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ARCHIVED REVIEWS December 2004 Wednesday December 1 Ever since he quit Dodgy six years ago, Clark’s been trying to get a solo album together. He started work back in 2001, recorded Make Believe Love and promptly scrapped it. Since then he’s had another go and plans for a release next Spring. However, just in case he changes his mind, you might want to catch early tasters along with favourite Dodgy tunes at this warm up/showcase gig with him and his new band. 7.30pm, £7, Glee Club. Wednesday December 1 Every Christmas for the past nine years, the NIA’s played host to a a festive concert featuring individual and massed children's choirs and guest spots from upcoming artists. This year’s no different and along with some 6000 kids, guests will include Welsh soprano Katherine Jenkins who’ll perform solo and join the choir for Oh Holy Night, recent Decca signing Chantz whose combination of tap,trumpet and singing has seen him described as a combination of Satchmo and Sammy Davis Jr, Welsh boy band The Noise and, returning after last year’s success to reprise The Living Years, Irish pop singer Keith Semple. The one the focus will be on though is Natascha Sohl whose debut album, Strange Fascination (Granite), with its rock n angst clearly sees her being marketed as a British answer to Avril or Alanis.
She’s not got that strong a voice, tending to stick to one somewhat whiny colour that becomes tiring after a while but she covers the musical bases effectively with melodic rock, acoustic balladry and, as on What Do You Want?, jazz infused funky grooves. Within the 13 tracks here several do rise above the crowd, the urgent bustle of the Alanis-like opening soul-rock swagger Are You Ready?, the moody smoulder Make Your Own Way, and stadium aspiring ballad Forgive Me suggesting that, when she finds her own voice rather than shadowing that of her influences, then things might really start to happen. She’ll be doing just two numbers from the album, hope she picks the right ones. 7.30pm, £16, NIA. Wednesday December 1/Thursday December 2
Always a welcome visitor, the fact he’s doing two near sold out shows is testament to the fact that not having chart hits doesn’t mean you don’t command a large audience. He’s still working the recent Whoever It Was That Brought Me Here Will Have To Take Me Home, his first studio album of all new material in four years, a more personal, less political collection of songs that include Every Little Sign about a drifting relationship and This Being Woman’s celebration of the strength, dignity and grace of older women. But in response to requests he’s also just released Run For Cover, a collection of cover versions of material he’s been performing live over the years and a few others he just wanted to do. His choice says much about his own influences and concerns, embracing as it does Larry Norman’s Dylanesque protest song The Great American Novel, Bruce Cockburn’s They Call It Democracy, Springsteen’s Thunder Road, U2’s Stuck In A Moment, Jackie Lomax’s cult classic How The Web Was Woven and Harry Chapin’s The Mayor of Candor Lied. Always ready to oblige, requests should ensure you get to hear pretty much everything you want too. 7.30pm,
£12, Midland Arts Centre. Wednesday December 1-Friday December 3
McFly may be raking in the tween trophies now, but with a string of sell out arena dates the Busted boys certainly show no signs of relinquishing their crown. If you’ve not experienced the live mania and don’t fancy being stuck in the middle of thousands of screaming 10 year old girls, then you might want to sample things in the safety of your own stereo or DVD with the Ticket For Everyone (Island) album and - slightly longer with bonus features DVD- which is, to all intents and purposes, are an in concert greatest hits as the trio romp and leap their power pop punky way through the likes of Air Hostess, That’s What I Go To School For, 3AM, Who’s David, Crashed The Wedding and their version of Teenage Kicks. The voices are a little more strained without the benefit of studio polish and production while it has to be said that oft repeated hey guys shouts of the singlaong/put your hands in the air variety are hardly at the cutting edge of audience rapport. Still, any one who can release something as infinitely naff as Thunderbirds Are Go and still come up smelling sweet has to be given full respect. Opening the show are upcoming boy band V, who, not a Roman version of Five, have rapidly established themselves as chart residents with a hat trick of hits in the shape of Blood, Sweat & Tears, their rework of the Jacksons’ Can You Feel It and the recent epic sweller You Stood Up. They’ll also be unveiling their debut album, also titled You Stood Up (Island), which goes some way to reinforcing descriptions of them as the new Take That. Certainly, as the likes of Hold Me, Walk On and Fools show, they have a solid grip on dance friendly soul infused harmony pop while both Chills In The Evening and Angel are the perfect blueprint of stadium sway ballads 7.30pm, £22.50, NEC. Thursday December
2
The cover versions continue then. Though not particularly well received by the critics, the Hymns of the 49th Parallel (Nonesuch) album of songs by fellow Canadian singer-songwriters is a well considered collection that sees Lang in fine voice, the orchestral arrangements sensitive to the material and the warm of her emotions in performing them. You’ll be pleased to learn she’s not actually had a go at any old Guess Who tunes, but there’s two apiece by Youngs (After The Goldrush, and the haunting Helpless), Joni (A Case of You, Jericho), Cohen (a soaring but heart burning Bird On A Wire and a stirring Hallelujah) and the perhaps lesser known Jane Siberry (The Valley. Love Is Everything) along with one each from Bruce Cockburn (his early folksy One Day I Walk) and Ron Sexsmith (Fallen), the set completed with one self-penned original, the aching romantic melancholy of Simple. It’s unclear just how much of the set will draw on the album and how much on her own extensive collection of such classics but it’s unlikely that from a list that includes Constant Craving, Miss Chateleine, Love’s Great Ocean and Sexuality at least one of them won’t put in an appearance. 7.30pm, £25, Symphony Hall. Thursday December
2
And yet more covers! Putting their own band material muses to bed for a while, Messrs Heaton and Rotheray and the rest of the chaps have turned to some fairly radical reinterpretations for new album Golddiggas, Headnodders & Pholk Songs (Sony). It’s unlikely anyone ever expected to hear Blue Oyster Cult’s Don’t Fear The Reaper reimagined with a Latin bossa nova rhythm, to find ELO’s Livin’ Thing turned into a jazzy soft shoe shuffle, S Club 7 party groove Don’t Stop Moving be recast like something from a noir movie with a dark country lollop or Grease’s perky rock n rolling You’re The One That I Want get slowed down into a sultry, serpentine and shadowy country ballad. Likewise Brook Benton’s soulful I Can’t Take It anymore becomes brassy 60s pop with a hint of blue beat and The Ramones’ speed punk-pop Blitzkrieg Bop gets slowed down to a playschool bounce. Given lesser known not to say obscure numbers like This Old Skin (The Heppelbaums!), Rebel Prince (Rufus Wainwright), Ciao (Lush) and Valentine (Willie Nelson), unless you happen to be a complete buff it’s hard to know just how different these versions are, which means they have to work in their own context. Which really is how the whole album should be taken, on its own terms rather than by comparison with the originals. And as such, most of it is rather good, as much veined with their love of country as it is that of 60s pop, though even they hold some things sacred, the cover of I’m Stone In Love With You remaining very faithful to the Stylistics’ original. It’s not one to build a whole show around though, so you can assume that the greatest hits album will be extensively plundered too 7.30pm, £23.50, NIA.
Thursday December
2
Having made fans wait seven years for a follow up to The Fat Of The Land and then having the nerve to palm them off with Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned (XL) is pretty insulting. Keith Flint’s gone, so has rapper Maxim Reality and so has anything resembling a decent tune or dance floor crunchers. Spitfire makes a stab at reliving the glory days of booming beats but by the time they reach the second track, the risible hip hop Girls, it seems all inspiration has run dry leaving the likes of You’ll Be Under My Wheels, Action Radar and Hot Ride to sound like second rate Prodigy copyists. Liam Howlett says Flint and Maxim will be back for the tour, but really it’s going to take a lot more than that to entice anyone to fork out for a ticket.
7pm, £22.50, Carling Academy. Friday December 3 Though the Nels Andrews gig for which she was playing support has been cancelled, Wilby’s still hiking up to play a free acoustic set at the bookshop. Lancashire born but London based, her debut album Precious Hours, came out four years ago to earn her country flavoured sweet soul favourable reviews with comparisons to the likes of Patsy Cline, kd lang, Tracey Thorn and Beth Orton, though listening to the jazzy, honeyed torch smoke of something like Dreams or the leafy acoustic You Were Loved it’s hard to see where the PJ Harvey and Shirley Bassey references come from. A formative album that largely manages to paper over some of the cracks of inexperience and hesitancy, stand out numbers such as Take My Hand suggest that she’ll have used the intervening years to hone her craft as well as write the new material she’ll likely to be showcasing here. Worth dropping by for. 4.30pm, Free. Borders, Bull Ring. Sunday December 12 The Saw Doctors
Undisputedly one of the best live bands on the circuit, guaranteed to produce buckets of sweat with their rowdy pub friendly bounce along Irish rock n roll, the Galway boys have never really enjoyed a consistent high chart profile on these shores but are deservedly lionised as the people’s band back in Ireland where their single I Useta Lover is the country’s biggest selling single of all time. Lyrically their songs range from bringing in the harvest to Ireland's unmarried mothers, from playing Gaelic football against a neighbouring village to the effect of religion on a nation's youth. Not your average ale up singalongs then. But singalongs they certainly are, the band consistently whipping audiences into a vocal frenzy, well evidenced on the current Live In Galway (Shamtown) album where they romp through a collection of their finest moments, among then N17, Bless Me Father, Green and Red Of Mayo, the reggae choppy I’ll Be On My Way and That’s What She Said Last Night. Sadly no My Heart Is Living In The 60s still, but who knows what might find their way into the set here as the bonhomie and beer spill out in equal measure. One of the few bands I’ve seen live where the floor quite literally shook from the sheer energy of the audience response, it’s a guaranteed knees up. 7.30pm, £17.50,
Warwick Arts Centre. Sunday December 12/Monday December 13 Wet Wet Wet
Now who’d have imagined that, given the acrimony of the break up, there’d ever be sufficient water to flow under a string of bridges and bring the guys back together. However, while walking grin Marti Pellow has succeeded in going from drug addiction rehab to taking centre stage in the musical Chicago and the other Wets have all been involved in something or other, they’ve found it in themselves to let bygone remain that way and join the reunion ranks. Not, they insist as a bunch of sad sacks trading on the past because they have nothing else to offer but regarding this as part two of the career, looking to the future as an ongoing outfit marrying old hits with new material. Thus this heavily subscribed comeback tour come with a Greatest Hits package that will inevitably get the crowds swaying along to the bestselling likes of Goodnight Girl (an early indication of Marti’s suitability for stage musicals), Wishing I Was Lucky, Sweet Little Mystery, and, of course, With A Little Help From My Friends and the song that’s become their trademark and albatross, Love Is All Around. But there’s also three brand new numbers, picking up where they left off with that sweet soul pop sound on recent country inflected hit All I Want, swaying stadium ballad Can You Hear Me Now and the gospel infused (Feels Like I’m) Walking On Water. Given that they were perhaps starting to wear out their welcome when it all fell apart in 1997, the enforced sabbatical may have been the best thing they could have done, rising from the ashes re-energised and with nostalgia still fresh with the tint of roses. 7.30pm,
£37.50-£25, NEC.
Steve Earle
If nothing else, George W Bush has done wonders for Earle's career, spurring him to some of the sharpest political songs he's written. Following Jerusalem with its story of American taliban John Walker's Blues and the live album All American Boy, recorded on tour during the Iraq war, The Revolution Starts Now is even more direct jab at his nation's rulers and their policies, bookended by two versions of the handclaps and hand-grenades title track. Highly evocative of Jim Morrison at his declamatory best on The End, Warrior finds a universal soldier mourning that there are no more 'honourable frays to join' but that they must remain dutiful and die for "the cruel consequences of your deceit." In more typical Earle form, Home To Houston is a jokey swagger about a trucker who's gone to Basra to make a buck and is now so desperate to get home he's ready to promise God he'll give up his trucking ways, The Gringo's Tale is a gruffly growled reflection of a fugitive secret ops agent who got sick of the job, Condi, Condi a tongue in cheek calypso about wanting to bed National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice while F The CC is a fairly direct Stonesy guitar rocking attack on the Federal Communications Commission and America's revised democracy where criticising POTUS is regarded as tantamount to treason. He's even handed too, well aware of the lot of the poor on both sides when it comes to being cannon fodder, the quietly chiming Rich Man's War drawing parallels between tattooed Bobby in Kandahar because there's bills to pay back home and Ali from Gaza who, reared amid tanks, "wrapped himself in death and praised Allah" when he was turned into a terrorist. It's not all agitprop, more intimate wounds and bruises can be found on the lonesome desire in waiting of I Thought You Should Know and, striking a welcome note of optimism amid the weariness and cynicism, the ringing faint hope burrowing up from The Seeker. Don’t worry about the gig turning into a soapbox though, first and foremost Earle’s an entertainer and, with the weight of his recent material behind him, this promises to be one of his most potent tours yet. Opening the show is Shelby Lynn’s kid sister Alison Moorer who’ll be turning the spotlight on her current album, The Duel. As the opening Neil Young feel of I Ain't Giving Up On You declares, this is an edgier, rockier, throatier affair that the early days of A Soft Place To Fall, Moorer's voice bearing signs of gravel mixed in with the honey while several tracks are steeped in the classic soul of 60s Stax and Atlantic. She says her songs are about the fights not the outcomes, but it's evident that pretty much all the characters in her stories here will end up on the canvas.
Not that there seems too much worth winning. In Believe In Me a man drowns while washing away his sins, the mournful title track rejects God in the wake of the narrator burying her lover while the lengthy slow train rhythm chugging All Aboard goes a step further and rejects a jingoist America. And as if the weariness of Louise Is In The Blue Moon and the defeated resignation of the swelling Once Upon A Time She Said wasn't enough the Gram Parsons-like Sing Me To Sleep is a complete heartbreaker in which the dying singer asks to be sung a lullaby, as when she was a child, as she closes her eyes for the last time. If this doesn't choke you up, then you're probably already dead. 7.30pm, £20,
Carling Academy. Tuesday December 14 Morrisey
Having been virtually written off as a glorious former glory following the damp squib performance of 1997’s Maladjusted, the old sour puss has made a remarkable comeback with You Are The Quarry, an album that generally sticks to such Stephen Patrick favourites as alienation, sexuality, self-important empty headed pop stars (The World Is Full Of Crashing Bores), national identity (Irish Blood, English Heart), patriotism and not liking things very much, all dressed up in familiar acerbic tones. But it’s also teeming with melodies (listen to the Bowie strutting pop of Hispanic gangster tale The First Of The Gang To Die), sonic muscle and, it has to be said, the best sweetly crooning voice Morrissey’s shown in years. Living in LA self-exile has perhaps sweetened his thoughts of home, here revisited in the wistful love letter chanson Come Back To Camden while America Is Not The World pretty much underlines the fact that he’s not been sucked into any delusions that his new adopted home isn’t equally riddled with poison and rampant imperialism. Certainly he’s not in particularly forgiving mood about the treatment he’s received from former colleagues, former admirers, the media, anyone in general, the bitterness bubbling like lava through the likes of ... Crashing Bores, How Can Anybody Possibly Think They Know How I Feel (a spleen venting over his court case loss to former Smiths drummer Mike Joyce) and You Know I Couldn’t Last. But there's also some surprising tenderness here, albeit wrapped up in perversely fractured sentiments on All The Lazy Dykes (a hymn to closet lesbians), I Have Forgiven Jesus (acceptance of unrewarded faith) and I Like You (dysfunctionals attract). He’s reportedly on fiery form live too, which, with
plenty of earlier solo material ready for an overhaul, promises to make for a
gig even doggedly entrenched Smiths fans might find themselves forced to admit
is a bit smart.
Fuelled by a relationship break up it’s an unsettling, sore wound of a record, oozing disgust on The Life And Death of Mr Badmouth, spitting venom on the ragged Who The F**k?, and wailing blues on Cat On The Wall. Light relief comes from the spooked folk of Pocket Knife while You Come Through actually shimmers, and if the prevailing mood may be clammy emotional darkness at least The Darker Days Of Me And Him offers a hint of light as she climbs from the wreckage. Even so, this seems an emotionally draining start to the evening. 7.30pm, £28.50,
NIA. Tuesday December 14 Kasabian
It’s been quite a year for Leicester’s practitioners of swirly psychedelic baggy amassing a library’s worth of glowing reviews for their live shows and self-titled debut album. Understandable really given their nu noise mixmaster ability to pull together influences as diverse as Hawkwind, Big Audio Dynamite, Stone Roses, Primal Scream and Happy Mondays. Floaty cosmic space rock grooves sit happily alongside electronica and lollopping beats in the sort of haze that once enveloped the Scream, all veined with the darkness you’d rightfully expect from a band that takes its name from Charlie Manson’s getaway driver. Fronted by the disturbingly forceful Tom Meighan, they send their instruments off into the beyond to see what life they can find out there and are rewarded by such diverse alien dance floor life as the interstella baggy of Club Foot, the hip hop n rock Processed Beats, recent hit LSF,a Kraftwerkian Reason is Treason and upcoming new Eastern undercurrented stoner blues single Cutt Off. They may cheerfully plunder already well mined sources, but they also retool and remodel the past to such pulsatingly dynamic effect that tomorrow clearly belongs to them. 7.30pm,
£12.50, Carling Academy. Tuesday December 14 Doves
Two years on since The Last Broadcast announced their transition from brooding blackness to sunnily anthemic with such tracks as the Charlatans like Words, the poppy There Goes The Fear, the leafy folk of M62 Song and the vaultingly incandescent The Sulphur Man, by rights such modest venues should be far too small to satisfy audience demand. It seems though that it’s going to take another mind-blowingly dazzling album before resistance crumbles. Hopefully this warm up for their London bash will include a few revealing tasters as to whether that’s in store with next year’s as yet untitled outing. 7.30pm, £16.50,
Wulfrun Hall. Wednesday December 15 Ocean Colour Scene
Much to the annoyance of their sour faced detractors, OCS show no signs of throwing in the towel. Indeed, if anything they’ve emerged stronger than ever from the recent line up change that’s brought in new bassist Dan Sealey and additional guitarist Andy Bennett. Don’t take my word for it, just lend an ear to recent live album One For The Road where guitarist Steve Craddock rips holes in the sky on a version of Wham Bam Thank You Mam while. It's My Shadow, Robin Hood, and One For The Road all swell to volcanic proportions and Golden Gate Bridge soars to a molten crescendo. With new studio album, The Hyperactive Workout For The Flying Squad, due early next year, this welcome hometown Christmas gig will be showcasing early tasters, hopefully including I Love You, a plaintively direct ballad on which Simon Fowler sounds unexpectedly like vintage Roy Orbison. Re-energised and at the peak of the their performance powers, the road clearly has a good few miles left in it yet. 7.30pm, £20,
Carling Academy Wednesday December 15 The Wildhearts
To be brutally honest, a Wildhearts live double album is probably not something the world at large really needs. On the other hand, for those who want little more from their rock n roll heroes than swilling beer and getting smashed to chugging guitar pop punk swathed in alcohol and nicotine fumes, then this is really hard to beat. Ripping through such obvious crowd favourites as I Wanna Go Where The People Go, Vanilla Radio, Caffeine Bomb, Someone That Won’t Let Me Go, and Turning American, the album’s a sweaty, smoky and rubbed raunchy raw experience, but really, you have to be there. Opening the gig are the band formerly known as Baby Chaos and now rechristened as the Blade Runner referencing Deckard, a no less rowdy outfit though these days slightly more musically variegated. Following up second album Dreams of Dynamite and Divinity, current EP Holy Rolling EP roams from the angular indie pop of the title track to the vague Placebo feel of By The Harbour and The Beatles/Kinks gone country influences of The Truth Will Do, ably demonstrating a propensity for catchy big tunes, emotive vocals and ringing guitars. Seems fair enough. 7.30pm,
£13, Wulfrun Hall. Thursday December 16 Manic Street Preachers
Given the slagging the current Lifeblood album’s had, with accusations of the band sounding tired, bored and, worse, MOR, disguising the fact they have nothing to say with overwritten but meaningless songs, it somewhat like slapping themselves in the face to reissue the classic Holy Bible in an extended version to celebrate its 10th anniversary. Certainly it’s hard to equate the band who made that with the one now singing such dreariness as Emily (yes, it rhymes with memory), the rambling To Repel Ghosts, the polished easy listening of Glasnost and the soft rock that is Cardiff Afterlife and the boring Always/Never. Even 1985, one of the few decent things here, sounds like the band trying to sound like the Manics while nothing titled The Love of Richard Nixon should end up sounding like some piston beats cabaret lounge disco. It’s slickly put together and, yes, I Live To Fall Asleep and Solitude Sometimes Is are Radio 2 friendly tunes, but after the generally ignored best of collection you can’t help but feel they should have quietly called it a day rather than sully the memory further with something as toothless as this. Ironic then that while the Manics are slipping away, they should enlist the services of Razorlight, one of the year’s most highly acclaimed success stories to open the show.
With debut album Up All Night figuring prominently on year end best of lists and the likes of Golden Touch and To The Sea already enshrined as modern classics, you suspect that Nicky Wire and James Dean Bradfield are going to find this a hard act to follow. 7.30pm,
£22.50, NEC. Thursday December 16 Interpol
Hailed as bright newcomers with their Turn on the Bright Lights debut two years back, the New Yorkers now find themselves topping many a 2004 Best Of list with follow up Antics. Still clearly indebted to Joy Division, The Cure and quite likely The Smith with their doomy swirlings, experience has now honed the sound into a tighter, leaner but muscular machine to deliver Paul Banks’s songs of unrequited love, twisted relationships and, just occasionally, as on Take You On A Cruise, the warmth of companionship. Pulling off the clever trick of layering emotional vocals over monochrome melodies, Antics ripples with tunes that, built around dense guitar riffing, are naggingly catchy even when the songs are filtering suicide images as with the pulsing Slow Hands and A Time To Be So Small. Dark dirges such as Length of Love or the icy martial drive of Not Even Jail come balanced with the warmer tones of Next Exit (a number that doesn’t exactly extol the joys of touring), the soaring Narc and the folkily REM suggestive upbeat tempo of Evil with its throbbing bassline. The ebbs and drones of gloom may ultimately dominate, but rarely ha sit been so mesmerisingly illuminated.
Support’s provided by New York trio Secret Machines who have already staked their claim to 2005 big things with recent album Now Here This Is Nowhere where they flaunt their psychedelic and prog rock colours and an ability to swing from Spiritualised meet Pink Floyd fragility (The Leaves Are Gone) and delirious pop rush (Sad And Lonely) to the Kraut rock title track and the My Bloody Valentine reborn of Road Leads Where It’s Led. 7.30pm, £12.50,
Carling Academy. Thursday December 16 Kings of Leon
Mostly shorn of their hirsute facial growth and with claims to be the sons of a defrocked Pentecostal preacher seeming to have been weapons of media deception, the Tennessee Kings arrive with a second album that has to rely solely on the music rather than being bolstered by colourful hype. Good news then that Aha Shake Heartbreak (Hand Me Down) is up to the task, building on the foundations of Youth And Young Manhood to drive their Southern soaked garage, swampy stoner rock and lazy bluesy funk to the next level. While you’re probably best advised not to seek out the lyrics to find what Caleb Followill is actually wittering on about (the curious will be ‘rewarded’ with yet more penis as firearm imagery - that’ll be Pistol of Fire then - and dubious veins of misogyny) as he growlingly chews his way through sordidly sleazy numbers and songs about girls with hourglass bodies always willing to lend a toothbrush, the overall effect is as intoxicating as sniffing Jack Daniel casks. Opening up with the New Orderish bass loping Slow Night, So Long, Caleb’s raspy Randy Newman throat doing curious acrobatics (elsewhere, on Day Old Blues he even seems to be doing some sort of swallowed yodel) guilty pleasures pile up; the rollicking King of the Rodeo, a Stones do Joy Division swaggering Taper Jean Girl, the tumbling riffery of The Bucket, reggae strutted Nuggets throwback Razz, and the bad ass punky Confederate hoedown that is Velvet Snow. At the end of the day, it’s still basically low dive bar band stuff, but you’ll certainly come out wanting to have a few quarts of whatever it is they’re drinking. 7.30pm,
£17.50, W’hampton Civic Hall. Friday December 17 Ronan Keating
He was never going to fall on his face when Boyzone retired, but I suspect few would have imagined Keating would carve out such a hugely successful, albeit safely bland, solo career. It’ll be 10 years now since Boyzone made their chart debut, while the past 5 have seen him chalking up his own string of successes from three best selling albums. Appropriately enough then, he’s out promoting his 10 Years of Hits (Polydor) collection which features three from the band days (Words, Father & Son and Baby Can I Hold You) alongside 13 solo outings, including the recent I Hope You Dance. Featuring, as it does, the likes of When You Say Nothing At All, If Tomorrow Never Comes, Lulu duet We’ve Got Tonight and She Believes In Me, it’s readily apparent that he’s painted himself into something of a romantic ballad corner, though given the dreadful attempt at getting funky with Lovin’ Each Day, perhaps the world should be grateful that he usually sticks to what he knows best. And, if he continues to do so, there seems no reason why a second volume shouldn’t be along in 2014. 7.30pm, £25,
NEC. Friday December 17 Bearos Christmas Party
The Brum indie label’s annual festive bash is in fine fettle this year. Instrumental sextet Souvaris will be reaching into their debut album I Felt Nothing At All, while former Starries man Richard Burke will be along to plug his not entirely cheery but folksily lilting solo debut Roscrea. Burke recently also popped up on Hailah Hailah, the debut album by James Summerfield who, having just followed up with a live EP of the same title on which he’s joined by the Toy Hearts, will also be along for some gorgeous backporch prairie country. By way of contrast, the night’s completed by Inch Blue whose desperately fine single Walking Backwards (Where The Sky Meets The Sea) magnificently evokes the doomy majesty of early U2 and the Chameleons. Top crackers the lot. 8.30pm, £3, Jug
of Ale, Moseley. Saturday December 18 Status Quo
Another year, another Quo Christmas boogie and, just in case there’s not enough already, another Greatest Hits collection. A mere two years on from The Best Of double album, this latest 2 disc version goes by, in the light of their dotage, the surely ironic title of XS All Areas (Universal), shaping up as a double set that, in no particularly coherent chronological order, tops and tails the career from the psychedelic days of Pictures of Matchstick Men and Ice In The Sun to their current incarnation as party knees up karaoke machines with hoary covers of Old Time Rock n Roll and Fun Fun Fun. Naturally there’s the obligatory two new numbers, recent and current singles, a strangely prog sounding You’ll Come Round which harks back to their kaftan wearing days and the trademark lollopping Thinking Of You. It would be churlish not to own up that in between times the Quo have produced some classic pop singles, the likes of Down Down, What You’re Proposing, Again and Again and Rockin’ All Over The World still irresistible head shaking, hips twisting dance floor fillers, but really, who ever thought they’d one day mutate into granny friendly rockers. What next year, the Quo Christmas Carols album? 7.30pm, £26.50,
NEC. Sunday December 19 The Human League
Last hear two years ago as part of another has beens Here & Now tour, at least they’ve reclaimed a measure of dignity by reverting to their own headlining outing this time round, even if they do seem to now only surface for festive season singsongs. Naturally it’ll be a night of golden oldies, anchored inevitably by Don’t You Want Me, though hopefully the odd nod to the current Secret album in the shape of All I Ever Wanted or Shameless will also make its presence felt. Who knows, with eleven months a year to mess around with, they might even have come up with some new material too. |
