Gig Guide Archives December 2009

Previews by Mike Davies

Tuesday December 1

Will Young

Hard to believe it’s been seven years since he won Pop Idol, since when he’s released four mega-selling albums, had 12 Top 40 hits, including four No 1s, acquitted himself well on screen and stage in Mrs Henderson Presents and The Vortex, and even addressed the Oxford Union debate.

Time then for the obligatory compilation album. Succinctly titled The Hits (RCA), it contains exactly what it says, opening with his debut single Evergreen and proceeding chronologically through the likes of You And I, Friday’s Child, Who Am I and Grace charting his versatility with ballads, funk, jazz, swing, soul and pure pop.

It could also prove a useful boost to a career that’s recently shown a few signs of faltering with the title track single from last year’s Let it Go failing to make the Top 40 and, at time of writing, the new dance friendly r&b pop of Hopes & Fears showing every sign of faring even worse. Not that he need worry unduly about the singles charts, his albums sell by the truckloads and there’s no lack of demand to hear his falsetto Mick Hucknall tones in the flesh.

You should make the effort to get there early and catch opening act Phantom Limb. A Bristol based six piece fronted by sometime Massive Attack singer Yolanda Quartey and featuring Stew Jackson and Dan Brown of Robot Club they stir together a heady concoction of southern soul, gospel, country blues and jazz with influences drawn from such diverse names as Gillian Welch, the Band, Aretha Franklin, Etta James and the Staple Singers. They’re touring their stunning eponymous debut album (Naim Edge) and current gospel country swaying single, Draw The Line, but while the exposure of the tour will be welcome, it’s probably not the venue to first discover them. However, those that do can’t fail to be won over and fortunately, they’re back in Birmingham later in the month for a headline date when they’ll have more time and a more intimate space to work their magic. Check back here in a week for a deeper look at what they and the album has to offer. 7.30pm. £35. NIA

Tuesday December 1

Ian Broudie

Five years since his last solo album, the folky Tales Told, earlier this year Broudie released Four Winds (Universal), the first new Lightning Seeds album for a decade. Inevitably, the record buying public failed to notice but those long serving Seeds fans won’t be wanting to miss this rare live outing to hear its Beatlesesque, dreamy and psychedelic tunes in intimate surroundings.

Now 50, Broudie calls it a musical autobiography, distilling his journey through sixties, punk and Britpop to today’s hip hop. Not that you’ll hear any slamming beats here, the mood very much mellow and melodic, couched with pedal steel and folky colours as he unfolds numbers like the melancholically gentle, cello flavoured 4 Strings which, like The Story Goes, stems from his depression and psychological breakdown, or the delicate yearning countrified croon of Things Just Happened, and the pastoral Lilac Time pop of The Story Goes and the jangling All I Do.

There’ll probably be a fair handful of old Seeds tunes here too, The Life of Riley and Pure among them, but please, no requests for Three Lions, ok.

The show’s a co-headliner with James Walsh who, as you’ll be aware, is the Bono-like warbling frontman for underachievers Starsailor and will, naturally, be playing stripped down versions of the band’s material, among them tracks from current album, All The Plans, the crowd swaying Stars & Stripes and the tender Safe At Home all likely to prove heart catchers. 8pm. £16.50. Glee Club

Wednesday December 2

Simple Minds

©David Ellis

One of those bands born to play stadiums, Jim Kerr and the boys will be cranking up the bombast in their continuing comeback since a creative rebirth with 2004’s Our Secrets Are The Same. They recently released their 16th studio album, Graffiti Soul (Universal), gaining their first Top 10 placing in 14 years, fanning the flames of the faithful with a sound that harks back to their 80s peak. Indeed, Stars Will Lead The Way has a definite touch of Don’t You (Forget About Me) to it while, for all its electronic aspects, the dark swirling Moscow Underground, the strident riffing Rockets, Kiss And Fly and the title track are all close relations to the post punk songs of Sparkle In The Rain.

Elsewhere, Blood Type O offers a brooding prowl around the electronica of Berlin period Bowie while Shadows And Light shimmers and buzzes with the aura of Zooropa era U2, the band bristling with recharged confidence batteries and an assured approach to the playing. They’ll be dropping in plenty of the old classics, naturally, but unlike many surviving acts from the mid 80s, you won’t be nipping out to the toilets during the new numbers. Not even their version of Rocking In The Free World.

They share the bill with fellow survivors, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, McCluskey, Humphreys, Holmes and Cooper serving up a feast of their synthpop gems, among them Enola Gay, Joan Of Arc, Souvenir and Sailing on the Seven Seas as well as tasters from next year’s original line up reunion album History Of Modern. That will include their cover version of Kraftwerk’s Neon Lights, a number which coincidentally also furnished the title track of the Minds’ ill-advised covers collection, to which end both bands will be getting together to perform it on stage. 7.30pm. £36. LG Arena

Wednesday December 2

Tunng

Local promoters Capsule celebrate their 10 anniversary in style with this rather fine transatlantic package of alt-folk. The British folktronica headliners are no strangers to these parts, having played several sell out gigs as well as supporting Seth Lakeman and being a Moseley Folk Fest highlight. They’re still pushing last year’s Good Arrows album with its mix of the Nick Drake, Incredible String Band, and John Renbourn influences to Bricks, Hands, and Spoons and the more wyrd trad and experimental aspects of

the medieval sounding Take and the sonic scratching metal of Soup.

Over from Vancouver is Lightning Dust, the side project of Amber Webber and Joshua Wells from space rockers Black Mountain. They’ll be talking up their Infinite Light (Jagjaguwar) album, an infectiously catchy collection of folk streaked indie pop and Webber’s tremulous warble that lobs highlight after highlight, opening with the dreamy soft rock Antonia Jane and working its way through the terrific Suicide come T Rex influenced pulsing electronica rockabilly I Knew, a bongo bounding The Times, the Cowboy Junkies-like Waiting For The Sun To Rise and the quivering swaying ballads Never Seen, a History and, sharing vocals, the Neil Young sounding Honest Man. Excellent stuff, they should return for a headline tour as soon as possible.

Then there’s Six Organs of Admittance, aka Californian nu folker Ben Chasny, who also come with a new album in tow, the similarly titled Luminous Light. Rather more psychedelic in musical mood, expect to hear the Floydian wooziness of Anesthesia and the woody folk fuzzed The Ballad of Charley Harper (an American Modernist wildlife artist, since you ask) and the Eastern influenced raga grooves of The River of Heaven and Enemies Before The Light. Also on the line up will be experimental electric cellist Bela Emerson. 7.30pm. £12.50. B’ham Town Hall

Wednesday December 2

Catherine Feeny

After enjoying critical acclaim with Hurricane Glass and featuring on the soundtracks to Running With Scissors and The OC, the Philadelphian singer-songwriter had something of a knock when, following a takeover, EMI declined to release her third album, People In The Hole. Leaving Norfolk, she moved back to America and set about learning to operate without the backing - or interference - of a major label, selling pre-release copies from her website earlier this year.

It’s on limited availability over here at present but a full release is planned for next year, meanwhile she’ll doubtless have a few copies with her on the night. It’s well worth taking along the extra cash too, the album rippling with her warm voice, flowing melodies and a meld of folk, jazz and pop. Flutes fluttering in the background, the hushed, heat hazy, piano noodling Jacaranda weaves a languorous melancholic web before the communication themed title track takes the pace up to a shuffle and the put down He’s Like You Only Better introduces a 60s piano pop feel to proceedings.

Flexing her musical muscles, there’s jazzy brushes for Bleeder, an acoustic blues tango for You’d Better Run with its smouldery vibe, parping horns and sudden eruptions of noirish twangy guitar while the lovely The Bell & The Anchor is old time ragtime and country music hall waltzing, New York In The Spring rides a skater’s waltzing carousel melody and a six minute slow building, strings dripping ballad The Rest Of Them could have come from some elegant 40s Hollywood romance.

She’ll be missing the intricate arrangements performing with just guitar and keyboard, but she’ll still have no trouble seducing your ears. 8pm. £10. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Wednesday December 2

The Cribs

Quite how much the addition of Johnny Marr to the ranks helped current album Ignore The Ignorant (Wichita) become the Wakefield outfit’s first Top 10 entry is open to argument, but it certainly seems to be an indication of their desire to progress from their formative punk origins into more grown up indie.

There’s bigger guitars, more melodies and a clearer sound, We Share The Same Skies is even a certifiable radio friendly pop song with the bouncy title track, Last Year’s Snow and Hari Kari equally catchy commercial ditties with a 60s pop flavour. Heck, on ennui themed fairground waltzer Stick To Your Guns, one of the album’s best cuts, Ryan even has a stab at crooning rather than his usual yelp.

We Were Aborted’s attack on Nuts magazine mentality maintains the urgent rock credentials that saw them compared to the Killers and Strokes while Emasculate Me swaggers out of the holding pen with riffs a go go and City Of Bugs wraps itself in a cloak of feedback, drawled vocals, low slung bass and angular guitar shapes, but even on a storm the barricades Alarm-like rouser like Victims of Mass Production they’re well aware of keeping a crowd friendly singalong chorus to the fore. They may leave a few of the diehards behind, but there’s a whole new audience out there waiting to be embraced into the fold. 7.30pm. £15. O2 Academy

Wednesday December 2

The Answer

Having spent most of the year touring with AC/DC converting the masses to sophomore album Everyday Demons, the bluesy rock Irish four piece are due some time to put their feet up. Not, however, before they wind up things with their biggest set of headline dates and the release of re-recorded live favourite ballad Comfort Man (Albert), transformed into a Celtic infused stadium swayer that shows just how far they’ve come since the album’s release. 7.30pm. £13. Wulfrun Hall

Wednesday December 2

Danny Schmidt

He’s been compared to Leonard Cohen and Townes Van Zandt, and while it’s a little hard to hear any of the former, there’s certainly strong traces of the latter streaking the Austin singer-songwriter’s latest, Instead The Forest Rose To Sing (Red House). But, on a collection of songs that offer a timely exploration of wealth, work and the lack of both in the current economic climate, you’ll also hear elements of John Prine (the poignant Grampa Built Bridges), Tom Russell (Firestorm), Neil Young (Better Off Broke) and on Two Timing Bank Robber’s Lament, a bluesy swing tale of trying to satisfy a woman with expensive tastes, even Cab Calloway.

Hailed in some quarters as the best new songwriter in the past 15 years, that may be pushing it a bit, but, be it penning character studies, wry love songs or social commentary, he’s definitely in with a shout when it comes to the upper rungs of the folk-roots ladder.

There’s much to enjoy here, whether it’s the Irish tinted slow waltzer lament Oh Bally Ho, the strings caressed romanticism of Accidentally Daisies or Southland Street, which, opening with references to Henry Ford proceeds to offer observations on the damage done to American industry by globalisation and outsourcing to cheap labour.

The man’s a gifted storyteller with a dustily affecting catch to the voice, and should easily hold you in thrall throughout the set.

Providing harmonies and sharing vocal duties on the fiery Serpentine Cycle of Money is fellow Austin resident and twangy voiced regular touring partner Carrie Elkin. She’s along tonight too, joining Schmidt but also playing her own solo set to flag up self-released new album, The Jeopardy Of Circumstance.

Drawing on Americana, folk, bluegrass and gospel, while Ode To Ongalla is a Band-like country soul tribute to the townsfolk where her car broke down and Broke TV is a quirky bubbling chugger about the things you’ll do for love, she shares Schmidt’s concerns with the quality of life in troubled times. The spare, stand out Obadiah questions the distances between spirituality and religion, a gently lilting Questions About Angels talks about how money can bend your life out of shape, the banjo dappled Black Lung’s an aching lament of a daughter for her late coal mining father and Gospel Song a southern barroom country boogie about staying connected on a human basis in the age of modern technology. Should be a fine evening. 8pm. £10. Kitchen Garden Cafe, Kings Heath

Thursday December 3

Paloma Faith

A former magician’s assistant, actress (St Trinian’s, The Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus), and dancer, the Anglo-Spanish singer’s debut album Do You Want The Truth Or Something Beautiful? (Epic) is an intriguing confection of Eartha Kitt, Amy Winehouse, Duffy, Billie Holiday and Shirley Bassey.

Her theatrically mannered slightly squeaky voice stylistically trampolining between r&b, torch soul, jazz, blues, swing and vaudeville, she knows how to sock out a tune and from the opening slinky Tina Turner prowl of Stone Cold Sober and the Gloria Gaynor disco suggestions of Smoke & Mirrors through the title track’s pantherish ballad with its Bond theme persuasions to Upside Down’s finger-clicking sassy soul swing, the Broadway and gospel infused New York and Stargazer’s harp shimmering contempo dreamy r&b ballad it’s patently obvious that she’s about to become something of a global sensation. 7pm. £11. O2 Academy 2

Friday December 4

Regards

Originally from Stafford, the four piece have apparently been making a splash in and around their adopted hometown of Liverpool. They now look to move further afield with a small nationwide jaunt and the release of limited edition debut single After Many A Summer (Tuniversal). It never quite seems to get where it wants to go, but with spidery guitar figures, moody bassline and circling rhythm, it’s a solid enough indie rock calling card that clearly shows their influences to be far more rooted in Merseyside than Staffordshire. 8pm. The Rainbow, Digbeth.

Saturday December 5

White Lies

Last bout of gigs until 2010 for the Ealing quartet whose To Lose My Life debut album was the first British chart topper of the year, more than confirming those ones to watch proclamations. With heavy echoes of Editors, Interpol, Depeche Mode and Arcade Fire, they’re not exactly original, but with songs such as Fifty On Our Foreheads, the Scott Walkerish Nothing To Give, Farewell To The Fairground and new single Death, where they manage to sound like Bryan Ferry fronting Echo & The Bunnymen, you’ll forgive them anything.

Opening act is Asobi Seksu, the American shoegaze duo of singer Yuki Chikudate and guitarist James Hanna. In town in February, they were making a reverb drenched noise with songs from the Hush album. This time around they’re showing off their quieter side in the company of the unimaginatively but accurately titled Acoustic At Olympic Studios (One Little Indian).

Predominantly relying on unplugged guitar and keyboard, there’s stripped down, gently fragile versions of songs from Hush (Familiar Light, Gloss, Blind Little Rain, Meh No Mae), Citrus (New Years, Thursday) and their eponymous debut (Walk On The Moon), as well as last year’s B side Breathe Into Glass and a couple of new numbers, a dreamy cover of Hope Sandoval’s Suzanne with what sounds like tinkling xylophone and, Urusai Tori, quite possibly the only samba tune you’ll have heard sung in Japanese. If they gave you a rush of blood to the head last time, this one’s designed to massage the temples. 6pm. £15. O2 Academy

Saturday December 5

Deborah Hodgson

She may be the support to Drowsy Maggie, but the liltingly pure voiced petite Welsh born Worcester singer-songwriter’s still worth the entrance fee. Having fallen victim to the current cutbacks at the NEC, she decided to focus all her energies on carving a career as a professional musician. She seems to have got off to a pretty good start by playing the Big Top at this year’s Isle of Wight festival as well as lining up a string of club dates that should put an end to having to make a few bob singing at weddings and restaurants.

Having released (well, gave away more like) an EP earlier this year, featuring Dali-Lily (a lovely little singsong number about a little girl’s view of the world) and, underlining her roots, the summery Cardigan Bay, she’s now working on a debut album, so she’ll be road testing numbers for that tonight. Among them is likely to be Truth Of The Matter (sadly without harp backing tonight), the airy Love Will Find A Way with its blues break out and dazzling fretwork, and forthcoming single, the beautiful Celtic mist infused slow building piano ballad Taigh Allain. Make an early appointment, you’ll be hearing much more about her next year. 8pm. £11. Red Lion, Kings Heath

Monday December 7

Natalie Imbruglia

It’s been five years since Counting Down The Days and, although she had a Top 5 hit with her singles collection in 2007, her profile since has been virtually off radar. To which end it seems rather foolhardy to be going ahead with this tour when her much delayed new album, Come To Life (Island), originally announced for early 2008, had its released date put back from this September until next February.

The fact that it debuted at a lowly 67 in the Australian charts, selling an embarrassing 740 copies in the first week and the first UK download only single, the Coldplay-penned sub Running Up That Hill sounding Want, didn’t even make the Top 75 may have her label running scared.

Its dismal failure may have something to do with the fact that half of the album finds her clambering aboard the current synthpop bandwagon, a genre for which she’s eminently unsuited, sounding totally detached from numbers like WYUT, Cameo and Wild About It. The frustrating thing is that moody acoustic with bleeps ballad All The Roses is actually quite good and when she does what she does best, as with the catchily pizzicato pop Twenty, the slightly Torn-sounding Scars, and even the uptempo dance My God the album lives to its title. It also happens to feature two further - rather better - Coldplay songs, the yearning folk inflected Fun and (nodding to Suzanne Vega in title and sound) the summery acoustic Lukas, that would surely provide the immediate fix of oxygen of airplay her career needs to keep breathing.

As it is, the dithering and delays seem certain to have consigned this to oblivion even before it finally emerges with the very real possibility of her now playing to a sparsely populated room trying to convince audiences to give the material a chance. 7.30pm. £12.50. O2 Academy 2

Monday December 7

Codeine Velvet Club

Bored with having time on his hands while the Fratellis too a breather before getting down to the third album, singer Jon Lawler hooked up with Scottish singer-songwriter Lou Hickey, a mate of his wife’s, to put this side project together. He calls their eponymous album (Island) “kitchen sink music”, you might just want to dub it a glorious pop rush.

Sharing vocals, the bouncing first single, Vanity Kills, sounds like Space or Beautiful South doing a top hat and tails Broadway production while album opener, Hollywood, is full on Wizzard with big Spector production, 60s girlie harmony vocals, cascading strings, tumbling melody and a massive chorus hook.

These alone are enough to have you hoping the Fratellis take an extended hiatus, but there’s still more glamorous splendour to come with the swirly, slightly Spanish and very cinematic Time, the rocky swing of The Black Roses with its moody widescreen 007 soundtrack arrangement and urgent rhythms, the brass packed Cotton Club handjiving Little Sister, surf twang pop Like A Full Moon, and, back in Roy Wood classic big pop mood, I Would Send You Roses.

Nevada provides a chance to catch your breath with its glittering waltzing romanticism, but it’s the uptempo numbers that are going to sweep you off your feet in a live set where, the line up fleshed out into a full band, they may even turn in their cover of the Stones Roses I Am The Resurrection. A touch if velvet’s just what you need. 8pm. £8. Glee Club

Tuesday December 7

Placebo

Battle For The Sun (Pias) may have provided their sixth Top 10 album entry but, 15 years down the line, while Brian Molko may sing ‘I need a change of skin’ on the opening Kitty Litter, for the most this is a band going through the familiar motions, recycling the sound that made them such a distinctive proposition in order to keep their ageing goth fans happy.

As such Ashtray Heart, Devil In The Details, Breathe Underwater and The Never-Ending Why serve up exactly what you’d expect in terms of air punching melodies and Molko’s nasally glam vibrato while the title track punches with a stabbing staccato and narcotic swirl chorus and For What It’s Worth heads into low slung Primal Scream rock n roll swagger.

You want ballads, then here’s the slow building Happy You’re Gone and the anthemic fairground keyboard driven Bright Lights where, bizarrely, the sound more like Pulp than Placebo.

They get a bit more electronica with the breezy Kings Of Medicine and Julien with its ill-advised attemp to be funky, but it’s the headcharge of numbers like Breathe Underwater where new drummer Steve Forrest proves his muscular worth that will have the crowd jumping up and down until their eye-liner runs. A Placebo photocopy perhaps, but the toner cartridge is still functioning perfectly.

Getting the mood going support comes from Silversun Pickups with the mix of 90s alt rock and shoegazing pop to be found on the current Swoon album and the likes of There's No Secrets This Year’s circling riffery and the spacily atmospheric Growing Old Is Getting Old.

Plus there’s also a guest slot from The Horrors riding high on the album of the year style praise for Primary Colours where their love of 60s garage, surf rock and new wavy funk gets bulked up with a drone rock cocktail of Joy Division, The Psychedelic Furs and Jesus & Mary Chain. 7.30pm. £25. LG Arena

Tuesday December 7

New York Dolls

Reopened last year, the Assembly is rapidly becoming a major music venue with several headline tours coming here rather than to Coventry or Birmingham. As if to prove the point, this is the only Midlands appearance by the 70s punk legends. Still featuring founder members David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain with former Hanoi Rocks man Sami Yaffa on bass, they’re here in service of Todd Rundgren produced second comeback album, ‘Cause I Sez So (Atco), a sterling slice of classic rowdy, booze fumed rock n roll served with a raw, live sounding edge. Sounding muddier and than of yore, Johansen’s voice is now plainly shot but he still knows how to sock across a dirty Mississippi blues strut on This Is Ridiculous or the Stonesy swagger of Muddy Bones and the title track.

Interestingly, there quite a few varied flavours on the new album. Nobody Got No Bizness adopts a Chicago style chicken strutting soul that recalls the J Geils Band, My World has a big Springsteen approach and on the surf rock Latino balladeering Temptation To Exist, Johansen sounds a bit like Southside Johnny.

Rundgren’s production adopts a noisy bluster approach, but the 60s Little Italy soulful Lonely So Long and the unlikely light reggae tropical rework of their debut album classic Trash offer ample evidence that this is no attempt to disguise any limitations of playing or performance. Mixing in new material with vintage NYD nuggets like Babylon, Jet Boy, Pills and Stranded In The Jungle, this is going to be a sweaty, ballsy inferno of a gig. Cause they sez so. 8pm. £20. The Assembly, Leamington Spa

Wednesday December 9

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

With singer Karen O’s soundtrack for Where The Wild Things are being lavished with praise, the New York trio are seeing the year out on something of a major high. This is the much anticipated first chance to see what sort of live shape they take for their third album, It’s Blitz! (Geffen) where guitars take a back seat to shimmering synths, bringing a less punky approach to their art school dance rock shapes and echoes of Blondie at their disco peak. Zero rings the changes from the opening, O crooning breathlessly over the electro waves, and the new mood’s swiftly confirmed with a bassline driving New Order meets Talking Heads tinged Heads Will Roll before Softshock wafts you away to some cosmic space station for a little soft synth pop massage and languidly aching vocals.

Skeletons keeps you floating around the swirling clouds before plunging back to a reminder of where they’ve come from with the jerky angular maelstrom garage rock rumbling drums punkfunk of Dull Life and the Morodor-trip funk of Dragon Queen.

If they have sense, they won’t be including the boring synth stabbing Shame And Fortune or the meandering moody Runaway in the set list, but you might want to refuse to go home if the lights go up and they’ve still not playe the slow building chorale wash of the uncluttered lullabyingly majestic Little Shadow. 7.30pm. £20. O2 Academy

Wednesday December 9

The Bookhouse Boys

Taking their name from the secret society in Twin Peaks, this nine piece outfit declare themselves surf/alternative which, roughly translated, means David Lynch soundtrack styled twangy guitars, Mariachi brass, big drums and girl-boy vocals that throw up such comparisons as Nick Cave, Tindersticks and The Triffids

Last year saw their eponymous debut album arrive on a tide of critical acclaim, kicking off with the dust raising mariachi surge of Dead before delivering a clutch of tremulously dark ballads in the shape of the cracked desperate I Can’t Help Myself, Yer Blue and a Roy Orbison-esque Baby I Gotta Go.

Earlier this year they lifted Shoot You Down, a Lee and Nancy stained twisted romance duet between Paul van Oestren and the smoky voiced Catherine Turner, as the lead song for a five track EP and the tour coincides with a new download only single, the Morricone meets Badalamenti with mariachi brass stomping Cold Crazy Eyes (Black) that underlines their ability to serve up a fiery live show. However, if they include it in the set list, it’s the pump organ backed despairing gospel Oh Lord from their debut EP that will have the place transfixed.

They’re supported by Brooklyn’s Black Gold, a project out together by multi-instrumentalist session players Eric Ronick and Than Luu whose backgrounds include stints with Panic at the Disco and M. Ward. Expanded to a four piece for live work, they’ll be showcasing debut album Rush (Red Bull) which finds the common dance beat factor to genres that embrace the soft rock of The Comedown, the synth funky Breakdown, pop rush keyboard rock Detroit and the Latin flavoured ballad Silver.

Conjuring a hybrid of Hall & Oates, Billy Joel, and Squeeze, this is polished piano pop with a strong sense of rhythm and the importance of grooves with the military beat backed Run, a dreamy midtempo Shine, shuffling chugger Idols and the big building Eltonesque ballad After The Flood marking them as major names for the year ahead. 8pm. £6. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Wednesday December 9

Seth Lakeman

Touring earlier this year on the back of his Cornish themed Poor Man's Heaven, the West Country folk superstar returns now, with Benji Kirkpatrick on bouzouki, to plug his first concert DVD, Live at the Minack which, recorded at Penzance’s open-air Minack Theatre, features selections from his last three hit albums, among them Riflemen Of War, Kitty Jay, The Hurlers and Hearts And Minds. Naturally, there’ll be a hefty representation in tonight’s set but, in case you feel you’ve done your live Lakeman for the year, there’ll also be the chance to get in early and hear seven or eight of the numbers that will appear on next year’s new album. 7.30pm. £16. Wulfrun Hall

Thursday December 10

Kate Rusby

After Thea Gilmore’s terrific seasonally themed show at the Glee, here’s another unmissable foray into the festive spirit as Rusby rolls out the songsheet for selections from Sweet Bells (Pure), her recently reissued collection of South Yorkshire carols. These may have been regulars in Yorkshire pubs over the past 200 years, but, even with her new arrangements, you’ll be well familiar with the likes of Here We Come A-Wassailing, The Holly and The Ivy, and Hark The Herald (Angels Sing) while discovering less obvious but still seasonally relevant tunes like Serving Girl's Holiday ( The Miner's Dream of Home will be a delight. 7.30pm. £20. B’ham Town Hall (Dec 18 + 8pm. £18.50, Warwick Arts Centre

Thursday December 10

Madness

With yet another Greatest Hits variation just released in time for the Xmas stockings, the ska-ster Nutty Boys are back with their now regular Christmas jaunt through their singles collection and favourite album tracks. This year, however, they’ll also be able to slip in some new material too -their first in a decade - following the release of The Liberty Of Norton Folgate (Lucky Seven).

With the 10 minute title track a guided tour round the history of the district of Spitalfields, it’s a loose concept album about east London life in all its joy, pain and anxiety, from the soured marriage dreams of Sugar & Spice and Idiot Child’s bad parenting to NW5’s toast to departed friends and the self-explanatory titled We Are London.

Lyrically, there’s not too much cheer around with songs about wasted lives, lost loves and being knocked down but, led by Suggs, there’s still plenty of musical vim in the veins of tunes like Rainbows, On The Town and Clerkenwell Polka. And, while it may only be in dreams, they even get away from the dirty dishes and dirty clothes of life in the Smoke for a while with the slow lollop of Africa.

An inspired album that reveals the band’s creative juices to be still on peak form, while a night out with the singalongs will be fun, they really owe it to the album to give it a tour of its own. 7.30pm. £33.50. O2 Academy (+ W’hampton Civic Dec 17)

Thursday December 10

Athlete

Six years on from their Mercury Music Prize nomination, it increasingly looks like the Deptford four-piece peaked with their emotionally aching Top 5 single Wires. Since then it’s been a bit of a downward slope both artistically and commercially with current album Black Swan (Fiction) failing to struggle beyond the lower end of the Top 20.

Like Beyond The Neighbourhood, it’s not a bad album as such, even if the synths twinkling Superhuman Touch borrows rather too obviously from Get What You Give by New Radicals. However, while there are a handful of highlights with the acoustic fragility of Love Come Rescue, the gently pulsing Don’t Hold Your Breath, Black Swan Song’s yearning Snow Patrol-like resignation to mortality and the anthemic waltzing Rubik’s Cube, none of them come close to matching the band’s defining moment while the rest of the album is just unmemorable. America may yet warm to their soap opera friendly songs, but back home it feels like they may have run their last lap. 7.30pm. £10. Wulfrun Hall

Friday December 11

Paramore

"It's getting harder to believe in anything”, sings Hayley Williams on the Tennessee emo rock mall rats third album, Brand New Eyes (Fueled By Raman). Yes, here were with all the frustrations and disillusions of growing up where the fairytales unravel and the tally of broken or bruised relationships grows in number.

If reports are to be believed, the band itself almost foundered, but they seem to have come through the fires re-energised with their punky pop attitude in amped up form as they rampage full tilt through such distorted guitar spitting, riff swinging, shouty numbers as Careful, Brick By Boring Brick (with its tearing wings off butterflies image), Turn It Off and Looking Up, a song with clearly references how close they came to the brink.

Naturally, since their self-hating teen audience also like to sit and mope, there’s a decent helping of mixed up emotion ballads and mid tempo tunes too; the angry cast the first stone themed Playing God, acoustic strummer The Only Exception’s tentative hope of a lasting love, the folksily plaintive Misguided Ghosts and the big howling power ballad closer All I Wanted.

Having doubtless recruited new fans by way of their contribution to the New Moon soundtrack, Decode, they can put their premature midlife crisis behind them and get on with reminding the kids that there’s someone out there who understands their hormonal turmoils and is prepared to plug in the guitars and share it.

Special guests are Surrey quintet You Me At Six who, having spent a good portion of the year promoting debut album Take Off Your Colours and its bonus disc reissue featuring the Kiss And Tell single, are already gearing up for next year’s follow up, Hold Me Down (Virgin).

Preceded by last month’s download only single, the snarling, pistol whipping Nirvana-ish The Consequence, there’ll likely be tasters among the set list tonight, the big swirling Stay With Me, an exuberant boundalong Playing The Blame Game, the heavy riff slamming Take Your Breath Away and stadium-eyeing ballads Liquid Confidence and the soaring crescendo of Fireworks all potential show stoppers. 7.30pm. £20. NIA

Friday December 11

Scott Matthews

A rather less tormented soul than you might assume from the pain and desolation that imbue his songs, the Wolverhampton singer-songwriter follows up his Novello earning 2007 debut with Elsewhere (San Remo), backed by his regular touring band (seen to impressive effect supporting Plant and Krauss) with the addition of a string section for the bluesy opener Underlying Lies and horns on the heart aching Suddenly You Figure Out.

Again evocative of Nick Drake and often sounding far older and world seasoned than his 23 years, the musical remit continues to be blues tinged folk soul, rumbling in the slow building minor key of Fractured (where brother Darren plays piano), quivering with tremulous hurt on the seven minute acoustic blues Fades In Vain and lying back to soak up the pastoral beauty of late summer fields with the plaintive self-searching Nothing’s Quite Right Here.

With only one of the 11 tracks under 3 and a half minutes, there’s not only value for money but you actually want to spend the time with these songs, drawing out the reflective emotions of the Celtic tinged Up On The Hill or feeling the blood quicken on the uptempo rocking Into The Firing Line. As previously mentioned, Plant himself puts in a guest appearance on the madrigal leafiness of 12 Harps, their voices entwining like vines on a trellice while Matthews’ guitar and shimmering harp accentuate the delicacy of the mood. There may not be another Novello winner here, but it’s a prize winning entry to any discerning record collection.

He shares the bill with another prodigious local talent in the willowy shape of Jo Hamilton, here to provide an end of year reminder of her recently released debut album Gown (Poseidon) with its percolation of jazz flavourings, the Kate Bush tinged soul folk Pick Me Up, Weimar cabaret coloured All In Adoration and the African rhythm vistas of How Beautiful. A little premature perhaps, but hopefully she’ll find room too for the playfully pizzicato waltzer Winter Is Over. 7.30pm. £14. B’ham Town Hall

Saturday December 12

Electric Six

It’s six years and several line ups now since Detroit’s Dick Valentine stormed the charts with the disco metal Danger High Voltage and follow up Gay Bar, since when he’s been trying to find the way back. The last chart entry was the Radio Gaga cover back in 2004 and none of the four albums released since Fire have made any impression.

The situation’s not about to improve with Kill (Rounder), but - at times sounding like Alice Cooper - that doesn’t mean it’s not got its fair share of funky bass lines and tongue in cheek posturing as it kicks around the disco and rock footballs.

The cowbell ringing Prince cum Jacko influenced Body Shot defies you not to start twitching the limbs on the dancefloor while the urgent You’re Bored manages to combine lounge and metal, The Newark Airport Boogie sparks up the Freddie Mercury influences, sleaze fest On Sick Puppy grinds the hips and licks the lips and the leather trousered riffs go to town for the clattering Waste Of Time And Money and the electro stroked funk of Rubbin’ Me The Wrong Way.

At the end of the day, however, there’s nothing here that’s going to find them a new audience and far too much that’s likely to see the old one throwing in the towel. 7pm. £10. O2 Academy 2

Saturday December 12

Rogue States

photo by Jeremy Cowart

When Birmingham punk outfit Dum Dums came to an end, former members Steve Clarke and Stuart Baxter-Wilkinson joined Clarke’s singer-songwriter brother Michael as the live band for his solo project, Clarkesville, and debut album The Hard Way. Working together on a follow up, the material began to shift and four years and the addition of guitarist David Wright later, they’ve re-emerged as a new incarnation.

Stuart and Steve work as part of Razorlight’s road crew led to a tour support slot and drummer Andy Burrows stumping up the cash to pay for the debut EP, Lights. It’s money well spent with its four songs mining themes of faith, doubt and reconciliation with music that echoes the influence of U2 (especially so on the slow burning, falsetto soaring ballad Faultline), Arcade Fire and Snow Patrol.

These are no photocopies however; Surrender is a shimmeringly tender soul ache climbing aloft on pulsing keyboards while the soaring title track plays the stadium anthem card with unbridled assurance. The killer though is Kings Of The Ghost Town’s Mile, an atop the barricades epic with plangent guitar chords, massive chorus and a vocal wrung with passionate defiance. This is their final gig of the year. Be there because they’re going to be the first big Birmingham band of the new decade. 8pm. £3. Flapper & Firkin

Saturday December 12

Shed Seven

Although these days they’re regarded as merely a footnote to the Britpop movement, back in the 90s Rick Witter and the boys chalked up an impressive run of 15 consecutive Top 40 hits, albeit with most of them at the lower end of the list.

However, unless you’re a staunch fans, you’d probably be hard pressed to name let alone sing any of them. So, following their 2007 reunion and a couple of well received festival appearances, they’re out on the road to jog those memories with a set list of such singles as Going For Gold, Chasing Rainbows, Getting Better and, their only Top 10 entry, Going For Gold as well as a sprinkling of album tracks.

Workmanlike rather than inspired, it’s hard to get too excited but at least there’s the bonus of opening act The Holloways whose current album, No Smoke, No Mirrors (Madfish), takes their Ray Davies influence, Madness affections and inevitable Fratellis comparisons and serves them up as classic British pop with numbers like AAA, On The Bus and Jukebox Sunshine. 7pm. £16.50. O2 Academy 2

Sunday December 13

Depeche Mode

Along with some naive fantasies about what Basildon might be like, recent documentary The Posters Came Down From The Walls featured a collection of fans from around Europe, Russia, UK and America talking about what the band meant to them and how they’d changed their lives.

Gore and Gahan won’t be curing the lame tonight, but with this first live outing for the recent Sounds Of The Universe (Mute) album they’ll certainly be bolstering the spirits of the faithful with a punchy affirmation of why they warrant continuing devotion.

It is, perhaps, a more restrained approach than that familiar from the likes of Personal Jesus, Shake The Disease, I Feel You, John The Revelator and the urgent pop of debut hit People Are People. Rather, darkly brooding tracks such as Hole To Feed, Wrong and Little Soul have an almost cosmic church feel about them as sombre chilled guitars and electronic murmurs slide in and out of the cloisters. Indeed, despite a fizzing bleep intro, the chorus of Peace sounds like the boys’ sci fi version of Gregorian hymnal. Pity the rest sounds like Ultravox, though.

They do pick up the pace slightly for In Sympathy which, in Gahan’s delivery, sounds like a synthpop version of young Scott Walker while Come Back strides purposefully along on a clanging industrial beat, Miles Away is a Depeche rock cruncher and Perfect an aptly titled slice of languid electronic pop.

It’s unlikely that any of the finely crafted but mutedly measured numbers from the album will prove highlights of the show and the crowd will be hanging out for the hits, but they do provide reassurance that, having survived their personal dark storms to find calm and redemption, the posters are going to be on the walls for some time to come, yet. 7.30pm. £40. LG Arena

Sunday December 13

Marilyn Manson

Really, does anyone care anymore? Once the spindly androgynous Antichrist Superstar of goth shock rock in his pallid make up, lipstick, and mascara, spitting out scabrously satirical lyrics designed to inflame even the more liberal of the moral majority, Manson sank into a desperate self-parody and wallowing introspection that seemed to drain his songwriting of its last reserves, hitting a nadir with Eat Me, Drink Me’s response to his failed marriage. Even so, that at least managed a Top 10 placing, something that eluded this year’s The High End Of Low, an album that, in recognition of his increasing lack of relevance, saw him bring back bassist and co-writer Twiggy Ramirez after seven years of exile.

Manson’s still in a self-pitying funk but, to be fair, there are flashes of the old fire on the twanging blues, stomp and electronic storms of Four Rusted Horses, We’re From America’s glam rock vitriolic response to the Bush engendered Iraq wars, the lacerating breakup downer of Devour and a self-villifying Unkillable Monster. Even so, the chances of him rekindling a dying fire seem remote. 7pm. £26. O2 Academy

Sunday December 13

Phantom Limb

Fresh from support to Will Young, the Bristolian sextet return for more intimate headline showcase of their own and a chance to really burn up the air with their self-titled debut album (Naim Edge), originally out last year but now reissued with an extra track.

From the opening six minute slow waltz shuffle of country soul gospel Don’t Say A Word, you’d have to have ears of mud not to go weak at the knees over Yolanda Quartey’s magnificent voice. She’s been deservedly compared to such greats as Etta James and Mavis Staples while among the band influences you’ll hear the likes of The Impressions, The Band, Gillian Welch, the Wild Horses side of the Stones and even Jeff Buckley as the songs unfold heart-twisted tales of love and its elusiveness.

With prominent use of lap steel and acoustic guitar, rootsy country blues is the dominant musical mood, occasionally, as on Withering Bones, harking to the plantation laments of Oh Brother.

The flexing muscles of Run and the martial beat and gospel swaying new track Draw The Line ensure they balance the pace with more uptempo material but it’s the keening slow songs that most hit the spot with the likes of the steel weeping My Love Has Gone, the Billie Holiday tinted Good Fortune and the organ and banjo flecked eight minute late night jazzy blues of Playing With Death. There can be few better ways of warming the bones and the soul on a cold winter’s night. 8pm. £6.50. The Yardbird, Paradise Place, B’ham

Monday December 14

Them Crooked Vultures

A rock supergroup that actually doesn’t include Jack White, this rarity lines up as Foo Fighters head honcho drummer Dave Grohl, QOTSA’s Josh Homme on lead vocals and, project originator, Led Zep bassist John Paul Jones. As you might imagine, their eponymous debut album (Sony) is a heavy beast, Zep influences prominent with grinding riffs, leviathan drumming and Homme giving it his best blues rock and leafing through the Jimmy Page notebook for his guitar solos.

You know what you’re in for from the opening of Nobody Loves Me & Neither Do I which gets down and dirty with the lemon squeezing blues and things rarely let up on the crunch. However, while instrumental Elephants is like taking a guided tour through Zep riffs and snakecharmer sway Spinning In Daffodils are fed from the same fertiliser, the trio do mine other influences. Scumbag Blues is like discovering a lost Cream track (Homme’s falsetto almost a ringer for Jack Bruce), an spaghetti Western tinged Dead End Friends echoes the Queens themselves while Gunman, Caligulove and the deafening eight minute prog rock groove Warsaw Or The First Breath You Take After You Give Up all have a strong scent of The Doors. And, most bizarrely, Mind Eraser, No Chaser sounds like a Jeff Lynn ELO rocker.

Fleshed out live with Alain Johannes as second guitarist, the set is big on licks and steroid pumped rhythms and gets all a bit odd during the psychedelic lounge of Interlude With Ludes, but shouts for Led Zep covers will not be welcomed.

Keeping things slightly incestuous, support comes from Sweethead, the new, obscure Bowie-named project from QOTSA guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen featuring the sultry vampish vocals of Serinna Sims. They’ll be showcasing their sleaze glam stoner rock tracks from The Great Disruptors EP and self-titled debut album which, rather inevitably, features a high quota of riffs that would have been at home on a Queens album only without the songs to go with them. While it’ll make a suitably noisy impression at the party, there’s nothing here to really distinguish them and it says much that the best number of the set is likely to be their cover of the Kinks’ Tired Of Waiting. 7pm. £30. O2 Academy

Tuesday December 15

PiL

After banking the cheque for the Pistols reunion, butter salesman Johnny Lydon now boots the savings account by resurrecting his experimental, innovative and highly influential post punk project, Public Image Limited.

The debut album, First Issue, was heavily steeped in dub with Lydon leaning to the avant garde with his deliberately tuneless vocals, while the follow up, Metal Box, was even more stark and uncompromising in Jah Wobble’s dub bass lines, Keith Levene’s jagged guitars and Lydon’s stream of consciousness vocals. Nonetheless, it did produce a Top 20 single in Death Disco although any notions this might see the band letting accessibility seep in was quickly dispelled with the Flowers of Romance album which, largely ditching guitars for synths and with unfathomable abstract lyrics, seemed pitched at a very limited core audience of extreme art rock devotees.

In typical contradictory manner, Lydon followed up with 1985’s This Is What You Want... This Is What You Get and a complete about turn that saw the band heading into dance and even pop territory, spawning This Is Not A Love Song’s riposte to accusations of selling out and becoming a Top 5 hit in the process.

A further four, equally unpredictable, albums followed variously playing around with metal, jazz and dance music before, refusing to lay out any more of his own cash, Lydon knocked it on the head in 1992. However, 17 years later here we are again, Lydon recalling drummer Bruce Smith and one time Damned keyboardist Lu Edmunds to the ranks alongside multi-instrumentalist new boy Scott Firth. Quite what shape the set list and stage show will take is, as you might expect, anyone’s guess, though, with an eye on the profit margins, it’s more likely to prompt dancing than head-scratching. 7.30pm. £36. O2 Academy

Tuesday December 15

David Gray

The parting of the ways with longtime songwriting partner and pianist Craig McClune would have given many a fan cause for concern, but, while his absence is notable, the recent Draw The Line (Polydor) is by no means a disappointment. There’s no great departure from the sort of sound and songs Gray’s been delivering in his raspy rootsy voice since breakthrough single Babylon, nine years ago, but familiarity breeds content rather than contempt. Opening with the piano tinkling Fugitive (the chords of which echo Babylon), it unfurls across slow burning nuggets like the bluesy Draw The Line, a twinklingly reflective Nemesis, the Morrison influenced Celtic soul of Jackdaw and the uptempo rocking Stella The Artist.

Transformation’s a bit of a plodder, only relieved by the campfire harmonies finale, and album closer Annie Lennox duet Full Steam proves rather an anti-climax while Jolie Holland’s kept so low in the mix of Kathleen she may as well not have bothered turning up, but otherwise pretty much anything here will sit comfortably alongside proven favourites in the set list. 7.30pm. £29.50. Symphony Hall

Wednesday December 16

The Twang

This should have been a triumphant year for the Quinton quintet, releasing a much anticipated follow up to Love It When I Feel Like This, a debut that spawned three Top 20 hits and many a sold out show. Instead, perhaps taken aback at the band having matured beyond their formative baggy funk and laddish songs of booze and bonking, fans deserted them in droves and Jewellery Quarter (b-Unique) ground to a halt on the bottom rung of the 20 and neither Barney Rubble or the breezily loping Encouraging Sign made any impression on the singles charts.

So, while they try and puzzle out what went wrong and review their strategy for survival in 2010, they’ve scaled down what might otherwise have been a bigger Christmas party but, rest assured, there’ll still be plenty of crackers. 8pm. £12.50. The Rainbow, Digbeth

Thursday December 17

The Wonder Stuff

Last year’s tour saw them playing the entirety of debut album The Eight Legged Groove Machine to mark its 20th anniversary and this year they move on twelve months to repeat the process with the Top 5 follow-up, Hup. They’d still have to wait two years for their first top 10 single with Size Of A Cow, but the album did lay the foundations with Don’t Let Me Down Gently and, their first foray into fiddly folk, Golden Green.

Lining up as founder members Miles Hunt and Malcom Treece alongside drummer Andres Karu, bassist Mark McCarthy and Hunt’s fiddle playing collaborator Erica Nockalls, they’ll be working their way through from 30 Years In The Bathroom to Room 410 by way of Radio Ass Kiss, Piece of Sky, Cartoon Boyfriend and everything else on the album. Since it clocks in at under 40 minutes, you can expect a fair sprinkling of other Stuffie favourites too while, dotted around the venue, special guests will include Jim Bob from Carter USM, Dave Sharpe from The Alarm and, from the Shared singer-songwriters album, Stourbridge’s Timothy Parkes and the throaty tones of Shropshire based Dirty Ray, alias Kevin Weatherill from Immaculate Fools. 7.30pm. £20. O2 Academy

Thursday December 17

The Raveonettes

They didn’t become the next big thing they were being touted as and, with the arrival of the synthpop bandwagon, Danish duo Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo find themselves yesterday’s news. Fortunately, this hasn’t impacted on their music and, while In And Out Of Control (Fierce Panda) hasn’t had the release of profile of last year’s Lust Lust Lust, it’s still packed with their trademark echoey, reverb heavy and Spectorised wall of sound 50s/60s rock n roll pop filtered through By Bloody Valentine needles.

Opening track Bang! is a sublime bubblegum meeting of The Shangri-Las and Ronettes, the sexual heat of Breaking Into Cars recalls classic Blondie and the Last Dance single is dreamy prom night sparkle. However, listen to its lyrics about a repeated overdose victim and you’ll note that this is the duo’s darkest album to date. Of course, the titles should be a clue; the Japanese water garden languid ripples of a hushed Oh, I Buried You Today, the twangy fuzz of Suicide, feedback storm Break Up Girls with its S&M references and the disco driven D.R.U.G.S. If you somehow miss these, you can’t really avoid the sexual assault centred Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed), a number which manages to combine sweet pop frills and nerve jarring discord simultaneously.

They really should be playing bigger venues than the upstairs room of a pub (even one as thrivingly cool as this), but you can be sure they’ll make the place feel vast. 8pm. £10. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Friday December 18

Pet Shop Boys

Rather like rich chocolate cake, you can over indulge on PSB music and not want to partake again for quite a while. Opening with the slow marching Love etc, replete with handclaps, orchestral sweeps, classical references (you’ll also hear Tchaikovsky on All Over The World) and electronics, current Grammy nominated album Yes is as rich as they come with lavishly arranged melodies, steeped in 60s pop history (Beautiful People conjures the spirits of both Dusty and Pet Clark), grand melodies, droll lyrics and sugar rush pop.

As such, the infectious rippling glam-dancey Pandemonium, electro hormonal soul pop Did You See Me Coming?, a bleepy Europop More Than A Dream, the dreamily languid King Of Rome and The Way It Used To Be’s fluttering sadness are the sort of songs you want to play constantly for a couple of weeks. But then find it hard to listen to again for months without feeling just a little overstuffed and slightly nauseous.

Four of the album tracks find their way into the set list for The Pandemonium Tour, staged amid a wall of white boxes with projections that underline the show’s themes of construction, buildings, architecture, and urban landscape. Opening with Heart, other numbers include lesser known songs Divided By Zero, Closer To Heaven, and obscure B-side ballad Do I Have To alongside rearranged versions of such hits as Left To My Own Devices, Always On My Mind and the triple whammy finale of It’s A Sin, Being Boring and West End Girls.

The festive season being upon us, they may also slip in It Doesn’t Often Snow At Christmas from their new Christmas (Parlophone) EP which also features their cover of Coldplay’s Viva La Vida for which, in the live set, Neil Tennant dons crown and cape like some panto star.

Special guests are Bad Lieutenant, the new project of New Order frontman Bernard Sumner which also features Stephen Morris on drums, bassist Tom Chapman. keyboard player Phil Cunningham and, sharing vocals and guitar duties, new boy Jake Evans.

Not too surprisingly, debut album Never Cry Another Tear (Triple Echo) has plenty of Manchester musical DNA but, with guitars prominent, it’s not an attempt (except perhaps for These Changes) to slip out the New Order sound under a different name. Indeed, poppily opening track Sink Or Swim owes much more to the summery jangle of The Byrds while This Is Home owes much to Echo & the Bunnymen, Shine Like The Sun is a bluesy dance swagger swirl that conjures Cornershop without the Asian colourings and the staccato Summer Days flies on Doves wings.

It’s probably going to prove rather more successful stateside than here, but with the psychedelic burr to Twist Of Fate, the lovely Lilac Time like pastoral Running Out Of Luck and the folky strum of the acoustic Head Into Tomorrow, it would be churlish not to let yourself give it a chance to win you over. 7.30pm. £30. NIA

Friday December 18

Ian Brown

In a logical world you wouldn’t be able to give Brown’s albums away from the back of a lorry. His tunes plod, his lyrics often make you cringe, his voice if colourless and his groove is frequently pedestrian. And his haircut’s crap. Yet, even though the current My Way (Fiction) has been the least successful, his albums have consistently cracked the Top 10 and his gigs are packed.

Brass blowing opening track Stellify struts along like a concrete cow, clunky protest song Crowning Of The Poor sounds like a psychedelic Bond theme throwback, Just Like You is so baggy its trousers are around its disco ankles, Own Brain turns his name into an anagram with a rigid breakbeat to which only zombies could dance and there’s so much swirling acid noise going on with By All Means Necessary it’s a surprise to realise there’s actually a song in there too.

Bizarrely, even if he pronounces it Joodgement Day, the track that works best is a mariachi tinged version of Zager & Evans’ In The Year 2525 (even more bizarrely, there’s been a second cover of the song in the past month), though it’s also hard to dislike Always Remember Me which, with its clumsily endearing marching beat and dreamy fuzzing melody, sounds like a ‘so there’ to fellow former Stone Roses forgotten man, Chris Squire. Not least since the actual CD has the title rather unsubtly emblazoned over a red rose

Undoubtedly another album of similar naffness will be along in a couple of years, and undoubtedly will provide Brown with yet another notch to his Top 10 belt. Such are the baffling wonders of the world. 7pm. £24. O2 Academy

Saturday December 19

Babyshambles

Booed by the audience and escorted from the stage in Germany for singing the banned Nazi era verse of the German National Anthem during a music festival, given Pete Doherty’s Jewish ancestry and his work to fight fascism, his protestations that he was unaware of the connection sound a little feeble. So, I guess he’s off Vera Lynn’s Christmas Card list too.

Having spent the year working on his solo album, this is the band’s first UK tour in two years, undoubtedly a warm up and testing ground for their third album with a few new numbers mixed in and around whatever songs Doherty can remember from Shotter’s Nation and Down In Albion. He probably won’t risk doing God Save The Queen. 7pm. £21. O2 Academy

Sunday December 20

The Cinematics

Clawing back lost ground after their American based label went under last year, the Glasgow based outfit are doing the rounds whipping up enthusiasm for sophomore album Love And Terror (The Orchard). It shouldn’t be too hard a job. They’ve been variously compared to Editors (Scot Rinning’s deep vocals are not unlike Tom Smith’s) and The Kaiser Chiefs, both of whom you can hear in the music, but the rumbling big music title track with its throbbing bassline twang also brings to mind the early Simple Minds, All These Things and Moving To Berlin vividly recall The Cure while Lips Taste Like Tears suggests Duran Duran and there’s shades of U2’s New Year’s Day to the slow pulsing Hard For Young Lovers.

Lyrically they plough a dark furrow with a large helping of bruised heart romanticism about lost love and longings, but there’s also an anguished account of a sister’s mental illness on the Editors-like Hospital Bills while Wish (When the Banks Collapse) rather speaks for itself. The album slipped out to little awareness a few months back so they’re clearly going to have to work hard to regain the buzz they had around the A Strange Education debut, but they certainly have the tools for the job. 8pm. £5. Rainbow. Digbeth

Monday December 21

UB40

A sign perhaps of increasing desperation after the excellent Twentyfourseven album failed to make the Top 75, this year’s already seen one compilation with Love Songs and comes Best Of Labour Of Love (Virgin) trawling the band’s three covers albums, reprising three tracks, Please Don’t Make Me Cry, Homely Girl and Come Back Darling from the Love Songs collection, and recycling several others that have already featured on previous best ofs.

It’s hard to see who might want this other than fans obsessed with running order permutations but, as is the usual sales grab case, the band have lobbed on two previously unreleased numbers. Not, however, tracks that failed to make any of the three previous volumes, but, the first to feature Duncan Campbell on vocals, new recordings of Don’t Want To See You Cry and the single Bring It On Home To Me. However, since both of these will be on next year’s Labour of Love IV, there really doesn’t seem any point. And, with rumours of sluggish ticket sales, that might soon be true of the band too. 7.30pm. £35. LG Arena

Tuesday December 22/Wednesday December 23

Miley Cyrus

Whatever you think of the music, the girl certainly has one hell of a Protestant work ethic. In the last two years alone she’s been voice talent for Bolt and recorded a Golden Globe nominated song for the soundtrack, released both the Best Of Both Worlds and Hannah Montana movies and started filming weepie drama The Last Song, created a line of girls clothing, made a third season of the Disney Channel’s Hannah Montana series (which has far outstripped That’s So Raven of which it was a spin-off and concludes next year) and released an accompanying soundtrack album, as well as recording two mega-selling albums under own name. All this without (save for a minor kerfuffle about a Vanity Fair photo shoot) without any of the tabloid headlines or meltdowns of a Britney or Lindsay.

The music? Well, think Avril and Hilary Duff, add a streak of twangy southern country (inherited from Achy Breaky dad Billy Ray) and a tough pop edge and you won’t be far off the mark. It is, of course, almost obligatory to approach any Disney machine pop singer with disdain, but the fact is Cyrus is the real thing. Whatever the well scrubbed image may be, musically speaking she gets down in there and rocks.

The swaggering pop title track of the Breakout album was co-penned by Gina Schock of the Go Gos, 7 Things romps along like a female version of bands like Blink and Weezer, See You Again throws in a Euro disco pop swirl, Fly On The Wall takes Girls Aloud on at their own game, These Fall Walls is a stylish Nashville country ballad and the self-written Wake Up America has her delivering a global warming protest with a chugging guitar attack. She even covers Girls Just Wanna Have Fun without a hint of disgracing herself.

She’s just released The Time Of Our Lives (Hollywood), a mini-album originally released through Walmart as a promo for her clothing launch and is now bulked up with The Climb from the Hannah Montana movie and a live Before The Storm duet with the Jonas Brothers.

However, it’s the new tracks that really grab you. Beefing things up even more, a cover of Ashlee Simpson track Kicking And Screaming sees her head in a garage punky rawk direction while recent hit Party In The U.S.A. is swaggery dance beats pop with speak sing verse and a Britney namecheck, Time Of Our Lives is chuggy power pop and both When I look At You and Obsessed are soaring stadium power ballads that wouldn’t be out of place in a Bon Jovi set.

Arriving in the UK for her first arena tour, there’ll be heavy representation from both albums in the set list alongside a Hannah Montana medley, an acoustic version of Bottom of the Ocean and a cover of Britney’s Baby One More Time before bringing down the curtain with 7 Things. It may take a while for cynics to see past the Disney tag, but the girl is growing up and when Montana’s just a reruns memory she’s still going to be a proper rock n roll star.

Opening the show (and duetting on Hovering) will be Metro Station, featuring Cyrus’ half-brother Trace. A generic US teen electro pop outfit with Panic At The Disco aspirations, they’re a rather less exciting proposition with little of their reissued eponymous debut likely to stick in the memory after the final notes fade. They’re releasing flaccid mid-tempo breathy ballad, Kelsey (Columbia) to tie in with the tour, but the really frightening proposition is that they might include the B side cover of Last Christmas, a tinny synth pop treatment that would have had them booted off X-Factor’s George Michael night in disgrace. 7.30pm. £60/£49.50. LG Arena

Wednesday December 23

The Lights

Although the 70s pop of current single January Blues doesn’t do the Birmingham quintet justice, they’ve had a fairly successful year building their name and certainly deserved to see the country pop of The Low Hundreds at least tickling the charts. This is their Christmas Party wrap up before getting down to business again in 2010 and pushing for the breakthrough they deserve, so get along and share some tinsel.

The show also serves as the launch night for the debut EP from Laura Bowen. Discovered when she won the Birmingham Mail’s One Voice, the 13 year old is the first signing to the new label launched by local outfit The Heathers who also provide her songs and backing band. She may be young, but she’s got a seasoned, slightly raspy pop edge to the voice that gives The Other Girlfriends Club a taste of The Bangles while both Betray and Keeping Secrets highlight her strengths in the ballad department, the latter calling to mind the early days of Lulu. One to keep an eye on. 8pm. £5. Flapper & Firkin

Wednesday December 30

Little Sister

Described on this very site as a homegrown answer to The Be Good Tanyas, the Birmingham based folk quartet see out the year with the launch of their debut album, Grey And Green. Since the release of their eponymous second EP a couple of years back, while she appears on the album Katy Bennett has left the band and moved to Bewdley, with accordionist Hannah Marsden, harpist Samantha Fox and violin player Laura Mattison now joined by blues guitarist Abie Budgen.

Reflecting their various background and influences, the music ranges wide to embrace traditional Welsh and Jewish airs, klezmer, bluegrass, Celtic and English folk, and classical with the album setting up contrasts between the city and the country experience.

The harmonies sparkling, it’s a heady affair with an open airy quality and freshness that captures the live feel, the band’s playfulness evident on Bili Broga, a kiddie song fairytale about a love affair between a Welsh frog and a toad, and the Spanish and gospel folk swing Did You See Me?, apparently a song about someone who stepped over Fox when she fell and dropped her shopping.

Scraping fiddle sparks up the counter harmonies rich Bennett-penned Rolling, a breezy blow your troubles away old school mountain music tune with a rhythm perfectly described by the title and the squeezebox wheezing to great effect while elsewhere you’ll find the shanty like call and response trad folk Magpie and two rousing instrumentals in the gypsy flavours and intricate interplay of harp, fiddle and accordion of Kevin and the brief but rousing fiddle driven No Job about being unemployed. They even have a fiddle firing folk dance tune called Ashby de la Zouch, the title of which comprises most of the lyric.

You’ll also find the plaintive ache of Coming Home, a virtual solo spotlight for Fox on vocals and guitar, the lovely near madrigal, harp plucked version of trad chetsnut Gyspy Rover and folk bluesy grooved cover of Gillian Welch’s One Monkey with hand percussion rhythms and a fiddle framed cajun shuffle through the Pomus/Shuman classic from which they derive their name.

Along with past material such as the Sephardic La Rosa sung in Hebrew, they will, I assume, be playing the album in its entirety tonight, an early taste of what’s pretty sure to be on many a best of list this time next year. 8pm. £8. Kitchen Garden Cafe