Wednesday February 1

The Motorettes

Two brothers and a mate from Tynemouth and a shared love of three minute 60s pop songs come together on debut single Super Heartbeats (Kitchenware), a flurry of punky fizzing rock n rolling, bursting at the seams guitars and clattering drums that surges along like a Ramones cavalry charge. Thoroughly disposable, but no less fun for that.

8pm. £1.50 Jug of Ale

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Thursday February 2

Bauhaus

One of the leading lights of the 80s goth movement, named after the Weimar art movement and fronted by the spindly high cheek-boned Pete Murphy and featuring guitarist Daniel Ash, bassist David J and drummer Kevin Haskins they were best known for the dark, swirly pulsing atmospherics they generated on such classics as Bela Lugosi’s Dead, She’s In Parties, Lagartija Nick, In The Flat Field and their seminal cover of Ziggy Stardust. The band called it a day in 1983, Murphy going off to produce solo albums (as did Ash) while the others evolved into Love and Rockets before that too ultimately bit the dust. Having been a major influence on the likes of Korn, Tool, Marilyn Manson and Jane's Addiction, they got back together for a tour in 1998 and have now done so again, this time promising an album of new material later this year. There may be sneak previews tonight, but it’s those old dark sonic juggernauts the faithful will be wanting to hear.

 7.30pm. £18.50. Carling Academy

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Saturday February 11

Two Gallants

Hailing from San Francisco, the gallants in question are Adam Stephens and Tyson Vogel, a drums and guitar duo who clearly have a love of early Southern blues, cite the gothic tragedies of William Faulkner among influences and tend to write songs that head towards the ten minute mark. They arrive here clutching copies of What The Toll Tells Saddle Creek), a sophomore album that, sometimes sounding like The White Stripes were they drifting cowboys, deserves to find them challenging for mentions in those best of lists.

Opening track, Las Cruces Jail, gets things off to a great start with its lonesome whistle and moody guitar intro giving way to a tempo switching ride through a rollicking throaty-voiced folk-blues stomper and Slow Summer Day’s tale of race murder is similarly energised, but it’s the slower, more pain-shredded, tumbleweed and dust coloured numbers that really see the band shine.

Slow waltzing Some Slender Rest recalls Townes Van Zandt, Threnody in B Minor is a burning country blues, Age of Assassins conjures Warren Zevon stuck in some Mexican border cantina while the epic closing Waves Of Grain brings together Giant Sand, Thin White Rope, Dylan and Neil Young. They write striking songs too, The Prodigal Son an almost sea-shanty rhythmed, harmonica wailing tale of woes from a Southern black man that belies the fact they’re both white and in their early 20s. Most definitely an Americana gig of the month and quite possibly the start of a long musical love affair.

7.30pm. £6.50. Bar Academy

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Sunday February 12

The Candy Box Valentine’s Day Mascara

Burlesque comes to Birmingham for the first time with this all-live night of hot girls and cool music. The latter’s provided courtesy of The World Famous Palookaville! Burlesque Orchestra, a collection of local musos assembled by Al Gare, bassist for Mike Sanchez and his own Palookaville, an outfit dedicated to recreating the twangy twistbeat, surf guitars and go go sounds of late 50s California.

They’ll be dipping into their self-titled debut album’s collection of some of the more obscure 50s instrumentals likely to have been found blasting out of beat clubs, cellar dives, frat parties and surf shacks with tracks including Link Wray’s Black Widow and Run Chicken Run, the old Routers hit Let’s Go!, Dick Dale’s Let’s Go Trippin’, the Lifeguards Chuck Berry-ish Everybody Outa Da Pool, and the fairly self-explanatory Drums a go-go!

Along with costumier wife Saffron, Gare’s put together the evening as an alternative to the usual Birmingham nightlife and will be welcoming burlesque queens Miss Gwendoline Lamour, Miss Cocoa Mae, Miss Lily Dumont, and Miss Keda Breeze to do their stuff with fire, fans and tassels, ably assisted by house dance troupe The Candied Heels. Shimmer and shake.

8pm. £10. Glee Club

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Sunday February 12

Morning Runner

Lauded as one’s to watch this year following the release of 2005’s Be All You Want Me To Be, the Reading outfit look to make good on the predictions with forthcoming debut album Wilderness Is Paradise Now (Parlophone). If the single suggested Radiohead and Elbow influences, the other ten tracks here offer ample confirmation with soaring, emotion drenched, keyboards driven melodies and yearning vocals to the fore on numbers such as It’s Not Like Everyone’s My Friend and Ocean. After a while you do find yourself wishing they’d take the dynamics down a notch, so it’s a relief to find the contemplative sadness of Hold Your Breath and the slow waltzing heartaching Best For You, but, whether jogging along on Punching Walls, Have A Good Time and Gone Up In Flames (where they sound like Supergrass on steroids) or reaching to shake the skies on new single Burning Benches, this is the sound of a band who’ll be holding court in much larger venues than this before winter rolls along.

 7.30pm. £7. Little Civic

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Monday February 13

The Strokes

Having seemed to be in danger of losing their way with Room On Fire, things are back on course with the release of third album, First Impresions of Earth (Rough Trade) although it has to be said Julian Casablancas’ fondness for Iggy Pop’s The Passenger is perhaps a touch over-evident on Heart In A Cage while the opening swagger of You Only Live Once manages to evoke both Under Pressure, Roxy and The Stones and Juicebox has a severe case of The Cramps.

Blatant influences aside (and there’s a lot of 80s new wave seepage here not to mention Casablancas seemingly impersonating Shane McGowan on 15 Minutes), this is a fine, high energy and tightly focused rock album that dangles its hooks before your ears with almost casual abandon, reaffirming them as still one of the most exciting bands out of America in the past five years.

Rarely sagging over the course of 14 tracks, their ability to craft steel sharp modern pop is clearly obvious from Razorblade, Evening Sun and the chimingly tropical lazy sway of Killing Lies while the storming stadium shaking Fear Of Sleep, Albert Hammond’s guitar breaks during Vision of Division and the blazing shards of Red Light serve fierce reminder that these boys know how to rock for a living.

If they’re showing the same drive on stage as they found in the studio, this looks like being a meltdown.

7.30pm. £23. W’hampton Civic Hall.

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Monday February 13

The Cribs

Having  failed to convince they’re anything more than an aled up pub shouty singalong band with recent album The New Fellas (Wichita), the Wakefield boys settle for playing to their strengths with new single You’re Gonna Lose Us (Wichita) which, if you’ve had a fair few bevvies, might even sound like the Small Faces having a knees up come closing time.

Sharing the night is The Jeffrey Lewis Band featuring the eponymous New York comic book artist and musician who, with brother Jack on bass, will be plugging their City & Eastern Songs (Rough Trade) album. A low fi affair from with songs that, within the space of its first three songs, variously talk about the travails of flyposting (Posters), visiting aquariums (Don’t Be Upset) and seeing Will Oldham on a train Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror, it largely pivots between the anti-folk scene sound of The Singing Tree and the squally rock n roll of Something Good or Time Machine.

Lewis trades in self-doubt and depressive anxiety, which probably makes him a pain as a dinner guest or flatmate, but also produces such little nuggets as the ramshackle New Old Friends (imagine a hillbilly Jonathan Richman) or Moving that’ll doubtless be bewildering those here to down some pints with the headliners.

Also along for occasion are Annie Hardy and Micah Calabrese, aka Giant Drag, who play fuzzy distorted guitars in the manner of My Bloody Valentine and whose debut album, Hearts and Unicorns (Interscope) has seem then littered with references as diverse as Mazzy Star, Nirvana and The Beach Boys. Having made a splash with last year’s soaring indie pop single Kevin Is Gay, they’ll be looking to solidify the buzz with the likes of the PJ Harvey-esque scuzz blues YFLMD (don’t ask what it stands for!), a sweet drugged folk Everything Worse, the tumbling powerpoppy This Isn’t It and Slayer and the droning blues distortion of High Friends In Places. No problem there then.

7.30pm. £9. Irish Centre (Lewis also plays Tin Angel Coventry, Fri Feb 24, £5)

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Monday February 13

The Crimea

A welcome return by the outfit fronted by Davey McManus, formerly of underrated Welsh anthemic guitar rock crew The Crocketts, and material from debut album Tragedy Rocks (Warner) with its bruised romanticism hit single Lottery Winners on Acid. Whereas his former band’s songs tended to grab you by the scruff of the neck, these tend to whisper their sweetly seductive pop waltzes persuasively in your ear, shades of the Waterboys in McManus’s quivering warble of The Miserablist Tango and the downcast Someone’s Crying.

With Girl Just Died sharing the sort of pop fancy that’s earned comparisons with The Flaming Lips, if justice is finally done he might even find himself sharing a degree of the same success.

7.30pm. £6. Little Civic

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Tuesday February 14

Jim Noir

Dunno if he’ll be enlisting help for the live show, but the Mancunian’s debut album, Tower Of Love (My Dad Recordings) is a solidly one man affair that deftly calls to mind the work of Brian Wilson, not least in Noir’s use of breezy sun drenched harmonies and quirky use of instrumentation. Indeed I Me You I’m Your or Turbulent Weather could have been lifted from the Surf’s Up sessions, though it’s a clearly British sensibility that sees him singing about his computer crashing (My Computer) or threatening to get your dad because the neighbour won’t give you your ball back (Eanie Meany). The title track itself is an instrumental that surely owes a nod to Percy Faith’s A Summer Place which, along with the country garden nursery rhyme feel of Turn Your Frown Into A Smile, is another of the many endearing little touches that make him well worth checking out.

7.30pm. £6. Glee Club

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Tuesday February 14

Howling Bells

A new name, the quartet hail from Sydney and are fronted by one Juanita Stein who sounds not unlike a certain Debbie Harry, just as debut single Wishing Stone sounds like Blondie were they to have recorded a theme for some David Lynch movie set in a neo-noir night-time city with its streets splashed with neon. An album’s already recorded, with Coldplay producer Ken Nelson at the helm, for release in April with advance word murmuring that the likes of Velvet Girl, The Bell Hit and last year’s download garage blues single Low Happening are guaranteed to see the band explode into the national consciousness. Get in early.

 7.30pm. £5. Bar Academy

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Wednesday February 15

Shout Out Louds

Fresh from support dates with The Strokes, the Stockholm five piece headline their own dates, digging into their goody bag of tracks from debut album How Howl Gaff Gaff. Already sounding like a Swedish version of Julian Casablanca’s mob, they’ll no doubt seem even more of a clone after being exposed to them in such close quarters and noting how their own Please Please Please shares the same affinity for that Passengers train rhythm. Still, at least Oh, Sweetheart’s marriage of Jonathan Richman and The Ronettes proves they’re not copycat clones and they do know how to have fun with three chords.

7.30pm. £6.50. Little Civic

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Thursday February 16

Humanzi

Angular guitar rock from Ireland, driven by an urgency drawn from life on Dublin’s darker side and channelled into jerky riffs and frontman Shaun’s upstart stage attitude. They made a solid impression as support to Hard-Fi and return to headline now, following up sparks flying debut single Fix The Cracks with the more steamrollering and dance friendly Long Time Coming (Fiction).

Support’s provided by Cardiff based (!) Dirty Perfect, a four piece hailed at the In The City conference and championed by Steve Lamacq. Hard to see why really on the basis of their debut single, Quaterback Hairdo (Sound Foundation), an instantly forgettable sample of tinnily produced bubblegummy indie pop rock. Maybe they have more to offer live.

7.30pm. £5. Barfly, Custard Factory

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Friday February 17

The Modern

They’ve been called Madonna fronting The Bravery with the Scissor Sisters in the wings with their cocktail of glam, theatricality, synths and style, but curiously their new single, Industry (Mercury) sounds remarkably much more like a cross between the Cure, Human League, The Divinyls and, er, A Flock of Seagulls. Let’s put those next big thing predictions on hold until the album appears shall we.

7.30pm. £5. Little Civic (+ Mon Feb 27 7.30pm. £5. Bar Academy)

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Friday February 17

Chumbawamba

They may be now reduced by half to the line up of the liltingly voiced Jude Abbott, Lou Watts, Boff Whaley and Neil Ferguson and playing acoustic, but Chumba simply continue to get better and better. They’re here to regale the faithful - and hopefully a fair few concerts to their folk flame - with new acoustic album A Singsong And A Scrap (No Masters) ,a frankly rather fine set of straightforward songs that deal in hearts, history and politics and welcomes contributions from such folk stalwarts as John James, Andy Cutting, Ian Telfer and Simpson, Boyes and Coope.

Kicking their reputation for brow-furrowing into touch with the opening singsong friendly lollopping anti-war Laughter In A Time Of War, they proceed to sing about William Francis, a 17th century Lord of East Yorkshire who spend so much time gathering riches he forgot to find anyone to share it with and ended up leaving everything to his horse. Executed Swedish born union organiser Joe Hill provides the subject for the gentle lullabying By & By, a tale of the first mass trespass is dealt with on the cheery soft shoe shuffling You Can while the current threat of fundamentalism in all creeds serves the a capella gospel story rework Working Into Battle With The Lord.

A couple of months earlier and John Tams’ triumph at the BBC Folk Awards might have been a different story, especially so when you consider their handling of the trad lament Learning To Love and the soft understated harmonies of When Alexander Met Emma’s account of the relationship between radical Emma Goldman and anarchist Alexander Berkman in the late 1880s of New York.

There’s not a weak track here; the unaccompanied Bella Ciao rewrite of an Italian partisan song following the 2001 G8 protests, the self-explanatory titled Land of Do What You’re Told, Smith & Taylor’s tribute to the men who died building the Ribblehead Viaduct in Yorkshire and other such constructions to help make the land a better place, the punk of Fade Away’s refusal to put out the flame. Everything hits the spot, both in the musical blood and in the conscience, without ever hectoring, promising to make this a truly outstanding night whatever your voting persuasions. And if they drop in their a cappela cover of The Clash’s Bankrobber too, you can consider yourself having died and gone to folk heaven.

7.30pm. £12. mac.

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Friday February 17

Beth Orton

Ten years on since her debut album, four since the release of Daybreaker, Orton’s maturing nicely, the image of adolescent waif giving way to worldly wise woman. This show serves to launch her much awaited fourth album, Comfort of Strangers (EMI), sharing a title with the Ian McEwan book and recorded in sparse, stripped down format over a quick two weeks. It’s heavy with songs charting the end of a relationship, opening with the kiss-off Worms, a lazy jazz n folk roller, before heading down the reflective flashback path documented in the bittersweet Safe In Your Arms and A Place Aside, though it should be noted she also includes a track titled Absinthe, the drink that numbs memory.

Musically, the mood doesn’t range anywhere as far and wide as her past work with its techno dabblings, content to settle between jazzy blues and the dusty folk-country that characterises Countenance, Rectify and the soul-baring Heartland Truckstop. Pedal steel, harmonium and acoustic guitar add emotional texture to several tracks, most notably the strangely Melanie-like Shopping Trolley (a neat metaphor for the wonky wheels of life) and the beautifully seasoned bluesy Feral Children where her voice seems to acquire the wearied gumminess of a seventysomething backwoods folk-gospel veteran.

You’ll still hear shades of Nick Drake poking through the likes of the watery afternoon moods of Heart Of Soul or Joni Mitchell on the title track’s understated cool folk-jazz vibe, but this introspective and oddly emotionally comforting album is very much the sound of Orton’s own voice, one that has become intoxicatingly assured.

7.30pm. £20 Warwick Arts Centre

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Saturday February 18

Orson

A new name on the Hollywood block and already only the third band (after U2 and Coldplay) to feature on the front cover of the Sunday Times Culture mag, named after Orson Welles the hat favouring outfit have actually been going since 2000, based around the core of singer Jason Pebworth and guitarist George Astasio. The current incarnation’s been called the missing link between the Stones and the Scissor Sisters, and certainly you can hear evidence of the former on the intro to current single No Tomorrow (Mercury), a tale of waking to realise the relationship you’re in means nothing.

But with formative influences that include Hall & Oates, Steely Dan, Memphis soul, Led Zep and ELO you can appreciate that the band’s West Coast sound is nothing if not eclectic. They like to call it rock n roll that girls can dance to, which listening to samples of things like Happiness and the big soul-pop of It’s Already Over from the upcoming Bright Idea album and its tales of Pebworth’s ill-starred love life, seems reasonable enough.

7pm. £6. Bar Academy

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Sunday February 19

Laura Veirs

Back for her second set of dates in the wake of her fifth album, The Tortured Souls, and new single Secret Someones. A musically more varied, fuller and at times almost pop-oriented affair than her past work it not only sees her leaning increasingly in the nu-folk direction of Suzanne Vega. but is also less bring warmth to a sometime chill approach. Indeed, strings heat up the glacial flow of Parisian Dream, Black Gold Blues indulges in jagged slashes of noisy, throaty guitar, Lake Swimming suggests Latin undercurrents and Galaxies almost invites you to join in and singalong.

Some may regret the shift away from her downbeat, icy shimmers and the dawning of the sweetness that ripples through even the introspective acoustic minimalism of Magnetized, but Veirs should be applauded for exploring new horizons rather than simply recycling the moods that made the best-selling Glacier so well received. It’ll be interesting to see if she invests any of the older material with these outlooks, but either way this is going to be a night worth talking about for weeks to come. And where Else will you hear a metaphorical song about cave exploration song called Spelunking!

7.30pm. £8. Glee Club

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Sunday February 19

The Darkness

With current album One Way Ticket To Hell...And Back (Atlantic) already fetching up in the bargain racks, the novelty of Justin Hawkins’ free-roving falsetto and the band’s glammed up mock rock may be starting to wear off. Arriving with new bassist Richie Edwards in tow, trousers suitably tight and hair stylishly fluffed, they’ll be putting the new material through its live paces to see if lines like ‘you're big and busty, and I'm a little rusty’ (Knockers with its I Wanna Break Free intro) are any less ridiculous on stage than they are on disc. Who do they think they are, the Wurzles of rock?

It is, of course, pretty much a retread of Permission To Land, indeed One Way Ticket could be the evil twin of I Believe In A Thing Called Love. Which means that, if you found their tongue in cheek pub rock posturing the bee knees then, there’s no reason to think things like Girlfriend, Hazel Eyes (bring on the pipes and drums, has anyone seen Roy Wood), the Def Leppard spotted Dinner Lady Arms and the Queentessential English Country Garden won’t have you playing air guitars with equal abandon while the Mercury rising ballad Blind Man will have lights aloft and arms swaying.

They’ve got away with it this time, but if they insist on sticking to the same formula for album number three, then I suspect they’ll find their ticket well and truly punched.

Things should get off to a good start in the company of Juliette Lewis & The Licks, the actress turned rock chick taking her cue from Guns n Roses, Patti Smith, Courtney Love and, by way of contrast, Lucinda Williams, for debut album, Speaking My Language. A fiery assault of big driving guitar riffs and hammering drums, this is rock n roll shouted out bluesy style by Lewis as she lays bare autobiographical tales of addiction and getting clean like the punky Pray For The Band Latoya or the anti-drugs title track or slides into caustic political fury with the searing talked through Patti Smith styled American Boy Vol 2.

It’s not all blood and fists stuff. I Never Got To Tell You What I Wanted To is a bluesy moaner where Lewis sounds like a Southern take on Marianne Faithful, the closing Long Road Out Of Here is a sultry torch song and Seventh Sign and Got Love To Kill even sound like a wired Blondie.

With a stoked up a reputation for electrifying live shows that make your average revivalist preacher seem like a country parson, she’ll be a hard act to follow..

7.30pm. £24.50. NEC

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Sunday February 19

Nickel Creek

Having made their name as proponents of contemporary filtered bluegrass for a mix of old tyme American and English folk served up with trad and self-penned songs, the acoustic Californian outfit have gone a little smoother into the soft rock arena with current album Why Should The Fire Die? (Sugar Hill).

Not that they’ve ditched the mandolin, fiddle and guitar arrangements that provided their distinctive flavour but tracks like the Beatlesish Somebody More Like You and the Eagles-like Jealous of the Moon are clear evidence a conscious move towards more mainstream territory.

It’s not a huge disappointment and the likes of the moody When In Room, a lazy backporch Anthony and the campfire banjo title track should sit rosily among past nuggets but it’s hard to image even ardent fans getting too worked up over their sugared cover of Dylan's Tomorrow Is a Long Time which worryingly seems to be the direction into which they’re headed.

7.30pm. £15. Warwick Arts Centre

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Sunday February 19

The Magic Numbers

Rooted in 60s harmony pop, London based siblings, Romeo and Michele Stodart and Sean and Angela Gannon, have been dubbed a new Mamas and Papas. Which, judging by their eponymous debut album seems to be a fair description, albeit with Wheels On Fire tinged with more than a trace of Gram Parsons.

Gloriously sun-dripping upbeat affairs, their happy-sad pop nuggets spill over with catchy melodies and hooks from the Bacharach and David school as the four piece tumble through the likes of new single Love’s A Game, the handclappy delights of Long Legs, Which Way To Happy’s dreamily laid back charms and chiming new single I See You, You See Me. Slightly over arranged perhaps, but you can forgive the temptation to lushness with gems like this.

 

Opening up are The Concretes, a musically like-minded eight piece Swedish outfit who’ll be showcasing material from next month’s new album, In Colour (EMI), a resolutely sunny sounding set of musically upbeat close harmony 60s pop that defies their country’s reputation for doom and gloom.

Opening with the plinketty plonk piano milkman friendly On The Radio before lead singer Lisa Milberg invites you to ‘spend some time in the shade with me’ on Sunbeams, they then come to Change In The Weather, a track that presages no clouds but does hint at a touch of country between the seams of their pop.

And so it goes, cheery rippling keyboards and guitars bubbling on current single Chosen One, clip clopping through the drunken nursery rhyme on the range As Four, jangling in crystal streams of guitars with Grey Days, inviting Dexys down the honky tonk saloon on Ooh La La and lazing through the pedal steel and string orchestral country pop that is Song For The Songs.

It doesn’t all work, Tomorrow a bit of a ploddy ballad, the six minute Fiction spending far too long on its instrumental foreplay before the anti-climax and the duet with the Numbers’ Romeo sadly a bit forgettable. But for the most, this should go a long way to, er, cementing their relationship with audiences and the charts.

7.30pm. £15. W’hampton Civic Hall

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Monday February 20

Claire Sproule

Reared on a diet of Waits, Mitchell and Costello back home on the north-west coast of Ireland, Sproule’s been playing guitar and writing since she was 14. She’s now ready to share them with a wider audience. Following support slots with Dr John and Al Green, which gives you a rough idea of where she’s coming from musically, tonight’s gig serves as a free showcase for her Stewart Levine produced self-titled debut album for Blue Note.

Written between the age of 17-19 (she’s now 21), the 11 tracks spin out from a diary of her life, the experiences of love, loss and confusion contained within delivered in a warm, honeyed voice that’s already drawn comparison to Carly Simon and Carole King. It’s not going to cost you anything but time to check her out. You should, next time you want to catch the jazzy swaying The Deal, the bluesy souled Angel, a gospel inflected Wash Over or the pure folksy pop of Not That Simple and Doin’ It My Way you could be paying top dollar.

8pm. Free. Living Room, Regency Wharf

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Monday February 20

Smoosh

They’re sisters from Seattle, they’ve toured with Pearl Jam, Sleater-Kinney and Death Cab for Cutie, and on the course of the drum/kybds duo’s debut album, She Like Electric (Pattern 25), they sound like Kate Bush, give it be happy sass on Rad, do a passable Japanese punkette impression on I’ve Got My Own Problems, come over all fragile and Tori like with Inner To The Outer, hit fragmented time signatures on the jerky Pygmy Motorcycle and do nervy spiky indie with Massive Cure.

Did I also mention that singer, keyboard player Asya is 13, her drummer sister Chloe 11? Over here they’d still be in school choirs warbling cute songs about old relatives or recording albums of hymns for record buyers who still nurture rosy memories of young Charlotte. Seattle, is clearly altogether a different climate. Are they any good? Well, it’s a bit hesitant in places and there are certain notes Aysa’s voice patently refuses to contemplate, but with so many thirtysomethings working hard to sound like little girls, that’s clearly not such a handicap and, if you didn’t see the photos or know the ages you’d assume they were probably some indie chicks who hung out in the wrong bars and had developed an instinctive sneer. Listen to the lyrics though and you can hear the hopes, fears and worries of preadolescence, and no doubt it’s that as much as the ‘hip’ nature of the music that’s going to pull those punters in away from watching reruns of Tracy Beaker.

 7pm. £12.50. Wulfrun Hall

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Tuesday February 21

Devon Sproule

As coincidence has it, here’s another Sproule, this one though hailing from Virginia, returning for solo dates after last year’s brief jaunt with now hubbie Paul Curreri. Last time over she was promoting Upstate Songs, an album of country blues hued folk-pop conjuring thoughts of Victoria Williams and Michelle Shocked on such self-penned nuggets as the traditional sounding Plea For A Good Night’s Rest, the subtly electric shaded bluesy melancholy of Should Have Been Snow and the violin enhanced Tristan and Isolde.

This time, as well as that she’ll be showcasing material from the follow-up, Keep Your Silver Shined (City Salvage), due later this year. Not a huge deviation from the blueprint already laid down, but sounding even more confident and (notably on the title track) drawing on the new experiences of domestic life, among those to listen up for are the rhythm clumping, fiddle scraping blue ridge hoe downer Old Virginia Block, the McGarrigles-reminiscent playful 1340 Chesapeake, a lazy lapping cover of jazz standard Let’s Go Out that’s all molasses, saspirilla and dusty 30s southern tracks to the creek, and a duet with Curreri on the high lonesome trad folk song Weeping Willow. Hopefully, she’ll be back playing closer to town when the album’s released, but on the advance evidence the travel costs are going to be worth every penny.

 8pm. £4. Tin Angel, Medieval Spon Street, Coventry

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Wednesday February 22

Gemma Hayes

The country inexplicably not yet having fallen at the feet of the Tipperary singer-songwriter, she’s back in town for another stab at converting deaf ears to her superb new album The Roads Don’t Love You (Source) which charts a largely acoustic course through the questioning emotions, self-declarations and yearnings contained in such gems as the summer drifting Easy On The Eye, skittish pop Happy Sad, the cascading melodies of Keep Me Here, and the chiming frothiness of Tomorrow.

The debut album’s hints of Joni Mitchell and Beth Orton having faded, her voice has settled into countryish twang in Hayes more reminiscent of a cross between Lucinda Williams and Stevie Nicks or, on the semi-spoken phrasings of Another For The Darkness, maybe even Alanis.

The simple hymnal moods of piano ballad Helen and the chiming strum of Undercover are highlights, but everything here is very special indeed and you really owe it to yourself to wake up and realise the fact.

7.30pm. £6. Carling Academy 2

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Wednesday February 22

The Soledad Brothers

Forged from the same Detroit roots as The White Stripes and Brendan Benson, the trio haven’t received anything like the same commercial success. That may change with the advent of next month’s new album, The Hardest Walk (Loog) which, while not discarding their familiar garage blues (check Crooked Crown and Loup Garou) does move out to embrace other kindred influences. You’ll find Dylan well in evidence for the driving Downtown Paranoia Blues, hear Neil Young in Dark Horses and perhaps detect 60s Dr John on Let Me Down while the early Rolling Stones are all across the stomping Truth Or Consequences and the slow wailing Crying Out Loud. That might even be Marc Bolan lurking behind the scenes of Sweet And Easy!

Fuelled by a bitter break-up, the songs burn with emotional betrayal, despair and anger, all of which should ensure the gig is well up the band’s reputation for a musical ruckus.

7.30pm. £8. Barfly, Custard Factory

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Thursday February 23

X-Factor

Oh good, they’re all back together again, happy families away from their mentors and no doubt all hugging and sharing jokes on the tour bus. Those with short memory spans can remind themselves who Journey South, Nicholas and Brenda were while the rest can wonder how vapid second rate Nolan Sisters clones The Conway Sisters ever managed to see off the two legged, thunder-lunged powerhouse that is Brenda, appreciate the true smooth soul pop talent of Andy, note that Chico (whose debut single, It’s Chico Time is truly horrendous) is a bargain basement Moroccan Ricky Martin and take bets on just how long it is before grinning wide-boy Shayne’s Christmas number one is a dim and distant memory.

7.30pm. £24.50. NEC7.30pm. £24.50. NEC

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Thursday February 23

Isobel Campbell

Formerly of Belle & Sebastian, for her current album, Ballad of Broken Seas (V2), the feathery voiced Scottish chanteuse has joined forces with rough throated ex Screaming Trees/Queens of The Stone Age singer Mark Lanegan. Given the string Americana flavours of the album, it’s not much of a surprise that their mix and match of honey and gravel plays like a latter day answer to Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra. Well, no problems there then.

It’s a moody, desert nights on the border album, The False Husband sounding a perfect fit for some David Lynch movie with its snaky melody, breathed vocals and the balance between twangy guitar and light strings that counterpoint each of their verses while a clattering shuffle cover of Hank Williams’ Ramblin’ Man as she whispers in your ear over his dusty moan is clearly on the lookout for a Tarantino soundtrack.

It’s a darkly atmospheric affair, wreathed with twisted folk shadows and cracked country vines (Black Mountain marries a Parsley, Sage melody line to Appalachian gothic textures) with Lanegan’s recent immersion in Johnny Cash’s American Recordings apparent on the likes of the title track, his own new song Revolver and the closing The Circus Is Leaving Town.

It’s not all bottom of the boots stuff though, (Do You Wanna) Come Walk With Me is a lovely summery two step love song and Honey Child What Can I Do opens the door to let the breeze, light and a hint of 60s Motown in to a hopeful sad heart. The problem is, of course, that Lanegan’s voice is so mesmerising and Campbell’s so airy, that she’s almost invisible on her own album. She may find more presence on tour where Lanegan’s parts are being sung by fellow Scot Eugene Kelly of Vaselines fame, but I suspect that admirers are going to have to wait to the folkier album she promises for later this year to really hear her shine.

Opening the night are Jeniferever, a floppy-haired Swedish four piece making their first UK tour in advance of debut album Choose A Bright Morning (Drowned In Sound).

It’s a big fjord of an album, fully of epic cinematic melodies, windswept emotions heading off into the ether and bruised whispers of voices in search of some epiphany. Being Swedish, it’s also naturally fond of Americana touches, a vocal twang here, a chord sequence there, but mostly this is post-rock territory with layers of slow, pulsating atmospheric soundscapes and lo-fi folk blues that enfold themselves into songs that rarely last under six minutes and go by titles like From Across The Sea, Swimming Eyes, Winter Nights and The Sound of Beating Wings that somehow actually manage to conjure how the songs sound. If you’re fond of Sigur Ros and the less drone heavy moments of Mogwai, then Opposites Attract and A Ghost In The Corner Of Your Eye will have you reaching for the oxygen tank.

7.30pm. £8. Glee Club

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Thursday February 23

Larrikin Love

Chirpy chappies with a gypsy ska-rock bounce along approach and tendency to reference their London habitats in song perhaps but, as jaunty Arthur Rimbaud inspired upcoming single Happy As Annie (Transgressive) points out in a song that reveals itself as being about rape and murder, not quite the frothy goodtime boys they might seem.

With disillusionment with the state of the nation a regular motif among their numbers, there’s clearly an effort being made to reach the mind as well as the feet with their music, though when Ed Larrikin sings ‘My shirt came off, I fed it to a cow’ during On Sussex Downs you have to wonder what sort of straw that is he’s sucking on.

8.45pm. £5. Bar Academy (+ Little Civic, Fri 24 £5)

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Friday February 24

Goldfrapp

Hang on, isn’t that supercool Alison Goldfrapp ‘borrowing’ from Spirit In The Sky for Oooh La La, the opening track on Supernature (Mute)? Well yes it is and good on her too as she returns regenerated as an electro disco vixen that’s a long way from the Bjorkian days of her debut. Gone is the slightly cold reserve of Black Cherry and now here she is coming over all Giorgio Moroder with the breathy synth pop of Fly Me Away, channelling Gary Numan (but with blood) on Koko, putting in her calling card for the next Bond movie theme with the smoke curling sophisticated balladry of Time Out From The World and digging into her Bolan glitter for the glam stomping Lovely 2 CU and the slinky New Orderish disco prowl of Ride A White Horse that sees her cross breeding Kylie and Eartha Kitt.

She and collaborator Will Gregory haven’t found any room for padding, rather they’ve had to settle for wall to wall pop gems, romping a plinkety beat through Satin Chic, massaging heaven’s nerve endings with the mid-tempo Number 1 that presents are as an atomic kittenish human leaguer with an Olympic Games anthem melody line, and tingling the emotional synapses with the afterhours on the Paris rooftops stargazing mood of Let It Take You where the electronic pulse beat is paired off with an acoustic piano intro. She’s now officially resident in pop’s upper echelons, and the fact she sashays a damn fine sexy look doesn’t hurt either. 7.30pm. £16. Carling AcademyBoy Kill Boy

Having caused a stir with their Fierce Panda ltd singles, the London quartet now hit the road with a Vertigo Records deal in their pocket and a first single, Back Again, in their hands. However, while it’s a flurry of keyboards driving pop there’s doesn’t actually seem to be a great deal beneath a surface that offers itself as some sort of Britpop Duran Duran with a hint of Morrissey in the vocal inflections. They have the image and the reputation, maybe now’s a good time to start working on the songs.

 7.30pm. £8. Barfly, Custard Factory

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Friday February 24

Alkaline Trio

Two years after touring the bouncing melodic punk pop of Good Mourning, the Chicago three-piece return with Crimson. Though Mercy Me, Your Neck and Dethbed are all sherbet fizz guitar and tumbling teen punk melody, they generally flex tougher muscles across favourite themes of drink, death, depression and general downers. It may wallow in the same old teen angst and self-pity, but it’s still their best collection yet, a tight, driving set of punk that bounds from songs about the Manson family (Sadie) and miscarriages of justice (Prevent This Tragedy) to the live fast, burn brightly sentiments of Burn and the general numbed nihilism of I Was A Prayer with its surging two and a half minute pop sensibilities.

7.30pm. £15. Wulfrun Hall

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Friday February 24

The Paddingtons

The Hull punk pop three chord thrashters have gone from strength to strength since the release of debut album First Comes First, even if quite a lot of it calls to mind the barricades storming pop of The Alarm on the likes of guitars ringing Panic Attack, 50 to a £, and Worse For Wear. Elsewhere Loser and All right In The Morning show they listed to the Pistols and Clash along the way too, but it’s the full throttle teenage rushes of big shouty, bounce around fizzing rock n roll that’s currently helping them scale the heights.

 7.30pm. £8.50. Carling Academy 2

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Monday February 27

Buddy Miller

It’s been a while since Miller visited these parts, since which time he’s released Universal United House Of Prayer, a full on bluesy gospel album that’s both reaction and response to the Iraq war.

It’s genesis lies in a cover of Dylan's protest number With God On Our Side, he'd been playing live for some years. When the war came, it seemed all the more relevant, so he set out to write a few more songs that brought together God and politics. Not in any Bush bashing way, but rather in the sense of finding succour and strength in a Higher Power (as the cover of the Louvin Brothers song has it) in times of trouble.

Opening up with swampy strutter Worry Too Much, what you get are songs about straying (Wide Rivers To Cross), repentance (the country-blues Don't Wait), forgiveness (This Old World) and salvation (wife Julie's Fall On The Rock which opens in a capella testifying shape before the swaggering funky blues and blistering electric guitar take up the pace).

Looking to The Staples Singers for its spiritual blueprint and arming itself with a faith that the future holds hope, you don't have to be a believer to lifted up.

He’ll doubtless be mining this tonight, but there’ll also be plenty from a weighty back catalogue that’s seem him hailed as one of America’s premiere singer-songwriters, and if he throws in his empty glass, full ashtray cover of Percy Mayfield's 50s R&B classic Please Send Me Someone To Love, then count yourself blessed. This is one Miller that's never brewed lite.

Get there early too and catch opening act Hayes Carll, currently being touted as the new big thing on the Americana circuit. Hailing from New Texas, Carll’s steeped in the same whisky-soaked alt-country as Steve Earle (notably on Hey Baby Where you Been) and Ray Wylie Hubbard, both of whom are clear reference points for new album, Little Rock (Highway 87) as well as, if Wish I Hadn’t Stayed Too Long is any indication, John Prine.

Dylan’s spirit also raises its head on Down The Road Tonight, a rolling swagger in the vein of Subterranean Homesick Blues, one of several cranked up, beer swilling, throaty country rock n rollers here. But it’s the sorrow drowning barroom ballads that see him really shine, numbers like the drawling Take Me Away and Long Way From Home while a bluesy Rivertown sees Guy Clarke sitting in for its tale of battered dreams, unfurled in Carll’s world-seasoned, been twice around the block voice. You’ll be hearing more from him.

7.30pm. £14. Little Civic

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Tuesday February 28

Kanye West

Recent winner of Best International Male Solo Artist at the Brits, with the release of Late Registration the Chicago born West seems pretty much untouchable as the currently hottest r&b star on the planet. Mixing outspoken politics ("I know the government administer AIDS" he raps on Heard 'Em Say) with smacks at the industry (Crack Music), swipes at opportunistic lovers (the Negro spiritual framed Gold Digger), wallows in romanticism and the usual self-glorifying narcissism of rap with radio friendly tunes and smartly utilised samples (Move On Up, Diamonds Are Forever), West knows his audience like his inside leg measurement, and he cuts the cloth to a perfect fit.

7.30pm. £27.50/£25. NEC

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Tuesday February 28

Stellastarr*

They’re not the new Pixies as some have misguidedly dubbed them, though to judge by new album Harmonies For The Haunted (RCA) the Brooklyn outfit do rather fancy themselves as a cocktail of The Cure, Echo & The Bunnymen and (on Damn This Foolish Heart especially) Roxy Music with a love of late 70s/early 80s art rock they share with bands like Interpol and The Bravery.

Fronted by the moody voiced Shawn Christensen and given to tracks laden with surging, riffing guitars, swirling keyboards and downcast, forlorn emotions, the album had a tendency to edge towards the overwrought at times and, taken in one sitting, does become all rather samey with its soaring choruses, posturing histrionics and Christensen’s occasional off-key notes.

That said, it’s hard to resist the rolling swell of something like Love & Longing and Angela, the stabbing Robert E Smiths of Stay Entertained, a cascading When I Disappear, Lost In Time’s Ultravoxy echoes and the Doorsy slow percussive padding intro to the epic On My Own, and caught up in the live surge of the moment I doubt anyone’s going to be ticking off the comparisons.

7.30pm. £7.50. Club Barfly, Digbeth.

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Wednesday March 1/Thursday March 2

James Blunt

Despite being beaten to best album and single by Coldplay, at the Brits, Blunt still managed to walk away with Best Pop Act and Best British Solo Act, crowning something of a remarkable year that still sees debut album, Back To Bedlam, dominating the top three of the album charts. Clearly resistant to criticisms of a certain blandness, Blunt’s romantic songwriter-pop looks set to turn the nation’s female hearts weak-kneed for a while yet, so how best to keep the tills ringing when a follow up set of new songs is going to be a while off.

Enter Chasing Time The Bedlam Sessions (Atlantic), a double disc that brings together a DVD of his acoustic BBC concert (where, suitably adorned in jumper and jeans, sporting beard traces, he looks like a cross between Robin Gibb and Simon Fowler) with a CD of a live Irish concert. There’s not a huge difference between the studio and live versions, and even sat behind the piano with face in close up, it’s hard to discern much raw emotion going into even No Bravery, but there’s no getting away from the fact that he does have a warm voice (oddly, the DVD interview makes him sound like he’s speaking on fast forward) and that it’s almost impossible to avoid hearing the likes of High, Goodbye My Lover and You’re Beautiful whenever you’re within 100 yards of a radio.

The Irish show does at least also introduce some variety into the recycling of the album. Billy gets to sound almost bluesy while Sugar-Coated, the B side to High, practically works up a rock sweat and, although there’s no new material in evidence (and unlikely be on these shows either), there are covers of Crowded House’s Fall At My Feet and, showing he’s got indie tastes too even if he does smooth them out, The Pixies Where Is My Mind.

If you saw his last tour, other than the running order, there’s not going to be much difference here, but then isn’t it familiarity and reliability that’s made him such a success in the first place?

7.30pm. £20. W’hampton Civic Hall