Saturday December 1

Steve Ashley

One of the veteran legends of the English folk scene, sometime lead singer for the Albion Band and part of the Fairport inner circle, the dark-voiced singer-songwriter made his debut some 33 years ago with Stroll On, quickly earning itself a Contemporary Folk Album of The Year trophy. Since when he’s sustained an infrequent but consistently high standard of output through such releases as Speedy Return, Mysterious Ways, and Everyday Lives.

Most recently, Time and Tide (Topic) as again seen him garlanded with glowing reviews for its marriage of trad form and contemporary themes that embrace politics, climate change (Land’s End), the ecology (Birds Of The Country) and England’s multi-cultural society (The Refugees) alongside personal musical memoirs of his union organiser grandfather (Down The Line)  and environmentalist filmmaker Roger Deakin (Friend Of The Rivers). Harking back to the days when he raised his voice during the Greenham Common protests, Ships Of Shame is an anger-fuelled comment on Trident. Of course, as the jaunty Pub Carpets demonstrates, he’s not averse to a jokey throwaway either.

Joined by regular collaborator Dik Cadbury, they’ll be showcasing new arrangements of material from the album and dipping deep into Ashley’s impressive if often overlooked back catalogue too.  8pm. £9. Red Lion, Kings Heath.

Saturday December 1

Maroon 5

Mild white boy funk that makes Hall & Oates sound positively hardcore perhaps, but they’ve clearly tapped a vein of kids who want to call themselves r&b fans, but don’t want to get too sweaty about it. After milking debut album Songs About Jane for five years, admittedly with something of a late kick off over here, they’ve finally got round to a follow up.

  Although Kiwi manages to bring together Prince and Van Halen, It Won’t Be Soon For Long (A&M) is predominantly a collection of slick middle of the road dance music that wanders from the smooth pop disco of Makes Me Wonder (think an emasculated Bee Gees) and the Police inclined Not Falling Apart or  Phil Collins-ish Won’t Go Home Without You to the Timberlake lite Little Of Your Time. Plus the obligatory soft rock ballads of Better That We Break, Goodnight Goodnight and, all very Take That, Back At Your Door. Then there’s Can’t Stop, party music for people who think Babycham is really a champagne.

It’s designed and crafted to within an inch of its life, but you have to admit they do it very well and have a strong pop sensibility for upbeat catchy hooks and nagging melodies that are likely to be rarely off the airwaves. And guaranteed to keep disco halls, dance floors and wine bars pumping for at least another five years. 

They’re joined by  Dashboard Confessional, over for a reminder of The Shade of Poison Trees (Vagrant) which finds Chris Carrabba getting back to more acoustic basics after the last album’s fuller band sound. It’s classic style open road driving music designed to have its choruses belted out with the windows down, arms out in the breeze jabbing the air.

Where’s There Gold and Thick As Thieves make for a strong opening gambit with his emotion quivering voice. And the album rarely slips below the standard as Carrabba slashes up and down the guitar strings for the jerky Keep Watch Of The Mines, hits an almost bossa nova gone Counting Crows groove with These Bones, strums the pop patterns for Fever Dreams and wraps himself around the aching heartfelt ballad tree for the title track and the piano based The Widow’s Peak.
Matters of Blood And Connection is a stinging attack on trust fund posers and charlatans, the blue bloods of inherited American wealth that probably needs the live fire to really hit its vitriolic peak where, along with the chiming ticking rhythms of  The Rush  and the power pop flurry Little Bombs, it’s likely to prove one of the set’s highlights. 7.30pm. £26.50. NEC

Saturday December 1

The Destroyers

A  Balkan gypsy folk music knees up in the heart of Birmingham courtesy of the Moseley based multi-instrumentalist collective with a thing for Klezmer, this serves as both an early ethnomusic Christmas bash and a showcase taster for next year’s  upcoming debut studio album. Giddily vaulting from the upbeat fiddle fire of Sirba to the stirring dark melancholy of Kopanitsas and the tuba and trombone parping jazz-folk passions of Stork Crossing Dudley, dancing scenes of wild abandon are guaranteed. 8pm. £10. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Saturday December 1

Squeeze

Yes, yes, yes, we all know about this lot and the Difford-Tilbrook songbook taking its pre-Christmas outing to stimulate those Greatest Hits sales, but what are audiences there to hear Up The Junction, Cool For Cats and Labelled With Love going to make of opening act King Creosote?

Where the headliners are almost exclusively musically upbeat with songs of cosy kitchen sink warmth, Kenny Anderson’s a bit of a self-deprecating Fife native who doesn’t generally trade in singalong choruses.  Indeed, current album Bombshell (679) is a frequent lyrical downer dealing, as it often does, with feelings of not measuring up as lover, father, human being.

That said, those willing to put a little effort into listening rather slouching off to the bar may well discover some poignant personal confessions that strike a universal chord and melodies that gradually reveal themselves as more Radio 2 friendly than they initially seem. Certainly, the plinking Cowardly Custard could well have come from a Beautiful South session, Church As Witness possesses a certain Everybody’s Talking quality, Home In A Sentence is the sort of gorgeous tumbling pop Coldplay might make were they from the Outer Hebredies and You’ve No Clue Do You is the Fleetwood Mac/Lindisfarne collaboration that got away. And if you’re lucky he might even sing And The Racket They Made and fill your heart with its funeral elegy celebration of a life lived. 7.30pm. £32.50. W’hampton Civic Hall

Monday December 3

Crowded House

It’s 11 years since the Antipodean outfit slipped away and the various components went off to pursue solo projects. However, a combination of drummer Paul Hester’s suicide two years ago and the band’s 10th anniversary prompted a decision to get back together. The result being Time On Earth (Parlophone), an album that provides the spine for this tour and which distills everything that made them so successful first time around with Beatles influences, dreamy melodies, wistful songs and Finn’s warm melancholic vocals.

 Inevitably it also bears the mark of Hester’s death on the likes of Nobody Wants To, Silent House, People Are Suns, English Trees and She Called Up while Finn’s recurring themes of Catholic guilt are all present and correct on Heaven That I’m Making.

But it never feels depressing and, if ultimately, it lacks durable classics on a par with Weather With You and Don’t Dream It’s Over, there’s ample quality here to take up the slack between the hits the nostalgists will have come to hear.

Warming things up will be Irish soulster Duke Special  who, currently between labels, could do with feeling a little love being given back. Following on from his Neil Hannon collaboration with Our Love Goes Deeper Than This off the re-issued version of Songs From The Deep Forest, he’s doubtless plugging the download only new version of the album’s final single, No Cover Up before turning attention to readying the follow-up and making V2 regret bidding him farewell. 7.30pm. £32.50. NEC

Monday December 3

Queens of the Stone Age

Five albums in and this is clearly not just some hobby for Josh Homme. So, here he and his latest backing boys are with the Era Vulgaris (Interscope) tour, turning the scratchy guitars and jagged percussion to the dance oriented party on groove embodied by Battery Acid, 3’s & 7’s, and current stoner single Make It Wit Chu.

Not that rock heads are forgotten and they’ll doubtless find room for either Turning The Screw with its thumping drum beat and acid-generation Hendrixy guitar, the psychedelic freakout of Run Pig Run or the queasy stabbing metal that is Sick Sick Sick.

Whether it marks a continuing new direction or is just another of Homme’s experiments in form only album number six will tell, but for now its twisted, spiked struts should keep the stage ignited.

Support will be The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster who, given their lengthy absence after label hiccups, have yet to follow up their come back  In The Garden  EP. That picked up where they left off with the  paranoia driven rock n roll  cross between Bauhaus, The Doors, and The Cramps but whether the new material’s shaping up for more of the same or looking to throw some unpredictable shapes you’ll just have to arrive in time to discover.  7pm. £19.50. Carling Academy

Monday December 3

Eliza Carthy

Back to her roots after misguided label attempts to reinvent her as an indie rock folk chick this tour seems likely to be  heavily based around Rough Music with its trad choices of Turpin Hero, Gallant Hussar, and Maid on the Shore. Joined by Willie Molleson on drums, Emma Smith on double bass and  Phil Alexander on keyboards / piano accordion, she’ll also be roadtesting original global music influenced songs from the forthcoming Dreams of Breathing Underwater scheduled for arrival early next year. 7.30pm. £14. mac

Monday December 3

Orson

With both Culture Vultures (Mercury) and the disco swaggering single Ain’t No Party stalling outside the Top 20, this could well be make or break time as the LA boys  try and recapture the impetus and interest they whipped up with their double chart topping debut album and the No Tomorrow single. It looks like being a bit of an uphill struggle because while punky pop Radio, the Faces meet Brian Wilson Little Miss Lost & Found, a Billy Joel  influenced Northern Girl and the chiming mid-tempo Broken Watch are catchy enough sunny album highlights, they just don’t have that memorable touch. Back to the 70s covers bars I suspect then. 7.30pm. £15. Wulfrun Hall

Tuesday December 4

Wet Wet Wet

Back together and, in the case of Marti Pellow, born again, the Wets were one of the best blue eyed soul outfits of the late 80s/early 90s. To which end, there’ll be many a moist-eyed fan swaying along tonight as they dip into the hits collection for the likes of Goodnight Girl, Wishing I Was Lucky and the ubiquitous Love Is All Around.

However, they’ve also opted to put together a set of new tunes too for Timeless (Absolute), an album best summed up by the title of one its tracks; Weightless. Sounding like something a faded boy band might come up with trying to restart a career, it’s a slickly polished but thoroughly soulless conveyor belt affair with the band never persuading you it’s not been done as a chore rather than a passion.

On a couple of tracks, Real Life with its Spanish guitar and the soaring orchestral ballad What Do You Know, have some of the old spark  but, like the anaemic dance track too Many People, so much of it just passes by without any impression. Timeless, only in that it seems to go on forever.  You suspect the reunion tour may well be the start of the last goodbye too.

Support comes from the anodyne Ben’s Brother whose Beta Male Fairytales (Relentless)  album casts them as  a watery version of Rod Stewart. Pleasant background music  but nothing to warrant rushing your tea for. 7.30pm. £40/£32,50. NEC

Tuesday December 4

The Klaxons

The London nu rave trio return with their mash up  guitars, sirens and synths  for a second foray with Myths Of The Near Future’s art rock tea party get together with Bowie, Brian Eno, PiL, Krautrock and 60s psychedelic wig outs. Things come over spacey on As Above, So Below and Two Receivers with its rumbling drums, while they cut it up techno style on Atlantis To Interzone, get into a 80s pop groove with Golden Skans and invite you into the 21st century disco with Gravity’s Rainbow while the loose limbed bassline and swirly synth punked up reconstruction of new single  It’s Not Over Yet should bring out those acid smiley faces. 7.30pm. £12.50. Carling Academy

Tuesday December 4

Kevin House

Born in England and raised in Canada, House isn’t just a singer-songwriter, he’s a banner artist too whose folk art deco work has been exhibited throughout Canada and the US. In many ways his painting is reflected in his music, impressionistic rural dusty folk Americana landscapes with an air of faded nostalgia and images of carnival folk and twilights dipping over the horizon.

He’ll not be bringing his brushes with him for this first UK tour, but he will have his piano and guitar to hand to unveil his new album, World Of Beauty (Bongo Beat), a gentle, hushed collection of dreamy chansons steeped in woozy folk blues and the influences of such names as Cohen, Drake, Gainsbourg, Fahey and Chet Baker.

This is intimate, leafy and spare but subtly textured music that requires focused listening as House fingerpicks and slow waltzes through songs such as All The Planets All The Stars, Song Of A Cloud, Down River and Where I Want To Be, often sounding like a less angst-ridden Mark Eitzel. It’ll be well worth your while. 7.30pm. £5. Bull’s Head, Moseley

Wednesday December 5

Vincent Black Shadow

A quartet from Vancouver who straddle the emo and goth tags like All About Eve meets No Doubt with singer Cassandra Ford sounding a cross between Gwen Stefani and Stevie Nicks,

 They’re here to promote their debut album, Fears In The Water (Bodog), a nifty set of muscular punky pop and melodramatics put to the service of  things like the Nicks like Broken, the jazzy cabaret swing that carries both The House of Tasteful Men and the scat shaded This Road Is Going Nowhere and the 60s pop flavoured catchy Metro and ballad swayer Don’t Go Soft.

With songs that deal in drugs, obsessive passion, spiked milk, and death they may not be the cheeriest bunch on the block but, as the massive hook laden Control (a soaring thumper of a hit in waiting) ably demonstrates they have the potential to be world class. 7.30pm. £8. Carling Academy 2

Wednesday December 5

The Wombats

Their first headlining tour after a spate of support slots, the Scouse trio are shaping up to be one of the big names for 2008 in the wake of recent rowdy bounce pop singles Kill The Director and Let’s Dance To Joy Division. They capitalise and build on that wave of enthusiasm now with A Guide To Love, Loss & Desperation (14th Floor), a  debut album that cheerily opens with the doo wop handclapping Tales Of Girls, Boys And Marsupials the lyric of which consist solely of the title.

 Then it’s all flurried guitars, snotty nasal vocals, indie pop carousel waltzers and, to be honest, a fair mix of low cal Pulp and Jilted John as they grin their way through witty teenage tales of  love, sex and being let down on both counts as, on Patricia The Stripper (no, not a Chis De Burgh cover), the girl of their dreams goes home with some other guy.

With the galumphing Little Miss Pipedream (when was the last time you heard the word ’fulcrum’ in a pop song?), Lost In The Post, Backfire At The Disco, the stomping Help Me Rhonda goes Kaiser Chief s of  Dr Suzanne Mattox PhD and Party In A Forest (Where’s Laura?), a tale of being stuck at a middle class rave, they clearly have their pop credentials in sparkling working order. And if they do tend to be a little exhausting with no slower moments to give time for breath, they’re also great irrepressible fun and  it’s surely better to be worn out enjoying yourself than be bored to death being serious. 7.30pm. £9. Wulfrun Hall

Friday December 7

The Chemical Brothers

Oh dear. Is that the smell of burn out in the air? Once at the cutting edge of the dance scene with their influence flooding all over, the Chems are now reduced to making something as polished but uninspired as We Are The Night (Virgin). There’s decent enough noises going down with the Kraftwerking title track,   Burst Generator, a spacey A Modern Midnight Conversation and the floaty hippie clouds of The Pills Won’t Help You Now is truly lovely. But then you get The Salmon Dance, the sound of bottomless depths are being plumbed with its nursery rhyme rap about taking crack and dancing like a, er, salmon punctuated by spoken facts about the natural habits of the fish. Wow. If they’re going to major on material from this, they’d better have a damn good visual show design to fall back on. 7.30pm. £22.50. NIA

Friday December 7

CSS

Their album title, Cansei de Ser Sexy, Portuguese for  ‘tired of being sexy’, the Brazilian quintet trade in trashy fun electro-pop dressed up like an accident in a fashion designer factory, populating the album with such hedonistic dance crazy pop culture referencing spine-benders as Let’s Make Love And Listen to Death From Above and Krautpop meets bubblegum Meeting Paris Hilton. There’s definite B52s, Madonna and Waitresses colours splashed over the likes of Art Bitch. Music is My Hot Hot Sex, the punky Talking Heads massaging Patins and casio pop lurcher Alcohol which, along with their exuberant live shows, make it easy to forgive their roughshod nature. Though perhaps not a second time.

 Support is London dance trio Metronomy who, taking time out from working up the new album, will be introducing everyone to the delights of new single Radio ladio (Need Now Future), an annoyingly catchy hybrid of Kraftwerk, Devo and romper room robotic electro. 6pm. £15.50. Carling Academy

Friday December 7

A Hawk & A Hacksaw

Hanging out with assorted local folk and jazz musos during a trip to Hungary last year,  Jeremy Barnes and violinist Heather Trost met  noted multi-instrumentalist Bela Agoston, a bit of a wizard on the old Hungarian bagpipes, trumpet and violin playing Ferenc Kovacs, upright bassist and klezmer expert Zsolt Kurtosi, and Balazs Unger, a master of the dulcimer-like cymbalon.

 The idea was hatched to put together an ensemble to record a mix of traditional Hungarian, Romanian, Serbian and klezmer tunes along with the duo’s new compositions. The result was the  A Hawk And A Hacksaw and The Hun Hanger Ensemble (Leaf) mini album showcasing the six musicians' individual talents across a selection of ensemble pieces, duos and solos.

Opening with the melancholic gypsy melody Kiraly Sitars sounding like an outtake from The Godfather, it belts into the Barnes’ urgent lurching Zozobra while Balazs gets to his own thing on Vajdaszentivany, a virtuoso collection of trad Hungarian melodies.

Elsewhere, Serbian Cocek sounds like a wedding party marching band, Ihabibi brings everyone together for a fiery mazurka, while Oriental Hora is violin led funeral march circle dance tune. If you have a taste for Eastern European folk, it's a fabulous addition to the collection. Even better, Balazs and Ferenc are joining them tonight for what promises to be a bit of an energetic knees up. 8pm. £10. Taylor John’s House, Coventry

Saturday December 8

Status Quo

Back once again for the annual Christmas knees-up, but they’ll also looking to spotlight a few numbers from new album In Search of The Fourth Chord.  There’s naturally few surprises among a standard collection of the chugging blues boogie rock they’ve been knocking out for the past few decades, but familiarity hasn’t dulled their ability to come up with a bunch of memorable leg tappers with each new outing. This time round I Don’t Wanna Hurt You Anymore is vintage Quo rock n roll country boogie, Gravy Train, Bad News and Electric Arena rowdy blues barrell-housing in the manner of the Down The Dustpipe era while the likes of Alright and Pennsylvania Blues Tonight couldn’t be anyone but Messrs Rossi and Parfitt. Which, let’s face, is all any of the army of denim heads really want. 7.30pm. £31.50. NEC

Saturday December 8

Manic Street Preachers

Back for the year’s second tour, moving into the arena leagues for another go round with Send Away The Tigers (Columbia), an album that positively revels in big, stadium swelling anthems in its evocation of their finest glories. Indeed, Your Love Alone Is Not Enough actually borrows the lyrics from You Stole The Sun From my Heart.

A familiar melding of the political (the punky chugging Imperial Bodybags) and the personal into massive tunes, it kicks off with the title track’s reference to the Iraq war and misguided notions of liberation served with a Guns n Roses attack. They seem happy to celebrate their influences,  Underdogs nodding to Alice Cooper and the Stooges while Rendition owes a debt to The Skids and The Clash and I Am Just A Patsy even cites Boston.

They’ve clearly raided the chorus cupboard for this one, The Second Great Depression’s rolling waves, the soaring air punching orchestral majesty of Autumn Song, the power chords of Queen-like ballad belter Winter Lovers with its guitar god solo and the arms linked swaying Indian Summer all guaranteed to have the congregations singing along in euphoria.

With a set likely to feature a sizeable wedge of new material along with evergreens given a new lick of paint this one will rock.  7.30pm. £25. NIA

Saturday December 8

Powderfinger

Taking their name from the mighty Neil Young song, this lot are one of the biggest bands in Australia. A pity then that their latest album, Dream Days At The Hotel Existence (Universal) proves to be such a dreary dud. It’s well played and well crafted, but, as on the ballad Wishing On The Same Moon,  attempts to inject a bombast  likely to break through American stadium consciousness just makes the songs sound musclebound. It doesn’t help much either that many of the tracks sound like thin impersonations of  outfits such as the Faces, Black Crowes, INXS, Oasis (listen to Head Up In The Clouds) and, of course a touch of Neil.

It’s not there aren’t good moments, Lost And Running is a fine piece of swaggering countrified soul while Black Tears is a stripped back to the bone acoustic number addressing the plight of the Aboriginals, it’s just that, unless you’re a homesick Strine,  there’s just not enough reasons to make you want to check in for the evening. 6pm. £18.50. Carling Academy 2

Saturday December 8

Him

The Finnish love metal boys continue on their melodic gloom path with this tour to plug latest offering, Venus Doom (Sire), an album they reckon is their heaviest yet. Well, not really. There’s some grinding riffs here and there as they turn the guitar amps into battering rams and on the title track singer Ville Valo adopts a growling goth metal rumble from the depths of Middle Earth, but they still keep the focus firmly on the hooks and songs of doomed love that have proven such a commercial crossover success.

Cases in point here include the heavy but lush  The Kiss of Dawn, the ten minute Sleepwalking Past Hope with its meld of Sabbath grind, Zep vocals and Sisters of Mercy goth ambience, and the snakily seductive single The Kiss Of Dawn. And while Passion’s Killing Floor may indulge in some hardcore death metal time signatures and tolling bells, it still remembers to throw in a catchy chorus line.

With the set liberally laced with nuggets from the previous albums, this looks like being a well satisfying gigs for head bangers, air guitar merchants and straight up rock fans alike. 7.30pm. £19. W’hampton Civic Hall

Sunday December 9

Marilyn Manson

The former self-styled Antichrist Superstar finally arrives on a belated tour to promote  the recent Eat Me Drink Me album, but does anyone still care? Having sniffed the wind of change, Manson steered the album towards a more accessible approach, playing down the lyrical controversy for more personal negative vibes forged from his divorce and pushing forward melodies and electro-rock rather than his former glam inclinations.

The result’s a  well crafted but ultimately tired and dull parade of Bowie, Bolan, Sisters of Mercy and Killing Joke influences that may spark briefly into life on things like Heart-Shaped Glasses, Putting Holes In Happiness and You And Me And The Devil Makes 3, but really, the clock’s turned well past his 15 minutes and a life writing horror movie title songs now beckons. 7.30pm. £25. NEC

Sunday December 9

Displacements

Hailing from Leicester, they’re apparently creating quite a buzz around their hometown. Now, signed to Stiff, they look to win friends and influence people on a wider scale with the release of new single, Lazy Bones. A live favourite with its romping guitars and vague Eastern European mazurka rhythms designed to have the crowds throwing themselves around the dance floor, it comes with the moodier mid-tempo Amie showing they can weave a brooding atmosphere too. If the rest of the repertoire measures up, then next year could well be theirs. 7.30pm. £5. Little Civic

Monday December 10

Kings of Leon

After two fine albums of Southern soaked garage, swampy stoner rock and lazy bluesy funk Americana in the form of  Youth And Young Manhood and Aha Shake Heartbreak, Deep South brothers Caleb, Nathan and Jared and cousin Matthew have shed their facial hair but not  the songs of sin and salvation informed by their religion heavy childhood.

Because Of The Times (RCA) sticks to  essentially the same blueprint, but they’re more confident about playing with the components, stripping things down to bare bones here and there, employing  studio trickery on the angular Charmer and turning out an epic seven minute guitar barrage with Knocked Up.

You’ll also find shadows of reggae hovering over Ragoo, jagged staccato riffery with My Party, thumping bass lines working out in My Party and aspirations to stadium rock anthemics with McFearless and Black  Thumbnail while True Love Way and Arizona should have guitar groupies dropping their underwear en mass.

Although they’ve still not really cracked it back home, their graduation to stadium status pulpits for this tour pretty much underlines their status here. Mind you, it’s still hard to shake the fact they often sound worryingly like Reef.

Being given their chance to play the size of venue they deserve, opening act is Manchester Orchestra, an Atlanta five piece led by bearded teen Andy Hull whose debut album, I'm Like A Virgin Losing A Child (Columbia) boasts a  widescreen, brooding emo-esque sound and densely layered songs. 

With its moody organ and chugging guitar riffs, Wolves At Night both recalls 60s psychedelic rock and the current emo vogue,  Now That You’re Home explores crisis of faith with a waltzing rhythms and volcanic guitars, while I Can Feel Your Pain is a stripped to the nerves acoustic ballad about bereavement, a theme echoed in the bare boned Don’t Let Them See You Cry.

Balancing such hushed, soul baring confessions with the cinematic scope of Where Have You Been and Golden Ticket, they should make a note of how to work the crowd in stadiums like this. They’ll be playing plenty more of them in months to come. 7.30pm. £22.50. NIA

Monday December 10

Rihanna (re-scheduled for Tuesday December 18)

If you didn’t become heartily fed up of hearing Umbrella during its eternity at No 1, it will inevitably prove the highlight of Robyn Rihanna Fenty’s show. But it’s actually not the best track on the accompanying album Good Girl Gone Bad (Def Jam),  a tremendous follow up to A Girl Like Me that puts her in the upper echelons of pop friendly r&b, capable of flirting with the rock set for Shut Up And Drive with its Blue Monday riff, taking on swaggering marching beat dance anthems for Don’t Stop The Music, spraying out sharp hooks and lyrical barbs alike on Breakin’ Dishes and showing the world how slinky r&b ballads are uncurled with Rehab and Hate That I Love You.

The fact that it’s sexually more upfront than her previous outings isn’t exactly a drawback either, especially for those hoping the live show will trade up on the booty bounce raunch and writhing inherent in the songs like Push Up On Me. With a set likely to feature the best picks from the previous two albums, S.O.S, Unfaithful and Pon De Replay, dressed up with some spectacular dazzle, you’ll wanna be starting something for sure. 7.30pm. £27.50. NEC

Monday December 10

Hellogoodbye

Having sold out a previous UK tour without ever releasing a record, no surprise to find that the release of  Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs! (Drive-Thru) has amped up the California outfit’s profile even further. Dubbed emo europop, it’s all sunnily catchy sugary upbeat kitsch stuff, driven by keyboards (often calling to mind Ben Folds Five) and chirpy guitar frills with danceable melodies designed to get you bouncing down the street.

They’re not exactly original, Touchdown Turnaround recalls The Buggles while Baby, It’s Fact sounds like The Turtles had they been an 80s synth pop band and I Saw It On Your Keyboard actually borrows from Beethoven’s Ode To Jo, but it’s hard to deny that chewy tunes like All Of Your Love, Here (In Your Arms) and the flurried Blink pop of Figures A and B are hard to dislodge from the brain once they’ve burrowed through the ears. The album’s bonus live tracks suggest they get a little tougher in the flesh, promising perhaps a little more muscle on the bone for the next album. For now though, you’ll be glad to meet and sad to part. Look out for those odd costumes and cardboard celebrity cuts outs too. 7.30pm. £12. Carling Academy

Monday December 10

Carina Round

Loyal devotees still anxiously awaiting her Interscope debut, Slow Motion Addict, had better start scouring the import racks and websites. Completed two years ago and finally released Stateside earlier this year, while copies will be on sale at the gig  it’s apparently not getting a UK release and she’s parting company with the label.

It’s nothing short of criminal, since, armed with a scorching set of musicians, it’s easily the best work she’s yet done, the PJ Harvey touches still in evidence on something like Gravity Lies but substantially less of an influence. Indeed, brooding glacial blues The Disconnection sounds like a cross between Billie Holiday and Bjork, Take The Money and Ready To Confess are choppy sonic burning rockers and the fecund pagan moods of January Heart and Slow Motion Addict both suggest what might be the result of splicing together Robert Plant and Kate Bush.

It’s hard to understand too why the label didn’t pounce on Come To You with its glorious slow build to soaring radio friendly chorus hook that fuses the attitude and vocal muscle of Chrissie Hynde and Charleen Spiteri.

Fresh from supporting Annie Lennox on her American tour,  this return to her old stomping grounds marks her first UK gig in almost two years, and chances are she may well be testing out the new material she’s currently working on for the next album. By when, one would hope, an A&R man with a proper set of ears will have signed her up and be working on her long overdue world domination.

She’ll be in good company tonight with Medway troubadour Lupen Crook who’ll be showcasing his current EP Matthew’s Magpie (Tap n Tin), the title track a new version of the song of his debut release reframed into jagged folk punk that perfectly catches its jittery mood of paranoia and madness while The Hardest Way Home looks like becoming a bit of a live favourite with its perky ska rhythms. He’ll be also showcasing material from next year’s new album with his band The Murderbirds, the moulderingly leafy Cackle And The Crown, Staghead And Monster, the rousing Young Love and a brass parping Splits ‘N’Differences ones to particularly keep the ears tuned for. Think Roy Harper for disaffected rural youth and you won’t be far off. 7.30pm. £7. Bar Academy (+ Tue Dec 11, 7.30pm. £7, Little Civic)

Tuesday December 11

Gogol Bordello

They may not be quite as off the wall entertaining as fellow Ukrainians the Leningrad Cowboys, fronted by New York based moustachioed refugee Eugene Hutz this lot have been  whipping up a storm on the festival circuit  with their Soviet party band marriage of punk and traditional Eastern European gypsy music with its dervish fiddles and fiery accordions.

They’re over here now plugging their current 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.

While they’re culturally and geographically unlikely to have ever heard it, Harem In Tuscany actually sounds like The Lost Patrol by cult Malvern gypsy folk-punk outfit The Dancing Did but 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 abandoned, there’s a certain air of kitsch to the band’s approach with its deliberately over-emphasised accents and culturally stereotypical melodies, but that only adds to the live frenzied fun as Hutz thrashes about the stage prompting audiences into wild bouts of ungainly Cossack dancing. 7.30pm. £13. Wulfrun Hall

Tuesday December 11

Funeral For a Friend

Having taken time off for Americana side project  The Secret Show, Matt Davies gets back with his Welsh band buddies for their biggest UK tour yet in service of the excellent Tales Don’t Tell Themselves album. Standout numbers such as the chiming Into Oblivion, the New Order rhythmed On A Wire, yearningly anthemic Walk Away and swelling ballad The Sweetest Wave should loom large. But the set list is also likely to call attention to recent mini-album The Great Wide Open (Atlantic) which, along with the album track, also includes live versions of everything from their first two EPs, among them a furious metal riffing 10.45 Amsterdam Conversations,  a throaty barraging She Drove Me To Daytime Television and the hardcore flirting This Year’s Most Open Heartbreak 7.30pm. £16.50. W’hampton Civic Hall

Wednesday December 12

One Night Only

Having tastes chart favour with  debut single You & Me’s  jaunty night down the pub with Chas n Dave indie pop, the Yorkshire lads  brace themselves to go for the double with upcoming sophomore outing Just For Tonight (Vertigo), a barricades stormer oddly sounding  a bit like  a poppier Simple Minds  twinned to Pulp.7.30pm. £6. Bar Academy

Friday December 14/Saturday December 15

Hard-Fi

With sufficient demand to warrant two nights, the Staines boys are now firmly in the big leagues in the wake of  Once Upon A Time In The West (Atlantic) with its Balkan and reggae tinged Suburban Knights and, echoing their clear Strummer influences, the dance oriented rock grooves that permeate I Shall Overcome, the Northern soul bled Can’t Get Along (Without You) and the brassy funked Little Angel.

They can be a little simplistic at times, the catchy Television marred by trite winges about politicians and the mind rot goggle box, and the bass throbbing, shouty I Close My Eyes is a terrible stab at Led Zep clattering blues for the post-punk generation. But, on the other hand, their ballads, the strings soaked The King, the  arms swaying Help Me Please and Watch Me Fall Apart with its crooning choral backing, are a cut above the average while Tonight patently has ambitions to stadium singalongs.

  With a set splicing the new material with first album favourites like Living For The Weekend, Middle Eastern Holiday and Stars of CCTV, it’s a fair bet  good number of the first night’s crowd will be back for a repeat experience.

Tour guests will be Devonian blue-eyed soul and ska popsters  The Rumble Strips serving reminded of exuberant debut album  Girls And Weather and such jubilantly effervescent dancefloor rollicking as Building A Boat, the handclappy Motown beat of Girls And Boys In Love, and, their very on Come On Eileen, Alarm Clock. Given the approaching festivities, they may well have their party hats on too and throw in their covers of Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black and a Dexys style  version of The Boys Are Back in Town. 7.30pm. £22.50. Carling Academy

Sunday December 16

Dartz

A joint Christmas bash by the XtraMile and Big Scary Monsters labels, the pop punk alt rock Sunderland trio are the ostensible headliners in as far as they’re probably the better known of the package. Out  of the same stylistic stable as Futureheads and Bloc Party, their This Is My Ship album is a punching collection of whiny vocals, pounding drums and piston whipping guitars spliced with skewed cut n paste tempos and rhythms, Teaching Me To Dance’s indie funk even throwing in cowbells and dissonant trumpet.

Dipping into the art rock dance of bands like Talking Heads and Gang of Four (notably so on Prego Triangolos and  St Petersburg), they do like to make you work at the difficult shapes of things like A Simple Hypothetical and Fantastic Apparatus with even the more direct numbers such as the catchy single Once, Twice, Again! and ska rooted Cold Holidays demanding concentration as well as limb twitching. Far too jittery and splintered for mainstream success, but they should keep the dance party market happy.

  Then there’s Oxford’s This Town Needs Guns, a tumbling guitar and piano led outfit who’ve been occasionally tagged as emo but are much more in the post-rock tradition to judge by 26 Is Dancier Than 4 while the shifting time signatures and lengthy titles of If I Sit Still Maybe I’ll Get Out Of Here and It’s Not True Rufus, Don’t Listen To The Hat suggest strong prog rock inclinations.

The presents under the gig tree are rounded off with Bridport’s post-hardcore Secondsmile who’ll be trailing material for next year’s second album, and homegrown stop-start hardcore crew Blakfish. 7.30pm. £5. Flapper & Firkin

Thursday December 20

The Twang

Celebrating a bit of a good year, the Bearwood boys are breaking out the fizz for a Christmas bash before getting back on the road next Feb. They’ll be popping the streamers and pulling the crackers to the sound of  debut album Love It When It Feels Like This with its mix of barricade storming pop anthems, funky beats and  Britlad baggy dance grooves like current single Push The Ghosts. Doubtless they’ve been working on new material so chance srae there might be a try out or two here along with some festive singalong or other.  Also bringing a bottle will be The Sunshine Underground and Look See Proof. 8pm. £15. Carling Academy

Tuesday December 18

Rihanna

If you didn’t become heartily fed up of hearing Umbrella during its eternity at No 1, it will inevitably prove the highlight of Robyn Rihanna Fenty’s show, rescheduled to tonight after she got poorly last week.

But it’s actually not the best track on the  accompanying album Good Girl Gone Bad (Def Jam),  a tremendous follow up to A Girl Like Me that puts her in the upper echelons of pop friendly r&b, capable of flirting with the rock set for Shut Up And Drive with its Blue Monday riff, taking on swaggering marching beat dance anthems for Don’t Stop The Music, spraying out sharp hooks and lyrical barbs alike on Breakin’ Dishes and showing the world how slinky r&b ballads are uncurled with Rehab and Hate That I Love You.

The fact that it’s sexually more upfront than her previous outings isn’t exactly a drawback either, especially for those hoping the live show will trade up on the booty bounce raunch and writhing inherent in the songs like Push Up On Me. With a set likely to feature the best picks from the previous two albums, S.O.S, Unfaithful and Pon De Replay, dressed up with some spectacular dazzle, you’ll wanna be starting something for sure. 7.30pm. £27.50. NEC

Thursday December 20

All Angels

There seems to be deluge of choral groups at present, from Welsh Male Voice choirs and prepubescent schoolboys to boy girl classical crossovers. It has to be said though that this lot, teenage quartet  Daisy Chute, Laura Wright, Melanie Nakhla and Charlotte Ritchie, are among the best. What they do is nothing new, there’s been groups like them before and will be again, but the combination of  pitch perfect complementary voices, bubbly attitude and that sexily innocent white dress image has seen them shift cartloads of last year’s self-titled debut and this year’s follow-up, Into Paradise (Universal Classics).

Bringing together a rich mix of classical and pop classics, delivered both unaccompanied and with lush orchestration, the new album, which will doubtless loom large tonight, ranges from an exuberantly thrilling version of Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, a soaringly heavenly Sancte Deus and a stripped down version of In Paradisum to their covers of Nothing Compares 2 U, Coldplay’s The Scientist and a particularly spine-shivering four part a capella harmony reading of Paul Simon’s The Sound of Silence. That one of the album’s stand outs is Heather Nova’s Singing You Through is firm proof that either they or their management have well sussed musical awareness too.

Dipping into the debut too with the likelihood of a set list including Songbird, Ave Maria, Angels and Silent Night as well as a few other festive choices, while the absence of the studio multi-tracking  means the sound may not be quite as full in the flesh, it won’t stop it being any less angelic. 7:30pm. £20. Birmingham Town Hall

Thursday December 20/Friday December 21

UB40

A Christmas reggae get  together with the hometown boys, back on form following the release of Who You Fighting For a couple of years back. They’ll naturally be turning out the expected hits, but you can also expect them to slip in one or two tasters for next year’s new album 24/7 (the first for their new label) and, quite possibly, something from Ali Campbell’s recent duets release, Running Free featuring covers of such numbers as Would I Life To You, Being With You and, joined by sibling Robin, Devoted To You. Dub devotees should also make note that copies of  the limited edition Dub Sessions, featuring dub versions from the upcoming album, will be exclusively on sale at the gig.  7.30pm. £35. NEC

Saturday December 22

Pint Shot Riot

Looking to follow in the slipstream of fellow Coventry lads The Enemy, this lot are going to have to come up with better songs than the run of the mill shouty punk chorus and romping guitar of download single Punches Kicks Trenches and Swords. Marrying the city’s 2Tone heritage with laddy punkpop of early Oasis, the live sets are more promising with the likes of Don’t Touch The Girls and Little Hitlers gathering energy, but they’ve a fair way to go yet. 8.30pm. £4. Jug of Ale. Moseley

Sunday December 23

Ocean Colour Scene

Ironically, the release of  On The Leyline, arguably their strongest album since Moseley Shoals, has also seen one of the band’s lowest profiles. Did anyone other than their fans and website followers know they’d released both the summer lane strolling  I Just Got Over You or Go To Sea, a crescendo-building number about the cynical recruitment of impoverished young Scots to feed the war machine, as singles?

The show has, naturally, sold out though it’s taken longer than usual to do so. All of which might lead some to sound the trumpets of doom and predict the band’s demise next year. Hopefully that’s unlikely, given a still robust following here and internationally (including South Korea apparently) and the potency of the album, the first studio recordings to fully feature new boys Andy Bennett and Dan Sealey.

It’s a back to basics approach, expanding their retro flavours and building further on the mellow folk elements with I Told You So a jangling slice of sunny pop that calls to mind a melding of Ronnie Lane's Slim Chance, Traffic's Paper Sun and The Beatles while the glorious title track reveals itself a rocking stomper in the mode of classic Lennon & McCartney influenced XTC.

 Although they stamp their trademark over numbers such as mid-tempo sweller I Just Got Over You, acoustic 60s folk pop You'll Never and lysergic folksy swayer Man In The Middle,, it's the departures from the norm that really set this apart. Steve Cradock takes lead for the lazy gypsy jazz inflected acoustic These Days  while Don't Get Me emerges as a laid back Young Rascals style country lane shuffle and banjo strummed romp Two Lovers harks back to McGuiness/Flint.

 With their Northern Soul style cover of Weller’s For Dancers Only and Orbisonesque acoustic lullaby Daylight adding further proof of the band’s current creative high, ignore the cynics and just accept the fact that they’re still one of the best outfits in the country. 7pm. £22.50. Carling Academy