Gig Guide Archives Feb 2010

Previews by Mike Davies

Monday February 1

Nancy Elizabeth

As well as dipping into debut album Battle And Victory, the Wigan born singer-songwriter will be showcasing last year’s follow-up Wrought Iron (Leaf). Drinks will need to be ordered through sing language and coughs stifled because this is quiet, fragile stuff indeed with her cracked husky voice set against instrumentation so sparse it’s often barely there. Listen to the wintry ghostly Steve Reich minimalism of Canopy, the blues folk Bring On The Hurricane with its hints of TalkTalk or Divining with its mournful trumpet over the piano’s icy fingers and you’ll feel the sense of solitude and stillness she seeks to evoke.

Not that it’s all so skeletally contemplative. Feet Of Courage employs puttering hand percussion on a jazzy folk rhythm while, relatively speaking, The Act positively wigs out with bluesy electric guitar and harmonica as she comes over all bluesy wail. Even so, outbreaks of crowd diving are unlikely. 8pm. £5. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Monday February 1

Carolina Chocolate Drops

It always struck me as ironic that, for a musical form that had its roots in the African-American community, there were only three black musicians featured on the Oh Brother soundtrack. A young trio comprising Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson, the Carolina Chocolate Drops (a riff on the Tennessee 20s outfit) are dedicated to reclaiming their string-band heritage, even if they had to learn some of their songs from white hillbilly recordings.

Playing 4 and 5 string banjo, fiddle, resophonic guitar, jug, bones, snare and other percussion in trio, duo and solo permutations, debut album Heritage (Dixie Frog) consists of traditional standards, Flemons' banjo adaptation of Schubert's Erlkonig (Earl King) and a setting of Banjo Dreams by Black poet Lalenja Giddens Harrington.

Indeed, it's Lalenja and Rhiannon who get the ball rolling with their unaccompanied rendition of chain gang prison song Another Man Done Gone, Rhiannon taking a stunning solo spotlight (and sounding far older than her years) for Po' Lazarus, the folk hero tale that opened the Oh Brother soundtrack.

Elsewhere, you'll be familiar with titles like Jack O'Diamonds, bluegrass waltz Short Life Of Trouble, Real Old Mountain Dew and Flemons and Giddens' own slow tempo take on 30s blues standard Sittin' On Top Of The World.

Lesser known but no less invigorating tunes include rousing banjo and fiddle instrumental Rickett's Hornpipe with its martial snare beat from the fife and drum tradition, Lottie Kimborough-Beaman's 1928 Wayward Girl Blues, Don't Get Trouble In Mind, and a Flemons talking blues solo with Bye-Bye Policeman.

Fittingly they end the album by going back to the roots with Gambia, a song taught to Rhiannon by a Senegalese troupe during her visit to West Africa and featuring her playing on the native akonting, one of the lute like instruments from which the banjo descended.

It’s tremendous stuff and the live set should be a stormer. 8pm. £12. Tin Angel, Coventry

Wednesday February 3

Rammstein

Given their preposterously over the top live shows, the gargantuan industrial size riffs, taboo rattling lyrics and tongue in cheek approach, it’s surprising that the German metal six piece haven’t become at least part way as big here as they are back home.

However, as their ability to pack the stadium shows, they’re not without a sizeable following. One which should have expanded considerably in the wake of their current and most commercial album Liebe Ist Für Alle Da (Universal) where the Nine Inch Nails grind and slabs of guitar assault has been tempered with massive, operatic orchestral melodies and swathes of Wagnerian choral voices.

Opening with a Gregorian chant that gives way to bone crushing piston driven industrial metal, Rammlied sets the mood perfectly and should provide an equally attention grabbing intro to the live show before they head off into the likes of the dark Depeche Mode influenced Ich Tu Dir Weh, a slamming Waidmanns Heil complete with hunting horns, and the synth driven Haifisch.

Incorporating the pivotal line from Piaf’s Je Regret Rien, Frühling In Paris is a soaring highlight, a stadium swelling slice of Germanic folk delivered by singer Till Lindemann with the full monty of crooning, chest bursting camp melodrama.

It is, of course, all sung in German. All, that is for the bubbling sleazy cabaret synth rock of Pussy, a send up of German sexual mores that came with an explicitly porno video that was immediately banned (as indeed have several other promos from the album), thereby ensuring it masses of attention.

The band don’t need to rely on such controversy though, they make the sort of rock that lifts you up and carries you along over the crowd’s outstretched arms while the likes of Iron Maiden and Megadeth can only stand and gawp. 7.30pm. £40. LG Arena

Thursday February 4

Will Kevans

If you still like the idea of Robbie Williams but wonder where he lost the song plot, then London singer-songwriter Kevans may well be the answer to your prayers. Listening to the likes of Believe, Bye Caroline and soaring ballad Shoot You Down off debut album Everything You Do (Stunt Dog), you feel like junking your copy of Reality Killed The Video Star and slipping this inside the album sleeve instead to remind you of the return to vintage form you’d hoped it might be.

Bringing together jangly Americana with classic British suburban pop, Kevans equally calls to mind the breezy countrified best of Beautiful South on things like Sand Makes A Pearl, the shuffling Dialling Tone, Picking Up The Pieces and Velveteen. Indeed, former BS singer Alison Wheeler even contributes backing vocals here and there and duets on the tumbling title track.

The organ driven Spencer Davis influenced boogie Super Casanaova doesn’t really work, but it’s the only misstep on an album that deserves to put Kevans firmly on the path to success. 8pm. £6. Glee Club

Thursday February 4

Peter Von Poehl

He’s from Sweden, he’s big in France, counts Air as fans and has been compared to Brian Wilson and Ben Folds. Here, however, he means virtually nothing, a state of affairs that should hopefully be rectified with the release of new album May Day (Tot Ou Tard), the follow up to 2007’s debut Going To Where The Tea Trees Are.

The 70s/80s influences remain but, where that was all rather dreamy nu-folk, this time round he’s a little less languid. While admittedly more Jack Johnson than funk, Parliament (dedicated to George Clintons freak-soul outfit) gets on some tumbling rhythms and brass, the Beatles-influenced Moonshot Falls lopes along on a swaggery psychedelic summery beat with itchy drums, brass and strings and Dust Of Heaven goes in for those Wilsonesque backward tape sounds and wheezing effects over which he double tracks the vocals.

The spirit of Nick Drake inevitably hovers, but listen to the rhythmic groove of Carrier Pigeon with its rare use of burbling electric guitar and you’ll also trace touches of Peter Gabriel while Lost In Space curls around you with sun-streaked rippling banjo, Forgotten Garden crafts a mood of rain day gardens and Near The End of the World strides purposefully along with Morricone horns and bubbling Floydian bass line underpinning the sweet folksy vocals.

He’s unlikely to cause any mosh pit or dance floor riots, but for gentle, contemplative soothing then you could do a lot worse. 8pm. £7. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Friday February 5

JLS

Almost as if they know they need to capitalise while they can, tickets for the X-Factor runners-up’s December arena shows are already on sale, cashing in on the current frenzy of adulation and earning some hefty interest between now and then.

Of course, it may well be that, come the end of the year, the anodyne Brit four piece will still be as massively popular among the easily pleased as they are now but that doesn’t negate the fact that their well tooled eponymous debut album (Epic) is as much about authentic soulful r&b as, say, Blue.

Give them their due, Everybody In Love is a Take That stadium ballad in everything but name, Beat Again is perfectly polished boyband R&B pop, Close To You provides the obligatory acoustic handclapping dreamily sensitive romantic ballad while Taio Cruz lends a writing helping hand to lift Keep You into a decent dance floor mover and the Jackson-aping Heal This Heartbreak has some solid hi energy beats to go with the acoustic guitar intro.

However, pretty much everything else is interchangeable Europop or waving mobiles balladeering with only the gaps between the tracks to distinguish one from another.

They have, of course, delivered exactly what their young girl audience wanted of them and, whether down to studio magic or not, they are in tune considerably more consistently than they were on the TV show. Whether they decide to repeat the exercise for the second album or show there’s more to them than slick sheen will determine whether they’ll still be selling out tours months in advance in two years time.

They’re supported on this leg by Stevie Hoang, an Asian urban pop newcomer whose DIY 2007 debut album This Is Me made him a star in Japan and proved a runaway success on the social networking sites. The tour’s designed to build demand for his debut UK single, No Coming Back (Mercury), which comes out in early march, three days after the final date, and which seems pretty much assured of a high chart placing even if it is rather generic Boyz 2 Men derived R&B pop. 7.30pm. £26.50/£22.50. LG Arena

Friday February 5

Adam Green

Sometime half of anti-folk shamblers Moldy Peaches with Kimya Dawson, Green’s past solo work has, to be honest, often had a whiff of the juvenile, the giggly schoolboy sniggering over references to bodily functions. Of late, however, he’s been growing up. His last album, Sixes & Sevens, fleshed out his whimsical approach with strings and brass while the songs drew on 50s and 650s influences for a mix of croon, doo wop, blues, country and vaudeville. Now comes Minor Love (Rough Trade) which, while the desert mooded Cigarette Burns Forever still bears witness to his Jonathan Richman influence, often finds him sounding a lot like both Lou Reed and Johnny Cash, with darker emotional narratives to match.

“I’ve been too awful to ever be nice”, he talk-sings on the opening Breaking Locks, proceeding through the strummed countrified murder ballad Boss Inside, the Cash-inclined twangy You Blacken My Sky, and the Velvets-lined double punch of a brooding Buddy Bradley and the chugging What Makes Him Act So Bad.

There’s a couple of stumbles, the dated wah wah fuzz guitar funk of Lockout and the raggedly shapeless Oh Shucks while the rhyming line about flatulent assholes on Castles & Tassles is an unnecessary throwback to less lyrically mature days, but otherwise this is a very welcome coming of age.

Support’s provided in furiously fine form by Scouse guitar slingers Sound of Guns, a five piece with a bristling mastery of stadium shaking anthemic choruses, ringing guitars and air punching melodies. Following last year’s barricades storming debut single Architects and the Elementary Of Youth EP they return in even more explosive epic form with Alcatraz (Distiller), leaving you in no doubt that their fusion of U2, Alarm and The Editors is about to make them world leaders. 6.30pm. £10. O2 Academy 2

Friday February 5

The Transatlantic Sessions

Aly & Phil

The final weekend jewel in the crown of Glasgow’s annual Celtic Connections Festival, this is the first time the show’s gone on the road for its celebration of the shared musical roots between Celtic folk and Americana.

Featuring a mix of traditional and contemporary material, the touring version brings together an impressive line up of old hands and new names. There’s no less than eight different singers. On the homegrown front Scotland and Ireland are respectively represented by Eddie Reader, Karen Matheson and Cara Dillon while from across the water comes Nickel Creek vocalist/fiddler Sara Watkins, mandolin maestro Dan Tyminski (who provided Geprge Clooney’s singing voice in O Brother Where Art Thou?), fiddle player Bruce Molsky and, a festival regular, bluegrass star Tim O’Brien accompanied by sister Mollie making her Sessions debut.

Aside from making their own instrumental contributions, they’ll be joined by a house band that will include legendary bassist Danny Thompson, Phil Cunningham, Donald Shaw, Michael McGoldrick and James Mackintosh alongside musical directors Aly Bain and dobro wizard Jerry Douglas. It’ll be a bit special. 7.30pm. £24.50. Symphony Hall

Sunday February 7

The Low Anthem

A welcome return for Ben Knox Miller, Jeff Prystowsky and Jocie Adams and another chance to soak up the pleasures of current album Oh My God, Charlie Darwin (Bella Union) with its contrasts between whispered folk-hymnal songs like (Don't) Tremble and the Cohen-like Ticket Taker and the gravel gargling, clanking and stomping of Champion Angel, Home I'll Never Be and The Horizon Is A Beltway. 6.30pm. £11. O2 Academy 2

Sunday February 7

Jesca Hoop

A former Mormon whose CV includes working on an Arizona wilderness rehabilitation programme for troubled kids and being nanny for Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, California born Hoop released her debut album two years ago and, following a tour supporting Elbow, decided to move to Manchester.

Guy Garvey's involvement in her life continues on new album Hunting My Dress (Last Laugh) with an appearance on the acoustic tumbling Murder Of Birds, one of her nine skewed takes on folk music.

From the opening trill of Whispering Light with its staccato burbling rhythm and her idiosyncratic swooping vocal delivery, it's clear she's something of a singular talent. Beginning with what sounds like bird song and a crackling fire, The Kingdom shifts from being trad Brit folk to a clattering percussive Native American tribal rhythm that sounds like Kate Bush doing a slow tempo version of Womaniser. Keeping your ears on their toes, new single Feast Of The Heart has vague eastern bazaar colours behind the gulping breath vocals, piston beats and an ending that bursts in from another dimension.

The headily infectious Four Dreams is a stew of blues, nursery rhyme, gospel, swamp rock and 60s girlie pop and pixie folk with a slide guitar interlude, Tulip a clanging murder ballad Irish jig with reverberating guitar and synth drums and the title track a peat and streams distilled Scottish romantic ballad complete with the accent and a layered voices finale.

The nature linked lyrics often abstract and impressionistic to the point of downright Bjork, the musically no less pulsingly sonic Angel Mum is, by contrast, pretty direct and emotionally unambiguous in its unsentimental tribute to her late mother. Waits describes her music as like going swimming in a lake at night. I'd suggest you dig out your bathing costume and join her.8pm. £7. Glee Club

Tuesday February 9

Twin Atlantic

The four piece return for another bout of the broad Glaswegian accents, big, noisy guitars, pulsing riffs, angry vocals and urgent melodies that spill from debut album Vivarium and the likes of Human After All and Audience and Audio with their staccato rhythms, the anthemic Scot rock roar of What Is Light? Where Is Laughter? and the rather more musically complex light and shade six minutes of Caribbean War Syndrome. They also have do nice line in unexpected live cover versions with Crowded House’s Fall At Your Feet and I Got A Feeling by Black Eyed Peas among those likely to put in an appearance. 7.30pm. £6. O2 Academy 3

Tuesday February 9

Cobra Starship

Photo by Matthew Salacuse

They may be a current hot proposition in America, but the punk synthpop five piece have yet to make any real impression over here. This, however, looks like being their breakthrough year. Having already gone Top 10 in the US, Australia and Canada, while only just scraping into the Top 20 Good Girls Gone Bad single did, at least, provide them with their first UK hit. Released back home last year where it reached the No 4 slot on the Top 100, their third album, Hot Mess (Fuelled By Ramen) finally surfaces on these shores next week and seems pretty certain to debut fairly high on the album charts.

It’s certainly their most directly poppy affair, opening with the glam stomping Nice Guys Finish last which not only sounds like a cross between Britney and Adam & The Ants, but actually includes the line ‘goody two shoes’ in the lyrics. Unfortunately, so pleased is leader Gabe Saporta with this little in joke that he feels he has to do it again. Thus Living In The Sky With Diamonds has a Beatles punning title while sounding like a Hall & Oates throwback complete to the extent of quoting from Maneater.

However, while unlikely to find a home in the halls of the timeless, you have to admit that, as disposable instantly catchy 80s influenced snarky and sometimes self-parodying pop goes, it does (well with the exception of the dreary, rap infested The World Will Never Do) sustain at three listens before you start to find you’re not longer paying attention.

The Fall Out Boy referencing Pete Wentz Is The Only Reason We’re Famous barrels along nicely despite being one of the tamest clarion calls to teenage rebellion you’ll ever hear, You’re Not In On The Joke nods to Britney again, only this time re-imagined as Journey, while The Scene Is Dead Long Live The Scene courts stray Jonas Brothers fans and Fold Your Hands Child shows they’re not beyond going for the cheesy achieve your dreams anthem. Needless to say, they fall several hurdles short, but, at least for now they can look forward to audiences waving along rather than waving goodbye.

There must be some reason why French punk and rock bands always sound so dated and stodgy. You wouldn’t need all the fingers on one hand to name those whose music has even vaguely caused ripples across the Channel. And even the shortlist of Taxi Girl, Metal Urbain and, er, Trust, would make pretty depressing reading.

It’s unlikely that Plastiscines are going to change the situation. A Parisian femme four piece they profess themselves rebels against the current state of the French music scene. Unfortunately, to judge by the About Love (Nylon) album, they appear to have defined their rebellion by sounding like a poor homme’s pop punk version of The Go Gos, Bangles and Blondie.

They look cute and seem to be adequate musicians, but when they attempt attitude on, say I Could Rob You or Bitch, they sound about as street tough as Vanessa Hudgens and while Barcelona may start off all sneery stabbing punk riffery by the time it gets to the chorus it succumbs to its inner Abba.

It’s not terrible. They make a decent fist of Swinging Blue Jeans/Linda Ronstadt hit You’re No Good, Marine Neuilly rips up some solid rock n roll guitar on Friends And Lovers and there’s nothing here that’s actually painful to sit through. Perhaps inevitably, they sound most assured on the three numbers that are in French, Pas Avec Toi being one of the set’s strongest, and, as Runnaway shows, although they may sing they well enough in English, writing in it is another matter entirely. 7.30pm. £13. Wulfrun Hall

Wednesday February 10

Vampire Weekend

Bursting on to the scene two years ago with their debut album’s infectious cocktail of art rock and Zimbabwean pop, the polyrhythmic New York university grads return in even stronger form with Contra (XL), still echoing Paul Simon’s visit to Graceland on White Sky and Run, marrying African and classical colours on the multi-textured California English and unleashing the tropical sunshine with Horchata and the ska tinged Carib-flavoured Holiday.

But they’ve also built on the debut’s foundations so that Cousins is a dervish dance stomper that also touches on Eastern European mazurka influences, the musically intriguing Taxi Cab’s tinkling piano scale and harpsichord nods to Mozart, Diplomat’s Son samples M.I.A for its shuffling electropop burble and I Think Ur A Contra closes the album on a cool breeze of looped ambient guitar and the feel of stars twinkling above sprawling plains.

As the original pioneers of world music increasingly look towards reaching pension age, it’s good to know their legacy is being nurtured and propagated by such capable hands. 7.30pm. £15. O2 Academy

Thursday February 11

Shockwaves NME Tour

Another year and another round of value for money package tours. This promises to be one of the best, headlining The Maccabees who ably proved their worthiness of elevation to the star status ranks with last year’s Wall of Arms album with its staccato guitars, Arcade Fire anthemics and the folk-inflected vocals of Orlando Weeks.

They open the batting for the new decade with a revised version of their No Kind Words single, the Joy Divisionish live favourite now deconstructed and retooled as Empty Vessels, featuring new lyrics and vocals by Roots Manuva. He won’t be along for the live dates, so it’ll be interesting to see which version they go with on stage, but hopefully whatever the set list they might find room to include the new EP’s cover of Roy Orbison’s I Drove All Night.

Frequent visitors to the venue, Bombay Bicycle Club return for another shake of their debut album and the reissue of the Strokes-like single Early/Morning, though singer Jack Steadman’s twitchy, epileptic stage mannerisms remain an irritant.

Named after The Band’s seminal album, Big Pink layer debut album A Brief History of Love (4AD) with lashings of Jesus & Mary Chain and Stone Roses styled guitar feedback, Spectorish echo, and droning vocals. It is, though, opiate heaven as they unleash 60s acid rock psychedelia and rockabilly judders on numbers like Young To Love and At War With The Sun while the slow swaggering Dominos sounds like a fusion of Chumbawamba, Public Image Ltd and Robbie Williams.

Finally, there’s The Drums, four blokes from Brooklyn who fuse the contrasting influences of 80s Factory with 50s Sun and, oddly enough, 60s girl groups , deftly illustrated by their MoshiMoshi single Let’s Go Surfing with its New Order like bassline, Ventures echoey guitar and streetcorner whistling. Elsewhere, Make You Mine brings together The Supremes, Shangri-Las and Richie Valens while Don’t Be A Jerk splashes electro pop ripples over Jay and the Americans bobbysox pop and Submarine finds The Beach Boys and Paul Anka holding hands.

With their debut album still a work in progress, they hit town on the back of new single Best Friend (MoshiMoshi), a jangling slice of harmony rich indie pop that introduces Smiths affections and Mexican brass to their 60s Cali pop bedrock. It may not be the one to translate hype into hit, but rest assured you’ll be hearing more of them this coming summer. 7pm. £15.50. O2 Academy

Thursday February 11

Cluster

One of the pioneers of 70s Krautrock alongside Kraftwerk, Neu!, Tangerine Dream and Can, Hans Joachim Roedelius, Dieter Moebius and their fusion of prog-rock, classical, jazz and that distinctive industrial ‘motorik’ beat would prove crucial influences on such names as PiL, David Bowie, John Foxx and The Orb and even today echoes of their work can be found in that of Radiohead, LCD Soundsystem and Delphic.

Originating as Kluster in 1969 with third member Conrad Schnitzler, they released three albums before adopting the anglicised spelling following Schnitzler’s departure and, joined by ‘Conny’ Plank (who would subsequently remain their producer until his death in 1987), the release of their eponymous debut in 1971.

Although they spent 1997-2007 working on solo and collaborative projects, the past 29 years has produced 11 studio and four live albums, including 1977’s seminal Cluster and Eno, the most recent being last year’s Qua, their first in over a decade.

Rather inevitably, live performances here have been few and far between. They played one show in London in 2007, another last year as support to Tortoise and now, promoted by Birmingham’s Capsule, comes this one off audio-visual performance that will feature music from both the new album and their impressive back catalogue of ambient industrial electronica.

A rare treat for avant rock devotees, support comes from Einstellung, Birmingham’s own sonic warriors fusion of krautrock and Sabbath riffage. 8pm. £15. B’ham Town Hall

Thursday February 11

Twisted Wheel

Having spent the latter end of last year as Paul Weller’s special guests, the Oldham crew bring their Mod and punk influenced retro indie rock to town for a headline tour, picking out choice nuggets from last year’s self-titled debut album and showcasing as yet unheard tracks from the forthcoming EP.

Citing such influences as The Jam, Kinks, Ramones, The Clash, Pistols, The Who and, er, Slaughter and the Dogs, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what to expect and numbers like Oh What Have You Done, Bad Candy, Bouncing Bomb and She’s A Weapon don’t disappoint, though the folk-punk Bang Of The Beat may come as a not unwelcome surprise. 6pm. £6.13. O2 Academy 3

Friday February 12

Daisy Dares You

Taking her name from the CITV kids show, this is one Daisy Coburn, a lippy 16 year old Essex blonde who’s been tipped for big things by those desperate to be first to find the next Lily Allen. One of the BBC’s 15 Sound of 2010 finalists, her debut album’s due in May and apparently includes a bubblegum punk version of Who Will Buy from Oliver. Meanwhile, you can suss the lie of the land with kick off single, Number One Enemy (Jive) which, featuring a guest rap from Chipmunk, sounds like it was cobbled together by a teenpop production line after sifting through bits of Avril, Pink and, yup, Lily. Pretty much guaranteed to be a Top 10 hit, doubtless more dispiritingly catchy homogenised songs about like boys and stuff lie ahead. 7pm. £11. O2 Academy 3

Saturday February 13

Kelly Clarkson

Although Thankful, her debut album after winning the first season of American Idol, failed to make the UK Top 40, the three subsequent releases have all landed in the Top 3 and, since Miss Independent provided her first British Top 10 single in 2003 she’s notched up a further 9 Top 40 hits, including last year’s No 1, My Life Would Suck Without You, the lead off track from current album All I Ever Wanted (RCA). On top of which, the show sold out ages ago.

It is, to be honest, a bit difficult to fathom her popularity. Certainly her raspy vocal acrobatics carry a real punch and the album’s wall to wall with huge rock-pop power chord tunes driven by stadium sized guitar riffs and big choruses as Clarkson gets all teen angst and attitude on numbers like I Do Not Hook Up, Long Shot and All I Ever Wanted. Ticking the necessary boxes, she does petulant punk on Whyyawannabringmedown, chews bubblegum for I Want You and delivers the requisite illuminated mobiles swayalong balladry with the Halo-like Already Gone, If No One Will Listen and Cry.

But with songs and sounds recycled and rehashed from the factory floor production line, other than a slight Texas country tinge to the voice this could equally be Avril, Katy Perry (indeed part of Ready sound a bit like I Kissed A Girl and Long Shot was intended for her original aborted debut), Pink or Miley making you wonder if the fanbase even check the photo on the front cover. 7pm. £28.50. O2 Academy

Saturday February 13

Imogen Heap

She does like to take her time. It took three years to make her solo debut after the demise of Frou Frou, then another seven for the follow up. Now, four years later comes album number three, Ellipse (Epic).

Unfortunately the creative spark would appear to have diminished somewhere along the way. Her arty electropop has always been of the coffee table variety, but it used to have a twinkling sophistication that lifted it above aural wallpaper. No longer. This is all pleasant but bland and dated, the tunes often sounding like they’re auditioning for B division American teen soap operas. Lyrically too her edge has been dulled, so that now she’s singing about the healing powers of time and a clutch of other clichés.

There’s occasional flashes of past inventiveness, like the found background chatter on breathy piano ballad closer Half Life and the pizzicato buzzing neurotic feel of Aha, but then Earth sounds like a feeble attempt at pastiching Lily Allen while Bad Body Double takes an intriguing idea about the dodgy alter-ego in the mirror and drains it of any lyrical or musical interest. A total ellipse of the art, I’m afraid. 7pm. £17.50. O2 Academy 2

Saturday February 13

MV & EE

That’ll be Matt Valentine and Erika Elder, prolific veterans of America’s homespun avant/psych folk movement with its roots in Grateful Dead jams, rambling Neil Young style guitar solos and bleary-eyed way back in the mix croaky vocals.

The duo mark their return to Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace label with Barn Nova, the eight track album that will form the bedrock of this brief flurry of dates. Get Right Church has Elder taking lead while the guitars chop out a laid back and loose funky groove, Wandering Nomad amps up the Crazy Horse reverb, Snapperhead drifts away on psychedelic clouds, Summer Clouds spends six minutes in a narcotic 60s Haight Ashbury fuzz guitar reverie while the noodling Feelin’ Fire and the acoustic Fully Tanked are both laid back country tinged children of campfire nights.

Bedroom Eyes provides an 11 minute bleak desert blasted raga prog centrepiece of guitar twangs and drones that threatens to take on paint blistering volume if they do it live in a set which, with your mind suitably primed beforehand with the complementary substances, should feel like a particularly heady trip. 8pm. £10. Taylor John’s House, Coventry

Saturday February 13

Sunshine Underground

Based in Leeds but originally from Telford and Shrewsbury, it’s taken four years to follow up debut album Raise The Alarm with its unlikely cocktail of Snow Patrol and PiL. However, they’re finally unveiling Nobody's Coming To Save You (City Rockers) which finds them in even more muscular dance beats and yearning vocal form on the swaggering Coming To Save You, a Muse-tinged Spell It Out, We’ve Always Been Your Friends, a funk infused of In Your Arms and the marching drums driven urgency of A Warning Sign which imagines The Killers fronted by John Lydon.

Nodding back to those Snow Patrol influences, The Messiah takes the route from gently puttering beginning to soaring crashing sonic crescendo while elsewhere Any Minute Now serves reminder that they’re quite capable of doing emotionally bruised anthemic balladry with the best of them.

Had justice been served, 2006’s Commercial Breakdown single should have seen them riding the crest of chart waves, as it is, with the long gap between released and live appearances limited to a few festivals last year, they may have a struggle ahead to regain the impetus and the success they warrant. 8pm. £11. Kasbah, Coventry

Sunday February 14

Band Of Skulls

Coming together at college in Southampton a couple of years back, Russell Marsden, Emma Richardson and Matt Hayward aren’t the thrash metal outfit the name might suggest. Rather, debut album Baby Darling Doll Face Honey (You Are Here) ranges from the Mary Chain fuzz chugg of Friends (as featured on the New Moon soundtrack) and a Gram Parsons coloured Fires to the New York swaggery reverb guitar bluesy punk Death By Diamonds And Pearls, Honest’s acoustic folk and current single I Know What I Am’s low slung scuzzy White Stripes groove. A little too defined by their influences, perhaps, but enticing stuff all the same. 8pm. £6. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Tuesday February 16

Midlake

Last here four years ago promoting The Trials of Van Occupanther, the Texan quintet make a long overdue but very welcome return armed with sublime new album, The Courage of Others (Bella Union). It is, if anything, even more steeped in 60s prog-folk than its predecessor, its dark limned age old songs cast in minor keys and littered with images drawn from the natural world.

But this time round, rather than CS&N, Neil Young and Fleetwood Mac, you’re more likely to find yourself thinking of Matthews Southern Comfort’s first album, Renaissance, early Genesis, Pentangle, Jethro Tull, Tim Buckley and, on many an occasion, an English folk variant of Love.

With its acoustic guitar fingering, flute, Tim Smith’s rich loam vocals and its wearied melancholy, the opening eco-themed Acts Of Man sets the bar so high you wonder how they’ll ever follow it.

The answer comes swiftly with the madrigal feel of Winter Dies, electric guitar joining acoustic and tambourine in a brooding observation of the passing seasons that serves as metaphor for mortality, the renewal of life and the possibility of change.

This in turn gives way to the Small Mountain, another weary lament about inevitable change, drums gathering power as the slow march builds to its crescendo. Then comes the paganistic The Core Nature with its lines about “all that waits to be known and all that will never be known.”

Four songs in and already a folk album of the year contender, it continues to take the breath away with the fingerpicked Fortune’s echoes of Paxton and Denver, the Forever Changes filigrees of Rulers Ruling All Things, the lyrically menacing Children Of The Grounds, Bring Down’s darkling waltz, and The Horn, which opens to shades of Blue Oyster Cult’s Don’t Fear The Reaper before slipping into medieval mood and Gregorian intonations.

Closing with the despairingly beautiful title track with its squally finale and In The Ground’s hypnotic ebb, flow and dying fall, it leaves you transfixed in a way that makes the likes of Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver seem utterly inconsequential. The show will be transcendental. 7.30pm. £15. B’ham Town Hall

Tuesday February 16

Straight Lines

Photo Dan Griffiths

Together for less than a year, the Welsh quartet have already racked up support slots to Kids In Glass House, the Automatic and Motorhead, all of which should give you an idea where their own music lies. Rested after the end of the year’s gruelling schedule, they’re out now on their headline tour spreading the word about Persistence In This Game (Xtra Mile),a debut album of pop punk riffs that occasionally echoes Billy Talent and Green Day but more often recalls noisenik underachievers Reuben. They seem likely to suffer much the same fate, building a loyal but small following to see them through a couple of albums before throwing in the towel.

For now, they spark out catchy, choppy tunes like Runaway Now, Loose Change, Antics and former single Versus The Allegiance that are designed to create a wave in the most pit while punctuating proceedings with the obligatory slow ones (Oh Blue Eyes, All My Friends Have Joined The Army). Unfortunately the latter tend to drag their feet while, even with the mid song tempo changes, the former all shade into similar notes.

The jaunty pop Set Me On Fire And Feed Me To The Wolves perks up proceedings, but given it’s the final track, that’s rather too late in the day to make you want to come back for more. The gig will doubtless by suitably loud and bounce along sweaty, but as the name suggests they just don’t throw any curves to make it interesting. 7.30pm. £5. O2 Academy 3

Tuesday February 16

Yeasayer

photo Guy Aroch

Skewed electro pop with a nose for the experimental but also an ear for commercial sensibilities, The Brooklynites launch their UK tour tonight, offering the first chance to catch material from new album, Odd Blood (Mute), in the flesh. It should be an interesting, predictability-defying experience.

Opening the album with The Children’s distorted slo mo vocals, industrial percussion and robotic leviathan rhythms certainly doesn’t prepare you for Ambling Amp which layers tumblingly catchy lurch and swoop Erasure pop over electronic bleeping noises or the Haircut 100 meets The Bee Gees in a Caribbean disco of O.N.E.

Then, to keep you pleasurably off balance, Madder Red is all double tracked vocals, soaring ooohing background harmonies and a guitar line and expansive melody that conjures thoughts of Toto in Africa and I Remember mingles cascading synths and dreamy falsetto vocals before Love Me Girls invites you into the liquid lights space station disco and Rome breaks out in propulsive ADD drumming and bang bang dance floor hives with Chris Keating shaking the hips and imagining himself the love child of Jackson and Mercury.

With the crunchy yet cosmic Strange Reunions tickling Flaming Lips psychprog territory and Mondegreen conceived as a space funk parping impression of Alison Moyet doing Don’t Go to a night-time New York chorus line stomp backdrop, if you can guarantee one thing it’s that you’re certainly not going to know what’s coming up next. 7.30pm. £10.O2 Academy 2

Tuesday February 16

Mastodon

As the Atlanta quartet’s name suggests, they make music that is big, heavy and hairy and you don’t want to get in its way once it’s in motion. Paganistic prog metal is the name of the game and concept album the default mode. They’ll be showcasing their latest mindwarper, Crack The Skye (Reprise), a convoluted tale involving a paraplegic boy going astral travelling, losing contact with his corporeal form, winding up in the spirit world and being sent through a wormhole to old Russia where his soul’s put into Rasputin’s body, who’s then killed trying to usurp the Czar and then has to get the kid’s spirit back home. Or something. It’s also about singer Brann Dailor’s sister, Skye, who committed suicide when she was 14.

If , however, all you really want to do is flail your hair around and play air guitar, then there’s seven hefty tracks worth of shifting time signatures, massive keyboards, heavy riffs, growly vocals, jazz motifs, and Southern rock. Featuring a banjo intro, the urgent rocking Divination is a modest three and a half minutes, but everything else heads for the six minute mark with the three part The Czar nudging 11 minutes and The Last Baron providing a climactic doom rock 13. Likely to spiral off into lengthier extended jams live, I’d take sandwiches and a thermos. 7.30pm. £15. Wulfrun Hall

Wednesday February 17

Lostprophets

Fully back up to strength after a brief period when it all threatened to fall apart, the Pontypridd boys follow up No 1 resurrection triumph Liberation Transmission with The Betrayed (Visible Noise), a much darker proposition that might not have received quite the same glowing critical reception but seems to have done no harm to their expanding teen following. Review copies weren’t available, but if first single It’s Not The End Of The World But I Can See It From Here was familiar riff driving rock and Next Stop, Atro City is all screamo, they also reach out beyond their safety zone to flirt with ska on For He’s A Jolly Good Felon while current single Where We Belong is poppily full blooded anthemic singalong. There’s clearly plenty of second life in them yet. 7.30pm. £22.50. O2 Academy

Wednesday February 17

Beth Jeans Houghton

With the current hype is all about Marina and the Diamonds and Ellie Goulding, it would be easy to overlook Tyneside singer Houghton, but that would be a big mistake. Anyone who heard her single, the twinkling beauty that is Golden where she sings like a shimmering harp, will be eager to discover more and, joined by her new band The Hooves of Destiny, she’ll be showcasing songs from her as yet unrecorded album alongside those on Hot Toast Vol 1 (Static Caravan), five tracks she describes as “riding the back of stained glass glory towards the war between modern day idiocy and the divine matrix.”

I have no idea what that means, but I can tell you it’s a collection of country inflected pop folk that sometimes recalls The Boothill Footappers (especially the banjo buoyant and utterly infectious hoe-down hit in waiting I Will Return, I Promise) and at others puts you in mind of Joanna Newsome.

Whimsical, playful and a little kooky in a Bat For Lashes kinda way, she skips merrily through the skipping rhythms and fiddle of Cruel Francis, dips into dreamy old fashioned star kissed pop with Anne Cramb, heads out to the front porch for the banjo plucking, washboard scraping, jug band stomping mountain music Americana title track, finally shifting from curl up ethereal to perky pizzicato on the galloping and offhandedly romantic Lilyput.

Bubbling over with personality to match her songwriting and musical chops, it would be a shame if she was overshadowed by artists with more record label clout and promotional budgets. 8pm. £9.50. Glee

Wednesday February 17

Animal Kingdom

Filtering of late 60s cosmic America through such influences as Arcade Fire, Pink Floyd, Dylan and The Cure, the London fourpiece are back out in service of last year’s debut album, Signs And Wonders (Warner) featuring such numbers as the spare, slow building piano ballad Chalk Stars, Walls Of Jericho’s throbbing rhythm and plangent guitars and the prog inclined Silence Summons You. They’ve lifted the nervy hot desert jogging pop of Two By Two as the new single, but, one of the least interesting cuts on the album, it’s not going to attract the mainstream ears they’ve still yet to catch. 8pm. £6. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Wednesday February 17

Boys Like Girls

Last in town two years ago touring the reissued eponymous 2006 debut, the Boston emo boys followed up with Love Drunk (Columbia), last year. Featuring Taylor Swift on the soaring big ballad Two Is Better Than One alongside the punching vocoderised arena rock Heart Heart Heartbreak, it reached #8 on the Billboard charts but won’t get released here until the end of April, which, given their fairly low profile here and the lack of any tie in radio exposure for the new material, makes this tour seem rather ill-timed.

What will be out shortly is the Killers-like punchy anthemic title track single which sounds like a standard bearer for summer and deserves to break down resistance and translate their live spark into a UK chart debut. Expect them back later in the year to play rather larger halls. 7.30pm. £11. O2 Academy 3

Wednesday February 17- Friday February 20

X-Factor Live

They may have amassed more hate mail than any of the previous series combined, but, while they can’t actually really sing or dance, it has to be said that John And Edward did enliven and bring a sense of fun to what was arguably the least exciting of the seasons to date.

They may have been kept from the No 1 slot by Owl City, but I’d bet money that, even without Vanilla Ice, their performance of Under Pressure (Ice Ice Baby) is going to produce the biggest screams and most enthusiastic response of the night.

They’ll be joined by seven other finalists, though unless you’re an easily impressed tweenage girl you’ll be wishing Rachel could have been in the line up rather than the flat, sub-Disney channel blandness of Lloyd Daniels.

Sporting trademark afro, Jamie Archer will be trying to persuade people he isn’t the pub rock singer Louis Walsh tagged him (he is), while, doubtlessly reviving her knockout performances of One Moment In Time, This Is Me and Sweet Child Of Mine, Lucie Jones will be out to demonstrate why getting elbow on show 5 in favour of Jedward prompted such controversy.

On the other hand, it’s hard to fathom how Olly Murs made the final two, particularly on the back of a thuddingly average version of Twist And Shout, and that fact that, while he may be a showman, he’s just a stolid hybrid of Gary Barlow and Mick Hucknall.

If he doesn’t overdo the mannerisms, Danyl Johnson should provide a fiery set, not least his stunning cover of Man In The Mirror while big voiced young Streisand lookalike Stacey Solomon, who should have been in the final two and has what it takes to become a major international star, deserves to have the place on its feet, especially if she reprises her electrifying covers of Son Of A Preacher Man, Rule The World, and Somewhere. Just hope she keeps the between song chat to a minimum.

The night should, of course, belong to the winner, Joe McElderry, not unreasonably dubbed the UK answer to Zak Efron. He might not have had the Christmas No 1, but he did see the new decade in topping the charts with his powerhouse version of The Climb while, assuming he reprises his series highlights, Dance With My Father Again, Circle of Life and Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me promise to be showstoppers, heralding a lengthy career rather than proving another Steve Brookstein or Leon.

Expect a few surprises too and, almost inevitably, a finale where everyone gathers for their ensemble No 1, You Are Not Alone. 7.30pm. £28.50. LG Arena

Thursday February 18

6 Day Riot

Another new name on the folk pop/world music stage, the five piece (seven when they play live) fronted by Glaswegian singer and ukulele player Tamara Schlesinger have, not inaccurately, been called a mixture of Vampire Weekend, Emmy The Great and Los Campensinos with an uplifting giddy cocktail of mariachi, calypso, folk, Afro-pop, Balkan and gypsy and lyrics that dig into less sunny places.

Debut album 6 Day Riot Have A Plan (Tantrum) surfaced last year to upbeat reviews and, while no review copy was available, tasters of the drum tumbling township bounce Run For Your Life, Rise Again’s gentle acoustic sway and the skiffle perkiness of O Those Kids warrant checking them out. 8pm. £6.50. Glee Club

Thursday February 18

Derrin Nauendorf

A country-blues singer-guitarist from Melbourne, Nauendorf isn’t exactly a household name over here, but, released a couple of years back, Skin Of The Earth (Ruf) reveals an accomplished fingerpicking, string-bending guitarist with a throaty vocal that underlines such influences as Dylan, Waits and Thompson, while Push The River nods in the direction of John Mellencamp.

Mingling bluesy instrumental (The Round Up) with guitar slinging roots rockers (Mystery Child, Pride Before A Fall), balladry (Sometime, Most Of The Time), swampy blues swagger (Skin Of The Earth) and train rhythm rock n roll (Not Alone), are enough incentives to motor over and see what’s on offer. 8pm. £5. Katie Fitzgerald’s, Stourbridge

Friday February 19

Europe

Forever destined to be remembered for the 1986 glam metal of The Final Countdown, unable to repeat the success of that hit and overshadowed by the rise of grunge, the Swedish outfit decided to put things on hold in 1992, frontman Joey Tempest going on to release two country rock solo albums before deciding he stood a better chance going back to hard for his third.

Reunion murmurs began in 1998, leading to a one off New Year’s Eve show for Stockholm’s millennium celebrations before the band was resurrected on a full time basis in 2003. Since then they’ve released two wholly dispensable albums and now arrive with a third, Last Look At Eden (Ear Music), a derivative old school blues metal affair that mostly cops from Whitesnake (Gonna Get Ready) and Purple (Last Look At Eden) but also throws in gobs of Sabbath (U Devil U), Zep (Catch That Plane), Maiden (The Beast), and Pearl Jam (Only Young Twice) while In My Time fancies itself a Bon Jovi country-blues tinged ballad

They do manage to conjure a prospective stadium anthem with No Stone Unturned and, if you think metal peaked in the mid 70s then this will probably get you wired, but really the countdown’s past and some clocks should never be reset. 7.30pm. £17. O2 Academy

Friday February 19

Erland & The Carnival

Headed up by Orcadian folk singer-guitarist Gawain Erland Cooper, the trio also comprises drummer and keyboards player David Nock from McCartney’s The Fireman project and, pricking up indie interest, Simon Tong, formerly guitarist with The Verve and sometime member of The Good, The Band, The Queen.

According to him the band are “Pentangle meets Ennio Morricone meets Love meets 13th Floor Elevators meets Joe Meek.” So, that’ll be retro psych folk then, gathered together on their self-titled debut album (Butterfly) where they mingle self-penned material with updated and deconstructed material from the trad songbook. Thus, for example, Love Is A Killing Thing takes a song collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams, splices it with a Seeger/MacColl chorus and casts it as raging electric indie folk rock while The Derby Ram’s unsettling taken from life account of teenager Shaun Dykes whose suicide plunge from a city car park was filmed on the mobile phones of the crowd urging him to jump is a far cry the original tale of a bovine giant.

Elsewhere the Lee Hazelwood does spaghetti western sounding My Name Is Carnival is a cover of the Jackson C Frank song from which they took their name, Disturbed In The Morning provides a spooked acoustic setting for Leonard Cohen’s poem while The Echoing Green gives William Blake a rolling folk beats groove, Tramps And Hawkers transforms from the Celtic chestnut beloved of The Dubliners into a slightly drugs queasy shanty.

The Meek inspired 60s garage colours hinted at by Tong are well to the fore on the likes of The Sweeter The Girl, The Harder The Fall and Gentle Gwen and while none of them come out and say it, you’ll hear at lot of The Doors, keyboardist Ray Manzarek especially, dotted around. most notably on Trouble In Mind and Everything Came Too Easy. Mind you, You Don’t Have To Be Lonely’s chorus is also a brazen cop from I Predict A Riot put through a Stranglers mixer. Still, I guess that’s part of the song collecting folk tradition!

Unlikely to loom large in any purist’s collection alongside the Carthys, Coppers and Watersons, but those who would like Jim Moray to be more Jim Morrison will love it. 8pm. £7.50. Glee Club

Friday February 19

The Butterfly Explosion

The Dublin five piece are of kindred spirits to Explosions In The Sky, Low, Mogwai, Slowdive, Sigur Ros and My Bloody Valentine, which roughly translates as alt/post rock shoegaze full of expansive swirling narcotic melodies delivered with fuzzy, half-breathed vocals and space surfing guitars.

The gig serves as an advance preview of their debut album, Lost Trails (Revive), due at the end of the month, which, already trailed by the euphoric trance soaring single Closer, includes the equally crystalline cosmic waterfall of Insulate Dreams, reverb drenched fuzzfest Chemistry, the floating acoustic caress of A Nearer Sky, and, embodying the swell from fragile to sonic tumult of their name, the quiet-loud eruptions of Crash, Turn In You and Carpark. 7pm. £7. O2 Academy 3

Saturday February 20

Hot Chip

Disappointingly, their fans were apparently not that taken when the casio popsters beefed up and adopted a more aggressive dancefloor attitude on the eclectic Made In The Dark. This despite such outstanding tracks as One Pure Thought, Ready For The Floor and the hyperactive Hold On. So, for album number three, One Life Stand (Parlophone), they’ve recharged the pop batteries and had sizeable Erasure and Visage transfusions to produce a contagious collection of chart and dance floor friendly tunes that bubble with the sort of melodies folk can hum on the bus.

Kick off title track single showed they meant business with its soulful strut and steel drums colourings and the album amply reaffirms matters on the likes of Thieves In The Night (very Fade To Grey), the gently pulsing Alley Cats with its roots in mid-tempo soft rock, the surely Queen influenced I Feel Better with its mock dramatic orchestral synths, a Motown tinged Hand Me Down Your Love and the near seven minutes of Slush, a quirky classical tinged little ballad that opens with choral la la la trilling and proceeds to lap at your ears like sensory ocean waves before those steel drums put in another appearance.

They’re still sly music aficionados, though, because while the dance floor brigade may not realise it, lurking within the album is a very retro Englishness that celebrates the colourings and sensibilities of Pink Floyd and Robert Wyatt, making them, arguably, the most subversive dance pop outfit around. 7pm. £17.50. O2 Academy

Sunday February 21

Owl City

This year’s out of nowhere pop sensation, Ocean Eyes (Island) is actually Minnesota native Adam Young’s third album, albeit the first on a proper record label. Woozy, geeky electronica pop sung in a whispery nasal voice, it’s taken America by storm and, with the whimsical Fireflies (a track that sounds a lot like Crash Test Dummies) having soared to the top of the UK charts, is about to repeat its success here.

Awash with soft focus synths, rippling strings and pretty if modest melodies over which he scatters twee, fluffy stargazing lyrics about being a sleeping pill or an albatross (Hello Seattle), going to the beach (Umbrella Beach), a visit to the dentist (Dental Care) and, of course, glowing bugs. It says much that one song is titled Vanilla Twilight.

He’s been likened to The Postal Service and Death Cab For Cutie with comparisons between his nasal enunciation and those of Blink 182’s Tom DeLonge, but he makes them sound like thrash metal as he goes skipping between the flowers and butterflies that populate his musical world. You might also discern a touch of the Andrew Golds and Ben Folds about him.

However, there’s not a great deal of structural or musical difference from one track to the next and, while perfectly pleasant in small doses, after a while the effect is rather like eating one big pink candyfloss after another. For now, they’ll be thronging the front of the stage to gently sway and singalong to Cave In, The Bird and the Worm, On The Wing and, of course, how 10 million fireflies light up the world and leave teardrops everywhere. Whether they’ll still be there in two years time is another matter. 7pm. £12.50. O2 Academy 2

Sunday February 21

Kathryn Williams

Last found collaborating with Neil MacColl on the Two album, recently signed to One Little Indian the Newcastle based songstress now returns with The Quickening, her first album since 2007’s Leave To Remain.

Despite the fact that this is her seventh solo release and she has a scrapbook full of critical praise, she still remains something of a cult. Finding her on peak form with an urgency and immediacy that came from not allowing the musicians to hear the material before they came to record it, and setting a limit of four takes, hopefully this will change matters.

Opening with 50 White Lines, a song about long distance driving with a rhythm to match as a voice counts from 1 to 50, it’s a gently reflective and often melancholic affair with songs contemplating the dawning and dying of love, rich in delicate fingerpicking guitar and her shy softly breathed vocals.

The cold snap of Winter Is Sharp finds her exploring traditional folk with a spare, accordion, percussion and ukulele arrangement that should sit nicely with Unthanks fans, but otherwise, save for certain Nick Drake colours, there’s more of a soft, brushed pop flavour in evidence; Wanting & Waiting nodding to Waterloo Sunset in its yearning and underpinning melody while Just Leave’s disintegrating relationship and the similar themed glockenspiel tinkling and suitably wispy Smoke both fragile gossamer waltzing delights.

Stretching out, she also slips into a late night jazz cellar vibe with the whispery Cream Of The Crop and the resonant piano backed, icily atmospheric, almost spoken There Are Keys before Noble Guesses returns to folksier climes and hints of the young Joni Mitchell as she sings about the connotations of different types of absences.

Having spent the rest of the album in leisurely mood, she gets positively sprightly for the bass led Little Lesson with its handclaps and almost pass the dutchie rhythmic stomp before bringing things to a close with Up North, a regret tinged and Pentangle shaded love song to the Northern home where she wishes she could spent more time. If the album finally gets her the attention and audiences she’s long deserved, I suspect she’ll be seeing even less of it in the year ahead. 7.30pm. £15. Glee Club

Sunday February 21

Jane Taylor

'Discovered' when Johnnie Walker played a track off her self-financed shoestring debut album Montpelier on Radio 2 and listener response went crazy, the Bristol singer-songwriter has since found herself supporting the likes of Seth Lakeman, Paulo Nutini and Jools Holland.

She's now in the solo spotlight to launch her second album, Compass (Bicyle), a collection of songs about the beginnings and ending of relationships, of reflection, and of self-exploration and self-confidence.

Her alternatively hushed and soaring gingham and girlish vocals building on core backing of cello and double bass, the instrumentation also includes piano, banjo, ukulele, violin, the Grimethorpe Colliery Band's cornet, horn and euphonium on Home and, on the gospel hued closer I Will Get There, even a choir.

While loosely fitting into the folk bracket (Nick Drake touches to Old Friends), her canvas also encompasses shades of blues (Where Is Your Grace?) and jazz (I'm Fine) while piano based numbers like Lay Down Your Sword. Home and the title track evoke a less quirky, more direct Tori Amos reared on Joni Mitchell. The jazzy-folk hypnotic rhythms of opening highlight Cracks also suggests she may have heard some Dave Brubeck along the way.

There's an infectious summer breeze and dragonflies over rippling waters feel to All Things Change while melancholy leans over the shoulders of Home's song of self-encouragement to carry on and the marvellous Hallelujah is a tenderly touching, grace-infused memory of childhood at her grandmother's side.

Weaving quiet charms and emotions that talk to direct to universal everyday emotion experiences, it's ultimately an album about journeys; you could do worse than become a travelling companion. 8.30pm. £10. Kitchen Garden Cafe, Kings Heath

Sunday February 21

Seal Cub Clubbing Club

Not the most attractive of names (though, if they wanted to be accurate rather than alliterative it would be Seal Pup), the Wirral post punk five piece have been knocking around for some seven years, regularly gigging and releasing a series of EPs and singles. Last year they finally came up with their debut album, Super Science Fiction, which reinforced the frequent Radiohead comparisons. They’ve clearly developed something of a industrious work ethic since a second, Royal Variety, is due later this year.

Meanwhile, they hit town on the back of lead single Made From Magic (Jack To Phono), a frantic limb-twitching affair of jerky rhythms and hyperactive vocals that sounds like The Fall, only a little more funkier while a taster of Peewit finds them funnelling drum n bass into a post hardcore version of Talking Heads. Worth a bash. 8pm. £5. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Monday February 22

Paper Aeroplanes

Hailing respectively from Cerdigion and Pembrokeshire, Welsh duo Richard Llewellyn and Sarah Howells spent four years together before the relationship ended a week before playing their biggest gig. However, while no longer personal partners, they do remain together professionally, which in the light of upcoming self-released debut album The Day We Ran Into The Sea and its songs of love and loss has to be good news.

Folksy pop with a nod to 70s FM rock, they’ve been likened to The Sundays, Cranberries, Amy McDonald, The Corrs, Fleetwood Mac and Lone Justice, and it’s not hard to see why. Opening track Cliche is a jangling guitar pop with a descending chord sequence reminiscent of the LA’s There She Goes with hints of Both Sides Now, Freewheel lies somewhere between Dolores O’Riordan and Maria McKee, Lost calls to mind the folkier webs of 10,000 Maniacs, Give It Back chops along like something off Rumours while Orange Lights introduces Suzanne Vega to the party of influences.

Cliche aside, I’m not persuaded there’s the crucial hit single in the mix, but they shouldn’t be short of radio play, especially with the sunny pop of Dancing Every Night and the lovely strummed evening skies romance of Newport Beach, and if they are as shimmering on stage as they are on disc, this should make for a hugely enjoyable preview.

They’re joined by Aberystwyth’s Georgia Ruth Williams, a pure-voiced Cambridge EngLit student who, when not buried in books, spends her time fingering a Welsh harp and singing self-penned blues tinged folk songs like Afterglow, Anna and the rather lovely rippling Ocean, all of which appear on her just released self-titled EP. 8pm. £5. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Monday February 22

First Aid Kit

Having mesmerised with last year's Drunken Trees EP, teenage Swedish sisters Klara and Johanna Soderberg's debut album The Big Black And The Blue (Wichita) is set to enchant its way into 2010's year end best of lists. Mining dark themes of emotional repression, broken relationships and hard lives but veining typical mordant Scandinavian references to death (on the acoustic bluesy Winter Is All Over you they compare a mother's look of innocence with a stillborn baby) with life-affirming shards of light and hope, these 11 songs of alt-folk are delivered with multi-layered twin harmony vocals as pure as pine-scented, frost-hung mountain air.

Variously conjuring thoughts of Gillian Welch, Michelle Shocked, Indigo Girls and a female Fleet Foxes, the album opens with an acapella In The Morning before hitting the first of several stand-outs with Hard Believer, an Appalachian tinged ballad about religion and how we only get the one life.

Continuing with thigh slapping lost love shanty Sailor Song and the trad folk fingerpicked farewell Waltz For Richard, they continue to strike downbeat notes with the paradoxically jaunty Heavy Storm, a yearning for days gone with a jazzy guitar arrangement from the Davy Graham textbook.

Melancholy and old before their time world weariness hangs over the wistfully reflective Ghost Town with its wheezing accordion intro, spare piano notes and xylophone and Josefin spins a folk gospel hymn to friendship before A Window Opens waltzes in with a whirlygig rhythm, yodelling croons and pictures of wolves howling.

The album closes out with I Met Up With The King with its flute, fairytale narrative, and unexpectedly raspy side to the vocals, and the gentle pastoral reedy lullaby of Wills Of The River which talks of life awakening from winter and heading out with the wind to "find myself a home". The journey begins, and the path ahead is one you really should travel with them. 8pm. £8. The Rainbow, Digbeth

Monday February 22

The Humans

Putting the nostalgia tours to one side for a while, Toyah Willcox returns to the ‘difficult’ experimental side of her musical career with We Are The Humans alongside jazz funk fusion guitarist Chris Wong and REM drummer Bill Rieflin.

Reminiscent of an unholy fusion of PJ Harvey, White Stripes, Captain Beefheart and Grace Jones, its cocktail of jazz fusion, electronics, space rock, progressive and dark r&b is a lot more accessible than might be thought.

The title track is particularly effective in its snaked, cosmic voodoo rhythms and hypnotic swirls, but it’s not alone among the highlights with the bass funky Step to The Bumper like Is It Wrong and Twisted Soul’s psychedelic soul gospel stepping up to a similar plate while, by contrast, Demigod feels like a Floydian reinterpretation of the Tubular Bells riff, Telkinesis evolves from unaccompanied, finger clicking jazz blues opening into a sort of mutant Glitter Band stomp by way of a guitar freak out and both Quicksilver and the Eno-esque This Belongs To You etch cosmos surfing ambient flotation atmospheres. The latter’s co-written by Willcox and King Crimson husband Robert Fripp who’ll be guesting tonight and who also plays guitar on the non album download single, a splendid darkly sexual, guitar distortion and clicking finger prowl through a deconstructed These Boots Are Made For Walking. 8pm. £18. The Assembly, L.Spa

Thursday February 25

Mika

Exploding on to the scene two years ago in a profusion of colour, falsettos, sexual ambiguity and a plethora of Brits nominations with the infuriatingly infectious Grace Kelly and deceptively serious minded album Life In Cartoon Motion from which Love Today went on to earn a Grammy nomination for best dance recording.

Showered with all manner of snide comparisons from Freddie Mercury to Robbie Williams by way of Bowie, Scissor Sisters, Elton and early Leo Sayer, cynics were putting money on him being something of a one trick pony.

However, last year along came The Boy Who Knew Too Much (Casablanca) and yet another truckload of flamboyantly catchy pop music, headed up by the school playground chorus driven We Are Golden sounding like Oliver reconceived by Queen.

Joined by the Ben Folds meets Nilsson handclapping tropical bounce of Blame It On The Girls, a Gracelands shuffling Blue Eyes, the glitzy showtune parading therapy-themed Dr John, the pirouetting Toy Boy with its air of a handslapping Danny Kaye in lederhosen, and the inspired electro pop disco orchestral Rain, it positively oozes the sort of camp that (no more so than on Good Gone Girl) has even pop hating grannies breaking into singalongs and toe tapping frenzies.

Guaranteed to be as much a visual spectacular as it is a musical candy box, it may be the musical equivalent of an e numbers overdose but short of someone bringing Doris Day, Rodgers & Hammerstein and Klaus Nomi back to life for the night, it’s the best show in town. 7.30pm. £25. O2 Academy

Thursday February 25

Eight Legs

Having made a wedge of cash from These Grey Days providing the music for the anti binge drinking ad, the Stratford-upon-Avon émigrés ploughed it into setting up their own Boot Legs label, through which now comes their Tom Wolfe/Ken Kesey referencing debut album The Electric Kool-Aid Cuckoo Nest.

Kicking off with former single I Understand and the All Day And All Of The Night meets The Stranglers of Stay Cool , it continues their crusade to revive 60s garage rock and pop psychedelia while lacing it with lyrics about drugs and the drabness of today’s generation. If you haven’t latched on yet, they even have a track called Wish It Was The 60s.

There’s a definite Ray Davies influence in the air too on the scurrying bangalong Just So You Know and The Dystopian Not So Future’s moodier mid-tempo slouched East End lope while Just So You Know and I Don’t Have The Time mirrors the Beatles influences in Madness.

The sound is sharp but loose with guitars churning (a Jam-like Cloak & Dagger adding a touch of surf reverb) and drums pounding, heard to passionate urgency on new single Best Of Me where Kaiser Chiefs hold a party with Gogol Bordello.

They can’t quite carry off the closing seven minutes of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test where, to clattering drums, choppy guitar riffs, and melody line borrowed from 19th Nervous Breakdown/Let’s Spend The Night Together, the ironically named Sam Jolly delivers a spoken surrealist imagery monologue that only reminds you how much better that sort of thing was done by the likes of Jim Morrison and The Toll. Even so, you don’t have to go out on a limb to realise, this lot are going to be squeezing 2010 between their fists. 8pm. £5. The Rainbow, Digbeth

Friday February 26

Reamonn

Having supported the Quo last year, the Irish-German quintet (singer Rea Garvey’s from Tralee) return for their own headline dates in support of a double barrelled stadium anthemics new single which, playing to the Westlife market, twins Million Miles with Through The Eyes Of A Child.

They’re lifted from their self-titled sixth studio album (UMRL) which may sound like its going to come over all Rammstein on the intro to Faith but quickly reveals itself to feature yet more big rock anthems designed to test the life of even the most robust mobile phone battery. Titles like Free As A Bird, Open Skies, Goodbyes, Serenade Me, It’s Over Now and Broken give a pretty good idea of what to expect as they move from one soaring chest sweller to the next, only taking a brief time out for the keyboard plinketty pop of Aeroplane, though even that can’t resist the heartfelt, catch your breath and touch the heavens chorus.

I have no idea that the other albums sound like, but clearly having been handed a VIP pass to the arena anthem upper tiers after being Baraka Obana’s opening act for his 2008 speech in Berlin, they’re milking it for all it’s worth. Quite what a sound designed for the 02 Arena is going to be like in this rather tinier cousin will be like is anyone’s guess, but I’d be prepared to leave feeling like you’ve stood through a dozen emotion wringing charity singles. 7pm. £7.50. O2 Academy 3

Saturday February 27

Beth Nielsen Chapman

Following her husband’s death and the breast cancer experiences that informed Deeper Still, Hymns collection of Latin hymns and Prism's multi-language songs of devotion, Chapman's latest, Back To Love (BNC), finds her in a less meditative and more upbeat and joyous frame of mind. Indeed, both I Can See Me Loving You and I Need You Love find her breaking into a giggle. But then, having recently come out the other end of an operation for a benign brain tumour, she has more reason to laugh than most.

She describes the album's theme as awakening the heart and letting love in. If the title weren't clue enough, love also figures in no less than six of the song titles while two others, Happiness and Peace, equally give a pretty good idea of where she's emotionally coming from.

Returning to the soulful country pop that characterised her eponymous album a decade ago, the set opens with the melodically infectious and life-embracing Hallelujah and its lovely George Harrison-like slide guitar figure. More Than Love may have an old school country gospel rhythm and the choppy I Can See Me Loving You frisky guitar and mandolin, but the prevalent musical mood is gently rolling mid-tempo, punctuated by the relaxed, Celtic tinged early evening balladry of How We Love and the hymnal notes of Peace and The Path Of Love. Tonight’s gig promises to be a soul washing affair. 7.30pm. £21. B’ham Town Hall

Saturday February 27

Jo Hamilton

She saw the year out in the stately environs of the Town Hall, but, playing support to recent Folk Awards nominees accordion/fiddle duo Belshazzar’s Feast, her first hometown gig of the new decade find her in the rather more intimate surroundings with an acoustic set drawn from debut album Gown. It’s proving quite a steady slow burner, picking up critical praise from all quarters, most recently a glowing review in the LA Times. She’ll be changing the set list around, but it’s pretty certain you can still rely on it including soul folk single Pick Me Up, the Gaelic infused Exist), airy ballad There It Is and the intoxicatingly hushed Mekong Song. 8pm. £11. Red Lion, Kings Heath

Saturday February 27

The Soft Pack

Having changed their name from The Muslims after getting a whole load of flak, the San Diego four piece are a no frills, high energy guitar driven rock n roll band who clearly have a thing for 60s garage and sound more like Jason & The Scorchers crossed with The Stooges than the hybrid of The Modern Lovers and Wire the press notes suggest. Oh, yes, and The Strokes with a splash of the punk revved up by the Dead Kennedys.

They’re here to capture hearts, minds and a few thousand iPods with their self-titled album (Heavenly) which may clock in at barely 30 minutes but delivers a flurry of breakneck dirty riffing rock n roll, racing out of the traps with the early REM-ish tumbling C’Mon, an invitation it proves hard to resist as tinny drums and sawing guitars punch their way through the snake-hipped garage rockabilly Down On Loving, the aptly titled Flammable, the even more aptly titled Move Along and the buzzed up surf riding Answer To Yourself.

The bass propelled moody Mexico shows they can take the pace down to back alleys bruised romanticism balladry, but it’s really only going to be in the set list to allow time for them and the crowd to get their breath back before leaping astride the paint burning surf rock Tides of Time and riding the gig into a steaming lake of sweat. 6.30pm. £7.50. O2 Academy 3

Saturday February 27

Chew Lips

Comprising James Watkins, Will Sanderson and singer Tigs, the London minimal dance pop follow up last year’s Blondie lite single Salt Air with debut album Unicorn (Kitsune), a further collection of 10 new 80s retro tunes that seeks to wrest ears away from the current crop of female led electro pop.

It may prove a bit of a battle since it can prove slightly difficult to warm to Tigs’ detached nasal croon while the beats, fluttering synths and basslines are all rather lacklustre. Not that they don’t have their moments. Eight is insidiously catchy, though probably more down to the fact the lyrics sound like out-takes from Alanis Morrisette’s’s Ironic, just as Play Together suggests a watered down version of Yazoo’s Don’t Go splashed with some spare Depeche Mode. And yes, that’s Vince and Alf’s spirit you can hear on the admittedly catchy whoosh of Seven, though it almost expires from a lack of real blood.

They do have a real chance of stabbing the charts with Karen where Tigs finds some hidden power to her voice on a descending scale delivery and the guys manage to dig a real (slightly New Orderish) tune out of their bags while Piano Song pulls back the curtain to reveal closet Kate Bush influences.

However, with no eye catching image, sassy attitude or, indeed, lastingly memorable dance floor packing tunes to give them an edge, it’s unlikely that Florence or LaRoux are going to be having too many sleepless nights. 7.30pm, £7. Slade Rooms (Little Civic)