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ARCHIVED REVIEWS March 2004
 

A bunch of East London noisenicks with post-hardcore preferences, the chaps have been talked up in the same sentences as Million Dead, Funeral For A Friend and Hundred Reasons. They hit the road to show why on the back of The Green Lights EP (Fallout), a four track flurry of raspy guitars, strained throat vocals and rubbed sore emo, offsetting the rush and ransack approach of Green Light & Stop Sings with the more reflective rolling chimes of Black Clouds Over Hackney. Worth a little musical vacation then. 

Touted as the new Harry Connick Jr though probably closer to Mel Torme than Sinatra or Bennett, baby faced Cullum’s the new boy on the jazz block who may have left purists sniffy but stormed the crossover barricades with Twentysomething, outselling Robbie Williams and Kylie Minogue. He’s not entirely come out of nowhere, his mega selling album is actually his third, following the Jamie Cullum Trio’s self-released Heard It All Before which he flogged round local Wiltshire gigs, recordings for bassist Geoff Gascoyne’s Songs of the Summer album and, with Gascoyne now part of his new trio, the Pointless Nostalgic set which proved the foundation stone for his £1million deal. 
You should know the score by now; interestingly rearranged jazz standards such as What a Difference A Day Made, I Get A Kick Out Of You, the big band swing of Old Devil Moon and an almost hip hop I Could Have Danced All Night, his jazzed up cover of Hendrix’s Wind Cries Mary and late night smoke through Jeff Buckley’s Lover, You Should Have Come Over, plus self-penned material like All At Sea and the finger snapping self-portrait Twentysomething which suggest he’s got a few Van Morrison blues albums in the collection too. 
There’s perhaps a tendency to try too hard to bend shapes away from expectations and time will prove how durable the current love affair with popular tastes proves, but for now Cullum’s is the coolest name to drop for those bluff your way in jazz fans who wouldn’t know a McCoy Tyner album or an Ella Fitzgerald blues if they heard one.
Support comes from upcoming Cambridge English grad (spot those literary refs and quotes in the lyrics!) Polly Paulusama, the former Ben & Jason backing singer and sometime member of Assembly, the improv outfit that also includes Beth Orton.

Support slots with Cara Dillon, Gary Jules and Arab Strap along with her own club dates have helped build a strong word of mouth and although it’s not out until the end of April, her debut album, Scissors In My Pocket (One Little Indian), is already picking up glowing advance reviews.
Confessional stuff built around strong melodies, playful literate wordplay and her breathily low, slightly smoky vocals, it harks to such influences as Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Sheryl Crow, Orton, Katherine Williams, Victoria Williams, Stephen Duffy and, on bluesier moments such as One Day even a less raw Joplin while the rhythm section (electric and upright bass) and her own occasional piano work inject jazz inflections into the arrangements. There’s brass and string in there too, giving extra rich textures and emotional resonance to such breezy, sometimes dark tinted English pastoral songs as I Was Made To Love You, Over The Hill, She Moves In Secret Ways and Something To Remember Me By. 
There’s poignant shivers to be felt on the undoubtedly deeply personal Perfect 4/4 as she details someone hooked up to drips and monitors in a hospital bed while fragile insecurity ripples through the bluesy Anywhere From Here but it’s the way she captures the giddy whirl of being caught up in love and life on the acoustic strummed Carry Me Home and gloriously folk pop waltzing debut single Dark Side (shades of Fairground Attraction here) that really shows you just how brightly her star is about to glow.

Former frontman with the Vigilantes of Love, Mallonee’s currently working on his latest solo album, Pin My Hope, returning more to his Americana roots and writing songs that serve as a personal diary of his experiences over the past year. However, while likely to be road testing such numbers as True Confessions, Dulce et Decorum Est and The Fresh, Struck Match of Faith, having just linked up with UK label Fundamental chances are he’ll be dipping considerably into their first release Locket Full of Moonlight. 
Just to confuse matters, this is actually credited to Bill and the Vigilantes and was issued in America two years ago following solo debut Fetal Position and prior to last year’s solo follow up Perfumed Letter. It also comes with six extra odds and sods tracks (including the Neil Young like Hat in Hand) not on the American version. 
Whatever the tangled details may be, fact is it’s another fine piece of work, albeit rather fuller and more arranged than his sparer rootsy projects, that mines a dark shade of heartache and despair framed (if you discount the extra tracks which rather make nonsense of the thematic circle) by the hopelessness and loss of the rocked up title track and its more reflective reprise. It’s not all down, Jaws of Life is a ringing guitar look back at his life and times with the band but then even Rearview Mirror sees the cost of life on the road while Dirty Job brings things back to the downbeat where even ten years of making music could be a curse. It’s great stuff, but you kinda hope that somewhere along the gig he finds a place to let the sun in. 

Along for the ride are Chicago five piece Dolly Varden, headed up by husband and wife team Stephen Dawson and Diane Christiansen who, for reasons best known to themselves, decided to name their band after a breed of trout. Over the past decade they’ve tickled up four albums (five if you add their duo release) worth of harmonies and pastoral songwriting in the tradition of Gram and Emmylou, so there’s a wealth of material on which to draw though most is likely to be culled from their most recent set Forgiven Now, released here last year, and 2001’s The Dumbest Magnets which is being reissued here later this year. Basically just ask to hear The Lotus Hour and you’ll go home happy.
Bringing up the rear, though not in terms of talent, is Maryland born bluegrasser Julie Lee who, for Stillhouse Road (Twinbeat), her third Nashville recorded album and first studio offering, has enlisted such luminaries as Alison Krauss and Vince Gill, the latter lending harmonies to both the title track’s story of her own family during prohibition and Another You’s celebration of young misfit rebellion and individualism.
Throwing shades of jazz, folk and blues into the pot she serves up the goodtiming fiddle swing of Made From Scratch and Soapbox and the bluesy Sojourner Truth and James, but it’s on the more yearning, plaintive ballads she shines brightest, the avowal of faith in the Dolly-ish Your Love, the stars waltzing Beautiful Night, the simple quivering Til The Cows Come Home and, best of all, the near hymnal Many Waters where her tremulous voice, accompanied by Krauss, takes to the heavens and back to earth again in her unadorned affirmation of love.

Finally making their way to these shores to promote last year’s The Artist in the Ambulance, the American four piece gird their hardcore loins and sharpen the riffs to show that recent radio friendly rock single All That’s Left isn’t typical of their sonic stance. Well, Stare At The Sun is kind of similar in its melodic interests, but otherwise we’re talking yowling throat ripping and lacerating guitars as they grind and mosh through the likes of such bile fuelled angst as Cold Cash And Cold Hearts or The Abolition of Man. Don’t expect to leave without bleeding.

Last time they toured they were tentatively nudging mainstream acceptance with the release of new album Final Straw, this time they’re conquering heroes on the back of soaring strings enhanced Top 3 single Run. It’s not the only slice of sublime summer pop on an album which reflects breathy voiced singer Gary Lightbody’s love for the likes of Super Furry Animals, Beck, Brian Wilson, XTC, and Sebadoh. With emotional swayers like the keyboards dominated ballad Same and midtempo lilts such as the biting confessional How To Be Dead and the more urgent chugging indie rock flurries of Wow, expect them to patrolling the charts for some time to come. 

Back out on the road, but this time with a full band line up to add extra sheen to their Still Life album, letting those strings dripping mellow melodies have full sway on their yearning songs of love like the achingly fragile Easier To Lie, Another Little Hole, and the tender love in darkness of Good Goodnight.

Shades of garage retro and hints of Paul Jones era Manfred Mann and the swaggering strut of the Stones as filtered through the stained glam of Pulp spark off new single Saffron (Rough Trade), but there’s more strings to the chords of this Berwick outfit. Due out in May their Shades of Black debut album also parades an affinity for the Appalachian bluegrass balladry of Ralph Stanley, new wave, low slung alt-country (Vena Cava) and, as evidenced by Shadow a big dose of mournful Neil Young. An intriguing outfit, well worth keeping a close eye on. 

Picking up Best Pop Act and Best Breakthrough Act at the Brits, the boy band it’s okay for rock hearts to like are more Blink 182 and Sum 41 than they are Westlife or Blue, refreshingly plastering their love of sherberty new wave guitars all over their sound. Having first exploded on the scene with the irresistible That’s What I Go To School For they’ve maintained that high quality of punch the air punky pop, most recently on second album A Present For Everyone and such chugging fizz nuggets as Crashed The Wedding, She Wants To Be Me, Air Hostess and Falling For You. Not quite so successful at the meaningful ballads, Why and Can’t Break Thru’ the only time you reach for the skip buttons, latest single Who’s David escaping by the skin of its teeth because 30 seconds in they realise their mistake and crank it back up. That and the fact it comes with a great version of the old Undertones gem, Teenage Kicks, further evidence of where their hearts and roots lie. Not a gig anyone over twenty should be ashamed to be seen at. 
Taking their name from Michael J Fox’s character in Back to The Future, support comes from McFly who guested with Busted on Wedding B side Build Me Up Buttercup and whose Tom Fletcher co-wrote many of the songs on their labelmates current album. Not too surprising then that they sound like, well, Busted, except as a wannabe underachievers version whose debut single, 5 Colours In Her Hair sets out their horny teen agenda with the line "I’d like to bone her ‘coz she puts me in the mood." Where’s Biff Tannen when you need him. 

Clearly not intending to spend any time putting their feet up this year, they’re back for their second tour in as many months, following up the single success of ‘Til The Day with another shove for their Kill The Last Romantic album. Nothing like the power pop guitar showers of their debut, it’s a much more intimate, tumblingly melodic and melancholic rock set that takes Coldplay and the Undertones as its touchstones rather than Erasure and Wedding Present. 
They get worked up on things like Celebrity Killer, the jittery pop of When You Come Back I Won’t Be Here and the slow crunching, Gabriel-esque All I Can Remember, but mostly this is reflective, quivering sad piano ballad territory as hauntingly embodied in such heart-swelling numbers as Drive, Tonight, the fragile pared down mountain country feel of You Have Been Here and the gorgeously wounded A Lot Of Miles From Home. Not to much leaping around in store perhaps, but as a night for slow, eyes-closed swaying it could prove hard to beat.

Fronted since 1991 by Paul Roberts who seems to have spent some time mastering Hugh Cornwall’s sneery growl style and with JJ Burnel’s bass, Jet Black’s drums and Dave Greenfield’s keyboards still doing their immediately distinctive thing, they’ve managed to not only survive the vicissitudes of changing musical fashions but claw their way back to a major label, resigning to EMI for the Norfolk Coast, album. It’s pretty much old school Stranglers stuff with tracks like I’ve Been Wild, Into The Fire, Lost Control and Norfolk Coast sounding not much different from the days of No More Heroes and Five Minutes. Whether they can find a new audience for what is essentially a dated blast of nostalgia tied to new songs or convince old timers that they’ve not become their own tribute band remains to be seen, but at least they feel like a band hungry to prove themselves once again. 

Playing here as part of World Unlimited’s One Step Forward, Two Steps Beyond project spotlighting local acoustic acts, Banska are a Birmingham folk-pop four piece formed by singer-songwriter, flautist and acoustic guitar strummer Rowena Knight and featuring Erin Marson on cello and local session stalwarts Martin Vole Smith on guitar and Rob Peters on percussion. Fusing gypsy, Eastern European (their name comes from a city in Slovakia) and trad English folk flavours with a sound that wouldn’t have been out of place in 60s coffee houses and basement bars providing the soundtrack to discussions on radical politics. Their three track demo’s rough and muddy round the edges, but Points of Power, When The Wind Blows and the anti regime change Not In My Name all deftly hook them into Billy Bragg/Poison Girls/New Model Army contemporary protest folk territory, offering food for thought as well as music for the soul. 
Sharing the bill is acoustic blues man Paul Cowley, founding member of The Sutton Blues Collective. 

Matador's first English signings in six years, the six piece describe their sound as a mix of Sonic Youth and Fairport Convention, Pavement with The Waterboys.  Well, there's certainly some interesting folk flavours on their debut album Lay of the Land; the first haunting three minutes of Anglokana with its spooked violin and dark woods mist mood, four minutes of The Nightwatch that opens on lonesome violin and proceeds into more dark, dank underground folk labyrinths like The Fall getting into trad, and the eerie build up to Come On Sister. But inevitably they all then collapse into squalling indie noise while the rest of the album dispenses with the preludes altogether and gets right in on distortion and twisted guitar pain. Folk club gigs do not beckon. 

His family know him as Alan Wilkes, but under his nom de music he joins the likes of Stephen Duffy, Jarvis Cocker, Billy Bragg, Chris Difford and Morrissey as one of the few distinctively English voices in contemporary rock, even if  he does have a clear fondness for old school country in his melodies and occasional inflections. Babybird probably the nearest comparison (though you might add Badly Drawn Boy if you subtract the Springsteen and Cleaners From Venus if you're being really obscure), he does a nice line in self-deprecating deadpan humour that's seen him dubbed a music answer to Tony Hancock for his witty vignettes of everyday small town life and characters. It's readily apparent on Growing Up With Vinny Peculiar (Shadrack & Doxbury), his new album and follow up to Ironing The Soul, where songs about Heaven's call centre (the wonderfully cynical I Work For God) sit alongside the disturbing schooldays memoirs of We Tried To Drown Our Music Teacher In 1974 for his dislike of pop, childhood tales of strange graffiti springing up around the town (Root Mull), musings about lost innocence (We Didn't Paint Our Nails When We Fought The Germans), football as a sense of community (Replica Shirt which even name checks Villa) and the parental implications of IVF (Confessions of a Sperm Donor). 
As you might suspect from the title, it's a lot about, well, growing up, joining the dots between the awkward painful years in the country chugging 24, clinging to youth's political idealism on the Bragg-like Punk Rock Dreaming and, the album's best track, singing a unexpectedly moving ironic ode to teen angst and the way it just changes its shape as we grow older (Everlasting Teenage Bedroom), all before closing up with Egg Incident, a local news story of some egg throwing kids on a council estate that, as he speaks the story to a Twin Peaks style musical backdrop, clearly lays out his artistic bloodline to that other documentarian of  Britlife, Ray Davies. Gorgeously essential, nostalgic stuff. 

Always a welcome visitor, she’s cantering in this time round to spread the word for her new album Coveted (Randan). Not, this time, her own material but, after dropping in redefining versions of All The Things She Said and Coldplay’s The Scientist on last year’s solo acoustic Only All Of Me, she’s recorded a whole collection of classic - if not necessarily all well known - covers given the personal stamp. Though it would have been better if it had been able to encompass an orchestra rather than the somewhat samey synths and click tracks, as you might expect from a soulful soaring, richly warm voice that’s seen her called one of the finest singers in Britain, she brings a smoky ambience to the likes of Stay With Me Till Dawn, Wild Is The Wind, Take My Breath Away and a 3am on the rooftops arrangement of Unbreak My Heart. Best of all though is a dreamy, windswept The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face and the breathily swell and ebb You’ll See. Several should figure tonight along with older stuff from the early days of God's Home Movie and Careful through to her last album, Hindsight and such numbers as Ship To Shore, Kiss My Aspiration and Starfish. She recently won a Radio Forth best live show award, beating off one Robbie Williams, so you know you’re in for the real deal. 

The last time they played here was one of the venue's best gigs of the year, so expectation are high for a repeat performance, especially coming on the back of not one but two recent releases. Maintaining their deft ability to experiment but still produce beguiling pop tunes, as the title suggests Summer Sun (Matador) is a floaty haze of peaceful lo fi jazzy melodies that lap at your ears and drift around your head. Yet while the likes of How To Make A Baby Elephant Float, Today Is The Day or the ineffably pretty Season of the Shark caress like warm breezes, there's edginess in there too, the neurotic keyboard and percussion funk of 'Georgia Vs. Yo La Tengo that conjures the darker shadows of the city alleys  or the heated sex  of a predatory Moonrock Mambo's while Winter A Go Go veins its cocktail vibes with hints of desperation while  the ostensibly soothing Little Eyes is about depression. 
Today is The Day also turns up as the title track of a six song EP (which includes an acoustic version of live favourite Cherry Chapstick), but here given a fuzzier rock treatment that also characterises a Velvetish Styles of the Sun and the, by Yo Lo standards, fairly thundering Eastern mantra squalls of Outsmartener with its double reed horn, both numbers that simply didn't fit with the parent album's mood. 
They're softer though for a lovely 1999 cover of Bert Jansch's Needle of Death on which singer Georgia sounds uncannily like Art Garfunkel, while the also previously unreleased Dr Crash instrumental is almost surf rock. Quite where they' be coming from  tonight is open to conjecture, but it's certainly a place you'll want to visit.
Even more so since this is a double bill with the ever marvellous Welsh quirks Gorky's Zygotic Mynci loading up extra fiddle and piano to bring the rural summer in the fields and autumn between the haystacks ambience of their folk pop early John Cale meets the Incredible String Band recent album Sleep/Holiday (Sanctuary). 

Never predictable, they erupt into a crazy voodoobilly swamp boogie stomp with Mow The Lawn and go splashing down the dust roads to the creek with a bluegrassy  Country but then soothe troubled brows with something as light to the touch as Single To Fairwater, the dreamy acoustic ripple of Shore Light or the hymnal drone that is Pretty As A Bee.
Although  Eyes of Green, Green, Green is a jaunty little number that kicks up a fine pair of juggy heels, a sense of  the dear departed and missed opportunities hangs around much of the album, hopefully not suggesting that, with is hints of winter, that the tour might be the first notes of an impending swansong.

Though probably best remembered for The Wombles, Mike Batt's actually got quite an unheralded musical credibility, having written Bright Eyes (Art Garfunkel), A Winter's Tale (David Essex), Caravan Song (Barbara Dixon), Railway Hotel (himself), releasing such underrated wistful pop albums as Schizophonia and Tarot Suite and being the creative force behind both Vanessa Mae and Bond. And now he's the guiding hand behind the Georgia born (as in the USSR not the USA), Belfast raised and now Surrey based 19 year old singer (and budding songwriter) whose debut album, Call Off The Search,  slipped out without any hype or buzz and, slowly gaining word of mouth, went on to knock Dido off the top of the charts following the top three success of its first single, the Batt penned The Closest Thing to Crazy. If that, like Blame It On The Moon suggested Melua as a huskier cross between Norah Jones and Edith Piaf,  the title track follow-up, again written by Batt, points up her love of such jazz greats as Ella Fitzgerald while elsewhere on the album Crawling Up The Hill surely gives the nod to Peggy Lee, My Aphrodisiac Is You and Mockingbird Song hark to her blues influences and Faraway Voice is both tribute to and echo of  Eva Cassidy. 
She's not yet ready to take on something like Randy Newman's I Think It's Gonna Rain or Lilac Wine (given a definite Piaf treatment), both of which demand an emotional depth and maturity as yet beyond her  and there are times she sounds dangerously close to West End musical territory, but as her own smoky Victoria Williams meets Billie Holiday jazz blues The Shirt of a Ghost off the new single shows, she's certainly getting there. This debut tour will no doubt show how far she has yet to go.

 Opening up will be Irish singer-songwriter Paddy Casey, a  man who to judge from the title track of his current Living (Sony Music) album really needs to spend some time away from his Van Morrison collection. If only that was the only thing wrong with it. Kick off single Saints & Sinners isn't bad, but it's hard to understand how the album nestled just below Dido at the top of the Irish charts or, given his somewhat harsh, colourless and straining vocals, how he got nominated as best Irish male singer. The record itself's something of a mess with its attempt to inject clattering percussion, beats, bluesy funk rhythms and even shades of world textures into the basic folk and sometimes 60s pop  foundations. Indeed tracks like Miracle, Stumble and Want It Can't Have It are actually painful to listen to. With the likes of fellow countrymen Damien Rice, the sadly forgotten Mundy and David Kitt having raised the bar since Casey's debut album back in 99, things like this really should be given short shrift. 

The first night of the new look Songwriters Festival gets the ball rolling in impressive style with Joe Pernice and his accomplices dropping by for a rare chance to soak up their extensive catalogue of miserable songs. But hang on, what's this, current album Yours, Mine & Ours (One Little Indian) is a largely upbeat power pop affair of cascading, jangling guitars and dreamy melodies characterised by Waiting For the Universe and new single The Weaker Shade of Blue. Nothing crass you understand, more in keeping with such influences as Big Star (Blinded By The Stars), The Smiths (Judy) and REM (Water Ban) as they weave their way through moods of wistful hope and weary sadness to produce just the sort of sublime garage pop for which early summer nights were made. 
They share the bill with The Belles whose Omerta (Eat Sleep) album is full of the sort of college pop bliss once made by the likes of The Raspberries, but filtered through the Americana sensibilities of Wilco and Evan Dando. 

So I, Sing recalls first album Bee Gees but generally lazily soft strummed lo fi, breathily dusty vocals and drifting melodies are the order of the day as they work their way through the likes of strummed folksy A Thousand Ships, a dreamy (Who Will Be) Here To Hear and Never Said Anything.  Providing local colour will be Midlands based acoustic duo Nizlopi.

Still going strong and looking pretty much as perky as she did decades ago when Shout made her a star, there's a new album doing the rounds rather optimistically titled Back On Track that sees her courting the Radio 2 audience with a mix of smoothly produced pop and country, but clearly even she's not putting much store by it since the tour's designed to celebrate her 40 years in the business and the recent release of her Greatest Hits album.
Which means that while the chances of hearing such obscure gems as Everybody Clap is pretty slim, you can  reliably look forward to such other highs as The Man Who Sold The World,  To Sir With Love, Let's Pretend, The Boat That I Row,  I'm A Tiger, Relight My Fire and recent Ronan Keating duet hit We've Got Tonight  though hopefully she'll see sense and refrain from throwing Boom Bang-A-Bang into the ring too. 

Back with their second album, Shatterproof Is Not A Challenge (Columbia), and a roar of post hardcore punkish rock veined with a strong pop sensibility as demonstrated most notably on, well, Pop actually.  Never as consistently heavy as the opening Savanna threatens in its closing phases nor as emo inclined as the towering Harmony or the ballad Still Be There suggest, the album makes a fair bid to be considered Surrey's contribution to the ranks of Pearl Jam and At The Drive-In with the almost delicate Makeshift and the brief but mountainous The Great Test assuring them a place in the current rock pantheon. One of the track's is called Truth In Elegance, add noise and it seems a reasonable description. 

Having recently supported Love, the Welsh trio return for a headline tour plugging From Tense To Loose To Slack, the first single off their self-titled debut album. It comes complete with a sample of The Shadows' Apache while elsewhere the album throws up the sound of  spag westerns, Hammond organs and Super Furrysish skewed folk psychedelia as they work their way through the likes of Love Your Sons & Daughters, Gurl Next Door, Simple, All The Drugs In The World (which sounds like a strung out Jesus and Mary Chain playing Crimson & Clover) and the sunny reverb fuzz pop of Simple. Worth a look.

First finding their way to the majority of UK ears via Sweetest Goodbye on the Love Actually soundtrack and translating awareness into the hit single Harder To Breathe, the LA boys have actually been around since 1999, although back then they were a four piece and traded as Kara's flowers playing pop-punk. These days, with the addition of an extra guitar, they chug out a retro white boy funk rock groove that's a bit like Spindoctors but poppier or Terence Trent D'Arby but more coherent. And with more wah wah. Heavily in debt to Stevie Wonder, debut album Songs About Jane may offer the acceptable mainstream face of urban dance but frontman Adam Levine has the right blue eyed soul voice and the chops to write the sort of tunes guaranteed to itch the feet. If you like the idea of Jamiroquai but could live without his ego, then the likes of Through With You and Not Coming Home should keep your bassline snapping. 

A bit of a showcase jobbie for the Glaswegian five piece who take a break from recording their first album to road test some material and give a helping hand to debut  EP At  One Time Or Another. We're talking basic rock here with powerhousing Zep riffs and the strained vocals and thundering melodies of such post grunge outfits as Soundgarden and Stone Temple Pilots. The title track's a ballad, singer Paul McCallion showing off the bruised side of his vocals while the others, a powerhouse No Cure, the Zep bluesy Slave Trade and the pounding Fear and Loathing, all serve to show off their ability to make walls shake. Promising, but they're going to have stop sounding so much like their album collection if they want to become part of anyone else's. 

First of the folky nights for the Songwriter's Fest brings in relative scene newcomer McGee, a Mancunian who started playing in bands when she was just 14 before switching allegiances to acoustic and who's also a card carrying member of the road protest movement. Having spent time getting it together in Cornwall, exorcising the angrier elements of the music, she emerged the other end with a love of Nick Drake and Joni Mitchell her marvellous Radio 2 Folk Awards nominated debut album, Honeysuckle.
Now she's back with a new label, Park, and a new album, Frost.  Despite her activist background, again there's no political issues here, though her eco sensibilities do find plenty of expression in images of the natural world with insects and the weather finding frequent expression within her songs. Mostly these hang their arms around relationships, their impermanence signified in songs of leaving (Plane Vapours), the wandering life (Spit & Shine), nature's ebb and flow (Kisses) and of life's passing (Cloudwatching). The passage of time weighs upon her songs too, the changing seasons, day giving way to night, month surrendering to month; two possible lovers staring into the dawn sky at the end of a party  in Coffee Coloured Strings and its what happened afterwards companion piece Put Back The Stars,  sitting on a bench watching the tide of  life pass by at St Mark's Place as memories trickle into its stream. 
This all with a slightly dusty, pure careworn voice (shown to fine effect in the a cappela trad sounding Safe Harbour Song) that occasionally conjures an English fusion of Janis Ian and Suzanne Vega and musicians of the calibre of John Spiers, Roy Dodds,  Neill MacColl and Boo Hewardine (who also produces) adding their mandolins, piano accordion, melodeons, guitars and double bass to McGee's own guitar and flute work. The sound of barley scented late summer, early autumn nights, caught between late balmy breezes and early chills to the air, it's a gorgeous album and, with the likelihood of  previous songs such as the wonderfully evocative Tuba Player's Wife or the melancholic The Wrong Girl  putting in an appearance, this comes hugely recommended.

Opening the set will be Birmingham's own Kate  Doubleday. Serving up another reminder of her own debut album. 

Sounding more spikey than usual on current album 12 Memories, the melancholic balladry now seamed with snarly guitars and edgier themes, it's something of a surprise how well the buying public has taken to the likes of  Re-Offender's domestic violence ditty and the not exactly radio friendly anti-war backlash Peace The F*** Out.  Success notwithstanding, the plain fact is that the melodies just aren't there, a drifting airiness having taken the place of memorable tunes and while the bruised pattering Paperclips,  niggling nervy hit The Beautiful Occupation and new single Love Will Come Through  partially evoke Travis at their best, whatever the title says there's very little here worth remembering. Hopefully that won't be the case with the show.
 Support comes from  Sussex trio Keane, fresh from their debut hit Somewhere Only We Know storming up the charts in response to the next big thing buzz. Big on  forlorn vocals, old before my time lyrics and bruised melancholy melodies, they basically sound like Coldplay but without any guitars. How far they can take that remains to be seen. 

Rehab, a stint in jail (ok, two days) for drunk driving, life's been a bit less rosy of late for the self-styled queen of soul and legendary airport security hating diva, so maybe a twinge more humility might be in evidence for this, one of seven in the round UK dates  for her Live Love tour. Quite what this will entail is uncertain, but since EMI have recently released the Love and Life best of compilation then it's reasonable to assume there'll be a trawl through the greatest hits (and then some, though not too recently) along with the usual array of wardrobe changes. 

The Wonder Stuff back on ice until the next Christmas reunion, their frontman's currently putting together his second Miles Hunt Club album, currently titled Escape From Rubbish Island and due in August, it generally chronicles how fed up he is with life in England. So, assuming he'll be previewing a fair bit of this live in his solo acoustic Songwriter's Fest  show it's a reasonable bet that invective, vitriol, and sarcasm will be fairly high on the set list. Would you have him any other way.
Former Rialto frontman Louis Eliot will also be touting songs from his debut solo album, Coming Through The Days, released this month, which includes all four of the tracks from his Everybody Loves You When You're Dead though not Emily, a Lilac Time like English folk pop nugget that seems to have become a bit of a fan favourite.

It will, I'd guess turn up in the set though and he has said there's plans to get it on to a single or another EP. Of course, you may just want to take a tape recorded just in case.
Local ingredient tonight is Casino, a band who seem to owe a considerable debt to both Diamond Dogs era Bowie and Primal Scream if numbers such as Heavy Metal Machine and No Place To Go, although the latter does include a lyrical nod to the Osmonds too! 

In from Toronto spewing angular guitar riffs, frontman Ben Kowalewicz's shouty punk vocals and boiling rage, they're being hailed as the latest outfit destined to change the face of rock n roll. That's pushing it. As their eponymous current album reveals they're part Johnny Rotten part System of a Down with a coating of emo, requiring much on stage jumping about and lacerated throat tissue. There's melodies lurking in the undergrowth of their jabbing bass lines and fractured rhythms while numbers that address such subjects as absent fathers (Try Honesty), a heroin addict hooker (Standing In The Rain),  Multiple Sclerosis (How It Goes), and teenage suicide (Nothing To Lose) show they've got plenty of fire they want to spit out. Mind you, they're just as prone to songs about being dumped (new single The Ex) as anyone while Line And Sinker's winge that 'Santa seemed to miss my chimney' shows even furious punks can be prone to poor me self-pity too. Fierce stuff with a reputation for being explosive live too, but probably not here for the long haul 

It's nearly five years since his last  album, the frankly rubbish Human Being. But he's back now and  the distinctive soulful voice that made Adamski's Killer a hit and earned Grammys for Kiss From A Rose  is as strong as ever. Unfortunately he's not brought many solid tunes with him, the recent IV (Warners) album steeped in the influences of Detroit and Philly but sounding somewhat dated. That said, the Teddy Pendegrass groove of  Get It Together,  Marvin Gaye inflected ballad Love's Divine, the Stevie Wonderish funk Waiting For You and Don't Make Me Wait are delivered with undeniable class and heart, and you can't argue with his ability to whip up a heated live performance. However, unless someone can pull a sizeable hit single out of the bag, it remains to be see whether his first UK tour since 1995 is of sufficient interest to fill the venue with any other than those with nine year nostalgia. 

She'll never shift records in Dido quantities, but in ten year's time those who have brought her albums will at least still be listening to them. And she needs nothing more than a microphone and an audience to hold an audience mesmerised with her rich brand of  soulful folk and blues. Don't take my word for it, lend an ear to Home (Stereoscout), her latest live album recorded, complete with chat, over the course of three shows in her native Isle of Man during 2002's 20th anniversary tour. 
Opening with an unaccompanied version of Helen Watson's bluesy Lowish Time she proceeds to demonstrate exactly why she's introduced as 'world class'  as she makes her way through self-penned numbers such as Act of Kindness and the wistfully weary Waiting For My Prayer and an eclectic set of covers that range from Tom Waits' Broken Bicycles, a song she's made very much her own, Don McLean's Vincent (including a bonus 'studio' version with strings) and a spare reading of Emmylou Harris's gospel Deeper Well with just shaken tambourine accompaniment to a folky intimate treatment of U2's Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For and a smoke curling torch through Billie Holiday's God Bless the Child, a song that takes real confidence in your abilities to even think of tackling it. Collister masters it with ease. But the best though has to be her haunting a cappela version of Christine McVie's Songbird for which the very air hushes in awe and, perhaps the song with which she's most identified, Clive Gregson's beautifully weary It's All Just Talk. 
Of course you have to be there really, and if you've got anything like discerning musical taste you most certainly will be. 

He has no colourful background, he's not been in any even half name bands, and he's not had his name dropped in trendy circles, but with debut self-label album Different Story Saw could well prove the David Gray story of 2004. Blessed with a warmly resonating, slightly tremulous voice that variously conjures thoughts of David Gates, Art Garfunkel, Clifford T Ward, Martyn Joseph,  Fran Healy and, if you're being really obscure, Doug Ashdown of Winter In America fame, he writes and sings gentle acoustic love songs tinged with English folk and sweetened with strings.
 Love After Wine will recall Fairground Attraction at their dreamiest, Let It Play is probably more in the Nick Drake if he was Ryan Adams vein while, the opening Hanging With The Big Guns takes a Dylan rasp and by way of the unexpected, Better Than A Woman sees things out with a bluegrass twang. 
There's no profound observations on the world or social issues, but for an album of wearied, downbeat but radio friendly songs like Big Deal that cut to the emotional core of those looking for a soundtrack to their heartaches, this is one musical Saw you really do need in your toolshed.
 Joining him for this Songwriters Fest showcase will be Cathy Burton whose debut album, Burn Out, earned comparisons to Alanis and Dido. 

The follow up, Speed Your Love, is due shortly, including co-writes with Ricky Ross, and certainly advance tasters should help spread the gospel beyond the Christian circuit on which she's already fairly well known. 

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, Liverpool singer-songwriter Lang was all the talk with albums Scallywag Jaz, Little Moscow and The Lost Letter Z, selling out residencies at Ronnie Scott's and earning praise for his way with such covers as Me and Mrs Jones and Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood. However, marketed as a cool lounge crooner, when the fad for sensitive young men smoking Gitanes and singing late night soul jazz passed, so too did Lang. Since then he's released an album of covers in Japan  that include his versions of San Diego Serenade, Love TKO and If Loving You Is Wrong  and did some soundtrack work on Leon The Pig Farmer and the best left unseen Solitaire for 2, but other than that nothing.
A planned comeback album, Fantastic Room, was supposed to emerge in 1997 but sank unissued along with the record company. However, he's now got himself a new band together and has got back into playing live. Where the music's at these days is anyone's guess, but he's pretty much guaranteed to be favouring the back catalogue for this Songwriters Fest special. 
Not to be confused with the top classical clarinettist, support is Birmingham pianist Emma Johnson whose honky tonk blues have earned her slots with Jamie Cullum. 

Something a bit different in the metal stakes, other than the fact they come from Gibraltar that is, in as much as that while they recycle the sort of stuff Pantera. Alice In Chains and Sabbath have been doing over the years, they spice it up with Moorish and Arabic flavours and classical guitars. They hit town in the wake of their rather good minor hit La Ultima Hora and its follow up The River, with new album Cultura lurking in the wings. 

Having recently graduated to official New Madonna status by the simple act of  amping up the sex in her image and act and toning down the r&b, Alecia Moore has pretty much left the Britneys and Christinas eating her dust. She sashays in now on the back of  current album Try This (Arista), a flurry of stroppy pop, dance beats and bad girl attitude that hits the ground running with Trouble and delivers a series of radio friendly punk shaded bubblegum knock out punches with God Is A DJ, Last To Know, Tonight's The Night,  Save My Life, Blondie-like Try Too Hard and  firsts pump the air on new wave CBGB punk swagger Humble Neighbouroods (which surely owes a debut to Ca Plane Pour Moi). The guitars are cranked up, Pink's vocal range gets its best showcase yet and, while she's clearly striking at the rock brigade  those crowd singalong choruses won't hurt her chances with the Avril audiences either. Though maybe the tweenies should be kept away from the sweary sweary hidden track Hooker.
There'll be inevitable nods back to her earlier hits, but this is where the hellraising stuff takes off and, with a few corsets and bustles, promises to make the gig one of the year's hottest rock chick nights to remember. Courtney Love, who she? 

John Dunnery and Wayne Wilkinson are a  couple of  thirtyish Cumbrian carpenters who just happen to be singer-songwriters (Dunnery nephew to former It Bites frontman Francis) and they've got more going for them than a great name for their double act. Their debut album, Nearly Killed Keith (Aquarian Nation), is a folk rock with touch of country collection of world weary songs about working class northern life with its dead end faded dreams and wasted hopes laid out in tales of  car crashes on the A5 (The Sign To Coventry), almost fatal accidents (Nearly Killed Keith) and their up and down experiences working on building sites around the country (The Old AM Radio, 213-Mile End Road). 
Yet while they sing of loss, never making it, broken relationships and the crappy bedsits of life on the road, there's still a playfulness in their work, a refusal to give in and, as on the Dire Straits meets Stealers Wheel Three O Blue, an often sunny cheeriness to the melodies. There's no gloss to what they do, just a couple of  ordinary blokes singing songs about ordinary lives and the daily grind, but whether you think of then as a sawdust Simon & Garfunkel, chippie James Taylors or David Gray with hammer and nails, they're certainly worth knocking on wood. 

Admirers of Gorkys, the Furries and Beta Band will probably appreciate these Welsh practitioners of skewed pop whose debut album Messy Century mixes electronic frippery with space-folk acoustics where the sonic eruptions of Bom Bom sit alongside something like the twangy elephantine strum of  Ripen, plaintive cracked lament Silent Dues or the acoustic vaudeville feel of UK Theatre which curiously recalls early Leo Sayer. A specialist taste for sure, but with new single I Gotta Sing demonstrating an affinity for catchy pop tunes, they could be scaling some moderate heights. 
Support's provided by The Golden Virgins, a  Sunderland four piece who cheerfully describe their music as rock n roll shambolique and who, to judge by last year' single Renaissance Kid/Shadows of Your Love are equally smitten by the Velvets, The Cars and English folk music. A debut album waits in the wings, so tasters should be much in evidence along with, quite possibly, one of those Madonna covers they seem to quite fancy. 

Arriving three years back with Simple Things to announce themselves as London stop gap between Air albums, the duo return (Sia,  Mozez, and Sophie Barker  again providing guest vocals) with sophomore outing When It Falls (Ultimate Dilemma) remaining firmly married to the same chill out vibe of fluttering pianos, synths, woodwinds and strings, albeit with more songs and far less instrumentals. 
Home (which features new vocal addition Tina Dico)  introduces a folk ambience into the mix while Somersault trots along at a slow country pace, but mostly it's the same sedate  trip hop groove designed for dawn trysts and rainy day reveries. If the first album didn't prompt you to rush out and buy a coffee table, it's unlikely this is going to change your furniture habits but if you've already decorated the inside of your head with jazzy soul and posters from holiday programmes then you'll find the likes of Warm Sound, Over Our Heads and the narcotic sun bleached dreaminess of In Time required wallpaper. Take a pillow.
First of two supports is Magnet aka  breathy voiced Norwegian singer-songwriter Even Johansen who's travelling the tarmac to plug  recent album On Your Side and its new single, a lazy orchestral summer day cover of Dylan's Lay Lady Lay (Ultimate Dilemma) on which he's joined by Gemma Hayes. 

All very pleasant but as substantial as the breeze. 
 Then there's record store assistant turned bluesy country soul singer-songwriter Willis whose impressive debut album Come Get Some came soaked  in such influences as Carole King, Joni Mitchell, The Band, and Aretha Franklin, her smoky voice stained with the sound of Deep South swamps. 

It now spawns Spanish moss and hillbilly baccy new single Take Me High (679), though it's the extra tracks that hold the real interest, a fine back porch acoustic version of the trad Old Time Religion that she sings with Bible in one hand a bourbon glass in the other, darn fine new self-penned folk-blues number Haunt You and a remarkable version of Cameo hit Word Up that brings in upright bass and turns the disco funk into a bluesy New Orleans voodoo gumbo. Star of the night and then some. 

Back after picking up Best Pop Act and Best Breakthrough Act at the Brits, not to mention their recent attempt at being rock n roll hellraisers by throwing a  toaster out of  a Birmingham hotel window, it seems audiences can't get enough of them. This is the second batch of dates on the current tour and they've already announced and sold out another brace in December. More Blink 182 than Blue, refreshingly plastering sherberty new wave guitars all over their punch the air punky pop,  even thirtysomethings can wear the t shirt with their heads held high.

What with the likes of The Coral Liverpool seems to be a grip of retro fever, this quartet firmly declaring their love of things 60s with a debut album, All Years Leaving (Echo), that is so enamoured of its influences there's times when they sound like The La's singing Bob Dylan. Positively dripping with jangling guitars, folk psychedelia and harmonicas,  The Beatles, Byrds and Neil Young add to the reference points on their musical map to produce an album that may be built upon plagiarism (When This River Rolls Over You is their It Ain't Me Babe) and emulation but which is impossible not to want to hug as nasal voiced (and rather talented songwriter) Howie Payne launches into the 12 string ringing Here She Comes Again, Outside Your Door (which borrows the cascading melody of Lennon & McCartney's Rain and filters it through Bob and McGuinn),  the acoustic It's Only Everything, the arms-linked beat pop of I Need You and the unashamed Fab Fours of The Love You Give and The Way She Does.  Derivative maybe, but in the finest way possible.

Although this is actually Ezio & Booga's Songwriters Festival debut, they're regular visitors around these parts having built up a sizeable audience for their warm Van Morrison influenced acoustic folk soul. Last year's The Making of Mr Spoons may have been smoother than previous outings, but with things like Everybody Forgets Sometimes, Mermaid Song, Shadowboxers and The Same Mistake also their strongest set yet and, with the current revival of easy listening there seems no reason why they shouldn't finally enjoy their long overdue chart success. Support from rather good local songsman Chris Tye.

Recently named  Best International Female Performer at the Irish World Newspaper Awards, although she'll no doubt be throwing in old favourites such as the evergreen A Woman's Heart,  McEvoy's over here to promote her long awaited follow up to Yola. Reteamed with pianist Brian Connor (who'll be with her on the tour), as the title suggests Early Hours (Market Square) is a more melancholic folk and jazz-blues affair steeped in whisky breath and cigarette smoke as she sings of absent friends, recalls childhood days and pays tribute to those coping with loss and loneliness or, as on night air moods of  The DJ, helping to ease it. 
Never exactly a slouch in the songwriting stakes, she's surpassed herself here, setting the standard from the opening track with You'll Hear Better Songs Than This; inspired by Shakespeare's Sonnet No 14 and bookended with a snatch if The Shadow of Your Smile, haunted by a mournful sax it's a  pledging my love song that finds McEvoy sounding reminiscent of Mary Coughlan. 
The themes of reaching out to ask for or offer help is there again on I'll Be Willing, an old fashioned 40sish trumpet intro giving way to a strummed sunny shuffle that gradually builds into a slow Van Morrison gospel, and on At The End of the Day, a lazily soulful confession of the simple need to be loved. But aware there are times when the rocks upon which we depend turn stone faced, she also offers Ave Maria, a poignant piano tinkling tune that calls the church to task for no longer being there for those in need in times of trouble. 
Loss veins several tracks. Days Roll By is a rolling and tumbling, flurried guitar meditation on mortality and the way life seems to hurry past,  Make Mine A Small One (co-written with brother Kieran some Christmasses past) a wistfully reflective memory of times and people past, Slipping Away a subtly gypsyish simple guitar and piano song memorial to a friend whose death came as a relief from long suffering.
The album's three covers maintain the theme. Sung in Gaelic, unaccompanied save for a solitary harp like keyboard,  the traditional Anoch Cuain recalls the sinking of a boat off the coast of Ireland, Where Did My Life Go is Bert Jansch's lament for Sandy Denny (the second time McEvoy's recorded it) while one of the album's highlights is surely her slowed down, bluesy boozey version of  Chuck Berry's Memphis Tennessee, inspiringly reinterpreted into a wearily sad song by an estranged father denied access to his child. 
Which just leaves a couple of numbers, Driving Home From Butler's, a simple Celtic mist fiddle and piano instrumental, and Sail Me High which, despite its almost drone backing, spare arrangement and slow melody is, inspired by a paragliding holiday,  the album's most soaringly upbeat lyric, a song about losing track of the time and surrendering to the breeze. Well worth grabbing hold of the string of her kite. 

Together for getting on for four years, fronted by Damien Katkhuda the quartet made an opening splash with their debut EP The Magic Land of Radio and went on to earn glowing reviews with their appearance at last year's Glastonbury. Now they've come up with their first album, Diceman Lopez (Cooking Vinyl), a lovely but downbeat collection of storytelling songs about disillusion and death  hidden behind cascading melodies, classical piano, carnival folk influences, Eastern European colours, Mexican trumpets, fiddles, and a voice that variously calls to mind Lloyd Cole, Al Stewart, Nick Cave, West Mids cult singer-songwriter Dominic Silvani of Penelope's Web obscurity and, rather strangely on some of the slower numbers, even a vague hint of Jagger. 
Incredible Jack and The Tale of Old Rodriguez suggest a Scott Walker influence among the record collection and Chewing At My Soul offers some faux Americana bluegrass with fiddles scraping away while elsewhere the keynote is folk pop, breathily fragile on the soured lullaby Sleep Well Dear Friends, echoing Cohen's lugubrious misery on The Sweetest Silver, lurching through the slow mazurka of Fairground and strolling through fallen English autumn leaves  with the ghost of Nick Drake on Movers and Shakers. 
With its tales of losers and bone weary melancholics culminating in the welcome resignation of A Plague On This House, where everything rusts and decays, it's not an album or a gig to send you skipping off with sunshine in your heart, but those who already seduced by the yearning misery of, say Coldplay, will find Obi good company. 
 Support's provided by Walsall's Michael Clarke aka Clarkesville, whose debut album The Half Chapter marks him out as a promising new talent who knocks the obvious Dylan and Beatles/Crowded House influences into a finely collection of  American highway music veined with cynicism and contemplative romanticism, current single Spinning an early contender for summer anthem. 

Briefly looking to stake a claim as the new U2 back in the early 90s with their Songs For The Tempted and Man Alive albums, failing to secure chart success soon saw CBS lose interest in the Irish outfit and there was a silence of seven years before they re-emerged with 99's Classified Personal and last year's much acclaimed (in Ireland anyway) follow up Heaven & Earth (Future). 
A gently reflective album of scuffed sunshine and rain grown up pop with the odd slink into soulful beats (Silver & Gold) that embraces songs that range from begun (U Make Me Feel, Sunshine) or broken (March 11th, Someday Soon) love affairs to terrorism (Voice on the Radio) and belief (Gospel Choir), it never works up a sweat but you can always feel the pulse of the passion.
Although there's six of them on the album, the band's basically brothers Brendan & Declan Murphy who, in something of a Festival scoop will be performing here as an acoustic duo in the first and only UK date in over 10 years.

Finally arriving after having postponed their tour last year, the trio are riding high on the back of their third album, er Three. Their most commercially direct yet, addictive pop mixing it up with funk, ragga, hip hop and the inevitable lush ballads. Kicking off with the no nonsense swagger rock of  mid-period Madonna and a dash of  Boney M Hole In The Head, the sitar sprinkled crunch funk Whatever Makes You Happy  assures us they're in it for the music not the fame. 
Of course, a little global adulation and accompanying bank accounts probably won't go amiss. And much as they find such things vulgar there's little doubt the likes of Diane Warren's purring pop r&b ballad Too Lost In  You and the slow jazzy waltzer Sometimes are going to be proving soundtracks to a million or so burgeoning romances. 
They're at their best though when they stretch out and explore more challenging textures, the suitably stroppy rhythms of playground hip hop Twisted, a jabbing funkpop In The Middle and, most strikingly, Nasty Ghetto, a pulsing percussive beats predatory urban groove that seems to have been written with stage strobe lighting in mind, breaking into a snake charmer sway midway before the girls pull back into that Neneh Cherry thang.  It could have possibly done without the overproduced strings on Caught In A Moment which seems to be pitched high enough to scare cats, but in the ongoing power struggle for girl group dominance, the 'babes have firmly wrested back the crown. Here's your chance to pay homage. 

Having contributed vocals for the likes of Rae and Christian, Toronto born Rogers took off back home to put together her own debut album, holing up in a local studio to produce St Eustacia (Grand Central), an eleven track collection that's seen her dubiously hailed as the Canadian Dido. You can see the reference points, but there's little of the coffee table polish here and Beth Orton and perhaps Natalie Merchant might be more appropriate comparisons. With influences that range from the Allmans and Neil Young to Ani Difranco and Nina Simone it's a  cocktail of spare folk, electronics, acoustics, blues, madrigals, wintery  backwoods and urban evenings; a multi-layered affair that moves from the rich arrangements of Welcome to the stripped down bluesy moods of Odyssey or the Arabic textures that ripple through spacey folk Nothing Appeals To Me Here, a song that surely owes a debt to Seal's Kiss From A Rose. 
She can do bedsit power balladry (Joan, Mighty), skittish jazzy ska (Sidelines), noir funky grooves (Sum It Up) and trip hop beats (This Collective) with equal ease, the title track rounding things off with a reminder of that keening radio friendly dizzily dreamy rootsy pop that seems set to make her the darling of the nieces and nephews of all those Norah Jones fans. Get in on the ground floor now. 

More 60s garage retro, this time congregating in London after assorted misspent educations in Nottingham, Manchester, Birmingham and Bournemouth. Driven by Hammond organ and a love of the sort of r&b played by Them, the Animals and any number of Nuggets acts, they make their debut with Can You Feel It (Log Jam), a track already featured on Sky Sports 1 and the British ski team's DVD. Not a bad start, though whether there's enough steam left in the revival to carry them beyond this remains to be seen. 

Fronted by magnetic singer Martin Trimble, Lincoln's 22-20's take their cue from the early Stones and Jim Morrison with an urgent retro blues rock that's as fast and filthy as nature intended, the soundtrack to a bottle of bourbon and a wild woman. Last year's mini album 05/03 laid out their colours pretty much unequivocally, sweat positively pouring from the speakers as they lathered their leather jacketed way through such live dynamite as Messed Up, 22 Days and the incendiary stage explosion that is The Devil In Me. With their Heavenly debut single, Why Don't You Do It For Me, a primal swampy sexual mantra that melds Manfred Mann with Out Of Our Heads and a dose of Muddy Waters, due next month and a formidable live reputation already established their status as the UK's only legitimate answer to The White Stripes looks to be unstoppable. 
Sharing the tour bus will be widely tipped Worthing outfit Ordinary Boys who lean on such influences as The Jam and The Smiths and give them a good guitar thrashing, and Southampton quartet The Delays who, on the evidence of debut hit Long Time Coming and new single Nearer To Heaven, have their sights firmly set on the jingly guitars and

West Coast close harmonies that launched  such 60s British bands as The Rocking Berries, The Ivy League and The Hollies as well as American homegrown legends like The Byrds. 

Boy bands postponing tours is usually a sign they're on the way out, but arriving a few months after originally intended the So Solid Crew Jr show little sign of having come to the en of their shelf life.  Sophomore album Now Or Never builds on their debut with a confidence and musical progression that shows them to be more than marketing department's rap novelty quickie. It's heavy on the 70s, reworking T Rex's Children of the Revolution with, er, Revolution, pilfering the piamo melody from Commodores hit Easy on Stop, hitting a War cum Fatback Band groove on Ride and taking a leaf out of Queen's book with a classical piano and even a burst of  opera for Here 4 One.
Skipping over the blip in quality control that is the generic Westfive ballad Thinking About You they lay it down hard homie style for Flip Reverse and Shorty, showing they've been lending an ear to Eminem inbetween the homework.
Quite how long a 10 piece teenage hip hop group is sustainable in terms of  internal friction and ambitions let alone the financial maintenance remains to be seen, but for now at least Blazin'  Squad show no sign of burning out.