Thursday August 2

Ricky Scaggs & Kentucky Thunder

Starting out with the legendary Ralph Stanley in the Clinch Mountain Boys,  Scaggs is a 36 year veteran of the traditional bluegrass scene and one of its most influential figures, but also willing to push the music’s boundaries. A former member of Emmylou Harris’ Hot Band prior to launching his solo career in 1980, in the years since he’s racked up a wall full of awards, including four Grammys, as well as more than two dozen albums. A mark of his contemporary sensibilities can be heard on his recent collaboration with Bruce Hornsby on an album that reinterprets several Hornsby originals (Mandolin Rain, naturally) but also gives a bluegrass makeover to the old Rick James dirty funk hit Super Freak, an eye opener he’ll hopefully be prevailed on to include in this all too rare UK  visit.

Kudos to for homegrown girls Hannah & Sophia, better known around these parts as members of native grown bluegrass outfit Toy Hearts, who’ve been invited to provide the opening set. 7pm. £20. Wulfrun Hall

Friday August 3

Badly Drawn Boy

Something of a feather in the cap for this year’s Sounds In The Round season, the chance to catch Damon Gough in the intimate open air setting has to be a major draw. Or at least it would be if  his recent album, Born In The UK, hadn’t proven his least successful .

All about growing up in the 70s and finding your own identity, peppered with talk of Jilted John, the Queen’s Jubilee, Maggie T and hosepipe bans and full of introspective piano ballads about the highs and lows of love like current single Promises,  it clearly aspires to be a latter day equivalent of the  Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society.

Unfortunately, it falls somewhat short with many of the songs and given his past lyrical output, it’s dispiriting  to hear him sounding so banal, ditching the heroic or poetic in favour of something from an Alan Sillitoe novel.

 Although the likes of Degrees of Separation, Welcome To The Overground, Without A Kiss and the mutedly sad Long Way Round wouldn’t go amiss, it’s likely that, chastened by public response, the set list will be leaning less on the new material and more on old favourites such as Silent Sight, You Were Right and Born Again. 7.30pm. £17. mac Arena

Wednesday August 8

Zico Chain

They’ve been pretty quiet so far this year, but now the Manchester hardcore punk metal trio are ready to make some noise as they hit the road with upcoming new album Food (Hassle) and lead off flesh flaying single Anaemia. They’ve not amended their basic blueprint of thundering riffs, Motorhead and Stooges influences, and Chris Glithero’s bleeding throat vocals applied to socially aware lyrics, but judging by the bluesy swagger of Where Would You Rather Be? they have been hanging out with Mr Melody too. As Pretty Pictures demonstrates, it’s still hard-rocking, brain pummelling stuff with Junk giving even Lemmy a run for his money, but be warned, you may actually go home humming the odd tune or two. 7.30pm. £6. Bar Academy

Saturday August 4
Mexicolas

It’s taken a while but the Birmingham trio finally get round to their debut single with Shame (InExile), a driving rhythm, riff crunching slab of rock from the same template as Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age, Stone Temple Pilots etc though you can actually heartheir claim to have a John Coltrane influence too while Sticks and Stones has that early Police hint in it too.
A ballsy outfit with a vocally muscular frontman in Jamie Evans, the album, X, is due in September and with tasters such as the guitar rasping bluesy Come Clean where Mark Lanegan meets Led Zep and the Chilli Peppers, the jerking, guitar stabbing melodics of Big In Japan and a swaggeringly confident stadium thumping Easy Smile they’re clearly about to join the swelling ranks of the city’s new globe conquering heroes. 7pm. £.5. Bar Academy

Monday August 20

Interpol

Three albums in and the somewhat dour New Yorkers have become firmly established stars signed to a major label and capable of selling out venues at the drop of a ticket. No wonder they feel they can take risks like kicking off Our Love To Admire (Capitol) with the almost six minute sombre gloom of Pioneer To The Falls, a track that pushes keyboards to the front and makes the late Ian Curtis (an obvious band touchstone) sound like Mika.

They don’t lighten up much either, ploughing through the melodic but funereal darkness and haunted dislocation that impregnates the likes of No I In Threesome, the coke sweating Rest My Chemistry, The Scale, and a woozily anthemic Wrecking Ball before reaching an apotheosis with the stripped back vulnerability of The Lighthouse that spreads emotions naked to a simple ambient guitar run.

  They do, of course, do surging riffs like the best of them, the steamrollering rock of Mammoth and, hinting at early Bauhaus and the Bunnymen as well as staple reference point The Chameleons,  the ringing soured romance kiss off The Heinrich Maneuver. The PhD student’s alternative to The Editors with  their songs of alienation and self-loathing designed to fill stadium halls this is romantic misery writ large. Take a large black handkerchief. 7.30pm. £18.50. Carling Academy

Tuesday August 21

+ 44

Blink 182 may be on an indefinite pit stop, but Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker are doing nicely thank you with their  new outfit named, staying with what they know while pushing the borders a bit further.

Debut album When Your Heart Stops Beating (Interscope) is  a mix of cranked up punk pop rocking and mid-tempo ballads then, tumbling melodies, circling choruses and nasal vocals the order of the day, but invested with a touch more muscular depth.

Lycanthrope sets the ball rolling with a spray of licks, Cliffdiving and the electro tinged 155, not straying far from the template while Baby Come On does the quiet bit, anthemic bit routine, Lillian provides an excuse to wave  the lighters out and the Cure-like Weathermen  show they can be just as moody and deep as Bob Smith and his boys.

There’s nothing as durable as All The Small Things or I Miss You, but at least they won’t be needing that bill-paying reunion just yet. 7.30pm. £15. Wulfrun Hall

Sunday August 26

The Only Ones

Perhaps best remembered for Another Girl, Another Planet (as used in last year’s Vodaphone ads and once dubbed the best rock single ever), although they’re cited as influences on such names as Blur, Libertines and even Nirvana, given they never had a hit single and didn’t even manage to scrape into the Top 40 until final album Baby’s Got A Gun, a reunion by this bunch of old New Waves was probably not something you’d have bet on.

They fell apart in disarray and drug problems in 1982, but now  reformed earlier this year, here they are in all their original glory, fronted by gangly Peter  Perrett and featuring former Spooky Tooth drummer Mike Kellie, guitarist John Perry and bassist Alan Mair, respectively ex members of Beatles-sponsored psychedelic underachievers Grapefruit and Glasgow’s likeminded garage outfit The Beatstalkers.

Although they’ve been including new number Dreamt She Could Fly in the shows, Perrett’s apparently balked at the idea of recording another album. However, the back catalogue's being given a remastered push and they’ll doubtless be plucking some of the best numbers, The Whole of the Law, Lovers of Today, Curtains For You and The Big Sleep among them, for the set list. Chances of them making their second time around even semi-permanent are slim, so catch your nostalgia while you can.

Old punk devotees and the contemporary curious alike, might  be interested to hear the gig also includes Penetration, the reformed line-up still headed by Pauline Murray (who provided back ups on The Only Ones track Fools) who went on to front The Invisible Girls and The Storm. While it’s doubtful anyone will remember anything they recorded other than the Don’t Dictate single, both their Moving Targets and Coming Up For Air albums were among some of the better moments of the punk era. Making an evening of it, the line-up  also features sets by John Cooper Clarke, Goldblade, Emergency and The Getaways. 5pm. £15. Wulfrun Hall

Friday August 31

Rilo Kiley

Jenny Lewis returned to day job duties after her blue grass excursion with the Watson Twins for Rabbit Fur Coat, this serves to launch the band’s fourth album, Under The Blacklight (Warner), which reportedly finds her channelling Stevie Nicks with a sound that evokes classic Fleetwood Mac with a strong emphasis on dance friendly rhythms. Certainly that’s the case with the funky steamrollering swagger of kick off single The Moneymaker, but since advance copies of the album were bizarrely not made available it’s difficult to say quite how representative it is. Still, past outings have always had a potent pop rock sensibility and Lewis’ voice isn’t something to pass up sampling in full electric flood. 6pm. £9.50. Carling Academy 2

Friday August 31

The Lancashire Hotpots

As you might guess from the name and the fact there’s members called Dickie Ticker and Willie Eckerslike, this is a bit of a novelty act, more inclined to the comedy circuit. However, out on the road plugging debut album Never Mind The Hotpots (Fuss), they’re worth a look if you fancy a sly giggle since, between the tongue in cheek Lancashire misogyny I Met A Girl On MySpace and the stereotype send ups Chippy Tea and Bitter Lager Cider Ale Stout, they clearly have their pop culture and tech radar well tuned. There’s songs about Firewalls, EBay, Sat Nav, PC World, PSPs, t’Internet, Blue Tooth and (to a tune akin to Matchstick Cats and Dogs) the advantages of Dolby 5.1 while the infuriatingly catchy He’s Turned Emo namechecks Jimmy Eat World, Bullet For My Valentine and Fall Out Boy.

Given radio play and a few bevvies, it could easily give them a hit, as too could A Lancashire DJ which, reworks the tune of Belle of Belfast City with a chorus hook of  ‘I’m a  DJ and I’ll make you dance with a little bit of techno, a little bit of trance..two turntables and a microphone I’ll play some house for your auntie Joan’. There a few dead spots when you might want to top up the glasses, but they’re certainly a lot more cred than the Wurzles. 7.30pm. £6. Little Civic, W’hampton