almost Certainly Elsewhere, and Man Bites Dog. Elsewhere they take on the Cure at their own Lovecats game with overlooked single Highness while the burlesque flavours of Talk To Strangers calls to mind Madness with a hint of Joboxers and (It Gets Harder To Be A) Martyr is a Britpop Joe Jackson crossbred with the Kooks and Billy Joel. And between their inventive arrangements (check out The Company We Keep), infectious melodies, appealing soft burr vocals and the seven minute slow building to tumultuous climax Radiohead-like closer Shipwrecked, they are clearly destined for a place in the current pantheon of Brum music gods alongside Editors, The Guillemots and Misty’s Big Adventure. 7.30pm. £6.50. Barfly Tuesday April 29 Alabama 3
Over their many albums, the Brixton combo have variously filtered their music through gospel, Deep South Americana, funk, blues, country and techno dance to thrilling and atmospheric effect. So, by way of pulling the picture together, they’re back out on the road on the back of retrospective collection Hits And Exit Wounds (One Little Indian). Over a gathering of 18 tracks, it travels their many roads from the twangy Hello I’m Johnny Cash and the Hank Williams influenced U Don't Dance To Tekno Anymore to dropping the beats and toasting on the New Orleans grooved Monday Don’t Mean Anything,, and their trip hop gospel classic Ain’t Goin’ To Goa. Disappointingly there’s no room for the fabulous Disneyland Is Burning but you do get their individual hillbilly techo dance version of Speed Of The Sound Of Loneliness and a cover of Jimmy Reed’s swampy Amos Moses as well as ‘new’ material in an Orbital collaboration on Ska’d For Life from the film SW9, an Arthur Baker remix of Mansion On The Hill and a remix of the aching How Can I Protect You featuring Irish outfit Aslan. An opportune time to play catch up and just remind yourself what good taste you’ve had all along. 7.30pm. £15. Wulfrun Hall
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