Birmingham live music and gig guide

After the success of their hillbilly tribute to AC/DC, the Dixies have extended their horizons by giving a whole bunch of other rock artists the bluegrass treatment with Let There Be Rockgrass. Tongue in cheek but musically serious, this time round they've put the banjos and fiddles to work on Motorhead (Ace Of Spades), Kiss (Detroit Rock City), Queen (Fat Bottomed Girls), Bad Company (Feel Like Making Love), J Geils Band (Centrefold), Aerosmith (Walk This Way), and even The Darkness (I Believe In A Thing Called Love). Plus, of course, a whole bunch more of AC/DC tunes with Whole Lotta Rosie and Touch Too Much and live versions of Highway To Hell and Dirty Deeds Done Dirty Cheap.

And, they throw in a couple of their own tunes too, though it's unlikely anyone's going to be returning the favour and reinventing Corn Liquor and I'm Keeping Your Poop anytime soon.

It's a simple formula, bend the songs out of musical shape - usually either slowing down or speeding up - and add hillbilly instrumentation, and there's no denying that the material lends itself surprisingly well and the guys can play up a storm, but ultimately while passing fun this really is a one trick pony. Worth a ride though.

Having announced their arrival with last year’s single Come Get Some, the young London four piece now take 2005 by the scruff of the neck with their self-titled debut album (Brightside). There’s no musical envelope pushing here, but they do undoubted solid justice to such obvious retro rock influences as Aerosmith, Free, Cream and Led Zep with a muscular but melodic clutch of riff and chorus friendly numbers ambitiously eyeing up stadium arenas.

On the air guitar, head shaking, sweat spraying blues rock front, Joyride, On The Road, Standing In Line (very Paul Rogers), Platinum Blind, and You’re So Right For Me (shades of Lennon’s Come Together) all swagger in style while, balancing the equation with the staple anthemic soaring ballads, current single Staring At The Sun amply lives up to its ambitions to be their answer to I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing.

There’s a minor worry that the sweeping big rock likes of To Die For, Angels Calling and the keyboard introed Deep And Meaningless make the boys sound suspiciously like they may be closet Bryan Adams fans, but I daresay that’ll only serve to further guarantee that their future’s going to be so bright with the glare of cigarette lighters being held aloft that they’ll need a bulk order of shades.

Dubbed the Jamie Callum of folk roots and compared to a young Richard Thompson, the fiddle playing, guitarist-singer’s enjoying his own turn in the spotlight after stints with Cara Dillon and Equation. Teamed with elder brother Sean (also of Equation and musical partner to Kathryn Roberts) and acoustic double bass player Ben Nicholls, Lakeman will be spreading the word on his current, second, album, Kitty Jay (I Scream) with its mostly self penned but trad sounding songs inspired by the myths and legends of Dartmoor.

Voted 2004’s best folk-roots album by Time Out, pivoting around the title track’s tale of the servant girl suicide buried at a crossroads near Hounds Tor, it’s a sterling collection that deftly balances the moor’s brooding atmosphere with the occasional sweetness of rain on moss. Death and darkness are dominant; the injured knight in the scraping The Bold Knight, the murders recounted in John Lomas and The Ballad of Josie, the hard life of copper miners in Blood Upon Copper, loss at sea in The Storm. So, it’s a welcome relief when he finally closes up things with The Streamers, a jauntily upbeat rework of trad tune The Streams of Lovely Nancy. But however gloomy the stories may get, the virtuoso, urgent and passionate playing of Lakeman and his cohorts guarantee the gig will be anything but a depressing experience.

Sex, drugs and rock n dole provide the thematic keynotes for this London four piece with their self-avowed love of The Who, The Small Faces and The Jam. It’s not all Mod though, you’ll find a touch of punk and The Beatles in there too (You marries early Lennon to The Buzzcocks) while comparisons to Squeeze aren’t unjustified. Above all though, it’s the energy that comes through on something like recent single Contrary Mary. They’re currently working on the follow up and debut album, so this looks like being something of a testing ground for the material.

American Music Club -It's ten years since the Club put up its shutters after a volatile twelve years and seven albums that sold in inverse proportion to their critical acclaim. Frontman and songwriter Mark Eitzel released an equal number of no less excellent but no more commercially successful solo albums while the other members, bassist Danny Pearson, drummer Tim Mooney and guitarist Vudi, drifted off into various degrees of musical obscurity.

Much missed, with Marc Capelle's keyboards and brass added to the fold, they've thankfully decided to give it another try, returning with Love Songs For Patriots (Cooking Vinyl), an album that ranks up there with such past classics as Mercury and Everclear, both of which shiuld be equally well represented in the live set.

While the passing decade has honed their musical brilliance to an even finer edge it hasn’t wrought too many changes in their world view, grounded as Eitzel's belief is in that life is there to inflict as much misery as possible, with disappointment the best you can hope for. That said, he does seem to have come to a relatively inner peace, accepting the end of relationships (as on Another Morning) with the grace of good times known rather than bad times gnawing at his heart. I mean who'd ever thought they'd ever hear Eitzel sing something called Only Love Can Set You Free or breathily croon a line like 'we're so small compared to our hearts' over a heartbeat pulse as he does on Love Is.

The music has warmth too, the dreamy folksiness of Another Morning, the jaunty The Horseshoe Wreath In Bloom, the scuffed lounge wooziness of the semi-spoken Mantovani The Mind Reader. Of course, then there's the other side; the world weariness that hangs across the simple acoustic Song of the Rats Leaving The Sinking Ship like a clammy shroud, the bluesy vitriol veining the hellish vision of political corruption and decay that is Patriot's Heart, Myopic Books with its soured stagnant relationship, and the piano discordant Ladies and Gentlemen where David Bowie, Tom Waits and John Coltrane come together in a call to personal spiritual arms in defiance of the climate of fear and oppression generated by the Bush regime.

It's unlikely to cause any seismic shift in their sales patterns, but perhaps being generally hailed as one of the greatest bands on the planet will be sufficient to hold the reunion together for a few more albums and tours yet.

The band formerly known as Lucky Luciano set out to spread the word on their new moniker and, since it’s now almost two years since their last EP, provide a musical update. Assuming there’s been no seismic shifts of direction, expect to find gentle acoustic English folksy pop with shades of CS&N and Ezio. Support comes from original Duran member and Girls On Film writer Andy Wickett.

A collaboration between The Beautiful South’s writer-guitarist Dave Rotheray and singer Sam Brown, this is their second tour and a further push for the self-titled debut album of acoustic country, folk and pop wrapped around Rotheray’s familiar melancholic observational lyrics about bruised and broken relationships and unfulfilled lives.

The general feel is of a rural British backporch country (perfectly captured on the excellent Days) with oak trees, dusty backroads and soon to be harvested fields. Support comes courtesy of Irish songstress Eleanor McEvoy repromoting her current Early Hours album of melancholic folk and jazz-blues as she sings of absent friends, recalls childhood days and pays tribute to those coping with loss and loneliness. Do insist she does her slowed down, bluesy boozey version of Chuck Berry’s Memphis Tennessee, reinterpreted into a wearily sad song by an estranged father denied access to his child.

If you think bass and drum outfits just do dance stuff, think again. Jesse Keeler or Sebastien Grainger are a couple of noisy tykes from Toronto who make the sort of brutal sound you might expect from the likes of Fugazi or Anthrax. Inspired by hip hop and funk they clearly go for the groove, but do so with an uncompromising speed metal assault while there’s elements of their techno that also calls to mind Gary Numan and Black History Month even harks to a Krautrock T Rex.

Describing themselves as sounding like ‘an elephant in your living room’, they announced their arrival last year with the hammering Blood On Our Hands single and return now with debut album You’reA Woman, I’m A Machine (679), launching into the fray with Turn It On’s pulverising sonic bloodbath and a following through with the likes of the title track’s marriage of Motorhead and New Order, the disco whirl n grind Go Home, Get Down and yet more headbanging hardcore dance on Going Steady and Little Girl, showing their funk colours off with the final Sexy Results. Not a gig for the feint hearted or those with sensitive ears I suspect.

Support comes from New York outfit The Fever, another bunch of dance rock groove merchants who also throw in garage and punk and glam influences, Ladyfingers from debut album Red Bedroom (Kemado) a cross between Billy Idol and Devo while Night Vision and Gray Ghost suggest they’re also fans of Sparks, Scorpio is a military Bowie stomp and Cold Blooded colours itself with echoes of Roxy and, er, Toto?

Numan rears his influence again with Artificial Heart but then Labour of Love gives you Iggy Pop and just when you think you have it sorted, they turn around and bow out with big end of the evening Bowiesque ballad sweller, Diamond Days. Pop it is, but there’s brains here for those who want to listen as well as dance.

A swift return in headline mode after her last appearance here supporting the Finn brothers, if Driver was looking to strike while the iron’s still hot she’s found just how quickly public interest can cool.

Despite being one of the best tracks on her Everything I've Got In My Pocket debut album, Invisible Girl failed to get within a whiff of the charts which makes you wonder just how many are going to turn out for the gig. Although the earlier shows were a bit hesitant, she’ll have settled into the things by now and whatever the carping critics had to say, she’s got a decent set of pipes in the Dido/Cowboy Junkies scheme of things while the music, streaking the soft rock with its country and folk tinges, serves up some classy material. Just to remind you, she also does a stunning piano ballad sway version of Springsteen's Hungry Heart that, were there any justice, would be the next single and an enormous hit. However, you can’t help thinking that, if the indifference continues, she may just start concentrating on reading scripts again and, frankly, that would be a bit of a loss.

Deservedly much acclaimed, despite some at times rather slavish adherence to their Morrisey obsessions (listen to Don’t Lose The Faith and it’s like The Smiths never broke up), the Montreal boys head back for another go round with current album No Cities Left (Bella Union) and a reminder that they spread their influences a little wider.

It’s an expansive orchestral sound, taking in French chanson with the title track, flavouring The Second Part with acoustic folksiness, Postcard From Purgatory incorporating disco, Henry Mancini, sonic squall and prog rock, Expecting The Worst somewhere between Bowie and ELO.

Born out of a response to 9/11, it’s a dark affair but also one richly veined with defiance of the horrors and a determination to face the future with hope. On the evidence so far and with a groundswell of support gathering momentum, tomorrow surely belongs to them. Opening proceedings are Ambulance Ltd (that’s el-tee-dee by the way), a New York quintet bonded by a mutual love of Neil Young, Booker T and My Bloody Valentine, although breathy strum pop new single Stay Where You Are (TVT) rather more sounds considerably like a cocktail of The Velvets, REM, The Beach Boys and Pink Floyd. They’ll be previewing their second album and, given they’ve reworked Floyd’s Fearless and the Velvets’ The Ocean for their live shows, probably throwing in some surprise curveballs too.

Her veins running with Chinese blood, raised in St Andrew's by adoptive Scottish parents with a love for the great outdoors and educated variously at Kent School, Connecticut and Royal Holloway College, Edinburgh born Tunstall paid her dues singing with klezmer hip hop outfit Oi Va Voi.

Over that time she was also busy amassing a hundred or so songs and filtering through influences ranging from Billie Holiday, Lou Reed and 10,000 Maniacs.

Debut album Eye To The Telescope has seen her compared to everyone from Carole King, and Beth Orton to Bjork and Rikki Lee Jones, from which you should guess she's firmly in the school of classic pop songwriting, the melody centred music veined with scratchy beats (check Miniature Disasters), jazz textures, r&b, soft rock and chiming country while the lyrics hover around a general theme of relationships and self-examining observations on women.

Apparently cited by Renee Zellweger as one of her favourite new artists, with particular highlights including the lullabyish False Alarm (where a touch of Travis peaks through), the bluesy Heal Over, the Tom Waits late night vibe of Through The Dark and the breathily sublime Under The Weather, she's likely to go down big with the same people who've embraced Katie Melua but wouldn't mind some personality to go with the music.

Support comes from Mississippi country boy Charlie Mars who’ll be previewing his soon to follow self-titled debut album which American reviews have already compared to Springsgteen, Young, U2 and Morrison. Sound worth arriving early for.

Never a predictable performer, he could well be in reflective mood and dipping extensively into the greatest hits catalogue to go with the recently released compilation, or he might well be favouring his current studio set The Delivery Man, an album that’s part story cycle of songs revolving around the titular Southern anti hero, part a response to war on terror and the climate of fear, and part a gathering together of songs he wrote for the Cold Mountain soundtrack. It’s also one of the best things he's done in years.

Those who liked their Costello pumped up will be hoping he decides to throw the political invective of Bedlam, the organ drive r&b venom that is Needle Time or wonderful rowdy honky tonker There's A Story In Your Voice which sounds like it could have been penned by Nick Lowe at his country peak.

Those who prefer him in more reflective mood should keep ears alert for slow swaying pedal steel and piano ballad Country Darkness, the title track’s moody late night blues club groove and in his country clothing, wounded ballad of tenderness Nothing Clings Like Ivy and the simple vocal and ukulele version of his Oscar nominated The Scarlet Tide.

Whatever’s on the set list though, this is pretty much guaranteed to be one of the gig’s of the month. 8pm, £14, Warwick Arts Centre. Mike Davies

Norwegian death metal mixed with symphonic goth rock makes for something of a schizophrenic experience listening to current album, Ashes (Steamhammer) as it swings from riff spraying braincrushers such as Libre and The Wretched with guttural screamer Kjetil to sepulchral rock opera ballads like Cure and Equilibrium with female singer Vibeke Stene and deep voiced third vocalist Osten Bergoy conjuring some unholy fusion of Evanescence and Renaissance.

That said, melding together skin lacerating bass and electric guitar with cellos and acoustic guitars on songs that swim in the turbulent lyrical waters of death, madness, despair and nightmare does make for a fairly invigorating experience.

Rarely clocking in at under five minutes on album, it’s likely the material will swell to even more epic proportions live, so they should manage to squeeze at least four numbers into the set.

The name comes from St. Petersburg and the band come from Newcastle, bringing together an experimental art pop with big bouncily propulsive power chords. Described as a cross between Franz Ferdinand and The Strokes, new single Apply Some Pressure (Warp) more realistically suggests a hybrid of Pulp, Sparks and early Roxy, a combination which, in tandem with the obvious knack of penning instantly infectious tunes, suggests those tips for big noise in 2005 are right on the money.

A bit of a coup this. A major early influence on Dylan not to mention the likes of Tom Waits and Beck, the footloose singing cowboy troubadour’s a fully paid up member of the folk music legend club and spiritual heir to Woody Guthrie. Born Elliott Charles Adnopoz and with a lifetime of musical anecdotes to his name (among them serenading James Dean, hanging out with Jack Kerouac and being part of Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Review), he’s now 73 he’s taking the opportunity to slip in a few shows while over here to receive the BBC Folk Awards Lifetime Achievement.

His arrival also coincides with the release of The Lost Topic Tapes: Isle of Wight 1957 (Hightone), a never released collection recording on a yacht in Cowes Harbour during his honeymoon with wife June and unheard for the past 50 years. His dusty voice in fine fettle, fingers picking those guitar strings like a wizard, it’s a marvellous trip back in time as a relaxed Elliott works his way through such classics as T For Texas, Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms, Ballad of John Henry, Woody Guthrie’s Car Song and Rock Island Line. No doubt he’ll be digging back into some of the evergreens he’s made his own over the years, but whatever he picks out of the bag his gigs are always things of wonder and no self-respecting roots music fan should miss what could prove one of the last chances to see the legend in the flesh.

That’ll be Gerard Whelan then, former frontman of Irish outfit An Emotional Fish, once hailed as the next U2. They imploded in the mid 90s with Whelan resurfacing with his new outfit some seven years later in 2002, recruiting such native names as Damien Rice and erstwhile Commitments members Maria Doyle Kennedy and Bronagh Gallagher to help out on vocals for debut album, Be Yourself (Rubyworks).

But old Fish fans shouldn’t expect to come over all Emotional, things are a bit different this time round with a sound that mixes together jazz, blues, latin, soul and country and conjures such various comparisons as Tom Waits, Dr John, Fun Lovin’ Criminals, Lee Hazelwood (Ger actually duets with Juliet Turner on Lee & Nancy’s Did You Ever) and Gavin Friday on songs that musically prowl from Tex Mex barrooms (Upside Down, Life Story) and New Orleans parades ( Bob & God, My Friend Jim) to seedy jazz cellars (Daddy Was A Devil, It Don’t Get Much Better Than This) and upright bass twanging back porches (Be Yourself). Well worth reeling in.

More noisy guitar thrashing London boys who’ve been dubbed a bastard offspring of The Kinks and The Stooges, brilliant new single Watch Committee (Irresponsible) leaves little doubt that they’re possessed of an urgent driving force reminiscent of the Pistols with Chris Barratt’s tonsil chewing Cockernee sounding vocals establishing a firmly individual identity. Galloping pop accompanying track Thick As Thieves and album previews, the staccato Keep It Shut and rowdy pub rocking Making Faces all add further evidence that this lot are about to become very big indeed.

Yes, you remember. They had that rap meets skate punk Walkie Talkie Man hit on the back its use for the Ipod ad. Then along came the Schmack (EMI) album and they did what’s known as a ‘Stiltskin’ or a ‘Babylon Zoo’. Basically a watered down New Zealand answer to the Red Hot Chillis. And garage rock. And Green Day. And Blink 182. And, oh why bother. Given they couldn’t even summon a minor hit second single it’s clear no one’s interested. Don’t expect to have to queue at the bar.

Barely into his twenties and protégé of Ryan Adams, Mason hails from the well heeled environs of Martha’s Vineyard but, living in a van with his dog and trusty acoustic guitar, he sounds like some dust croaked voiced world seasoned boxcar riding hobo troubadour, his songs including references to Dostoevsky, full of moral indignation at Bush’s America.

Last year’s Hard Hand To Hold EP sealed his reputation from the moment it was released, Waiting At The Station, Live It Up and the title track underlining such reference points as Guy Clarke, Woody and Johnny Cash. He’s back now with debut album Where The Humans Eat (Virgin), recorded live in his Catskills house using mostly first takes, which confirms him as one of the finest songwriters to have emerged on the roots folk scene in years and clearly in for the long haul.

The influences are still up front, Gotta Keep Movin and Our Town revealing a keen love of uncluttered folk blues while the deceptively tinkling venomous title track and the easy rolling Fear No Pain suggest he may include Bruce Cockburn in the record collection too. A little naive and inexperienced perhaps in his connections with the world as he sings lines like "I wanna see through all the lies of society, to the reality; happiness is at stake" and All You Can has the reaction of a typical middle class kid on discovering the city isn’t quite the paradise it’s cracked up to be.

But, these are minor niggles when presented with such gems as the semi-spoken rhythm ticking Cohenesque Still A Fly, a bluesy clattering Sold My Soul and, stand out track and sunny dancing concerned youth manifesto new single, Oxygen where he asks “do you remember the forgotten America, justice, equality, freedom for every race?" Get in now, then in 40 years time you can reminisce about how you saw him when.

Fuzzing up their old whispered slowcore melancholia with some serious rock freak out sonics, the Duluth trio might not, as they sing on Death of a Salesman, burned their guitars in rage but they certainly seem to have ignited them for new album The Great Destroyer (Rough Trade).

It may well come as something of a heart-attack to those who fell in love with the minimalist intimate beauty of the band’s earlier albums, but, rather like discovering Trans or Rust Never Sleeps when all you’ve known is After The Gold Rush, once you’ve got over the initial shock it’s hard to figure how you might live without it.

The melodies and harmonies are still there beneath the rumbling noise and distortions, the stunning desert night moods of Monkey conjuring those old Cowboy Junkies comparisons. California and Just Stand Back soaring Byrdsian folk-rock while Walk Into The Sea just spills all over with the spirit of Phil Spector. There’s a couple of missteps (the Tommy James-like Broadway is considerably overextended at seven minutes) but the big picture is overwhelmingly exhilarating, though when it comes to the live set it might be an idea not to cut the old fans too much adrift by cranking up the volume on cherished back catalogue memories.

Sunday February 20

James Blunt

You’ve probably heard his story. A former soldier who served in Kosovo and stood guard over the Queen Mother as she lay in state, Blunt then landed a publishing deal with ex 4 Non Blondes singer turned songwriter Linda Perry’s label within weeks of demob. Debut album, Back To Bedlam (Atlantic), has seen him dubbed the male Dido and the new David Gray, both of which comparisons you can understand listening to the likes of You’re Beautiful and Goodbye My Lover, but then High and Tears and Rain also respectively suggest Elton John and, er, Chris De Burgh.

You pretty much know what to expect from the reference points, heartfelt balladeering delivered on the wings of acoustic guitar and piano, big choruses, strong melodies and lyrics steeped in romance and melancholia. To be honest, given a tendency to lines like ‘I wish I could walk through the doors of my mind;’ and ‘I’m a puppet on a string’, he could probably do with some polishing on the songwriting front. But for now an ability to strike resonant chords and the emotional power of something like So Long Jimmy or, spawned from his army experiences, No Bravery, should see him safely through this reputation establishing period.

8pm, £5, Glee Club. Mike Davies

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Sunday February 20

Biffy Clyro

Back out on the road yet again to give a second push for new album Infinity Land. If anything harder and more abrasive than the debut with more savage guitar and yowling vocals, but also exploring other territories with My Recovery Injection a sort of stuttering altrock dub that weds emo rock, hardcore and, er, The Police. Indeed, Simon Neil sounds equally worryingly like Mr Sting on Some Kind of Wizard too.

Those who fancied the folky acoustic With Aplomb from the last album will want to head in the direction of The Atrocity and anyone wanting more of their flirtation with Eastern colours on the last album should be directed to There’s No Such Thing As A Jaggy Snake, a curious hybrid of melodic poprock and ear bleeding hardcore. And with recent single Glitter and Trauma hitting a mutant disco groove with Neil putting a sugar sweet coating to the voice and The Weapons Are Concealed switching midway from a semi-spoken delivery to a single guitar pulse into a rampaging flurry of guitar pop noise, predictability certainly isn’t a term much bandied about here.

When they focus in on the staccato, laceration and riffola elements, they’re as brutal as it gets but, as they’ve constantly demonstrated and new single Only One Word Comes To Mind amply reinforces, beneath that iron glove lurks a deceptively velvet fist.

7.30pm, £10, Wulfrun Hall. Mike Davies

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Tuesday February 22

The Deadstring Brothers

If you've been hanging around waiting for a band to pull together influences from Exile On Main Street era Stones, Gram Parsons and The Band, look no further. Indeed at one point around Exile there were rumours that Gram, who'd toured with the Stones, might hook up with them on a full time basis.

With Kurt Marschke's Jagger-like vocals, this Detroit five piece's self-titled debut gives a good idea of what might have resulted. So wistful dobro country (Jones Street, the slightly Dylanish 27 Hours), meets mid tempo r&b guitar strutters (I'm Not A Stealer, new single Entitled) in a Southern honky tonk then, in what's essentially an entire album of Gilded Sin and Dead Flowers. It's derivative but it's quality derivative, the soulful Unbroken a spooked lonesome desert I Know You Dear and even a narcotic, pedal steel layered slow sway through The Long Black Veil just a sample of its familiar sounding charms. Far from old rope!

7.30pm, £8, Ceol Castle. Mike Davies

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Tuesday February 22

Simple Plan

Montreal’s answer to Blink 182 or Sum 41 and former tour buddies of Avril Lavigne, the plan does indeed seem a simple on. Having got the taste for success after shifting two million copies of their pop punk debut album they’ve added extra sheen, loaded up the radio friendly riffs and hooks and returned with a teen angst guitar pop side vengeance for Still Not Getting Away (Lava).

You’ve heard it all before, but there’s no getting away from the fact that Welcome To My Life, Me Against The World, Perfect World, anthemic rock builder Crazy and bubble surging singalong energy of Blinky new single Shut Up have a solid grip on the combination of sherbert bubbling guitars and no-one understands me lyrics guaranteed to have the place packed to the rafters with spotty oiks bouncing off the walls.

7.30pm, £10, Carling Academy. Mike Davies

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Tuesday February 22

The Bureau

When, in the wake of chart topping single Geno and the Searching for the Young Soul Rebels album, internal frictions saw Dexy’s Midnight Runners fragment, Pete Williams, Geoff Blythe, Mick Talbot, Steve Spooner and Stoker Growcott quitting to form their own band. Joining forces with Rob Jones, Paul Taylor and vocalist Archie Brown , the Bureau was born and their self-titled album recorded. But then it all went pear shaped with management problems resulting in their label refusing to release it in the UK. It surfaced in Canada and Australia, where it gave them No 1 singles, but before long ongoing problems caused the band to call it a day.

The album’s only ever been available here on import, but a recent band reunion and a new deal with Warners finally sees it enjoy a long delayed homeland debut. As you might expect, it’s not too far removed from the r&b mod pop they were playing in Dexys, brass adding flourishes to choppy guitars and driving rhythms. Indeed Only For Sheep, with its mix of film noir soundtrack mood and big Northern Soul could easily have been a follow up to Geno.

But there’s more texture there too, a choppy hint of reggae bubbling beneath The First One, surf drums introing the surging soul pop swing of Sentimental Attachment, Got To Be Now flexing swaggering melodic muscles as Brown conjures thoughts of a cross between Wilson Pickett, Chris Farlowe and Screaming Jay Hawkins, and Talbot taking a Mancini/Neil Hefti workout on Carpetbaggers while Helpless stretches into beatnik jazz territory and Looking For Excitement goes some way to imagining what Depeche Mode might have been had they grown up in Wigan Casino.

The songs stand up too, The Bigger Prize and Let Him Have It, which recounts the miscarriage of justice over Derek Bentley, adding further strings to the album’s impressive bow. The ‘re-issue’, remastered to sound as it always should have done, also comes with not only four bonus tracks but also a whole extra 11 track CD of a never before heard live set recorded back in the early 80s.

Reformed with all of the original line up save Stoker, they may be a lot older these days but the music remains invigoratingly fresh and if they play this album launch gig with only half the heat and passion the muster on the live CD’s versions of Got To Be Now and Only For Sheep then the paintwork will be blistering for miles around.

8pm, £12, Glee Club. Mike Davies

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Wednesday February 23

REM

They’ve been subject to a few critical slings and arrows of late, accused of losing focus, creative direction and songwriting nous in the albums following Bill Berry’s departure. It may be no coincidence then that a ressiue programme of expanded editions of their post 88-back catalogue accompanies the tour, reminder of the days of Losing My Religion, Man On The Moon, Everybody Hurts and Daysleeper.

But really, even with less Peter Buck for your money and a rather unnecessary appearance by Q-Tip on The Outsiders, coolly received current album Around The Sun offers no reason for them to hang their head in shame. Okay, there’s a certain plodding quality to Make It All, Boy In The Well and the misfiring desert mood of High Speed Train, but even if they’re not vintage REM Around The Sun, a dreamy Electron Blue, the acoustic dark folk Final Straw and Leaving New York with its trademark tumbling melody lines still bear the distinctive trace of the band’s unique magic.

That said, unless Stipe’s feeling particularly perverse it’s a fair bet that tonight isn’t going to lean too heavily on either that album or such equally less well received offerings Up and Reveal, so if you happen to be of the opinion that the band’s best work is behind them chances are there’ll be plenty of memories on display tonight to underline matters.

Opening up are newcomers Now It’s Overhead, fronted by singer-songwriter and sometime Bright Eyes guitarist Andy LeMaster. Both Stipe and Bright Eyes maestro Conor Oberst provided back ups on last year’s Fall Back Open album, from which comes decidedly REM-ish and rather fine crunchy new single Wait In Line. Better yet though is their cover of Magnetic Fields’s Book Of Love on which, taken at a weary aching but slow building anthemic chug, LeMaster sounds not unlike Miracle Legion’s Mark Mulcahy. Take that as recommendation to stay out of the bar and catch the set.

7.30pm, £35, NEC. Mike Davies

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Wednesday February 23

Stephen Fretwell

Scunthorpe born, Manchester based and looking a bit like Vin Garbutt with that beard and corkscrew hair, Fretwell first announced his intentions a couple of years ago with a limited edition self-help acoustic album, going on to record an EP and mini album before landing a deal with Fiction, playing support to Snow Patrol and Keane and finally releasing Magpie, his first album ‘proper’, last November.

Largely just him and an acoustic guitar, sensitively fleshed out with spare backing arrangements, this is quality singer-songwriter stuff that’s seen reviews falling over themselves to throw Dylan, Drake and Damien Rice comparisons at him. They’re all apt enough (though the Bobness seems largely down to some harmonica and the lyrical touches and phrasing of What’s That You Say Little Girl) but Fretwell’s dustily melancholic vocals are firmly his own.

He casts something of a vulnerable, melancholic figure on stage, thereby immediately capturing the eyes and hearts of the female members of the audience, but make no mistake, he’s confident and assured artist. Listen to the late night jazzy moods of Play, the fractured Randy Newman romance of New York, the ruminative folk of Do You Want To Come With or the dreamy, water lapping pop that is Rose or the Spanish inflections of If You Go and you’ll hear just what a craftsman he is. There’s not a weak track here, but perhaps the real stand outs are the timeless love song beauty of Bad Bad Me Bad Bad You (though most obvious of the Rice comparisons) and first single, Run, a classic uplifting folk soul ballad that suggests that in years to come Fretwell may well be looked back on as Salford’s very own Van Morrison. It’s unlikely there’s tickets left, but if you happen to be one of the lucky ones then consider yourself blessed indeed.

7.30pm, £7, Glee Club. Mike Davies

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Wednesday February 23

The Bravery

Much touted and compared to The Cure, the New York garage electro outfit are among those heavily tipped for big things in 2005 following last year’s debut EP and a series of swaggeringly confident gigs. The debut album’s due in March so this should afford a useful advance suck it and see showcase alongside new single An Honest Mistake which, whatever the band may say, sounds remarkably like New Order.

7.30pm, £8.50, Carling Academy 2. Mike Davies

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Friday February 25

Martha Wainwright

Daughter of Loudon (and Kate McGarrigle), sister of Rufus,it would have been surprising if Martha hadn’t inherited the same talents and gone into music. With a couple of limited edition EPs over the years and occasional live shows with assorted family members, she’s been maintaining something of a low profile. That stops now though. Last year saw the release of the venomously titled Bloody Mother F***ing Asshole (DIS), a brilliant song of anger, frustration, and gender defiance that, evocative of dad’s early work, she spits out with raw passion over a slashed acoustic guitar and a cracked emotion warble that makes her sound like a foul-mouthed Melanie.

It’s no one trick pony either. The EP also comes with the heart shreddingly frayed and desolate I Will Internalize, noisy rumbling guitar bluesy wail It’s Over where she recalls Buffy Sainte-Marie and the Western saloon lazy honky tonk piano crooner How Soon.

These are just a handful of tasters for next month’s eagerly awaited debut album, much of which will doubtless be unveiled here on her first headlining tour.

8pm, £6, Glee Club. Mike Davies

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Friday February 25

Electric Six

A couple of years on from storming the charts with Danger! High Voltage! and Gay Bar, only front man Dick Valentine remains from the original version of the Detroit band. Following up debut album Fire, he and his latest line up return with Senor Smoke (Warner) and further funky disco metal synthogroove indulgences. It must be said things didn’t bode well given the kick off single was a pointless remake of Radio Ga Ga, but the good news is that the album manages to rescue the sinking ship with the effusive pop of Vibrator and such lycra-stretching funky grooves as Dance Epidemic, Boy Or Girl and the fairly self-explanatory Dance-A-Thon 2005 while pomp overload Rock and Roll Evacuation and warped romance Be My Dark Angel are ample indication that Valentine has a sense of humour to go with the ego. Cheesy and not a little camp but fun you can dance to all the same.

7pm, £12, Wulfrun Hall. Mike Davies

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Saturday February 26

Natasha Bedingfield

The Bedingfield name is becoming rather ubiquitous in the UK charts. Though lagging an album behind brother Daniel, 22 year old Natasha’s Unwritten (BMG) debut reveals he’s not the only one with a kean grasp on the mechanics of dance pop as she struts and sashays her way through thirteen tracks worth of ballads (I Bruise Easily), hip hop (These Words), reggae (Unwritten) and Pink rock attitude (If You're Gonna).

There’s a certain sheen to things that gives an air of manufactured personality in places, and you do get the feel that, with I’m A Bomb’s electro-rock and Drop Me In The Middle ‘s slinky R&B strut there’s an attempt to embrace all marketable bases.

There’s a couple of serious misfires, most notably Drop Me In The Middle, but as long as she can keep turning out things like the infectious Size Matters delicate piano ballad Wild ****es and the funky Frogs and Princes, then the Bedingfield trophy cabinet is going to be stacked with a few more platinum albums for a while yet.

7.30pm, £15, Alexandra Theatre. Mike Davies

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Saturday February 26

The Black Velvets

The Liverpool four piece made a somewhat forgettable meat and potatoes rock debut last year with Get On Your Life, but have managed to extricate themselves from the hole with current follow up 3345 (Vertigo). By no means a classic, but it is a big, bolshy, beat bashing strutter that hammers the drums and punishes the guitars while kicking up Beatles dust and Who thunder. It ain’t going to make them the next big thing but it should keep the buzz ticking over while they find what they’re looking for.

7.30pm, £6, Little Civic. Mike Davies

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Saturday February 26

Hem

It’s four years since the Brooklyn based eight piece released their debut album Rabbit Songs and instantly earned a place in 2001’s top five. And, darn, if they’ve not gone and done it again with long awaited follow up Eveningland (Liberty).

Things are a little different this time round. The debut was a hushed wonder, as intimate as pillow talk, but here they’ve taken the whisper up a notch, emphasising the orchestral arrangements (courtesy the Slovak Radio Orchestra) and pedal steel slightly more to bring a chamber pop feel to their gorgeous brand of pastoral Americana that’s been dubbed countrypolitan and compared to such 70s acts as Bread.

No problems with that though; Dan Messe still writes disarmingly beautiful, gently melancholic cinematic songs and Sally Ellyson still sings them with a voice as crystal pure as mountain streams and as seductive as an Appalachian siren.

Opening with Firethief (written for Messe’s son) evoking a backporch Cowboy Junkies, they glide through sixteen songs of endings, starting over and seeking comfort, painting evocative images of sunsets on the dreamily laid back Receiver, comparing lovers to travellers on the Brill building lushness of Pacific Street and venturing into murder ballad territory (though far sweeter than Nick Cave) with Carry Me Home.

A honky tonk waltz away from heartache keen with pedal steel and mandolin, Dance With Me Now, Darling is positively uptempo in Hem terms but save for the clean air pop of Redwing the mood is otherwise that of lullaby and hymn, the latter most evidently so on the traditional sounding Strays, while A-Hunting We Will Go and the piano doodling My Father’s Waltz hark back to their love of Stephen Foster. Good news for completists too is that they’ve also included their slow dance cover of Johnny Cash’s Jackson that never made it on to the I’m Talking With My Mouth EP. Enchanting music, enchanting band, enchanting live show.

They’re joined by Anglo-Texan outfit The Earlies whose debut album These Were The Earlies melds Brian Wilson’s soft melancholic psychedelia into Flaming Lips blissed out cool, Mercury Rev cosmic zen and baggy Air floatiness.

It’s a dreamy affair, Wayward Song drifting on clouds of flutes, One Of Us Is Dead a murmured drowning excursion into classic Beatles trippiness and Slow Man’s Dream a quietly building watery bubbling instrumental.

It’s not all narcotic sedation; The Devil’s Country clanks along like some Hare Krishna party down the swamp with David Bowie guesting while Morning Wonder follows slurred beats on a funky adventure into Strawberry Fields backwards tape pastures. Not quite the musical apotheosis reviews might have you believe, but perfect listening for closed eyes and wandering minds.

Opening proceedings is special guest Martha Tilston, daughter of West Country singer-songwriter Steve and step-daughter to singer Maggie Boyle. No surprise to find her marvellously titled official debut album Bimbling (Squiggly) well steeped in folk tradition influences, but, as on the skittering rhythms of Tribal Kidz also tuned to the world culture vibes of Glastonbury.

As political as often as she is romantic, her breathily husky voice weaves magic around such self-penned stand-outs as Over To Ireland, an itchily shuffling Seagull, sensual cello and violin coloured love song Firefly where she sings of the love filling up her belly, liltingly melodic fairytale Mary and the Prince and the marvellous Red, redolent of wet leaves, spider-webbed hollows, ricks and shadowing clouds over fields. The Tilston name seems fair set to dominate the English folk scene for another generation.

7.30pm, £12.50, Wulfrun Hall. Mike Davies

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Sunday February 27

The*Ga*Ga*s

Touted as the UK’s answer to Velvet Revolver, the practitioners of hard sleaze rock riffery follow up recent single Sex with their debut album, Tonight The Midway Shines (Sanctuary), cheerfully parading influences that that embrace the likes of Aerosmith, Stone Temple Pilots, and Def Leppard. A lot more melodic than the single suggests, tracks like Left Of Centre, Swallow Me, Breaking America and The Real World hit the ground running with a punchy swagger, guitars shooting off sparks and headbanging to the max on Replica and KO. But as demonstrated by Air, Severed and the excellent Crash and Burn they’re equally capable of lighting the hard rock stadium anthem torch too. Armed with a reputation for incendiary live shows, it’s going to be weeks rather than months before venues such as this will be just too small to contain then.

7pm, £6, Bar Academy. Mike Davies

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Sunday February 27

Kelly Joe Phelps

Seven albums in to his career, the jazz guitarist turned acoustic country blues man has increasingly been balancing old standards and forgotten nuggets with his own material. For Tap The Red Cane Whirlwind (Rykodisc) his current live album (and fair pointer to his set) the only non originals included are Skip James’s Hard Time Killin’ Floor Blues and Rev Gary Davis’s I Am The Light of the World, and while this may not totally delight the traditionalists it’s difficult to raise much cause for complaint when you hear dusty voiced Phelps picking his way through the hauntingly plaintive Cardboard Box of Batteries or the melancholic Not So Far To Go.

Over the years, he’s graduated to a level on par with the likes of Waits and Springsteen in his storytelling as he weaves his tales of life’s bruised hearts in search of their dreams and his fingers slide over the guitar strings like it’s god strumming the notes. Frankly even six minutes or so in the company of Tommy or Waiting For Marty just doesn’t seem long enough. Soak up and enjoy.

7.30pm, £14.50, Warwick Arts Centre. Mike Davies

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Monday February 28

David Crosby & Graham Nash

It's almost thirty years since the pair last shared an album but, weight gain and hair loss aside, there's been little change in the interim. Thus on their eponymous current release you still get immaculate harmonies, Beatles influenced mellow melodies and sun-blushed FM LA rock. Unfortunately you also still get their simplistically naive and clumsily written songs about universal love and world peace, setting South American economic injustices to rights on the cringe-inducing Jesus of Rio ("if everyone opened their eyes they'd see that loving feeling is waiting within us"), telling us war is bad and people die on Live On (The Wall) or berating corporate capitalist greed on Crosby's 70s funky They Want It All. Worse, the embarrassingly awful Half Your Angels sounds horribly like Nash's response to 9/11 while his On The Other Side of Town could easily have come from one of those dire social comment off Broadway musicals that opened and closed in the same week.

Hard as it is to listen to this bloated double album already (especially given lines like "good is a concept like a loaf of bread"), just be grateful they've not actually managed to write a song together, the meeting of righteous anger and hippie idealism would be unimaginably dreadful.

They’ll doubtless be mining their shared and individual histories (though CSN&Y material is rather more likely than anything from the Hollies!), and, if they must inflict anything from the new album then hopefully they’ll include its two saving graces, a cover of Marc Cohn's I Surrender and the tinklingly shimmering Shining On Your Dreams, but honestly only the most unreconstructed Woodstock veteran could possibly not hope there's at least another 30 years before they decide to do it again.

7.30pm, £28.50/£26.50, Symphony Hall. Mike Davies

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Monday February 28

The Wedding Present

It’s eight years since David Gedge filed the divorce papers on the band that, more than anyone other than The Smiths, provided a soundtrack to the romantic misery of late 80s indie fans. Since then he’s released a clutch of albums as Cinerama, but with the collapse of the relationship with girlfriend and musical partner Sally Murrell he’s now reverted to his former musical identity.

He’s not invited any of the old Wedding party back for the new album but you’d not mistake Take Fountains (Scopitones) for anyone else. Not least because it’s packed with songs like Mars Sparkles Down On Me, Don’t Touch That Dial, Larry’s and I’m From Further North Than You that, set to the slightly ramshackle sound of jangling guitars, clearly stem from the break up with Murrell.

But while this is vintage stuff that doesn’t sound as though there’s been any continuity gap between releases, it’s not entirely all typical Weddoes. Indeed, while Road To Seatac and Always The Quiet One may put big smiles on the faces of old fans, arguably the most interesting material here draws on Cinerama’s more adventurous perspective with the opening instrumental Ramp and the subsequent lengthy but excellent Interstate 5 dwell deeply and moodily in noir Morricone territory, ultimately unfurling (as they also do in the closing moments of the equally superb new love in bloom Queen Anne), into flourishes of trumpets and Spaghetti western vistas. Personally I’d always felt the Wedding Present of old to be lacking something, this though is a band with whom you look forward to many anniversaries.

7.30pm, £12, Carling Academy 2. Mike Davies

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Monday February 28

My Awesome Compilation

A double punky pop bill this happily also coincides with a split single featuring both bands. MAC are a Leicester four piece whose recent mini-album, The View Is Amazing (Sorepoint), offered an impressive noise with Our Lives:The Sequel and, their 50% of the single, As Always putting in a bid for anthemic stadium contenders and piano led Butterflies custom built for inclusion on some post Dawson’s Creek teen drama.

Sharing the same musical sensibility but perhaps leaning more towards the Blink 182 shape of melodic things, Chicago’s Fall Out Boy have been steadily building reputation and following since the release of the Take This To Your Grave album a couple of years back. Along with such sly wit pop as Sending Postcards From a Plane Crash (Wish You Were Here) and Tell That Mick He Just Made My List of Thing To Do Today, they’ll be cranking up their half of the single, also lifted from the album, Grand Theft Autumn (Where Is Your Boy).

7.30pm, £7, CarlingAcademy, Mike Davies

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