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ARCHIVED REVIEWS June 2009 Previews by Mike Davies Monday June 1 Christy Moore
Hailed Ireland’s greatest living musician, this year marks the 40th anniversary of his debut release, Paddy On The Road, during which time his songs and voice have seasoned like fine whiskey,. It’s been four years since his last studio album, but this tour coincides with the release of Listen (Columbia), a vintage collection of the romantic, political, and playful with originals and covers that address everyday life as powerfully as they do global injustices. The Disappeared, for example, concerns the victims of South American politics and the jaunty Duffy’s Cut unfolds the story of the 57 Irish navvies who died building America’s railroads while, by contrast, The Ballad Of Ruby Walsh, a wistful Barrowland, Rory’s Gone (recorded life) and Gortatagort celebrate the Irish jockey, the Glasgow venue, the late Rory Gallagher and Ireland itself respectively. As embodied by the title cut’s serene evocation of the Arctic and Does This Train Stop On Merseyside?, a cover of number by Liverpool outfit Amsterdam, it’s a calm, reflective album that allows Moore’s malty brogue full expression, no finer than an unexpected but lovely reading of Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Pink Floyd’s eulogy to Syd Barrett. It should have the place spellbound tonight. 7.30pm. £32.50/£28. Symphony Hall Monday June 1 The Pan I Am
The new seven piece project from Ed Larrikin, formerly of Thamesbeat combo Larrikin Love, this started life as a fusion of spoken word and ambient folk music. And so it would appear they remain from the start of debut single O.R.L.D, until, that is, churchy organ and echoey hymnal singing give way to hissing electronics, piston pumping beats, dub influences, and distorted vocals that call to mind a demented Big Audio Dynamite reimagined as industrial folk. The same rings true of Fire Dance with its throbbing bass, junkyard percussion and evocations of PiL, the cavernous Chorus For The Desert with its marching rhythm and strobe guitars and the industrial drone rock of Young God/Bad Thing, all of which suggests you should seriously expect the unexpected. 7.30pm. £6. O2 Academy 3 Monday June 1 Manic Street Preachers
Having now notched up a quarter of a century, even their most ardent detractors would have to admit the Manics are firmly established among the pantheon of British rock with The Holy Bible standing as one of the finest albums ever made. It’s fair to say, though, that their last, Send Away The Tigers, wasn’t an entirely unqualified success so there was a fair degree of anticipation when they revealed the follow up, the just released Journal For Plague Lovers (Columbia), would be built around lyrics left behind by the missing and now officially declared dead Richie Edwards. Sighs of relief all round then that this is a feral beast of an album, primed with raw intense power, hard riffs, drivingly passionate vocals and dark lyrical clouds. Peeled Apples sets the wheel in motion with a Christian Bale sample from The Machinist before a steamrollering riff, bass distortions and Bradfield positively pumping up the tendons in his throat to deliver the sort of vocal you don’t argue with. A ringing guitar figure ushers in Jackie Collins Existential Question Time, the lyric rebuffing the strident pop melodies radio friendly appeal while Me And Stephen Hawking keeps the rock muscles fully flexed as the stabbing riff nails the melody to the stadium flagpole. This Joke Sport Severed provides the first of two acoustic excursions, exposing the self-doubt of Edwards’ lyric to naked view, before the title track leaps back with a full fire and fury carried over to She Bathed Herself In A Bath of Bleach, a Stonesy swagger tongue twister that’s every bit as fierce as the title suggests. With harps shimmering through Facing Page, Top Left and Nicky Wire’s shaky Reed-like vocals squeezing the emotions on the closing, stripped down William’s Last Words, a lyrics that reads like shiveringly a suicide note farewell, the album doesn’t lack for tender, quiter moments, but it’s the explosive urgency of things like All Is Vanity and Virginia State Epileptic Colony that provide its defining mood, as much a catharsis as anything. With this album and the accompanying tour, the remaining trio have embraced the ghost of their past and forged a reinvigorated future. 7.30pm. £25. W’hampton Civic Hall Tuesday June 2 The Horrors
For a while it looked like Faris Badwan’s only claim to fame would be as one of Peaches Geldof’s cast offs and for his Southend band’s foppish image that crossed Russell Brand with a Dickensian undertaker and their unjustly ridiculed debut album, Strange House, with its collision of Nick Cave, Joe Meek, 60s garage, B52s funk, and psycho surf rock. Two years on and suddenly they’re being hailed as the godheads with their follow up, Primary Colours (XL), tagged as an album of the year. Other than drafting in Portishead’s Geoff Barrow to produce, not a huge amount has changed. Their love of the 60s is still beating (midway through Who Can Say Badwan breaks into a spoken quote from Shangri-Las break-up classic He Cried) and you can still hear the previous influences, but in addition they’ve introduced a swathe of drone rock that sounds like a mad scientist’s cloning of Psychedelic Furs, early Ultravox, Gary Numan, Joy Division, Jesus & Mary Chain, Suicide and the krautrock of Neu. It’s not the Second Coming and at times (as with Three Decades, for example) it threatens to collapse into one mighty sonic mess while Badwan’s atonal singing often has no idea where the notes are. But on the other hand, drenched in bleakness and euphoric fuzzed, echoey feedback, it’s hard not to feel inexplicably elated by the Ian Curtis echoes on Do You Remember and I Only Think Of You, the mesmeric vibe to New Ice Age or Mirror’s Image and Sea Within A Sea’s eight minute Kraftwerkian journey into eternity. Live, the new material mixing it up with past gems like She Is The New Thing, Draw Japan, and Sheena Is A Parasite, it’s likely to be a shambolic squall, but then it was ever (Lord) Sutch. 7.30pm. £10. O2 Academy 2 Thursday June 4 Ralph McTell
Mention his name and inevitably, it’s Streets Of London that pops into the head. Which, notwithstanding its classic status, actually does him a bit of a disservice since, in a decades spanning career, he’s been responsible for considerably more and better songs than that. Even so, it’s true to say that its McTell’s early albums where the choicest material lies, including such numbers as Maddy Dances, From Clare To Here, Zimmerman Blues, Bentley & Craig (his mom knew the family of Derek Bentley, the teenager hung for a murder he didn’t commit), and The Girl from the Hiring Fair. It should be said though that England, a 1982 single from Water Of Dreams, recently reissued with added brass from the St Keverne Band for St George’s Day, isn’t one of them. Although 2007’s As Far As I Can Tell featured new recordings of old material to accompany readings from his autobiography, there’s not been a proper new album for three years, and that, Gates Of Eden, was a collection of songs by his musical heroes. Still, McTell fans don’t go to his shows to hear new songs, they want the old favourites and displays of his virtuosity as a blues and ragtime guitarist. With no support act or interval, no one will leave disappointed. 8pm. £18.50. B’ham Town Hall Friday June 5 Howard Elliot Payne
Formerly frontman of The Stands, last year Liverpool born Payne hooked up with producer Ethan Johns to record his solo debut, Bright Light Ballads, released on his own Move City Records. Those who savoured the bands 60s retro sound with its Byrds, Dylan and Neil Young influences and 12 string ringing folk rock will be pleased to hear Payne’s not had any musical sea-change, indeed, if anything, he’s become even more country. I Just Want To Spend Some Time With You is a pedal steel laden honky tonker that weds Dylan, a melodic dash of Everybody’s Talking and Gram Parsons, Seven Years a fiddle scraping two step waltz while Come Down Easy reprises his Dylan-like nasal delivery with a swampy blues slope and the simple guitar and piano backed Until Morning filters Leonard Cohen through Ray Lamontagne and a hint of Chimes of Freedom. You’ll want to hear the bright lights tonight. 7.30pm. £7. Glee Club Sunday June 7 Katy Perry
Known to her pastor parents and former California church congregation as Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson, Perry’s first taste of success and notoriety came in 2007 with her internet hit Ur So Gay, but, having been reduced to doing Miley Cyrus backing vocals, it was last year’s sophomore album, One Of the Boys, (her first was the Christian music Katy Hudson back in 2001 while she also sang vocals for The Matrix’s unreleased debut) that turned her into an international name with the relentlessly catchy No 1 single I Kissed A Girl. A UK Top 5 hit, follow up Hot ‘n’ Cold fared well too but then the recent formulaic breathy voiced acoustic ballad Thinking Of You stalled at 27 in a case of the Sandi Thom syndrome. Essentially she’s a sort of vanilla Cyndi Lauper retread, perky, contrivedly eccentric and consciously attention grabbing controversial, her music at the poppier end of the grrrll power spectrum. That said, while I’m Still Breathing actually sounds comatose and Lost is about as dull as stadium balladry gets, If You Can Afford Me, Fingerprints, Self-Inflicted and One Of The Boys are passable, hooks laden Lavigne lite and should have audiences bouncing along. Just don’t expect miracles. 7pm. £13.50. O2 Academy Sunday June 7 The Joy Formidable
Their video for Austere featuring clips of the faces of men and women pleasuring themselves, being banned from YouTube should be enough to stir interest, but fortunately North Wales trio Ritzy Bryan, Rhydian Dafydd, and Matt Thomas have more going for them than that. Debut album, A Balloon Called Moaning, is packed with such fuzzed up sugar-rush powerpop as The Last Drop, While The Flies and new single Whirring while opener track The Greatest Light Is The Greatest Shade is a slow gathering epic of wall of sound Mary Chain reverb. Well worth investigating further. 7pm. £6. O2 Academy 3 Sunday June 7 My Passion
Scuzzy hard rock and punk mixed with electronics is the chosen noise for this London quartet who look like they’ve stepped out of a Tim Burton fashion parade. They’re set to persuade other ears to share their sensibilities now as they take to the road in service of Corporate Flesh Party (Cool Green), a debut album that sound much like what the title would lead you to expect. Synths spill over the riff stabbing Day Of The Bees, Never Everland stomps through industrial electro-rock with a hardcore sensibility, Play Dirty exercises the vocal yowl, Hot In The Dollhouse punches out the drums and synths, and Thanks For Nothing does the mosh and metal while, for contrast, you get the spacey trip hop mood of After Calais. It’s intense and tight and, if ultimately nothing really gives you the sense that they might do a Lostprophets, a band to which they bear the occasional passing resemblance, the prospect of a loud, exhausting gig seems pretty strong. 8pm. £5. Eddie’s Rock Club, Gough St Monday June 8 King Creosote
Kenny Anderson’s spreading his musical wings, No One Had It Better, the opening track of current album Flick The Vs (Domino), wraps his delicate nu-folk in an electronic cloak to give a sort of pastoral New Order feel. Likewise Two Frocks At A Wedding has ticking beats behind the woozy Celtic drone, No Way She Exists has a parping rock n roll sax intro and shimmering uptempo keyboard while Rims marries skiffle and lush lounge moods and Saw Circular Prowess is positively wall of sound symphonics. The lazy summery amble of Curtain Craft sounds more like the familiar KC of old, until its punctuated by sudden burping stabs of belchy keyboard, but at least the rippling Nothing Rings True holds comfort for those easily shaken by such deviations from expectation. Inevitably, the lyrical moods aren’t exactly sun kissed rainbows and marshmallow, but that’s much of their burring charm and there’s no denying that the man’s carved a comfortably firm niche for himself that allows him to play with his templates without upsetting the faithful. “You’ve seen me waiting for reviews I don’t deserve,” he sings on the Coast on By, a song that almost seems him transforming into The Proclaimers. The lad’s far too modest. 7.30pm. £12. Glee Club Monday June 8-Wednesday June 10 Take That
The Robbie rumours remain just that, but really, who cares, having already delivered one storming comeback album and two spectacular tours, the team reaffirm their return to the pinnacle of British pop with The Circus (RCA) and their latest live dazzle. There isn’t, to be honest, anything on the album quite up there with Patience, Shine or Rule The World and Greatest Day was a particularly lacklustre choice of first single. However, the military beat The Garden, Up All Night’s snap crackle pop, and the big ballad What Is Love, with Howard on vocals, are stand outs in anyone’s boy band book while the Monkees like perky Hello and the big build Here offer plenty of opportunity to pull out all the live pyrotechnics and choreographic explosions. Robbie who?
Main support for the three nights is bespectacled singer songwriter Gary Go who’ll be looking to drum up interest in his self-titled debut album (Polydor) after, like the Wonderful single, it stalled outside the Top 20. It’s polished yearning Chris Martin style pop with big choruses, the decidedly Coldplay-like Open Arms surely destined for the upper reaches of the chart while So So is a husky swayer of the Oasis persuasion and Honest, Heart And Soul and piano ballad Brooklyn all clearly fancying themselves born out of New York from a marriage of Manilow and Joel. It’s a touch overdone and it would be interesting to hear him in a more intimate setting without the orchestral wall as support, but he patently knows his way around the classic pop map and, despite the handicap of the novelty moniker that summons depressing memories of Gilbert O’Sullivan, he threatens to have a durable future. The special guest supports are The Saturdays (Monday), James Morrison (Tuesday) and The Script (Wednesday). 6pm £55/£45. Ricoh Arena Tuesday June 9 Tommy Reilly
Quite how this smalltown one man band Scot managed to win the Orange Unsigned Act competition is a mystery. Debut single, Gimme A Call, was an inevitable hit in its wake, despite sounding like he recorded it underwater with someone knocking on the side of the tank to get in and the fact that (even with the echo effects full out) his voice is weedy beyond belief and he plays guitar like someone hitting the strings in the hope he’ll find the right notes. A debut album Words On The Floor (A&M) is due to tie in with the dates, but while upcoming single Jackets skitters along affably enough and Reilly does a passable job at sounding like a karaoke Proclaimers, tasters of the anaemic Kick The Covers and Words On The Floor, another number that appears to have had the vocals strained through cotton wool, don’t offer much to hope for. Orange won’t be returning his calls. 7.30pm. £6. O2 Academy 3 Wednesday June 10 Hafdis Huld
Three years on from the release of debut album Dirty Paper Cup, the Icelandic songstress and former voice of GusGus, is working around to the follow up. It’ll be interesting to hear what she has to tease with tonight. The debut revealed an affection for 60s English folk, though quite how much this was down to the influence of Boo Hewardine who wrote five of the songs as well as produced is open to question. Whatever, it was an impish, intoxicating and playful affair that touched on bluegrass and Eastern flavours and included a vaudeville cover of Lou Reed’s Who Loves The Sun featuring ukulele. The only taster from the new material, Kongulu, certainly whets the appetite with a rhythmic samba jazz sway, Spanish flamenco guitar colours, itchy percussion, breathy vocals and a melodic mood that curiously evokes Hotel California. If the rest is a quirky and rich as this, you’re in for a treat. 7.30pm. £6. O2 Academy 3 Wednesday June 10 The Drones
Four albums in and the Australians are still probably better known in the bush back home than they are here, hence this decidedly low key pub appearance. New album, Havilah (ATP), isn’t about to change matters greatly, but the curious who opt to see what the cult fuss is about should find themselves drawn into the band’s atonal rustyard blues rock n roll where Crazy Horse, the Birthday Party, Tom Waits and Radiohead’s more off the wall outings coalesce. Previous album, Gala Mill, was a dark, angry affair with songs about drawn from world and Australian history, mostly to do with death and mankind’s murderous ways. This, at least, is slightly lighter by comparison, though lines like ‘people are a waste of food’ on the scouring Oh My show frontman Gareth Liddiard’s not exactly mellowed in his view of humanity. Musically, the new songs balance abrasive riffage (Nail It Down, Luck In Odd Numbers) with melancholic acoustics (The Drifting Housewife, Penumbra) but, with imagery that ranges from the moon landing to supercargo freighters, the lyrics rarely deviate from their sour, often misanthropic cocktail of regret, rage, hopelessness and resignation. Indeed, if you’re lucky, you won’t hear another song this year more full of bile and loathing at humanity than The Minotaur. A singular experience on record and live, but possibly not advisable if you’re on medication. 8pm. £7. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath Wednesday June 10 Gemma Garmeson
Moving down from Liverpool, she’s been around the London acoustic scene for the past three years, building a small but steadfast following for her sweetly sung folksy songs. Patently influenced by anti-folk and Juno star Kimya Dawson (mingled with Lily Allen) in her semi-spoken delivery, the music hall whimsy of the melodies and her wry stories of shoes, spoons and the quirks of life and love, she’s taking debut album Stalking For Dummies around the circuit. Like Dawson, the musically simple and unadorned songs may sound like fripperies and, indeed, the likes of Shut Up And Kiss Me, the vaudeville-like Flip Flops, A To B (a love song to the record making process to the tune of Them Bones), Who’s The Daddy? and let me be your rebound new single Mavis all have a childlike quality. But listen deeper and behind the playfulness you’ll hear serious thoughts ticking. Skin deals with the way society’s body image affects women, I Don’t Want To Be Your Number 2 has a real sense of emotional insecurity, the title track addresses a real problem with deceptive wit, and Happy Fathers Day peels back the personal as she exposes the hurt and confusion of being abandoned by her father as a child. Too much of the airy stuff might turn the crowd restless, but if she can make an early strike to engage the hearts she’ll likely hold them spellbound. 7.30pm. Free. Bull's Head, Moseley Wednesday June 10 Stereophonics
A warm up for their Reading and Isle of Wight shows, they’ll be looking to rub down any rough edges and revitalise tired blood cells with a preview of what the festival sets will contain. Inevitably they’ll be having to include the mob rousers, but after last year’s greatest hits tour don’t be surprised to find them slipping in some of their lesser known material too.
They’ll be supported for this one by Tom Allalone & The 78s, a Gravesend combo whose debut album, Major Sins pt 1 (Nettwerk), channels 50s rockabilly with Northern Soul, rock n roll and late 70s new wave. The likes of Casillero Del Diablo with its mariachi horns, the pounding drums and brass of Crashland, Get Down & Dirty’s greasy quiffed guitar riffs and slap beat, the Costello meets Morrissey branded I’m Just The DJ, surf guitar rocking Hell Hath No Fury, and the self-descriptively titled The Jitterbug show off their love of a good time stomp. But they’re equally at home curling up in the lovelorn corner with the Del Shannon bluesy Wounded or the rousing anthemic swayalong This Teenage Crush which takes the Everlys and gives them a Queen orchestral makeover. Allalone’s reedy nasal vocals can get a bit grating after a while, but you can surely forgive anyone who has a Cochranesque swampy vaudeville rock n roll number titled Sign On You Lazy Diamond. 7.30pm. £28.50. W’hampton Civic Hall Friday June 12 Athlete
Although they recently wrapped album number four, Black Swan, having abruptly left Parlophone earlier this month and signing to Fiction, release won’t be until later in the year. So, this should prove an early opportunity to see how the new material goes down and, if necessary, slip back into the studio for any tweaks. With new live guitarist Jonny Pilcher in tow, they’ll be mixing in old nuggets like Half Light and Wires with as yet unheard new numbers such as Superhuman Touch, The Awkward Goodbye, Light The Way and Magical Mistakes. After the underperfomance of the Beyond The Neighbourhood singles, they’ll be hoping there’s at least something among them to revive their chart fortunes and keep the new label bosses happy. 7pm. £15. O2 Academy 2 Friday June 12 Britain’s Got Talent
As the backlash continues about reducing kids to tears and whether or not they exploited someone with mental health problems for the purpose of ratings, the finalists head out to strut their stuff in front of paying audiences. Well, probably not runner up Susan Boyle given her admission to a psychiatric unit under the mental health act after the finals meltdown. The pressure of the show was one thing, quite how she’d fare under the strain of a relentless tour is another. However, you can count on a sensational appearance from deserved winners Diversity with their inspired choreography with more dance moves from Flawless (surprisingly coming in 8th in the voting) and, sure to be hometown self-taught body popper favourite, Aidan Davis. Plus, of course, the hilarious Stavros Flatley (is it just me or is the dad not a Greek version of Bob Hoskins?), surely the most fun act in the series and just 0.1% behind Julian Smith.
Saccahrine overdoses line up with Disney song grandad/granddaughter duo 2 Grand (who only got 1% of the finals vote) and trilling poppet Hollie Steel, though she may yet turn out to be a tiny tot Faryl Smith in the making. The rest of the musical entertainment’s provided by young big voiced (but sometimes a bit shouty) Shaheen Jafargholi, the hunky but actually rather ordinary Shaun Smith and engaging talented sax player Smith who could well have a solid career ahead but really has to be careful not to emulate his corkscrew haired idol Kenny G to the extent of churning out the sort of drearily bland (though inexplicably mega-selling) AOR.
The ever amiable and amusing Stephen Mulhern comperes and there’ll be a guest turn from last year’s dance sensation winner, George Sampson. Hopefully, none of it will end in tears. 7.30pm. £32.50. NIA (Also Wed Jun 24/Thu Jul 3) Sunday June 14 Broken Records
The Edinburgh septet are an intriguing proposition, marrying together European trad folk and Scottish alt-rock with instrumentation that includes violin, cello, accordion, mandolin, piano, trumpet, and glockenspiel. Debut album Until The Earth Begins to Part (4AD) is every bit as intoxicating as that sounds, full of widescreen cinematic epics, fiddle firing mazurka and bass throbbing indie romps. If The News Makes You Sad Don’t Watch It recalls the Waterboys and the Wonder Stuff’s darker folk moments, Nearly Home is a slow gathering massive chest beater that conjures thoughts of a Gaelic Coldplay defying the elements atop a Highlands peak while the title track is a tumultuous romantic yearning anthem for Armageddon. On a contrasting note, Ghosts is a haunted falsetto ballad and If Eilert Lovborg Wrote A Song, It Would Sound Like This rousing Balkan mazurka about the pangs of love, but their default mode is certainly the momentous scale something like Thoughts On A Picture In A Paper. Even slow starters such as the spare carousel waltzing falsetto voiced Slaw Parade and broody piano ballads Wolves and A Promise wend their way to huge emotional crescendos. Should be a majestic live experience.
Support comes from the oddly named Sparrow And The Workshop, a Scottish (Gregor Donaldson) Welsh (Nick Packer), American (Jill O'Sullivan) trio whose trad folk and psychedelic rock influenced country with fiddle, slide guitars and close harmonies has seen them likened to Fleet Foxes. They’re touring Sleight Of Hand (Distiller), a six track mini album steeped in gothic romance and revenge containing desert noir romps Devil Song and Last Chance (imagine them as a surf Riders in The Sky), twangy waltzer The Gun, where O’Sullivan sounds like Lily Allen channelling Eddi Reader, the dark folksy percussive rumbles of I Will Break You and My Crime, and perky front porcher Broken Heart, Broken Home. Probably a tad ramshackle live, but certainly well worth an early arrival. 7.30pm. £7.50. Glee Club Monday June 15/Tuesday June 16 Boyzone
Another revived boy band, even if Ronan Keating’s still maintaining a solo career singing songs for mums and grannies it looks as though the reunion has legs in it yet. Likely to prove a greatest hits set to chime with the current compilation Back Again... No Matter What (Polydor), so you’ll be geared up to expect such heart swelling old favourites as Love Me For A Reason, Baby Can I Hold You, Words, Father And Son and, of course, No Matter What. They’ll also be showcasing the album’s two new numbers, the fairly typical Irish mist romantic balladeering Better and, their Top 10 comeback hit, I Love You Anyway on which they sound peculiarly like 10cc. Take That style stage spectaculars are not anticipated.
Starting the ball rolling will be their third placed X-Factor singing partner Eoghan Quigg. Simon Cowell can be a bit sharp with his criticism of kids, but he’s got nothing on the Guardian review of Quigg’s self-titled debut album (RCA), describing it as “the worst album in the history of recorded sound”. That’s just a touch unfair. The first of the finalists to release an album, Quigg’s not exactly made a masterpiece. It sounds a bit rushed and he really should have ditched some of the numbers he did on the X-Factor, most especially a terrible clumsy cover of Does Your Mother Know, the plodding She’s The One and a singularly lame All About You. But Ben still stands up, Busted’s Year 3000 has loads of pop verve and the all new 28,000 Friends is a solid dose of HSM friendly power pop. However, after the album failed to make the Top 10, plans to release it as a single were shelved and it’s a fair bet that, like X-factor finalists and also rans before him, he’ll be ditched by the label and wondering where his glittering future went before the year’s out. For now, he and you should just enjoy the party while they’re still serving drinks. 7.30pm. £32.50. NIA Wednesday June 17 Raygun
Fresh from supporting Pink on her European jaunt, fronted by the sharply cheekboned Ray Gun, the 80s rock n soul reviving Londoners start laying the ground for their debut album due this October. Current single In The City (RCA) deftly encapsulates the manifesto and sound which, basically, stirs together Bowie, Blondie, the Stones, INXS, and even Dead Or Alive. Tasters on the set list tonight should also include the funky INXSsive swaggers Waiting In Line and See You Later, urgent tumbling synth rocker Just Because, electro disco swirler Rocket Blast and the handclappy Johhny Johnson & The Bandwagon meets The Proclaimers that is Can’t Say No. Squeeze the trigger, they’re set to stun. 7.30pm. £6.60. O2 Academy 3 Thursday June 18 Roger McGuinn
The legendary leader of The Byrds and the seminal master of the ringing 12 string guitar has forged a solid solo career since the band’s eventual demise back in the mid 70s, most recently forging an impressive folk tradition repertoire with his Folk Den site and albums. However, it’s the vintage classics the nostalgic will be wanting to hear tonight, with Byrds evergreens such as Mr Tambourine Man, Turn Turn Turn and Eight Miles High mingling with solo nuggets such as Don't You Write Her Off, Peace On You and his version of Petty’s American Girl. Hopefully too, hell be minded to flag up the reissue of his 1991 comeback album, Back from Rio (SPV) with such soft burred chiming Byrds-like gems as Someone To Love, You Bowed Down, King Of The Hill and If We Never Meet Again. But, whatever he decides, the chance to catch up with someone who’s as much a living legend as Dylan should not be passed up. 8pm. £24. B’ham Town Hall Thursday June 18 Serpico
A metal punk crew from Scotland whose record collection patently includes the works of Bullet For My Valentine, My Chemical Romance and Funeral For A Friend, they’ve built a strong live rep with support tours for such names as Stone Gods, Aiden and Kill Hannah (one of them even sports their t-shirt on the back cover) and now look to translate that into sales for their fully fledged debut, Neon Wasteland (Wesayso). Unfortunately, whatever the live spark may be it feels somewhat constrained on disc, the album a solid enough collection of driving riffs, hammering drums and throaty vocals, guitar solos inevitably popping up here and there, but rarely coming across as original or inspired. Alkaline Nights is decent enough metal-lite pop with hints of Thin Lizzy and We Own The Night is a suitably snotty chugging punk single, but Glasseye recalls the sludgy worst of the NWOBHM and while Last Honest Cops might prompt much air guitar spraying and head bobbing live, those rushing home to get the album version are surely going to feel shortchanged. 8pm. £8. Irish Club, Digbeth Thursday June 18 Jon Allen
The product of a Devon hippie schooling and graduate of McCartney's Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, Allen got a taste of success when the gentle acoustic melancholy of Going Home became the theme music for the Land Rover TV commercial and shifted some 20,000 copies of the single. That's now given birth to Dead Mans Suit (Monologue), a debut album that seeks to seduce an audience of folk friendly AOR tastes by dint of the sheer familiarity of its influences. I'm not sure what Allen studied in Liverpool, but if there was a course on 60s and 70s American folk rock then he was probably its keenest student. Judging by Dead Man's Suit, Friends and New Years Eve, Dylan was clearly high on the set texts, the first nodding to All Along The Watchtower and the others brazen revisitings of Forever Young and Girl From The North Country respectively. Then there's young Rod Stewart for In Your Light (the song itself channelling The Band) and the bluesily soulful Happy Now (with added Hammond organ and Dave Gilmour guitar), a touch of the Byrds for Down By The River while Bad Penny manages to evoke both Stealer's Wheel and Creedence. Showing his musical education embraced other eras too, Take Me To Heart does credible Billy Joel piano balladry and Young Man Blues surely nods to mid period solo Macca himself. All of which, you'll have surmised, means this is decidedly derivative. However, that doesn't necessarily mean you should dismiss it out of hand. Allen has a kind of James Morrison quality to his voice which, along with a similarly unshaven tousled image, should sew up the impressionable young women market, and, while they may have obvious musical forbears, his songs and melodies are undeniably memorable, the country flecked Lay Your Burden Down firm evidence of genuine writing talent. This album probably won't do a Blunt, but, if he can leave his record collection at home next time he's in the studio, it could prove the first step of a solid career. 7.30pm. £6. Glee Club Friday June 19 The Baddies
Having just finished recording their debut album, the Southenders will be letting their hair down and working off all that studio tension while revealing whether Do The Job is going to be just Queens of the Stone Age with Franz Ferdinand twists or whether they’ve built on the templates with bricks of their own. New single, Holler For My Holiday (Medical), does suggest they have an affection for the Sex Pistols and Stranglers too while its predecessor, Battleships, felt like a psyched up Talking Heads, but whether they have the stylistic muscle to live up to the early hype remains to be seen 8pm. £5. 444 Club, The Rainbow, Digbeth Friday June 19 Subkicks
Risen from the demise of Exist who finally ceased to after a single apiece for EMI and Island, the West Mids quartet finally get round to releasing their Threes Fives and Sevens (SNS) debut album. Listening to opening Forminas Star, the first thought its white boy funk n indie bring to mind is of Franz Ferdinand mingled with a rougher round the collar INXS, a feeling compounded by the six minutes beats based Do You Feel Loved which also introduces Duran colours into the mix. They’re rockier on Goodbye Caroline while Rewind Me and the tribal rhythms of Sirens sets sights on keening stadium anthemics, Under the Barricades does the tunnel vision dance beats shuffle, Searchlights is in thrall to Oasis and Last Time shows they have a good grasp of air punching indie power pop too. With six tracks clocking in around the five minute mark, they’re nothing if not ambitious even if at times (as on pulsing keyboard ballad Eucalyptus and the seven minute Sgt Pepperish Vanilla) the ideas run out before the song. But better to try too much than too little, and given some solid musicianship, a sense of attitude, better than average lyrics and an awareness of how rhythms can agitate the dance floor blood, they’re certainly in with a promise. 6.30pm. £6. O2 Academy 3 Friday June 19 The Destroyers
Well known around the hometown circuit for their lusty turbo charged brand of klezmer and gypsy folk, the 15 piece Birmingham crew don’t do things by halves. Hence this launch bash for their new single, Out of Babel, a roaring carnival knees up round the wedding table or camp fire with Paul Murphy’s gravel and smoke beat poetry narrative curling around the rhythms and a sudden break into Greek dancing, will be a seven hour marathon. During which time, they’ll be exhausting the revellers with tasters from the upcoming debut album of the same name, doubtless to include Glass Coffin Burial with its Vincent Price style spoken intro, the lyrically timely wah wah chugging funk ‘n’ Balkan of Where Has The Money Gone?, the lurching big brother themed Nasty Right Wing Campaign and the glorious tuba, trombone and trumpet showcase mariachi free jazz break down of Stork Crossing Dudley Canal. If their blood stirring set isn’t enough to leave you sweat soaked and flopped on the floor, there’s also ska band 360 and DJ sets from Marc Reck and the Home Cookin' collective. Phew. 9pm. £10. Rainbow Warehouse, Digbeth Friday June 19 Jamie-T
Two years ago, the Wimbledon white rapper cum suburban folkie’s debut album saw him staring down two career paths, one of which would see him pursuing his lurching pop where Billy Bragg meets The Streets, while the other would lead him into the strings laden Radio 2 pop of numbers like Pacemaker. Judging by new single, Sticks ‘n’ Stones (Virgin), he’s gone for the former, apparently also ditching the folk elements but retaining his social comment bite. The as yet untitled album’s due later in the year, meanwhile this is an early chance to see just how much more musically expansive it is than Panic Prevention and where those Beastie Boys and Johnny Cash influences slot in. 7.30pm. £14.25. Kasbah, Coventry Saturday June 20 The Saturdays
Featuring former S Club Jr members Frankie Sandford and Rochelle Wiseman, the five piece are really Girls Aloud lite, but that’s not prevented them notching up four Top 10 singles, most notably their painful No 2 charting cover of Just Can’t Get Enough for Children In Need. That didn’t figure on the original release of the Chasing Lights (Fascination) album but was understandably shoehorned into a reissue though, showing unusual good sense on behalf of the record buying public, this didn’t send it flying back up the charts. Being fair, despite sounding a lot like an All Saints cast off, Issues was a decent pop song and the album has its fair share of similarly disposably catchy material, most notably the electro clopping Set Me Off, 60s girl group inclined Why Me, Why Now, and the tumblingly good Up. However, the shrill title track shows they don’t really get the ballad thing and new single Work is really a sub Rhianna plodder. Whether they have the personality and musical foundations to sustain a career as lengthy as Cheryl Cole and co (for whom they began life as a support act) is open to question, but for now at least they are something for the weekend.
Their own opening act is 18 year old Pixie Lott who, as Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts student Victoria Lott appeared as Louisa Von Trapp in a BBC celebration of the Sound of Music and, at just 13, was recording with Roger Waters for his opera Ça Ira. . She was rejected from talent series Britannia High, which seems rather short sighted on their part, not least because Grammy winning producer LA Reid took her under his wing and teamed her with a clutch of top name writers who’ve turned out hits for the likes of Beyonce, Fergie, Shakira and Pussycat Dolls. Now signed to Mercury she’s about to stake a claim to the spotlight with Mama Do (Mercury), a debut single that reveals a Winehouse like retro soul pop inclination and bodes well for the Turn It Up album in September. She’s being touted as pop’s new princess, for once they might be right. 7.30pm. £20. W’hampton Civic Hall Saturday June 20 Jack Penate
The last the world heard from Penate’s falsetto, he was the latest golden boy of the new London scene, dashing off twangy ska pop and cheery busker pop in between trying to persuade everyone that he might be the future of the cappuccino soul revival. With the demise of that little fad and the general assessment that his debut album was pretty mediocre, he’s had a rethink and now returns with appropriately titled Everything Is New (XL). Headed up by the recent Tonight’s Today, this sees him reinvented as synth pop with splashes of Afrobeat, dub, tropical dance grooves and Latin American carnival party. Sadly, he’s not ditched the often irritating falsetto and his vocals remains strainingly thin, but things like the musical cultural car crash of Let’s All Die, brassy 70s techno pop funk single Be The One and the island life joie de vivre of So Near have enough going on to keep your feet distracted. Exposed and with too much echo on the moody Every Glance and the psychedelic soul of Body Down, it’s not a voice that persuades you of a long lived career (when he does the screamy bit on Give Yourself Way it sounds like a strangled cat) but the makeover should be good for at least this year. 7.30pm. £11, Kasbah, Coventry Sunday June 28 Anastacia
The past few years have been a bit of a rollercoaster, taking in breast cancer, marriage and an admission that she’s a little older than the publicity machine used to claim, but the diminutive songstress is nothing if not a survivor, embracing the good times while taking the bad ones on the chin. She’s far bigger over here than back home in America, indeed her last, self-titled, album didn’t even get a US release despite shifting some 10 million copies, though, worryingly, her current album, Heavy Rotation (Mercury), a return to R&B after exploring a rockier sound, has been her least successful in the UK charts and neither I Can Feel You for the piano ballad Defeated have dented the singles Top 40. The voice, though, remains a force with which to be reckoned and the live shows still pack a hell of a punch in terms of both presentation and performance. With the crowds out in force, it’s a chance to persuade them that the likes of the catchy Chaka Khan styled Absolutely Positive, the driving disco groove title track, the Tina Turner tinges of The Way I See It and All Fall Down and slinky Winehouse libation Same Song are as worth their attention as Sick And Tired And Left Outside Alone. 7.30pm. £36/£32. NIA Tuesday June 30 Silversun Pickups
Brian Aubert’s love affair with his Smashing Pumpkins collection continues with Swoon (Sire), an album of equal highs and lows that sticks to the band’s 90s alt rock guns, keeps some of their shoegazing sensibilities and applies an accessible pop coating to the catchier tunes. Six minutes of a rather directionless distortion psychedelics of Panic Switch tests the patience somewhat while even a sixteen piece orchestra can’t stop Draining sounding like a formless meandering doodle. However such blips are more than compensated for when it comes to the perky chugging Substitution, the flurry of burring guitar driving along The Royal We, There's No Secrets This Year’s urgent circling riffery and tumbling melody, the spacy atmospherics floating through Growing Old Is Getting Old or (evoking Nirvana rather than the Pumpkins) the moody stand out that is Catch and Release. Not the album to elevate them to arena level, perhaps, but certainly one to boost their following and reputation considerably.
Support is London quartet Animal Kingdom, another outfit with a fondness for the Pumpkins but who filter that through such other influences as Mercury Rev, early Radiohead and the less bombastic aspects of the Flaming Lips. A debut album’s due in September with tasters of such numbers as Into the Sea and Good Morning Mr Magpie likely to feature in the set alongside dreamily melancholic single Tin Man (Warner) with its insistent buzzing reverb guitar chimes and Richard Sauberlich’s floating falsetto. 7.30pm. £9. O2 Academy 2
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