Monday July 4

Kid Carpet

 

 

Back for his second headline tour, this time round the Kid’s rolling out his debut album Ideas and Oh Dears (Tired & Lonesome), an 18 track (albeit several mere seconds long) collection of ‘toytronica’ that fancies itself as another Streets with its cocktail of dance beats, hip hop, rock, mutant pop and general engineered naivete. Recent live rocking highlight Shiny Shiny New suggests he might well be taking some cues from John Otway while Breakdancin Bodypoppin mingles Krautrock and Eminem. There’s certainly an air of whimsy veining  material like Bristol Carpet Factory, Carrier Bag and carnival merry go round freak out Nelson St Space Invaders but you’ll also hear an underlying social conscience widdling through Green and Pleasant Land, Sick of the Future and the punk mentality jigger Hip Hip Hooray.

It wears out its charms fairly quickly and it’ll be interesting to see if he can outlive the  intrinsic novelty factor, but for the moment it promises an evening of entertaining shag pile with a sandpapery underlay. 7.30pm, £6. Bar Academy. Mike Davies

 

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Tuesday July 5

Clor

 

 

Angular funk rock with a drum machine, My Sharona riffs and Gang Of Four roots says  Good Stuff, the opening track on the Brixton outfit’s self-titled debut album (Regal), proceeding to add Krautrock, early Human League, Gary Numan and XTC flavours on Outlines and moving into Sparks gone synthpop territory with swirly single Love+ Pain.

 Like Franz Ferdinand they’re reinterpreting dance music through 70s technopop, pulsing through staccato, percussive melodies while frontman Barry Dobbin adopts his strangled whine and the band sport  sober suits and poker faces like the children of Kraftwerk and David Byrne.

The album bristles with catchy tunes, the Talking Heads-like  Stuck in A Tight Spot, a space lounge Making You All Mine, the juddering electro-punkfunk Dangerzone and dreamy ballads Goodbye and Gifted all reinforcing the impression laid down by the opening tracks. Skewed guitars, sinuous bass, wormy lyrics that often hover around darker shadows of sexuality, they’re going to prove hard to escape or resist over the coming months.

10pm. £4. Club HQ. Mike Davies

 

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Thursday July  7

Johnathan Rice

 

 

Recently in town supporting Martha Wainwright, the Scottish/American singer-songwriter now returns for his first headline tour on the back of major label debut Trouble Is Real (One Little Indian) and playing Roy Orbison in the upcoming Johnny Cash biopic. Already featured on The OC, Smallville and Six Feet Under, he’s got a dusty rasped voice and wears his Van Morrison, Dylan, Gram, Nick Drake and Clash influences on his sleeve. What he doesn’t have is an album’s worth of persuasive songs. There are times when he touches on the achingly beautiful; the bruised tenderness of Mid November, the gentle acoustic shrug that is Behind The Frontlines, I Wouldn’t Miss It For The World and the moody City of Fire are fine examples. At other times he hits a fine guitar pop vibe on the jangly mandolin led REM-ish Kiss Me Goodbye and a noisy Salvation Day while the short scuffed and crackling gospel folk Put Me in Your Holy War is startlingly effective.

But there’s also too many moments that are overdone (the orchestral overload My Mother's Son, Acrobat, Stay At Home), undercooked (lazy blues Lady Memphis) or simply ill-advised (the electronic beats of Leave The Light On) that just let the side down. Still, with sixteen album tracks and doubtless a couple of unrecorded numbers to play with, he should be able to prune out the dead wood to make this a compact gig worth catching.

  Support comes courtesy  Cambridge English grad Polly Paulusma reminding the world of last year’s debut album Scissors In My Pocket with its  playful literate wordplay, her breathily low, slightly smoky vocals, and such influences as Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Sheryl Crow, Victoria Williams, Stephen Duffy and even a less raw Joplin.

 

 

  There's poignant shivers to be felt on the undoubtedly deeply personal Perfect 4/4 as she details someone hooked up to drips and monitors in a hospital bed while fragile insecurity ripples through the bluesy Anywhere From Here but it's the way she captures the giddy whirl of being caught up in love and life on the acoustic strummed Carry Me Home and gloriously folk pop waltzing debut single Dark Side that really shows you just how brightly her star is about to glow.

8pm. £5. Glee Club. Mike Davies

 

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Thursday July  7

Leaves

 

 

Another pre-release outing for the Icelandic Coldplay as they gear up for next month’s The Angela Test album  following recent single  The Spell with its clattering drumbeat and flowing strings. Advance word says to expect slabs of Beach Boys and Pink Floyd influences in the mix this time round.

If Liverpool support boys  Alterkicks aren’t Bowie fans then no doubt the fact jagged pop new single Oh Honey (Moshi Moshi)at times sounds very similar to John I’m Only Dancing is going to be pure coincidence.

 

 

Probably so since there’s no trace to be found on either of the accompanying acoustic numbers Citalopram and Dragon. Unfortunately there’s not too much to distinguish them either. Still, they arrive with a reasonable live rep with 'The Cannibal Hiking Disaster apparently the one to listen up for.

7.30pm, £5. Little Civic. Mike Davies

 

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Friday July 8

Nine Inch Nails

 

Six years and several unrealised side projects on from Fragile, Trent Reznor finally resurfaces with a new band (only drummer Jerome Dillon remains from the last line up) and a fourth album, With Teeth (Island), that does the expected with its hammering rhythms, spitting angst, nihilistic world views, and expletive riddled lyrics. You Know What You Are and a thumping The Collector pretty much encapsulate the blueprint while Getting Smaller is screaming hard rock  but you’ll perchance be surprised to find a heavy amount of pop sensibility chorus driven noise here too.

Recent single The Hand That Feeds is almost radio friendly with a disco pop swagger while All The Love In The World and Every Day Is Exactly The Same are prowling, dub mooded ballads, Only You is practically a dance number. Not Kylie exactly, and probably not recommended as in house music for depressives and suicidal streaks, especially the growling blues distortions of The Line Begins To Blur, but as things fade away on the back of the droningly hypnotic Beside You In Time and Home and the plaintive, crushed Right Where It Belongs, it’s obvious these nails can still pin you to the wall.

 6.30pm, £20. Carling Academy. Mike Davies

 

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Saturday July 9

Funeral For A Friend

 

 

One minute an underground cult, the next a globe conquering Welsh emo band. Well not yet, but having brought the UK to heel, they’re busy making assaults on the US and Europe. So, catch them while you can as they hit the road here on the back of second album Hours (Atlantic), reinforcing their propensity for urgent, driving riff raging hardcore rock with the opening All The Rage and a pummelling The End of Nothing.

But there’s been changes made between albums too. Drive finds them in moody ballad territory while History comes over all stadium friendly and the closing Sonny throws caution to the wind by confronting the fanbase with drum machine and synths before it builds into a progrock quiet storm. 

How die-hards are going to react will depend a lot on how the band approach the new, more musically mature material on stage and how much things like Roses For The Dead (it’s not the cheeriest or most optimistic of albums), the death metal growls of Recovery and the piston pumping Hospitality dominate over the poppier directions of recent single Streetcar.

 Support’s provided by New York labelmates Gratitude flying in to spread the word on their self-titled debut, a rather poppier affair in the big guitar, soaring chorus, anguished vocal mould of things assayed by the likes of Dashboard Confessional and Jimmy Eat World.

 

 

Naggingly memorable kick off single Drive Away pretty much sets the standard as the band work their way through such emotion founded rock as Last, All In A Row, Sadie and summer anthem Someone To Love with If Ever clearly lined up as the big lighters aloft stadium anthem.

 7pm, £12.30. Carling Academy. Mike Davies

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Tuesday July 19

Louis XIV

Out of San Diego and fresh from support slots with Hot Hot Heat and The Killers, this bunch are prototype garage rock with slashing throaty guitar, jerky riffs, juddery handclap rhythms, twangy bass and Stooges-style vocals all present and correct on new single God Killed The Queen (Pineapple), a barely two minute taster for October’s debut album The Best Litle Secrets Are Kept which will undoubtedly be getting the full showcase here.

7.30pm, £6. Bar Academy. Mike Davies

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Thursday July 21

Joseph Arthur

Although Redemption’s Son did much to raise his profile, the American singer-songwriter, poet and occasional artist remains something of a critics favourite rather than as commercial success. For those unfamiliar he has a soft burr of a falsetto set off by the warmly frazzled arrangements that dominate his cocktail of folk, rock and world beats with its themes of physical, emotional and spiritual dislocation and loss, all showcased to perfection but also taken into different realms on his latest outing, Our Shadows Will Remain (14th Floor).

There’s a slightly more radio friendly mood to things like the sublime snake-funk blues rocker Devil’s Broom, the catchy hooks of a slightly U2 tinged Can’t Exist with its squall of guitars, a summery trip hop Even So and the decidedly poppy Puppets but as the elegantly moody orchestral mournfulness of Echo Park, a simple acoustic A Smile That Explodes and the Buckleyesque hurt of Failed underline he’s not compromised his creative muse in the process. On an album informed by images of death, distance and the post 9/11 climate of paranoia and fear, he closes with the haunting Leave Us Alone. If this record gets the exposure it deserves, isolation may be the last thing Arthur’s going to be experiencing for the foreseeable future.

 8pm. £6. Glee Club. Mike Davies

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Thursday July 21

The Raveonettes

The Mary Chain-like fuzzy feedback may be absent from Pretty In Black (Columbia), the Danish duo’s follow-up to Chain Gang of Love, but Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo’s love of echo-twanged 60s Spector and narcotics pop is still abundantly obvious, aided and abetted by Velvets drummer Moe Tucker and, on girl group homage Ode To LA, the legendary Ronnie Spector herself.

The album opens with The Heavens, a slow waltzing whispery country tune that could have come from Elvis’s scrapbook then its on to, Seductress of Bums with its deliberate nod to I Love How You Love Me, a Buddy Holly informed Uncertain Times, the Everlys styled Here Comes Mary and recent surf noir single Love In A Trashcan, and Sleepwalking where Friday On My Mind’s intro gives way to shades of the Stones’ Paint Ut Black and Mother’s Little Helper.

Covering the old Angels hit My Boyfriend’s Back (but perversely with an electro click beat), it’s all thoroughly retro (though the songs are often far darker and seedier than their innocent pop inspirations) and not ashamed to admit it, something which, along with nuggets from its predecessor, should guarantee tonight offering the past time of your musical life.

Thee Unstrung

Support’s courtesy of Poptones’ rowdy Cockney garage psychobilly pop boys with a social conscience Thee Unstrung who bring their collision of Small Faces, Jam and Kinks influences to bear on an energetic set that’s guaranteed to feature recent single Psycho and follow up Who Runs The Show.

7.30pm, £8. Carling Academy 2. Mike Davies

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Sunday July 24

Laura Cantrell

Following on from the stop-gap release of The Hello Records compiling of her 1996 recordings, Nashville born New Yorker Cantrell returns for her first visit in two years armed with the all new Humming By The Flowered Vine, her first for new label home Matador.

As ever it’s a folk/country mix of self-penned and covers, the latter including Lucinda Williams’ previously unreleased brooding Letters, delivered in her bittersweet and vulnerable Nanci Griffiths-like tones with songs of life’s bruises.

There’s much reflectiveness here, whether in her treatment of Emily Spray’s New York snapshot 14th Street or her own memories of moving to the Big Apple in the mid 80s that inform the lovely Khaki & Corduroy while her closing Old Downtown is a throatier twanged then and now meditation inspired by a visit home and a statue to WWI hero Alvin York.

Her affection for the past is also evident on California Rose, an old-school country tale of unappreciated honky tonk pioneer Rose Maddox, a sprightly mandolin and fiddle dance step take on trad murder ballad Poor Ellen Smith and a tribute to 50s country star Skeeter Davis with a heel-stepping cover of Wishful Thinking.

It’s not all sawdust dance floor gingham dungarees though; Bees is a touching song about a dying friend looking back on his life and those gone before that seems set to bring a lump to the throat when played live. Which is where any country fan worth their salt will be heading to see her.

Following up their Bad Pennies album debut, The HaveNots provide one-off support slot to spread the word on its follow-up, Never Say Goodnight (Cooking Vinyl). If you've not encountered Liam Dullaghan and Sophia Marshall before you'd be forgiven for thinking they hail from the MidWest or California. In fact they’re from Leicester. Physically anyway. Their spirits are an ocean away, borne on the same jangle and twang breezes as Gram Parsons and The Byrds, though Let's Just Start Again suggests they own a Mamas and Papas collection too while Liam's hushed Ghosts will surely evoke thoughts of Damien Rice.

The sunny tumbling jangle Flyer sends you weak at the knees with its simple sense of joy, Papercuts is glorious powerpop while New Lace Dress sees Marshall weaving between the spaces that link Stevie Nicks and Sandy Denny and a sublime ballad Undecorated evokes gentle rain dropping on leaves. Sweetest Feeling shows they can rock too, its Fleetwood Mac hints picked up on the English leafy folk of A Tiny Taste of Death. The songs are veined with melancholy and sadness, but the music dispels any grey clouds, the harmonies streaming sunshine into the soul as they chime and dissolve into the skies with the gorgeous closing Let's Just Start Again. And if that isn't a cue for a punchline I don't know what is.

 8pm. £14. Glee Club. Mike Davies

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Sunday July 24

Thirteenth Day

A massive all day metal bash the fest’s UK debut casts its net across Europe for an ear-bleeding line-up that comes headlined by Finnish outfit Sonata Arctica and features fellow Finns Finntroll with their mash of folk an d metal, death metal Scandinavians Norther, Dutch power metal crew Epica, Sweden’s pummelling Dragonland and, keeping up the British end of things, Intense and Hampshire goths Season’s End.

1.30pm. £18. Carling Academy. Mike Davies

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Monday July 25

Dogs

Imagine a more aggressive Razorlight and you’ll not be far off getting a lead on these London canines with flailing guitars and chugging punkpop riffs being the order of the day on next month’s debut album Turn Against This Land. It has to be said though that, when he’s not doing Phil Daniels impersonations on the spoken verses of She’s Got A Reason (which bizarrely quotes a line from Love), mouthy frontman Johnny Cooke seems to be working too hard to sound like a shouty Johnny Rotten, notably so on things like End of An Era and Heading For An Early Grave.

They do though, as London Bridge, Selfish Ways and Tuned To A Different Station amply demonstrate, have a fistful of strong loud, noisy and frenetic rock n roll bombs ready to detonate on stage with the broody walking basslined Tarred And Feathered on hand in case they and the crowd need to catch their breath. Mongrels rather than pedigrees perhaps, but they have both the bark and the bite.

7.30pm. £6. Bar Academy. Mike Davies

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Thursday July 28

Editors

Following on from the Bullets and Munich singles, the Birmingham based outfit return with debut album The Back Room (Kitchenware), the opening Lights wearing their Joy Division and Echo & The Bunnymen influences blatantly on its sleeve, Tom Smith’s Ian Curtis like vocals drenching the ears in earnest dark emotions. Problem is that too much tends to stick to the same blueprint, merely speeding up (new single Blood) or slowing down (Fall) to mark the difference.

Which doesn’t make it a bad album by any means. Indeed, Camera is a weighty electronic stormed masterpiece that draws as much on Scott Walker as it does Interpol while Someone Says wouldn’t have sounded out of place on the Bunnnymen’s Ocean Rain, Open Your Arms is big screen panoramic melancholy and the European rain splashed alleys feel of Fingers In The Factories suggests it has all the makings of a future band classic. The skittering electronics drum machine backing to closing wearied ballad fade out Distance provides the album’s only misstep, but having established their power, passion and fury next time round it would help if they looked a little beyond their own horizons.

7.30pm, £7. Carling Academy 2. Mike Davies

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Saturday July 30

The Proclaimers

Fresh from frenzying up the Live 8 crowds at Murrayfield, Craig and Charlie Reid hit the road for a massive four month tour in support of upcoming new album Restless Soul (Persevere), stopping off in town for this open air date that should see the park resounding to a mass singalong of 500 Miles and Letter From America.

Not that they need to rely on past hits. The new album of lost and found love songs, calls to inspirational arms and tales of too much booze positively bristles with feet tapping, blood juggling tunes embraces such musical influences as zydeco (Everyday I Try), old school r&b (Restless Soul), Hammond organ flamenco soul (Turning Away), 60s balladry (He Just Can’t, One More Down’s poignant memoir of those who’ve passed on), barroom blues (The One Who Loves You Now), skiffle rock n roll (Now and Then) and, of course, Celtic veined country (I’m Gone).

There might not be anything here likely to be played on any future space mission in the way I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) was when Rover landed on Mars, but the heavens should still be ringing tonight.

7.30pm, £15. mac Arena. Mike Davies

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Sunday July 31

Mohair

Jaunty summery Watford pop boys who’ve been described as ‘like Neil Young and The Charlatans taught at folk-rock school,’ they take a break from recording the debut album to pour some sunshine over the land with new single, Stranded (Ear Candy), accompanying track Everything I Want pointing up those 60s Kinks/Manfred Mann influences.

7pm. £6. Bar Academy . Mike Davies