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He enjoyed last year’s Growing Up tour so much, he decided to come back and play the places he hadn’t managed to visit. Clearly he must have lost a page of the tour diary since he actually appeared at the NEC but , hey, it’s a different venue so maybe that counts. Anyway, in a business where copyists and soundalikes are a staple diet, Gabriel remains one of the few voices that it is impossible to replicate. That yearningly plaintive soaring quiver is so utterly distinctive the chances of anyone turning up to do Shock The Monkey, Blood of Eden, Red Rain or Biko is pretty remote. And yet it’s been ten years since it was last heard in its full glory. Ten years in which he spent his time involved with assorted Real World projects, developing technology, contributing an event to the Millennium Dome and providing the score to Rabbit Proof Fence. All that time though he was also gathering recording for Up, an eclectic, disparate work that involves sonic squalls, backward tapes, emotional balladry, a song about the aftermath of a road accident, themes of grief, death, life, renewal, the big issues, instruments with bizarre names like the Wonky Ord and contributions that range from The Blind Boys from Alabama and the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to the Black Dyke Mills Band. Classic, definitive Gabriel then and forming a substantial chunk of the tour that finds him returning to the spectacular visuals and staging of the halcyon Genesis years. Designed by noted theatre director Robert Lepage with an emphasis on the vertical to reflect the album title, the highly acclaimed show has Gabriel singing upside down and walking around the stage in a transparent 12-foot hamster ball. With new material standing alongside the likes of such vintage nuggets as Red Rain, Sledgehammer, Here Comes The Flood, In Your Eyes and Solsbury Hill, the only way is Up 

Small but perfectly formed, Paige has long been the undisputed queen of British musical theatre, her collaborations with the Rice/Lloyd Webber partnership legendary. And just to underline the point, her new best of double CD, Centre Stage (Warner), gathers together her finest moments with such classics as I Know Him So Well, Memory, Don’t Cry For Me Argentina, On My Own, Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien and How Long Has This Being Going On.  However, she’s about more than stage belters, hence the inclusion of evergreens and pop nuggets like Wishin’ On A Star, Ave Maria, Something In Red , Judy Tzuke’s For You, Unchained Melody, Alfie, I Only Have Eyes For You and a live duet with Cliff on Miss You Nights. There’s brace of new tracks and half a dozen previously unissued ones, among them live recordings that include superb versions of September Song and I Dreamed A Dream (from Les Mis) that were actually recorded at Symphony Hall back in 94. A combination of career spanning retrospective and looks to the future (a funky rock Paige can be found doing Change The World) will form the basis of this No Strings Attached tour which, as you might gather, features no strings but a standard quartet line up with added keyboards and sax. Not that she needs the swelling arrangements, there’s power and passion enough in that voice to make a symphony orchestra seem redundant. 

If you ever felt The Beautiful South would sound a lot better without the male vocals, then this is what you’ve been waiting for. During a BS sabbatical writer-guitarist Dave Rotheray decided to put together a musical diary of the year. What emerged though was a collection of songs to, for and about his family and close friends. Being rather more personal he decided not to offer them up for the band’s next album but to find a singer who would do them justice in their own right. Enter Sam Brown, regular vocalist with Jools Holland and all round underrated talent. The result is the self-titled, self-label album, a collection of songs that perfectly fit the image of the trio’s name (Tony Robinson makes up the numbers on keyboards) in a gentle acoustic blend of country, folk and pop wrapped around Rotheray’s familiar melancholic observational lyrics about bruised and broken relationships and unfulfilled lives. 
The presence of trombone on the likes of Did You Ever? and the sad waltzing Unfortunately Young add a warm Hovis flavour to proceedings while such numbers as Anniversary Rag and Don’t Force Me To Be Free bring out a latent blues influence in Rotheray’s writing but the general feel is of a rural British backporch country (perfectly captured on the excellent Days) where sun filters through oak trees that line the dusty backroads and soon to be harvested fields. All rather lovely and if it finally gets Brown back in the mainstream public eye then that’s no bad thing either. 

You might not know the name, but, covered as they have been by such names as Bryan Adams, Bonnie Raitt and Neil Diamond, you’ve probably heard her songs. She also collaborated with Adams for the soundtrack of the animated film Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmarron. But nobody sings her songs like she does, so it’s a pity that, thanks to record label disasters, she’s not been as prolific as she might on the album front. It’s been almost four years since her last outing but now this all too rare a visit happily coincides with her third release, Halcyon (Curb). Again the Nanci Griffiths and Dolly Parton influences are evident, most notably on the opening Tomorrow Morning with its won’t beat me down sentiment, while the similarly themed standout Blessing On Disguise (co-penned with Adams) with its hacienda guitar recalls the best of Emmylou Harris with a melody that Springsteen might have written . It’s not the most upbeat collection of stories. Lovers leaving inform The Aviator’s Song (which at times sounds curiously like Mandy) where she twins the image of a pilot being shot down with a lover falling out of her life and the laid back jazz lounge country of A Cool Goodbye. And it’s not just broken hearts. The wistful, piano tinkling This Used To Be My Town is a tale of a twelve year old’s rape and murder sung by the victim and, introed by a Roy Bittan-like piano phrase, Germanstown (another Springsteenish narrative) sketches out a Friday night gone bad and lovers on the lam to the county line. And yet for the most part, while achingly melancholic, it’s an ultimately uplifting album about rising above the rubble of life and relationships. The scuffed Lou Reed shuffle of the talk-sing Imogene is a touching song of simple faith that sometimes the slot machine comes up cherries, Drowning In You, a plaintive acoustic number with accordion backing that breaks out into a blues guitar bridge, sees her find the strength to keep her head above the water of a bad romance, Museum details the ‘joy and strife’ of pinning the pain to the art it creates and If Heaven is about death then it’s a death faced with acceptance and the hope that the world to come only has the best bits of the one we leave behind. 
Ultimately, it’s about acknowledging what’s lost and what strengths remain, beautifully encapsulated in the near Baptist hymnal Child of Mine where a mother regrets no longer being able to ‘fight your dragons’ but affirms the love that still runs deeper than oceans. 
 Pretty much assured a place in the year’s best of lists, it will likely form the backbone of the set she’ll be working tonight, though requests for earlier heart piercers like the suicide themed On A Bus to St Cloud, divorce song This Uncivil War and her award winning Independence Day should hopefully not go unheeded. 

Taking their name from the aircraft in which Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, the Dublin-based quartet set the buzz going back home with their debut album Neither Am I and, from now look set to carry the word further afield with Music In Mouth’s gorgeously bruised tumble and jangle of Irish folk-pop that, on Alphabet Soup manages to reference both Chris De Burgh and Ireland's own Joan of Arc, Maud Gonne. Paul Noonan has one of those heart choking in his mouth voices that seems permanently on the edge of an emotional breakdown, an aching heard to good effect on Eve, The Apple of My Eye and, in contrast, the cascading chorus hook and plangent guitar burr of Snakes & Snakes where the Byrds mate with Miracle Legion. Citing Talking Heads as an influence, it's not surprising to find several numbers displaying funkier shades as with the twanging guitar intro to the brooding U2 pulse of Tongue, the choppy fractured White Water Song with its semi-spoken preacher-like passages and stabbing guitar breaks. They even come over all Paul Simon goes back porch folk with West Of Her Spine. Their strengths though lie in the moody, spare introspective moments of things like parting of the ways song Daybreak or In Every Sunflower with its pump organ drone. With intricately textured arrangements that employ bells, vibraphone and fragile strings to create serious young men moods, they're going to find some inevitable Radiohead comparisons while it does seem to be tempting fate somewhat for the closing I'll See Your Heart & Raise You Mine to sound not a million miles away from Coldplay's The Scientist. However, there's more than enough individual muscle here to see them safely over the pitfalls of convenient pigeonholing. 

A long eight months after the release of Stuck in My Throat, the post hardcore trio finally crawl out of the studio to take to the road with follow up Freddy Kreuger (Xtra Mile), a suitably poundingly urgent yet melodic two and a half minute surge of Foo Fighters styled rock that serves as prelude to the debut album, Racecar Is Racecar Backwards, that’ll be getting some heavy duty showcasing tonight. Support’s emo meets pop punk post hardcore quartet The Holiday Plan who, after laying the ground with two impressive EPs are finally girding up the musical loins to launch a debut album later this year. 

The Holiday Plan

Once it would have been the NEC, but they’ve downsized considerably these days as audiences drifted away in the wake of increasingly lacklustre albums. However, while major label deals look like something of the past along with lavish stage sets, they recovered their form with last year’s Tribe and now consolidate with The Art Of Live (Mayan), recorded during that album tour. 
There’s no Silent Lucidity, but that seems a small sacrifice given the acoustic versions of Rhythm of Hope, My Global Mind and a rather good Roads To Madness alongside the melodic metal of Sign of the Times, the raging The Needle Lies and, harking way back, the Zep blues touch of Anybody Listening. Axes duly grind and spit, riffs are crunched, drums thundered and Geoff Tate twists his vocal chords into all manner of emotional angsts. In short, it promises to be a solid heavy night out. 

Now down to just two original members but still going strong, with Zak Starkey sitting behind the drum kit and Pino Palladino replacing the late John Entwistle on bass, Townsend and Daltrey hit the arenas for what’s essentially a journey through their finest moments, conveniently coinciding with the recent singles compilation and box set. So, Anyway, Anyhow Anywhere, Baba O Riley, I’m A Boy, Can’t Explain. Who Are You and so forth with both Tommy and Quadrophenia well represented amid sonic booms of nostalgia that declare the band are still possessed of the same furious energy as in their halcyon days. They’ll also be including their first new material in 22 years, the surgingly powerful Old Red Wine’s farewell to Entwistle and, incorporating Falling In Love With You, the rousing Real Good Looking Boy which, for those thinking this might be singularly inappropriate in the wake of Townsend’s recent troubles, is actually a song about narcissism and sounds like it could have come from the Tommy era. A new album’s due next year but given their advancing ages and the ever volatile relationship between Pete and Roger I’d not miss the opportunity of catching them on stage while it presents itself. 

A showcase advance unveiling of their debut album Up All Night (Vertigo) as well as whoever’s replaced Christian Smith-Pancorvo behind the drums, this could well be the last time you get to see them in such relatively intimate confines. Fronted by mouthy rock n roll poster boy ex-Libertine Johnny Borrell and his performing ego, with Swedes Bjorn Agren and Carl Dalemo on guitar and bass, it’s a rampantly confident cocky swagger through 13 tales of London life that embrace new versions of Rock n Roll Lies and recent Jam meets Clash single Rip It Up, the soaring follow-up Golden Touch, live favourite In The City where they pay respect to Patti Smith’s Gloria, a rowdy Springsteenesque Vice and the massive To The Sea while just to show they can do moody as well as mean there’s a time out breather for Hang By, Hang By and the closing Fall Fall Fall. And they walk it like they talk it too, so expect the place to be a heaving inferno of blistering rock and scalding sweat. 

Band defunct, Neil Hannon current album Absent Friends, the first since 2001's Regeneration, is pretty much as business as usual. Which, variously inspired by dumping the band, moving to Dublin, touring America, and becoming a dad, means more attempts (Sticks & Stones, Leaving Today) to flog albums to Scott Walker fans waiting patiently for their idol's next venture within 100 miles of a recording studio or failing that try and land a commission for a Broadway musical (Charmed Life).
Mixing in the heavily autobiographical (Leaving Today is about saying goodbye to the family to tour America while Freedom Road documents the odyssey itself) with such observational ditties as Our Mutual Friend (infidelity), Come Home, Billy Bird (a businessman tries to get, er, home) and The Happy Goth (misunderstood, alienated girl likes it that way), it's a swings and roundabouts of emotions, up on Charmed Life, down on My Imaginary Friend (essentially about absent fathers). Best of all though is the opening Absent Friends, a soaring rush of melody and Big Country (film not band) 60s pop that suggests Walker in full radio friendly flood as Hannon namedrops Oscar Wilde and Steve McQueen. Armed with a new bunch of musicians for the live version, he may be derivative, but it's nice to have him back.
Support comes from sometime Fridge bassist Adem Ilhan but you really are going to have to be on your most hushed behaviour if his live set is anything like debut album Homesongs (Domino). 

 Adem Ilhan

Tousled hair with looks somewhere between Jeff Buckley and Steve Forbert, the Idaho born Ritter's star is on the fast track. Two years on from the shoestring release of his Golden Age of Radio debut, the title track of which featured over the end credits of Six Feet Under, he’s already a star in Ireland where his George Harrison influenced Me & Jiggs single made the Top 40, been feted with glowing reviews, and toured with Joan Baez. 
He’s back now to promote his just released sophomore outing, Hello Starling (Signature Sounds). Recorded in old French dairy barn, the influences are clear; the young Greenwich Village folk singer Dylan and Don't Think Twice It's All Right shining through You Don't Make It Easy Babe, the Springsteeneque touches of Man Burning, the haunting acoustic ballad Wings (already covered by Joan Baez on her new album) where Townes Van Zandt meets Leonard Cohen amid religious imagery and American gothic, the uplifting love after a long winter Snow Is Gone with its title line lyric and shades of John Prine while Bright Smile blends the fragile folk of Nick Drake with Cat Stevens. But Ritter's far more than the sum of his references. Blessed with a warm and weary earthy voice and a gift for lilting, unassuming but infectious melodies he's also a superb poetic lyricist and storyteller, whether waiting around at a party to drive home the prettiest girl in Kathleen, observing the end of a relationship in The Bad Actress or getting metaphysical in the brilliant Bone Of Song where he talks of the artist's desire for the song to be remembered even if the writer is forgotten. A shimmering, confident, relaxed and emotion drenched album full of yearning for times to come, nostalgia for times lost and an awareness of the beauty of the moment, it confirms Ritter as one of those rare artists for whom the term timeless was created. Don’t miss him. 
Support’s provided by A Girl Called Eddy aka breathy voiced New Jersey singer-songwriter Erin Moran promoting her upcoming self-titled debut album (Anti Inc), a dreamy collection of smoky urban love songs designed as backdrops for looking out of loft windows over rain washed dusk streets.

 A Girl Called Eddy

A surprisingly small venue for the nearest she gets to a hometown gig, but as her first road trip since the release (and then re-release with two extra tracks) of Thank You (Parlophone) it’s probably worth the travel to see how she puts a live spin on the hip pop of what’s her most commercially direct material to date. And while the basic beats can tend to a degree of similarity, she’s sussed enough to put the rhythms through hoops on such numbers as Cutie, Bounce, Superstar (with that annoyingly catchy guitar line intro), the summer sway of DJ and, of course the hard nosed swaggering B.I.T.C.H. and the irresistible title track. There’ll be no Bubba Sparxxx or Rah Digga along to lend a hand, but given the sparks she’s got flying now it seems unlikely anyone’s going to miss the bonus points. 

One of the veteran ska legends whose hits include such classics as 54-46 Was My Number and Monkey Man (amazingly, their only UK hit), Toots Hibbert is actually credited with inventing the term reggae on his 1968 single Do The Reggay. He’s also been an incredibly influence on several generations of roots rockers and rappers while Pressure Drop became something of a Clash anthem. It’s testament to his standing that his new album, True Love (V2) is awash with star non reggae collaborators as diverse as Ryan Adams (a bluesy Time Tough), Willie Nelson (on his own Still Is Still Moving To Me), No Doubt (a rocking up Monkey Man), Keith Richards (Careless Ethiopians), Jeff Beck (scorching guitar on 54-46) and Eric Clapton (a party hearty Pressure Drop) as well as genre icons like Bunny Wailer (Take A Trip), Ken Boothe and Marcia Griffiths (Reggae Got Soul), new boy Shaggy (Bam Bam) and even an interesting combination of ska legends The Skatalites, dub veteran U Roy and former Specials main man Terry Hall on Never Grow Old while a laid back stoned Funky Kingston teams old school funkster with new R&B stars The Roots. Of course, none of them will be popping along tonight, but famous friends have never been a requirement for Toots to serve up a solid set of bubbling good time reggae party fun. Sweet and dandy indeed. 

Rescheduled after she was taken poorly, this finds the Irish singer-songwriter to town spreading the word on third album Season of the Hurricane, now back on her own Hear This label following a brief stint with Warners for Burn The Black Suit. And with Wogan having got behind, Everything is Beautiful (a sort of cross between Norah Jones, The Corrs, Dido and Natalie Merchant), she may yet find match her home success. While keeping the last album’s edgy jazzy folk feel honed, it’s a poppier, more playful affair with songs about sexual attraction (the sultry The Greatest Show On Earth), sexual urges (a smoky One Night) and sexual vampirism (See Another Side) mingled with more wistful memories of fumbled childhood romance (an almost rocking 1987), steadfast love (Business As Usual) and aching betrayals and regrets (the 5am cityscape mood of Vampire, the melancholic, spare No Good In This Goodybe). Social and spiritual issues are addressed too in the driftingly dreamy but downbeat title track, a quietly angry Suzanne Vega-ish The Signal and the Noise and the enigmatic, faith-themed slow waltzingly acoustic Elvis Is In The Building. 
Wrapped up with a cover of Nancy Sinatra hit Sugartown, it’s a consummately crafted affair that never loses its passion and soul beneath the musical polish, and if this time round she puts in the necessary footwork promoting it over here, then it shouldn’t be too long before she’s breezing back to play rather more sizeable venues.

Defying those who reckoned they’d fallen apart in the three years after the Wonderland album in which Tim Burgess took off to LA to make a solo album, the Charlies are back for Up At The Lake (Island), their eighth collection. And a poky little beast it is too, Burgess laying off the falsetto and the band stripping things down to put the focus on the drive and energy of things like the funky Stones meet Dylan strutter Feel The Pressure, a choogling Mick n Keef meet Bowie pop As I Watch You In Disbelief, the Who-like Apples And Oranges , a rowdy Blue For You and the garage beat throbbing highs and lows title track. Cooked up on a Bodmin moor winter, there’s a certain rustic flavour here and there, most obviously so on I’ll Sing A Hymn where they draw on both their Dylan and Cash influences (not to mention a specific melodic hint of Lay Lady Lay) and the simple folksily acoustic Dead Love.
There’s certainly a big 60s flavour veined throughout (you can hear the Byrds take wing on Loving You Is Easy where Tony Rogers takes over vocals) and Burgess even cites the Small Faces as the spirit that informs the good time summery feel of Bona Fide Treasure. It’s a vibe that beams though the whole album and while that may mean dad rock aspersions being cast, the result is so thoroughly feelgood it’ll be a sour set of ears that turns away simply because of spurious labels. Go take a dip. 

Having pollinated the airwaves with their lolloppingly sunny honeyed psychedelic shaker pop Wash In The Rain where those Stranglers influence join forces with straw sucking jug band goodtiming, the Isle of Wight boys flit back with their sophomore album Free The Bees (Virgin) positively buzzing with goodtime 60s noise, part Spencer Davis, part The Who, part part Hollies and on I Love You part Jim Webb. In fact, listening to the excellent This Is The Land you get a sense of what it might have been like had The Monkees and The Fortunes ever got together. A musical mix of r&b (No Atmosphere), whirlygig folk (The Start), psychedelic pop (Hourglass) and soul (the James Brown flavoured Chicken Payback), it makes no great claims for originality, but with the likes of These Are The Ghosts and One Glass of Water it does earn an instant place on the best summer albums of the year list. Best case of hives in town.

Still kicking against the pricks in an ongoing anarcho struggle for a better world and with vocalist Danbert Nobacon still sounding like he’s stepped out of a cloth cap Northern folk club with Alice Nutter providing the more flowery folksy tones, but new album Un (Mutt) rings quite a few changes with a globalization of the musical influences and lyrical references.  Subjects here range from the bullying climate that led to Columbine (We Don’t Want To Sing Along with its tequila brass), Bacardi’s sham Cuban image and the US economic blockade of the island (A Man Walks Into A Bar), American cultural imperialism (On eBay, written following the looting of Baghdad Museum), media distortion (Everything You Know Is Wrong), consumerism (Buy Nothing Day) and female artists subverting Bolivia’s entrenched patriarchal society (When Fine Society Sits Down To Dine) while the music too crosses continents to take in Arabic, African, Polynesian, Texicali, Eastern European and Latin colours. And then they add beats and still find time to look on the upside (Rebel Code’s free operating software, Following You’s celebration of Social Centres) as well as crack a smile in reminding on Just Desserts that sometimes a pie in the face can be just as effective as a bullet in a gun. 
You don’t have to sign up for the politics of course, they’re still a fine folk-pop bunch even if you’re a staunch defender of Blair and Bush but then if that’s all you’re going for you probably only ever reckoned Tubthumping was a good pub singalong. 

As Gareth Gates’ sun slips slowly over the horizon so Young sets out on his sell out first ever solo tour. Assuming of course Steve Stills hasn’t managed to arrange a hitman to payback for the appalling cover of Love The One You’re With. It remains a mystery though as to why he’s quite so popular given the anodyne blue eyed soul of his recent Friday’s Child (BMG) album. Sounding like a limpid George Michael on Stronger, a thin Stevie Wonder on Going My Way and a saccharine Westlife with Love Is A Matter of Distance (a song that surely escaped a 60s Cilla Black time warp), and as Out Of My Mind shows he certainly doesn’t convince as funkster either.  To be fair Leave Right Now and the title track are quality polished pop and Young does hit exactly the right easy going laid back tone, but the damning thing is that it’s all so inoffensively pleasant that you feel positively churlish about carping on. Cliff Richard for the thirtysomething moms then. 

Given she’s her country’s biggest selling female star and makes albums of sublime pop beauty, the Chinese-Maori New Zealander really deserves bigger venues than this. First heard of with the Drive album a couple of years back, the follow-up, Beautiful Collision (Sony), is a collection of breathily sweet voiced dreamy reveries tinged with hints of neurosis that paints its melodies like an artist filtering light on to canvas. Listening For The Weather might suggest a less histrionic Bjork while Gravity and When I See You Smile hark at Eddi Reader and Good Morning Baby and Get Some Sleep are a bit of a Dido like slow rock strut, but arguably the nearest comparison is a less jazz inflected Norah Jones. With occasional hints of Oriental flavours to the arrangements (Precious Things), it’s an expansive sound full of the breeze between the trees and twilight scents, a sensibility particularly evident on Election Night or the gorgeous brushed slow country waltzes Honest Goodbyes and The Be All And End All. Inevitably it’s all going to be a lot sparser in this intimate setting, but it’ll be a dull soul who doesn’t come away entranced. 

Having seen his career fall apart when, after seven years working London’s R&B scene he got dumped from his previous label before he could even record and was forced to return to working at Nat West, the Tottenham born singer took a last chance by entering the Fame Academy. He didn’t win, but the rest is history and he’s certainly proving one of their most successful graduates. Already having been invited to duet with Beverly Knight, Lionel Richie and George Benson, he’s now headlining his first major UK tour, taking last year’s platinum selling debut album, Dedicated (Sony), out on the road, creamy late night summer breeze R&B ballads like 50/50, No Pressure and his self-penned jazzy 'acoustic All I Ever Do (My
Boo) mixing it up with the more hip hop n funk grooves of Dance (With U), Fresh, and Body Talk. Showing a firm pop sensibility on the piano ballad What About Love? and the boy band like swayer Another Day, he also turns in a smooth cover of Let’s Stay Together that even makes you forget Tina Turner’s original. Should be a slick one. 

Working on the premise that you don’t fix what isn’t broken, the Canadian emo-mongerers followed up the best selling Silver Side Up with the identikit The Long Road (Roadrunner), the Someday single serving as its answer to Never Again. If you were grabbed by them first time around, then this is pretty much like experiencing deja vu, virtually all of the album’s tracks following the same quite, loud, chugging, spitting guitar, clattering drums and tortured sandpapered vocal structure. And while, say, Believe It Or Not shows a minor variation on tempo and drive from the more acoustic Should’ve Listened and the closing flame thrower See You At The Show, it’s still difficult to call major differences from one track to the next. Clearly this is what their audiences want, but perhaps next time they might try recording without the aid of such a rigid safety net.

Back for second helpings of recent album The Curse of Blondie as guitars churn with youthful venom and 58 year old Debbie Harry delivers the material like some New Wave vixen but with the weight of life experience also evident in her curling sneers. The opening Shakedown sees her rapping about New Jersey roots with cool sexual prowl before Good Boys and Undone get down to their trademark blueprint, while elsewhere a Japanese sheen’s draped over Magic, End To End chugs along like a rattling ghost train through some blasted desert night and Desire Brings Me Back takes a journey into freaky beatjazz territory before Songs of Love winds it up with a torchy eastern hued snake charmer ballad. It’s not likely anything here will stand up as well as, say Heart Of Glass, Denis or Sunday Girl in 20 years time, but slipped between the hits everyone’s come to hear nor are they likely to drag the set or send anyone out for a beer between the more familiar memories.

Born in Hollywood and based in Manhattan, the breathy voiced singer-songwriter might not be an immediately recognisable name but she’s rapidly building a sizeable cult following for her broodingly folksy introspective songs of love, death, secrets and sadness. She’s recently released her third album, Run To Ruin, an eight track follow up to the equally well received On The Blackened Air, though it’s her obscure 1999 Steve Albini produced debut Dogs (Touch and Go) that’s currently getting attention in the wake of its reissue, strings and wind instruments adding ghostly textures to her acoustic guitar and a voice that variously evokes thoughts of Suzanne Vega, Mazzy Star and a less intense PJ Harvey as she moves through such urban storywriter snapshots as Judy’s In The Sandbox, Stormy Weather and Jimmy’s Rose Tattoo.
Decidedly worth the discovering, this Contemporary Music Network tour looks to expand on the often stripped back chamber like intimacy of the albums as, invited to create a new project, her regular band will be joined with two founding members of the Tuvan band Huun-Huur-Tu on horse-hair cello, long-necked lute and other Tuvan instruments. Likely to be one you’ll be talking about for months to come. 

Out on the road with UFO, and still going strong following their resurrection a few years back this coincides with new album Well Oiled (SPV), a solid slab of Stones (What’s Your Name) meets Faces (Lorraine Lorraine) meets AC/DC (You’ve Got A Nerve) strutting riffery rock n roll that pretty much sounds like they’ve never been away, though on a few of the tracks they do sound a little more measured and less rowdy than I remember from the old days. However, while Too Familiar sees them adopting a mix of Mott The Hoople and the Stones’ country whiskey flavours, The Last Fence dispels any thoughts that they can’t still crank up the sweat flying energy when required. One for unreconstructed rockers and Darkness fans looking for a taste of history. 

Arriving to give a taste for Stealing Of A Nation (City Slang), their upcoming follow up to Gotham, the New Yorkers fuse New Wave and dance floor in energetic form, frames of reference embracing the likes of Big Audio Dynamite, Gang of Four and The Clash, shades of dub reggae veining their rock and electronica. A first single, Party Crashers, sets the mood with its train chugging rhythm and while Nation spotlights their moodier dub interests both Transmission and Absolute Affirmation suggests an injection of more poppier New Orderish awareness this time around. With established favourites such as Start A Fire, Calling All Enthusiasts and Struggle frequenting the set, much significant feet moving would seem to be the order of the evening. 

With Jeff Tweedy fresh out of rehab following treatment for his painkillers addiction and Jay Bennett having departed, Wilco fly in to unveil their fifth album, A Ghost Is Born (Nonesuch), the follow up to their critically acclaimed and high charting (after their original label rejected it) Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. 
Warmer and more relaxed than its predecessor, it still remains something of an eclectic musical journey, opening with At Least That’s What You Said, a spare pensive ballad that suddenly takes off into Crazy Horse territory as those Neil Young distorted guitar reference points boil to the surface while the ten minute Spiders (Kidsmoke) sounds bizarrely as though it’s got an Eight Miles High guitar workout stapled to a stray Kraftwerk rhythm track adaptation of Lips Inc’s Funky Town. Elsewhere though the summery rays of Brian Wilson and The Beatles shine through on Muzzle of Bees and Hummingbird, a pumping I’m A Wheel throws off Stonesy sparks, Wishful Thinking gently pulses over percussive waves, Company In My Back sounds like something Mark Olson might have fished out for the Creekdippers and the wryly self-satirising The Late Greats is the sort of loose singalong designed for chucking out time down the back porch saloon.Good to see them on continued good form, and a fair sample of the new songs of bruised love and escape should find its way among the old favourites, but if they do decide to feature Less Than You Think just pray Tweedy doesn’t include the inexplicable 10 minutes of high pitched electronic drone that’s on the album version. 

The hip hop gig of the year really, as the original bad girl heads up a girl power rapping night on snaky grooves, right on street politics and sexual swagger, stomping around through her current in your face This Is Not A Test! album while support act Kelis keeps it a little lighter and less intense as she wiggles her way through her Tasty album and the tongue in cheek food n sex double entendres of Milkshake. 

Kelis 

A fairly swift return after her recent well received Glee Club set, this affords another chance to soak up the Seattle based singer-songwriter’s current album, Carbon Glacier with its often impressionistic tales of pirate ladies, shipwrecks, estrangement and connection, served up in folk and earthily bluesy clothing. Listen up for the likes of Lonely Angel Dust with its echoes of The Handsome Family, the Appalachian moods of Wind Is Blowing Stars and the bluesy moods of Snow Camping sitting side by side with no less entrancing material as the anti-war Cannon Fodder and the gentle high lonesome folk-country of Bedroom Eyes from the earlier Troubled By Fire. 
Opening up will be Texan quintet Midlake whose just released oddly titled Bamnan and Slivercork (Bella Union) is a beguiling mix of Americana, pop and electronica, veined with a gentle air of melancholy. Nothing revelatory perhaps, but the likes of a wibbling poppy Kingfish Pies, a slightly grand Baloon Maker, Mopper’s Medley, the vaguely Eastern meets jazz dancing The Jungler and a waltzy He Tried To Escape should appeal to the more esoteric fans of Granddaddy and The Flaming Lips. 

A full band show with The Decent Men, this serves as a warm up for his Glastonbury appearance, so you can expect the recent album to be well represented with things like the Springsteenesque Celestial City and the soul-roots slow burner When You Leave The Spotlight. It also serves as a useful trailer for Cosmic Fireworks, a double CD compilation of the best of his work with The Good Sons, culled from their four albums and including such gems as Townes Van Zandt duet Riding The Range, God’s Other Son, I Can’t Cry Hard Enough and the excellent Tim Hardin ’65 plus a demo version of .Shake This Town. And, trusting the fans have deep pockets, he’s also got a mail order only Absent Friends which features three brand new numbers alongside 11 live tracks recorded over the past three years. 

A living legend of Irish folk music and arguably the scene’s most influential artist in living memory, Moore’s live appearances are becoming increasingly rare so this two night stint, promising different material on each occasion, really is not something to be missed. 
A man whose repertoire embraces everything from traditional Irish ballads to love songs to biting political and social comment and breezy whimsy, his recorded output over the past 40 years has been phenomenal. So much so that the tour coincides with the release of a box set, aptly titled The Box Set 1964-2004 (Columbia), which contains no less than six CDs. And not a compilation from the many albums either, but 101 tracks of outtakes, B sides, rehearsal demos, live cuts and long deleted material. As I say, a prolific man.
A remarkable collection, it’s an essential addition to any Moore devotee’s collection but also a useful crash course for newcomers or those looking to catch up. Impossible to mention everything here, but in a wide ranging selection of tone, style and subject matter notable standouts must surely include the new version of Yellow Triangle, a live recording of They Never Came Home, his banned song about the children who died in a fire at the Stardust Ballroom because the fire engines were chained up, a rowdy live recording of Don’t Forget Your Shovel, a 27 year old version of Little Musgrave, a muddy but rare live Planxty recording of The Raggle Taggle Gypsy, the original take of his tribute to Veronica Guerin and even a fine brace of evergreens that include a far from maudlin Danny Boy, The Eniskillen Dragoon (from 1964), Whiskey In The Jar and, recorded 25 years before O Brother, Planxty’s wonderful unreleased version of Down In The Valley. Whether any of these actually turn up in the live sets is immaterial, whatever he chooses to throw into the ring, songs, stories, whatever, it’s going to be mesmerising.

A former Jesus freak, surfer and fashion model, murmury voiced White favours a spooked brand of Southern roots with the accent on weird. Rather less skewed these days than back when he released his Wrong-Eyed Jesus debut, even so reflective current album Drill a Hole in That Substrate and Tell Me What You See (V2) is hardly what you’d call mainstream in its smouldering cocktail of country, funk, gospel, jazz and soul that ponders of themes of travel and religion. To give an idea where he’s coming from If Jesus Drove a Motor Home paints a picture of a bona fide motorised saviour who double parks and eats waffles while Objects in Motion reworks Ophelia’s suicide with a suitcase of undelivered love-letters floating down a river in a metaphor of emotional baggage and That Girl From Brownsville Texas spends the day "counting bullet holes in state-line signs." before returning to the lonely motel room. 
Though his Aimee Mann duet, Static on the Radio, offers an easy late night alt country groove, Bluebird’s a lazy catfish river croon, Borrowed Wings chirps along with plucked banjo like some refugee from O Brother, and, a master of weaving atmosphere into his songs, he teams with Mary Gauthier for the aching spare country break up ballad Phone Booth in Heaven, he’s generally a lot fonder of the claustrophobic heat vibe. Thus an intense Buzzards Of Love, a swampy blues that drips with perspiration, while Alabama Chrome burns with psychedelic gospel and bluegrass. Unfolding in the venue’s intimate confines, you’ll probably even be able to taste the sweat on his tongue. 

Tying in with last year’s album this is a best of tour so you can trace her move from the low slung goodtime funkiness of All I Wanna Do through her bluesy My Favourite Mistake phase, the rock chick swagger of Everyday Is A Winding Road and the twangy country rock If It Makes You Happy to the acoustic latter day George and Tammy country of Kid Rock duet Picture and her Dollyish C’mon C’mon (which still sounds like Bread’s Guitar Man) with The Corrs. No doubt she’ll also be dropping in recent singles First Cut Is The Deepest and Light In Your Eyes. Now firmly established in the pantheon of contemporary female singer-songwriters, if she keeps up her current musical inclinations there could be a country hall of fame plaque waiting down the line too. 

Without doubt one of the world's finest singer-songriters, she's penned major hits for Faith Hill and Dixie Chicks, provided Find Your Love (a new version of which features here) for the soundtrack of Calendar Girls while her song Sand And Water has taken the place of Candle In The Wind in Elton John's live set. 
What with the death of her husband and her own struggle with breast cancer, the past few years have been something of a rough ride. All of which adds extra poignancy to and shapes her songs of love, loss and life's resilience. 
The follow up to the critically acclaimed Deeper Still, it embraces the spectrum of her musical influences from soul (Right Back In To The Feeling's duet with Michael McDonald), jazz (the percussive Free) and country (a yearning love remembered Time Won't Tell co-written with Harlan Howard) to rock (Will and Liz wouldn't be out of place on an Alanis album) and even Tin Pan Alley (the lushly arranged Look where those Hoagy Carmichael influences shine). 
Easily her most accomplished work to date, there are also deeply felt moments here that register among the most profoundly moving songs she's ever recorded. Who We Are, a song about bitter words spoken in anger, the simple hymnal Your Love Stays (guessingly written in her husband’s memory) and, sounding a close cousin of Heart Like A Wheel, the piano backed Touch My Heart (another requiem for those who have passed on) will quite simply shred you apart. "There are songs I love that catch my breath", she sings. As these and undoubtedly anything new or old that she cares to include in her set proves, she knows how to write them too.
Opening act will be Darden Smith, busy promoting Circo (Dualtone), his follow up to last year’s ‘comeback’ album Sunflower.

Another best of tour, this offers a useful retrospective of a career that’s approaching its 20th anniversary. From the release of her self-titled debut songs like Marlene On The Wall, The Queen and the Soldier and Small Blue Thing immediately announced Vega as a major new force in the world of the literate, socially aware singer-songwriter with her emotional confessionals and sharp observations about love and loss, sensuality and sensibility.
Two years later came Solitude Standing and an almost overnight elevation to the ranks of superstardom with the album topping the UK charts and the single Luka, a poignant story of child abuse, becoming her international breakthrough hit and garnering three Grammy nominations. 
Hopefully, as with the album, she’ll be featuring the percussive clanking techno-pop of Blood Makes Noise, Tom’ Diner and such overlooked gems as the post-divorce I'll Never Be Your Maggie May and the relatively hard to find Left Of Centre alongside Anniversary Song, an all new number that reminds you a full new album is well overdue. 
She still sounds more emotionally detached from her songs than some might prefer, but few have wielded a lyrical scalpel with quite such incisive precision. 
Opening up will be the ever excellent Martyn Joseph, currently touring Whoever It Was That Brought Me Here Will Have To Take Me Home (Pipe),

Martyn Joseph

Another addition to the ranks of emo, this bunch hail from Glasgow and have been likened to a meeting between Zep crunching riffs and Soundgarden melodies. Possibly so, suffice to say new single Slave Trade (RCA) is a pummelling flurry of battering noise riddled with the urgency of youth that should easily earn them a few moments in the spotlight.

Air guitar heaven then, as Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and, clearly of a rather different musical bent, Robert Fripp (replacing Yyngwie Malmsteen) come together to do their individual and collective fret spanking things. Basically a night for those who reckon you can’t get enough screaming heavy rock guitar solos into one show, an accompanying Live In Denver DVD gives a rough idea of what to expect from Satriani and Vai with the likes of The Extremist and Juice while it’ll be interesting to see how the more experimental and left field Fripp takes to a group encore that may well include Rockin’ In The Free World and Voodoo Child. 
Satriani also has his own solo album, Is There Love in Space (Columbia) out to there’s a fair chance of a dash of either moody cosmic acoustic or weltering metal riffery from that too. 

A belated and rare tour on the back of last year’s Diamonds On The Inside, his first album in four years, which found the warm voiced rootsy singer-songwriter emphasising his eclectic musical tastes, veering from the opening roots reggae My Own Two Hands and the dobro bluesy When It's Good to the Band-like early Dylanish title track, to hymnal folk with strings When She Believes, choppy funk on Brown Eyed Blues and Bring The Fun, the Hendrixy rock of Temporary Remedy and even some African colours on Picture of Jesus.
Patently veined with themes of spirituality and faith- be that in religion or relationships - it's not one for those who like their artists to follow a reasonably tight path, but even when it strays into territory that might not push your musical button, the emotional warmth and sheer musicianship is undeniable. Should be a good one.