Birmingham Gig Guide - News and Reviews

Eight albums in, the Dolls still haven’t broken out of the second division to crack the stadium market despite shifting some 6 million copies of the last two albums. Frankly, if their latest, Let Love In (Warner) doesn’t do it then they may as well stop trying. While there’s no immediately obvious classic barnstorming tracks, the cumulative effect of their guitar driven power pop with its bountiful supply of hooks and choruses really hits the mark, while John Reznik’s yearning warble further evokes thoughts of Petty, REM and The Hooters, although o0n We’ll Be Here he does sound a lot like David Grey.
As the title suggests, it never lyrically strays far from the ‘love can make things better, letting it go/turning it away is a bit of a downer but dreamers give the world hope’ territory. But they sock it across with such ringing energy and melodic power through such numbers as Feel The Silence, Better Days, the surgingly anthemic Become and the crowd rousing Can’t Let it Go (which sports the great line ‘you were no angel and I was no sin’), that who really cares. On top of which, they also turn in a transforming version of Supertramp’s Give A Little Bit that seems set to be a live highlight.

One of the original but now departed founder members of the Be Good Tanyas (a subject that forms the basis of her song Mexican Blue), Holland’s subsequent solo track has inclined itself more towards folksy blues and jazzy undercurrents, to be found in fine shape on her current, third, album Springtime Can Kill You (Anti). There’s traces of the old Appalachian country roots with Stubborn Beast and the Patsy Cline sounding traditional Adieu False Heart, but it’s the departures that strike most; the New Orleans soul of You’re Not Satisfied, the carny atmospheres of piano ballad Crazy Dreams, the pump organ and cello colours of Please Don’t and the Rickie Lee Jones flavours seeping from the title track.

She’s got a bit of fixation with images of the seasons and nature, but she applies them to potent effect, tracing a murder ballad in Nothing To Do But Dream, kicking into giddy love with Crush in The Ghetto and lamenting its loss on Mehitabel’s Blues.

Her slurry Southern strangled vowels can be a bit of an acquired taste, but her sometimes ghostly stories are always worth hearing, not least with Moonshiner where she laments having to get drunk on regular booze after he regular supplier leaves (this may well be a metaphor, I suspect!) and gets sexually frisky on Crush In The Ghetto as she sings "ants are crawling in my pants as if to say they know where the honey is". How can you resist.

One minute an underground cult, the next a globe conquering Welsh emo band. Well soon anyway. They’re back on the road with current album Hours reinforcing their urgent, driving riff raging hardcore rock with the opening All The Rage and a pummelling The End of Nothing. But then Drive finds them in moody ballad territory while History comes over all stadium friendly and the closing Sonny throws caution to the wind with drum machine and synths before it builds into a progrock quiet storm.

How they stand or fall though will depend a lot on how the band approach the new, more musically mature material on stage and how much things like recent single Roses For The Dead, the death metal growls of Recovery and the piston pumping Hospitality dominate over their poppier new directions.

Support’s provided by Fightstar, the nu metal home of former Busted man Charlie Simpson, though their debut album, Grand Unification, is hardly cause for celebration, a workmanlike collection of emo-esque rock that sounds like a band too in thrall to the likes of Linkin Park to really forge their own sound. Charlie’s throat ripping yowls are a long way from the bubble fizz of old but numbers like Lost Like Tears In The Rain and Sleep Well Tonight show he can actually sing while Alex Westaway clearly knows how to rip out a vicious guitar line. But it’s hard not to hear the likes of An Army and new single Hazy Eyes as just so much bluster that barely offers one reason to get involved let alone a hundred.

Scottish by birth, Australian by residence, the singer-songwriter has long been installed in folk’s hall of fame by dint of writing the much covered anti-war songs And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda and No Man’s Land. Of course there’s considerably more to him than that.

Strongly evocative of the late great Stan Rogers with his rich, deep warm malty voice and songs of social commentary and emotional resonance, he’s got a ridiculously extensive and impressive back catalogue, to which he now adds Other People’s Children (Greentrax).

Like all his work, it’s a marvellous collection of songs veined with humanism, compassion, reflection, humour and indignation, ranging here as it does from Tamborine Mountain’s tribute to Slim Dusty and those others we’ve lost to time to songs that address the cost of war (Hallowed Ground, Other People’s Children), the betrayal of Australia’s promise (True Believers) and a celebration of those who made the land great (The Last of the Old Timers).

It’s heartfelt stuff that catches Bogle reflecting resignedly on the world yet determined not to go quietly into the dying light. And if the new songs may not prove as enduring as his classics, there’s plenty of stirring material here, the title track’s meditation on the young victims of war, The Demons with its account of manic depression, and the terror defiant Thou Shalt Not among the finest he’s written. Do not miss this man.

Following up last year’s twee pop single The Way You Used To Smile, the Wakfield bass, drums and casio keyboard boy/girls trio follow up with debut album Breaking Up (At Large). However, as anticipated, what might have been tolerably quirky on single proves profoundly irritating spread across an album’s worth of Russell Searle’s whining adenoidal warble that sounds like Jilted John variously trying to be the Lightning Seeds and Brian Wilson. A shame, really, since as numbers like I Love You, But..., C’mon Chameleon, True Love Weighs A Tonne and the ukulele backed Too Young they certainly have the songs and the pop sensibility, and taken in small doses parts of the album are simultaneously quite beguilingly lovely and veined with a sense of emotional darkness.

Tellingly, the two best tracks here are Lonely Hearts Still Beat The Same, where Georgina Lashbrook takes on lead vocals, and the a capella Splitting Hairs which relies on her and Sarah Williams harmonies. Maybe if Searle toned down his surely mannered approach and if the girls stepped centre more often, then a happier marriage of lyrical wit and vocal stylings might prove the lever the band need to live up to their potential.

Old school rock n roll from Bristol, this lot have been talked about in terms of a garagey Faces, earning quite a reputation around their hometown for fierce, sweaty live gigs packed with gritty guitar riffs, organ driving swagger and songs that surge and swagger. Certainly debut single, My Girlfriend’s An Arsonist (Shy), with its cloud of paranoia and storm of noise bodes well to see them take on the world beyond Avon.

An alldayer, the gig also features sets from nine other local outfits, including The Taste, Fade To Sepia and headliners The Noisettes.

Five albums in six years, you can’t say Harcourt’s not prolific. Fortunately, quantity and quality also go hand in hand. Following on from Strangers and its breezy pop hymns to loneliness and anguish, now comes The Beautiful Lie (Heavenly), during which time the lad’s found love and got wed. Thankfully it’s not mellowed his lyrical muse with dark veined songs (not all of them recent) that address friendship (You Only Call Me When You’re Drunk, Late Night Partner), the devastation of a small town and the lonely guy left behind (a Morricone flamencoWhirlwind In D Minor), loss of childhood innocence and a world going down the sink (a Ben Foldsy Visit From The Dead Dog), death (the spare, sad violin haunted The Last Cigarette), despair (the rain on autumn streets feel of Shadowboxing), and plastic surgery (the dusted folk blues The Pristine Claw). Mind you, Rain On The Pretty Ones does look up a bit, being a song about accepting yourself warts and all.

Musically, there’s a fair few colours to the palette, Until Tomorrow Comes evoking thoughts of 40s dance bands and lonely waltzes, Revolution In The Heart all Thunder Road crashing anthemics, I Am The Drug calling to mind the clattering flamenco of Tom Waits.

All of it though resonates through your fibre, closing up with the minimal tender moods of Braille, where he duets on a love song with the missus, and the chapel hymn sounding anthem to hope and endurance that is Good Friends Are Hard To Find. You should certainly make Harcourt one of your musical best mates.

Listening to the banjo and steel driven twangy country The Rose of My Cologne, the opening track on new album Superbi (Sony), you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d slipped the wrong CD into the player. . Paul Heaton and co, have always had that country influence but never quite as pronounced as this, with Alison Wheeler warbling a typical acerbic tale of a dysfunctional family like some sassy Southern gal of the Lucinda persuasion. However, while country is a steadfast musical influence throughout, most obviously so on tracks like From Now On, the dobro flavoured Never Lost A Chicken To A Fox, and the plangent There Is Song, it’s not exclusive. The downbeat When Romance Is Dead is rolling folk-pop, The Next Verse drops in brass band and, a paean to the drizzling melancholia, Manchester is a classic slice of the sort of perky British pop the band’s long made its trademark.

Naturally, Heaton’s songs aren’t overflowing with sunny optimism, but while several deal with disappointment and souring relationships there’s also those like Bed of Nails and There Is Song that offer vague hope that things might look up. The band have lost some of the lustre that saw them reigning as one of the most successful British bands of the 90s, but, their first new material in three years, they are clearly still on form and, if justice and taste prevails, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be compiling another glittering greatest hits collection in a few years time.

Hailing from Glasgow and comprising guitarist Jon, drummer Mince and bassist Barry (like the Ramones they’ve all adopted the supposed family moniker), having released a self-titled indie EP in April the trio have subsequently been scooped up by Island, their major label debut, due next week. They’ve been likened to a cross between T Rex and The Libertines, and while that’s not exactly obvious from Henrietta (which sounds more like a glammy meeting between Pulp and Slade) they do patently have plenty of fizz and energy. They’ve already carved a decent rep on the college circuit, this should be the start of a comfortable breakout into wider audiences. Support comes from Dictator.

7.30pm. £8. Carling Academy 2

Tuesday June 6

Mojave 3

It’s four years since Neil Halstead put in an appearance hereabouts, promoting his solo album, since when the band have released Spoon & Rafter and Rachel Goswell his solo album’s released her own solo album, Waves Are Universal and Ian McCutcheon’s been working on a debut by his own band. The Loose Salute. However, having apparently replaced the numerical with the alphabetical, the band finally break their touring silence (though Goswell’s absent through illness) in support of the new, fifth, album Puzzles Like You (4AD).

Opening with the bouncy Truck Driving Man and sliding into the jangly title track it’s the poppiest, most approachable work they’ve ever done, departing from the slow, fragile melancholy and furthering instead the last album’s West Coast sounding material and uptempo pop.

Certainly the single, Breaking The Ice, is a fabulous flurry of power pop fizz, all early Roxy tumbling riff, majestic piano chords and sunny skipping vocals while the accompanying Star In The Sky sounds like a meeting between the Monkees and CS&N. As Most Days, You Said It Before (with its water dripping backdrop) and The Mutineer show, they’ve not wholly thrown out their more wistful, ruminative elements, but these too are wrapped in a lush warm cocoon of hazy sunshine. Listen to Running With Your Eyes Closed and you could back in 1967, flowers and patchouli in the air as they sing of dragonflies and buttercups, while the chugging Ghostship Waiting and Kill The Lights surely owe a debt to such harmony bands like The Association and To Hold Your Tiny Toes with its bouncy Crococile Rock beat might well have come from another world’s version of American Graffiti.

They’ve been something of a cult property until now, hopefully this will see them getting the widespread acclaim they fully deserve though it’ll be interesting to see what their new sensibility brings to revisitation of such numbers as Too Many Mornings, Battle of the Broken Hearts and Writing To St Peter.

8pm. £10. Glee Club

Over the 15 years that Steve Knightley and Phil Beer have been working together as Show of Hands, they’ve been quietly building such a solid and substantial audience that they’ve proven quite capable of twice selling out the Royal Albert Hall. Not band for what most consider just some acoustic folk duo.

But while their roots may be in folk music, there’s much more to them than that, embracing world music and rock in equal measure, showing more affinity with names like The Levellers than, say, Fairport. Certainly their current album, Witness (Hands On), is firm testament to the musical and lyrical muscle they pack, the fiery instrumental The Falmouth Packet/Haul Away Joe displaying their global influences while the songs largely take inspiration from incidents and events around the West Country.

The floppy-haired Swedish quartet make a headlining return to give another push to Choose A Bright Morning (Drowned In Sound), their debut album full of epic cinematic melodies and windswept emotions heading off into the ether in search of some epiphany. It’s post rock stuff with layers of slow, pulsating atmospheric soundscapes and lo-fi folk blues that enfold themselves into songs that rarely last under six minutes with titles like From Across The Sea, Swimming Eyes, Winter Nights and the gorgeously epic download single The Sound of Beating Wings somehow conjuring how the songs actually sound.

If you’re fond of Sigur Ros and My Bloody Valentine, then these will have you reaching for the oxygen tank.

Chinese-Maori New Zealander, Briolette Kahbic Runga started her current tour here and now she’s back to conclude it. Along with songs from her previous releases, she’ll be digging into new album Birds, a dreamy collection of torch and jazz infused gentle melodies and honey smoked melancholy that variously summons thoughts of The Carpenters, Francois Hardy and even Shirley Bassey. And don’t think that this is just going to be repeat of the opening gig, held in the larger room she promises to deliver a completely different set.

Recently seen on the Metal documentary recalling his fight against censorship back in the 80s, Dee Snider’s still going strong and, while the look’s not changed a great deal, these days he’s sounding a lot like Al Pacino. The band courted mild outrage with their glam and tran image and songs of teenage rebellion, though they were never quite as successful as memory might think, notching up just two minor UK hits with I Am (I’m Me) and The Kids Are Back, surpassingly failing to chart with their rowdy anthem We’re Not Gonna Take It. Today, really, who cares.

Support’s another bunch of rock n roll pensioners, Hanoi Rocks. Finnish rock n roll bad boys in the 80s, fronted by Michael Monroe and with Andy McCoy on lead guitar they desperately wanted to be Scandinavia’s answer to the New York Dolls but, just as things were starting to move the death of their drummer dealt a blow from which they never recovered. They split up in 1985, fragmenting into solo careers and claims that they were a big influence on the likes of Guns n Roses.

Monroe and McCoy reuniting at the turn of the millennium they’re currently slogging away with a new line up, still big in Finland and still a sub Stones meat and potatoes pub rock band everywhere else, a status unlikely to be transformed by Another Hostile Takeover (Demolition), an album which has the energy and the licks, but in recycling Led Zep on Talk To The Hand, coming on all Bon Jovi with No Compromise, No Regrets and even going INXS on The Devil In You and Rick Springfield for Dear Miss Lonely Hearts singularly fails to explain what the fuss was about in the first place.

It’s the first gig to be held at the Coventry stadium so something of a testing ground to see how smoothly things run. Being christened by Jon Bon Jovi and the boys certainly helps in terms of ensuring a full house of people going pretty wild with air guitars, nodding heads and no doubt some cigarette lighters being held aloft.

Not, it must be said, that the current album, Have A Nice Day, actually warrants such a response, being content to work its way through the band’s established formula of air fisting anthems, radio friendly rock and the big emotive ballads. There’s nothing intrinsically bad about crowd rouser numbers like Who Says You Can’t Go Home, I Want To Be Loved or Bells of Freedom but they do sound like a band content to play to the strength of old glories, while never finding the spark or freshness invested in such classics as Livin’ On A Prayer. You Give Love A Bad Name or Bed of Roses.

Equally happy to stick to what works, support act is Nickleback whose past two singles, Far Away and Savin’ Me (both lifted from the All The Right Reasons album) are big arena filling numbers, but simply go through the earnest throaty emo motions that established the band in the first place.

Having announced their arrival in no uncertain terms with their Back To The Futureheads debut, the Sunderland boys now confirm they’re in for the long haul with sophomore release News And Tributes (679).

They don’t mess about, getting right down to business with the crunching call-and-response Yes/No, then cranking up the adrenalin punkrush guitars for Cope, hammering nails with Return of the Beserker (which sounds exactly as you might expect) and swaggering through a syncopated white reggae lurch on Face which sounds like the Police might have done had they spent a year sequestered with Gang Of Four albums. And just take in that confident swagger that intros the jerky Skip To The End or the swelling passion bursting through Worry About It Later.

Arguably it could have done with one or two more of the quieter moments, like the title track’s tribute to the victims of the Munich air disaster and the almost waltzing quality of the doo wop harmony laden Thursday, but, drawing inspiration from the likes of Fugazi, Sonic Youth and Pixies, their pop art noise with its bold time changes and juddering riffs is clearly more than capable of grabbing you by the ears and dragging you round the room.

You may not have previously encountered this Sheffield outfit but judging by their debut album, Perforations (Thee Sheffield Phonographic Corporation), you’ll be hearing plenty of them over the forthcoming months. They took four years to get to a place where they were ready to commit the material to disc, but they’ve obviously didn’t waste a day of that, crafting complex melodies and harmonies that draw on folk, post rock and prog. Indeed, the opening Io and Get On Up reveal themselves to have XTC plays Brian Wilson meets Robert Wyatt charms enfolded in shades of the early Super Furries with a hint of Gregorian church music.

It’s intricate music that demands you pay attention as you listen, but offers rewards with is intelligence and such slowly unfolding pleasures as the gothic nursery rhyme goes late 60s art-folk quality to the title track or the shivery pagan processional percussive Like Him+Her+Her+Me which can only be described as the sort of last orders pub singalong favoured by locals down the Wicker Man boozer. English art rock of the finest hue.

If the weather holds, this could prove one of the hottest of the Sounds In The Round season as, led by bassist Gary Crosby and featuring in such legends as Soweto Kinch, Denys Baptiste and soul diva Juliet Roberts, the new 12-piece outfit let rip with their latest album, the Motown tribute Motorcity Roots (Dune).

As you might guess, it’s a collection of Motown chestnuts like My Cherie Amour, My Girl, You Keep Me Hanging On and Easy given a Jazz Jamaica make-over, blending Detroit soul with jazz, reggae and skanking ska.

It’s somewhat unlikely that either Omar or former TGWU leader Bill Morris will be dropping by to recreate their respective contributions to Just My Imagination and What’s Going On but with Roberts hitting meltdown form for Tears of A Clown and This Old Heart Of Mine, co vocalists Abram Wilson and Mary Pearce belting out I Want You Back and Signed Sealed Delivered, Baptiste taking the spotlight on I Heard It Through The Grapevine and everyone getting into the groove for Dancing In The Street and a rabble rousingly funky War this looks like being a scorcher. Like to hear them have a go at Reach Out I’ll Be There though.

Back in 1975, actress turned singer-songwriter Howe had a turntable hit with the title song from her album Harry. However, like her debut album, What A Beautiful Place, some four years earlier, despite good reviews neither it nor the subsequent Silent Mother Nature, proved commercial successes. When her 1979 release, Dragonfly Days, met a similar fate, she reluctantly decided to call it quits, returned to Halifax, raised a family, took an OU degree in history and religion and started work on a book about a 19th century socialist. Then, in 2000, she turned fifty and decided she out to give her love of a music another chance. The result now finds her back out performing live with the self-label Princelet Street, her first new material (save for a solitary 1981 single) in 25 years.

A concept album of sorts, inspired by the titular London thoroughfare that crosses Brick Lane and where her great grandmother was born and where she spent time as a young girl, it deals with themes of family and multiculturalism, the songs set in a cocktail of jazz, blues, folk, world and timeless easy listening pop.

The songs themselves cover a wide timeframe, the delicate acoustic Come Back Soon harking back before Harry, spare piano ballad You Never Know (written in memory of legendary writer/pianist/producer Bobby Scott) from 1991, 2002’s flamenco flavoured Someone’s Been There Before inspired by her daughter’s first day at secondary school, and the violin based All I Can Say a 2003 response to the religious turmoil tearing the world apart.

The years have clearly not dulled Howe’s vocal purity (the beautiful unaccompanied Yorkshire Hills love song to her adoptive county, a perfect example), her ability to craft thoughtful, haunting songs and melodies, nor, to judge by Brothers (1850) with its tale of poverty and emigration and the Latin soulful One Percent’s observation on how easy it is to shut yourself off from global disasters, her social conscience.

Given the zero public awareness resulting from a quarter of a century away from making music and the unavailability of her previous albums, other than nostalgic old fans it’s difficult to judge quite what sort of audience are going to turn up, but, if she can get the Radio 2 exposure she deserves, hopefully new ears will be awakened to her gloriously seasoned and finely burnished talents.

Back when, Bring It On, won the Mercury Music Prize, Gomez sounded like a bunch of wannabe Tom Waits, growling out a American roots-blues sun n drugs frazzled shuffle and 70s southern soul laced with a sheen of techno hip hop lurches. Then, with their fourth album, Split The Difference, they appeared to have reinvented themselves with a breezy collection of sunny West Coast psychedelic pop and lashings of 60s Beatles and Hollies influences.

Today, while their arc of success may have peaked, How We Operate (Independiente), is arguably the best thing they’ve done since the debut, a melding of both influences with Ben Ottewell on fine throaty form but with Ian Ball, who handles the opening laid back soul-searching Notice, and chief songwriter Tom Gray who sings his own lopingly jangly Girlshapedlovedrug, also more featured.

That said, it’s the Ottewell tracks really stand out, making his first appearance on the glorious Van Morrisonesque rootsy See The World and the album lifting whenever he’s upfront. It’s notable too that, for the most part, the Ball and Gray numbers are veined with an English folksiness (and at times almost Ray Davies flavours) while those Ottewell sings lean towards Americana. Quite who provided the Monkees influence on Tear Your Love Apart and Hamoa Beach is open to debate.

The reflective, acoustic folk blues Chasing Ghosts With Alcohol, the Mississippi waters lapping around its feet, is unquestionably the highpoint but everything here denotes a band with a continuing bright future freed from the hype of expectations.

The gig rescheduled after he lost his voice, the lad’s in musically ebullient mood for Why Not Nothing, the opening driving guitar rock track on current album Keys To The World (Parlophone), a collection that largely draws a line in the sand between his past with The Verve and his current solo work. Indeed, Music Is Power sees him engaging in soul folk of the Van Morrison persuasion, filtered through a Curtis Mayfield sample while World Keeps Turning has a definite touch of the Dylans and, partly down to that deep vocal timbre, Words Just Get In The Way bizarrely calls to mind Neil Diamond.

Built around songs about love, loss, depression and loneliness (no change there then), it’s not a complete departure and both the orchestrally swelling Simple Song, swirling ballad Why Do Lovers? and the harpsichord backed Break The Night With Colour will certainly find favour with those still stuck in the Bittersweet Symphony Loop. Ultimately, it’s not quite up there with the best of the Verve but it’s certainly his finest solo work to date and, while there’ll be doubtless calls for the old favourites he really doesn’t need to rely on the back catalogue to deliver a night to remember.

They’ve been away for a while, but frontman Stephen Fleming’s got the lads out of cold storage in Glasgow, busy gigging in the cause of new album, The Stars Look Different From Down Here (Korova). Happily, the trio are still trading in big guitar harmony pop melodies and dreamy melancholia, catchily evidenced on the sunny pop of Love Won’t Free Me, the guitar drenched soaring When You Come Around, and the early hours smoke rings of In Time, its McCartneyesque moods balanced by the Lennon hints to Just A Satellite.

But if they handle the rousing choruses and jangly melodies of songs such as Lost In America and People Are People (not a Depeche Mode cover you’ll be glad to hear) with verve, This Is Your Release, it’s on the uplifting mid tempo big builders Fight and This Is Your Release and the closing, simple piano ballad title track that things really take on that cosmic glow. Nice to have them back.

Canada has given the world some great musical names. Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Nelly Furtardo, Shania Twain, Bruce Cockburn, hell even Bryan Adams and Celine Dion. But couldn’t it have kept Powter to itself. Projecting a don’t mess with me tough guy pose to balance the sensitive singer-songwriter bit, he’s inexplicably had enormous success over here among the James Blunt/David Gray buying public for his formulaic soft rock mix of piano ballads, radio friendly white soul and dance coated pop.

OK, the inescapable Bad Day is annoyingly catchy while Jimmy Gets High turns a decent ballad fist, but really it’s all so poor man’s Elton John with the overdone falsetto (even worse there’s times when he sounds like Leo Sayer) that you wonder where the attraction lies.

Having buried the hatchets in the name of lucrative comeback options, the current reunion line up of Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit continue their ongoing comeback farewell jaunt with another stroll through the greatest hits, conveniently coinciding with yet another definitive collection reissue and last year’s Live From Melbourne DVD.

Assuming they won’t be bothered about changing the set too much, you can pretty much rely on hearing all the favourites, among them One Of These Nights, Another Tequila Sunrise, Lyin’ Eyes, Take It To The Limit. New Kid In Town and Hotel California alongside a smattering of solo hits such as Henley’s The Boys of Summer and Walsh’s Rocky Mountain Way and a couple of the more ‘recent’ numbers like Hole In The World, so you can take a break to get another beer.

Arguably the most successful hip hop crossover act in recent years with their cocktail of rap, r&b, funk and rock, they’re back for another round of promotion for Monkey Business (A&M), their slickest and, with contributions from the likes of Justin Timberlake, Sting and James Brown, most successful album yet.

It’s also their smoothest and, the amusing My Humps (woman complains about men ogling her breasts) aside, most accessibly family friendly set since the arrival of Fergie to supply sexy female vocals. As retitling Don’t Phunk With My Heart to Don’t Mess With My Heart for radio play indicates, the priorities now are maintaining and building on the mainstream audience they picked up with Elephunk.

Unfortunately for those who came in on the ground floor, this largely means playing it safe and, on occasion, somewhat bland with the likes of instantly catchy but disposable party popper single Pump It, the dreary My Style, cliche riddled Disco Club and Sting debacle Union. You might also wonder why they bother to enlist James Brown and then just churn out a virtual pastiche of the same grooves he was laying down decades ago.

Inspiration rears its head here and there, on the rapping Don’t Lie, the chugging jump around beats of Do What You Want and their lazy and laid back folksy acoustic collaboration with Jack Johnson on Gone Going, but while they may have gained a world sized audience in padding the album with fillers and turning their back on issues-driven songs in favour of dance floor fillers they may well have lost the fans that got them there.

Providing something of a contrast, they’re supported by Pussycat Dolls. Formerly dancers at LA’s Viper Rooms where the original troupe earned a rep as Hollywood celebs dropped by for guest slots, the Dolls were dubbed the hottest new group on the planet by GQ. That’s a bit extreme, but they certainly stake a claim as the best litter of funky r&b pop in an overcrowded girl group market with the Don’t Cha single having topped both the UK and US charts.

There’s a lot more where that came from on PCD (A&M), where guest appearances by the likes of Timbaland are among the least of its attractions. Produced by a stellar selection of names that include, don’t you know it, Black Eyed Peas, it’s stuffed with ridiculously commercial but sophisticated slinky soul n strut like dreamy cinematic ballad How Many Times, How Many Lies while We Went As Far As We Felt Like Going recalls the vintage days of Labelle.

Elsewhere the evergreen Sway leads them off into Vegas Latin cabaret lounge, Right Now has a brassy samba rhythm and big Broadway musical feel, Hot Stuff hits the Eurodisco beat with panting breathy vocals and Feeling Good seems them tackling the Newley/Bricusse tune in slinky Eartha Kitt meets Bassey torch song mood. Drop in the eastern rhythmic snakesway of the sexy stand out Buttons, creamy ballad Stickwitu, sassy pop nugget I Don’t Need A Man and their already fabled cover amalgam of Tainted Love and Where Did Our Love Go and frankly the likes of Sugababes and Destiny’s Child should call it quits before the embarrassment proves too much.

Following on from toe in water singles last year, Maya von Doll, Ana Bonbon, Toni Sailor and Gavin Jay (some of whom may not be using their real names!) set out on their debut UK tour armed with new single Stripper (Filthy Pretty), an electro-glam pop little number that purrs with the sex and stomps along on a Glitter Band beat and Soft Cell sleaze that promises a suitably trashy night out.

Released two years ago, her debut album, Faultlines, picked up a sheaf of gongs at the Radio 2 Folk Awards, going on to establish her as one of the most exciting ‘new’ (she’s 35 and was in the Battlefield Band and Malinky) voices on the contemporary folk scene. She returns now with sophomore release Scribbled In Chalk (Shoeshine), an album that stretches further beyond the Scottish trad roots evident on something like Hole In The Heart and Baleerie Baloo (one of two songs inspired by Jane Haining, a Paisley millworker who perished at Auschwitz for working with Jewish children in a Hungarian orphanage) into the Celtamerican feels illustrated here with the lilting I’m Gonna Do It All ( hints of Alison Krause), and the jinglingly wonderful Daisy.

There’s a certain celebration of an innocence untainted by the world’s negativity at work in songs like I’m Gonna Do It All while Take It’s Own Time is a kick back and let things rolls by number dedicated to her dad, a mood echoed in Follow The Heron, a song about the Shetlands she originally sang with Malinky. But Polwart’s no lyrical ingenue; I’ve Seen It All a moody number about history repeating itself as towers are built and pulled down, with the infectiously hummable Maybe There’s A Road (where Nanci meets Lucinda) hiding a song about prostitution.

She sounds less sure of herself when she tries the funky folk Joni Mitchell route on the choppy Where The Smoke Blows, but there’s few to compare when she’s in her rootsier moods, and with the new material here mixing it up with the likes of Harder To Walk These Days Than Run, Azalea Flower and the award-winning The Sun's Comin Over The Hill from her debut, you can guarantee a night to remember.

For some ten years, along with Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker, Tom DeLonge was part of Blink-182, one of the world’s biggest bands. Then, last year, with the band on an indefinite hiatus, he put together this new outfit, recruiting guitarist David Kennedy from his previous side project, Box Car Racer, Distillers bassist Ryan Sinn and Atom Willard who’d pounded the drum kit for Rocket From The Crypt and Offspring.

The result, while still bearing evident traces of his past (especially in some of the melodic phrases), is quite a step away from Blink. Forgoing the hard pop punk, this is a bigger, more anthemic sound that even embraces electronica and, setting the scene with the opening Valykrie Missile and Distraction’s story of a soldier on the WWII frontline, deals with a loose thematic concept about love and war.

With its potent guitar work it often musically harks to U2 in places (if Bono had a nasal vocal), most notably on The Adventure and, one of the album highlights, The Gift, while The War suggests Floyd and, a swelling, soaring Start The Machine bizarrely even evokes thoughts of Yes.

Ultimately, it never quite lives up to its ambitions, the lyrics, though now serious minded rather than juvenile, falling short of the musical bombast but there’s certainly sufficient here to build upon and to promise something of a thunderous live set, assuming of course, the crowd don’t drown everything out calling to hear All The Small Things and What’s My Age Again?

Over the past couple of years the Nuneaton born, Birmingham based singer-songwriter’s been slowly building a reputation with a constant string of low key pub gigs, demos and a couple of self released EPs. I’ve always said his time would come and, with the release of debut album Somewhere Down The Line (Headwrecker) it seems it’s finally approaching.

His soul drawn to the 60s folk roots of London and Greenwich Village, Tye’s blessed with a soft Buckleyesque voice that sounds like it's been on the earth forever and a guitar style than calls to mind the work of Davy Graham and Bert Jansch.

According to Tye the album’s a "series of statements documenting how I became a songwriter", so fair enough then it opens with Joanne, a sadness drenched tale of lost love and one of the first songs he wrote. To the best of my knowledge, it and Electric Tracks are the only numbers to have previously surfaced on record.

Pegging itself on themes of home and change, it’s not ashamed to wear its influences like a badge of honour; Like Wild Fire, a song he’s as yet never played live, dates from a period listening to Van Morrison while the beautiful Come Undone is haunted by both Paul Simon and Nick Drake, Sidesteps nods to early Dylan and Beautiful Morning is coloured with tones of an ambient John Martyn.

Though most is hushed and low key, the closing Slow Sad Swing Song does show him lifting the sonics up a notch or two with scraping violin, guitar storms and jazzy drums, and it also plays out into the bonus hidden live version of Come On Everyone. The gig serves to launch the album but may well also include a couple of advance previews of numbers he’s already recorded for the follow up, among them All There, a track that will feature contribution from Stephen Fretwell. The ‘new Ed Harcourt’ headlines start here. 8pm.

Out of Stoke with jangling guitars and burnished vocal burrs that can’t but fail to draw references to The Byrds while new single For Your Bones (Blow Up) positively glows with echoes of the early Stone Roses, this lot might not yet have much of a profile but it’s hard to imagine that not changing very soon. Drawing on psychedelic folk rock roots, the five piece confidently deliver something as beguilingly Super Furry folksy as the ripplingly percussive Little Girl but are also, apparently, quite capable of breaking in Zep style freak outs. A new single, live favourite Deadman, is due at the start of July with the debut album, Then We Begin, following in August. Get in now, because you’ll be wanting to tell everyone you were there first.

A lanky lad from Wimbledon, Mr T has taken an upbringing on The Clash, Specials, Rancid and drum n bass and filtered them into his songs about life in modern suburbia. Clearly channelling the spirit of both Billy Bragg and, on So Lonely Was The Ballad, The Streets, he’s more fussed about the spit than the polish, so that he often sounds a bit, well, shambolic and amateur. He’s here armed with Betty And Her Selfish Sons (Pacemaker), a four track EP that clearly has passion in the veins of Salvador (that’ll be his rocking out moody reggae gone a Clash number) but wears out its welcome long before it winds up on the ragged acoustic Back In The Game. Maybe he’s got live charisma. I certainly hope he’s got more songs.

Both fellow surfer and mate of Jack Johnson perhaps, but the Californian singer/songwriter doesn’t groove to the same acoustic mellow folk vibes. His wave is much more 60s/70s woozy blues jazz soul, the title track of new album Move By Yourself (Lost Highway) firmly in the mode of Curtis Mayfield while elsewhere on numbers such as The Way It Is, Fool, Everytime, the handclappy Girl Like You and scratching funk jam That’s Too Bad you’ll hear shades of Marvin Gaye the Doobies, Dan Penn and Steely Dan.

He doesn’t forsake the beach campfire entirely, By Your Side and Beautiful Day both laid back acoustic ballads, but it’s the blissed out r&b that’s clearly his prime musical motivator and while it slips down easy as a late night background aural massage, the live proposition may well prove narcoleptic.

She’s been kept so busy constantly touring on the back of Eye To The Telescope, she’s not had time to get down to the business of making a follow-up. So, next best thing, she’s come up with an unplugged set. Recorded in Skye last year and titled K.T. Tunstall's Acoustic Extravaganza, there’s alternate takes of Miniature Disasters and Universe & U from Telescope, a new version of the limited edition Throw Me A Rope single, B-sides Girl And The Ghost, One Day, and Boo Hoo, a cover of Beck’s Golden Age and what appear to be three previously unrecorded numbers,Ashes ,Change and Gone To The Dogs. There is a catch though. The album and the DVD of the sessions, are only available as digital downloads or from her website, though, since they’re forming the core of the current tour, you can at least sample live before doing your i-Tunes thing.

Having played some relatively low key gigs last year, Gray’s finally taking his Life In Slow Motion tour into the arena circuit. You’ll lose the intimacy of his tremulous vocal warmth, but the cinematic production and soaring orchestrations of things like Alibi, the Springsteenesque The One I Love and Ain’t No Love are patently custom made for venues like this. I daresay he might just slip Babylon into the proceedings too.

He’s supported by sandpapery voiced New Hampshire singer-songwriter Ray Lamontagne who enjoyed success last year with his soul n roots debut album Trouble. That’s being revamped and reissued on his new label, 14th Floor, trailed by a limited edition vinyl single, the Stephen Stills-like How Come, that also features his all new acoustic cover of Gnarls Barkley’s recent long running chart topper Crazy. No opportunistic cash in, it’s taken from a US radio session recorded back in April, Lamontagne well before it became the nine week wonder. As you’d imagine, it’s a bit different from the original, but certainly striking enough to warrant chart success of its own.

No doubt it’ll prove a centrepiece of the live show which, all things being equal, should also see him rolling the tongue around the likes of the Dylanesque Hannah, the trembling stark beauty of Narrow Escape and the aching lullaby that is All The Wild Horses.

Recently wed and even more recently inducted into the Mojo Hall of Fame, Elt seems to be hogging the headlines at the moment, albeit also for his strop about how all photographers should be shot and the fact that his and Bernie Taupin’s vampire musical Lestat bombed on Broadway. But at least the lad’s on good form with his current touring extravaganza, out on the road under the banner of The Captain and the Kid. This, apparently, is also the title of an upcoming album, a reunion with Taupin for a sort of sequel to Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, inspired by their last 30 years in the music biz, though he doesn’t seem to be actually previewing any of the songs in the show.

What you do get though is a hefty trawl through a pile of hits and more recent album cuts, opening proceedings with Bennie & the Jets and working through Philadelphia Freedom, an extended Rocket Man, Take Me To The Pilot, I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues, Daniel, Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word, Tiny Dancer and a couple from the Peachtree Road before ending with a bit of a rock n roll frenzy with the triple whammy of I'm Still Standing, The Bitch Is Back and Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting. There’s no Candle In The Wind you may or may not be glad to know, but (after doing the autograph thing from the stage) he has been consistently encoring with Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me and Your Song which, fan reports say, sounds a bit more uptempo but also a lot more emotional these days.
A hard act to warm up for, but doing their best will be The Storys, a South Wales sextet and current home for Jesus Christ Superstar star Steve Balsamo, whose eponymous debut album leans heavily towards the rootsy pop flavours of Southern California and such influences as The Eagles, CS&N, the Byrds and Fleetwood Mac.

It’s lush, sunny soaring pop rich in rippling melodies and radio friendly choruses with songs like the scarf-waving I Believe In Love, country stroller Be By Your Side, power ballad Journey’s End and Westlife wannabe Is It True What They Say About Us determined to get the crowd into the mood for a good time.

An acid blues-rock trio from London, the organ dripping Guinevere from their debut The Council EP (Empire) may well put you in mind of Gomez’s debut, though without quite the same commanding vocals. Rainy Days (Revisited). But, while it’s overlong at a drawn out seven minutes, it’s the only thing to recommend here, the accompanying Rainy Days (Revisited) standard blues stodge that seems to be pretty much just five minutes of them intoning the title while If It Makes A Change sounds like a run of the mill 8-bar blues Creedence copy. Workmalike and probably good and sweaty live, but nothing you’ll be talking about the next day.

Thursday June 22

Bob Mould

Founder member of the legendary and influential Husker Du, Mould’s been ploughing his solo furrow for some years now, but new album Body of Song (Cooking Vinyl) is the first time he’s felt the need to add vocoder to his musical armoury. Mercifully, he only comes over all Cher-like on a couple of tracks but it’s more than enough to torpedo both (Shine Your) Light Love Hope and the otherwise surging Harrison-esque I Am Vision, I Am Sound.

Elsewhere his current love of electronica and beats works to better effect, allowing the guitar work that characterised his formative work more chance of _expression.

Just as beneath Husker Du’s blistering noise there beat a pop heart, so too here the melodies insist on rearing their heads on such things as the cranked up Best Thing, Paralyzed, Underneath Days and the ringing circling phrases of Missing You which recalls his days with Sugar.

He also takes the barrage down a bit on a couple of occasions, delivering a straight ruminative ballad with High Fidelity and informing Gauze of Friendship with shades of Husker’s gravelly psychedelia and Paul Wellerish retro folk while Always Tomorrow conceals an almost easy listening number behinds its wallpapering of fuzz.

Pulling together musical references from across his career doesn’t make it the most stylistically coherent work and there’s times when you wish he’d let rip a little more but, put in context with a set list of former favourites likely to play to fan demands, there’s enough to suggest he’s still a force to be reckoned with.

7.30pm. £11. Carling Academy 2

With Paul Simon enjoying a career renaissance with his adventurous new album, his 64 year old former partner continues on a safe course with his familiar sweet voiced balladry, predictable but no less enjoyable for all that. Touring with a four piece band, shows in America earlier this year were strong on S&G classics, among them a rousing Cecilia, Sound of Silence, Scarborough Fair, For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her, Mrs Robinson, The Boxer and inevitable show closer Bridge Over Troubled Water. Solo hits I Only Have Eyes For You , All I Know and Bright Eyes also slotted alongside unexpected outings for Simon’s politically inclined The Side Of The Hill and An American Tune.
He’s also been including the self-penned Perfect Moment, the only number lifted from his most recent and undervalued Everything Waits To Be Noticed, a collaboration with Maia Sharp and Buddy Mondlock that, with tracks like Bounce, Wishbone and Every Now And Then is arguably his best work since the solo debut and Breakaway. If you’ve not encountered it it’s well worth discovering, meanwhile settle back and enjoy the man in action.

As prolific as he is erratic, the barking psychedelic genius returns in tandem with REM’s Scott McCaughey, Bill Rieflin and Peter Buck for another sureal foray into his world of offkilter pop with lyrics about fish and songs bearing such titles as Madonna of the Wasps, My Wife and My Dead Wife, The Man With the Lightbulb Head and a number called Television that features a chorus of ‘binga bonga, bing-bong!"

He’s dipping into the old Soft Boys repertoire too these days, resurrecting I Wanna Destroy You while recent gigs have also seen the band belting out a fine cover of The Byrds’ Eight Miles High and there’s every chance they might well throw in a version of folk rock nugget Polly on the Shore or even Dylan’s It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes A Train to Cry, both featured on a recent CD of BBC sessions. Whatever, you know it makes sense, of a kind.

Having exploded into the nation’s consciousness with No 1 album The Good Will Out, it looked as if they were going to fade away after its two follow ups had to struggle to get into the Top 10. Then came Out Of Nothing which put them back at the top and now they’re not only riding higher than ever with album number four, This New Day (Independiente) but even landed the job of supplying the official England World Cup song. Of course, rather embarrassingly, World At Your Feet made its chart debut well behind both Tony Christie’s Amarillo rewrite and even Stan Boardman, though I daresay it’ll still have arms swaying here, even if only out of commiseration.

However, sporting anthemic shades of U2, the album’s big music more than hits the spot with the glowing upbeat optimism and soaring choruses invested in such numbers as No Use Crying, You Will Hit The Target Everytime and Celebrate. Even the emotional downer of I Can’t Come Down sand end of relationship piano ballad Nature’s Law reach up to shake the heavens.

Sainted, Exploding Machines and Even Smaller Stones sees them flexing their rock muscles on a numbers likely to be even more amped up and urgent played live and, given the show’s setting their anthemic majesty seems well suited to the occasion.

Opening proceedings are Morning Runner and, with Great Escape recently lifted from the Wilderness Is Paradise Now album, the Reading outfit continue to make good on predictions of greatness with their amalgam of Radiohead and Elbow influences on soaring, emotion drenched, keyboards driven melodies and yearning vocals. They should take good advantage of the show’s vastness to deliver tumultuous performances of It’s Not Like Everyone’s My Friend, Burning Benches and forthcoming single Oceans though they’ll be equally adept at catching the intimate breeze with Hold Your Breath.

It’s ten years since they last played here, almost three decades since their poodle rock actually meant anything to anyone. Still featuring founder member Mick Jones, the current line-up’s includes veterans Jeff Jacobs on keyboards and Tom Gimbel on rhythm guitar, with new boys Kelly Hansen handling vocals and Led Zep scion Jason Bonham doing drum duties. They’ve released new material of late but if anyone’s going along it’ll be to see what state the old hits in are in, so you can confidently expect much stage posturing to the likes of Cold As Ice, Hot Blooded, Waiting For a Girl Like You and their classic AOR ballad I Want To Know What Love Is.