Saturday March 5

Thunder

Although they only ever once cracked the Top 20, forged from the ashes of Terraplane and taking inspiration from the likes of Deep Purple Danny Bowes, Luke Morley and the rest of the boys were one of the more commercially consistent of British rock bands back in the early 90s. They called it a day in August 2000, but then, solo projects not exactly having taken the world by storm, got back together two years later. Having not done too badly for a band with no record deal while also maintaining Bowes and Morley’s side project, having recently scraped back into the Top 40 with I Love You More Than Rock ‘N’ Roll, they’ve now released their second own label comeback album, The Magnificent Seventh (STC).

While not exactly living up to the title, it gets in and does the job efficiently enough, doing the Whitesnake bluesy rock swagger and ensuring there’s plenty of catchy melodies to go with the riffs. As standard it pretty much divides itself between the strutting rockers such as The Gods of Love (which David Coverdale might even be convinced he wrote), Amy’s On The Run and air punching Fade Into The Sun and the band’s ballad side evidenced by Bryan Adams meets Bon Jovi acoustic anthem surger I’m Dreaming Again and bluesy workout Together or Apart.

There’s nothing overly fresh or original, certainly not the lyrics or regulation rock solos, but they do what they do with sufficient polished competence to keep them ticking over on the mid range venue circuit for a while yet.

 7.30pm, £18.50, Carling Academy. Mike Davies

back to top of page

---

Sunday March 6

Clayhill

Formerly frontman for the ill-fated Sunhouse whose rootsy blues work regularly graced the films of Shane Meadows but rarely the public’s record collections, dust n gravel voiced singer Gavin Clark now shares a band with Beth Orton collaborator Ted Barnes and Ali Friend of Red Snapper, the music leaning more towards the rainy days end of the soul-folk-rock spectrum once charted by Talk Talk.

Following on from well received acoustic mini album debut Cuban Green, the gig serves to launch full fledged follow up Small Circle (EastSleep), another collection of musically forlorn songs of the humdrum and humanity and similarly drenched in moods of broken relationship narcotic desolation (the minimalism aches of Afterlight and End Refrain) and relative optimism and acceptance (Even Though, new single Moon I Hide, the brass punctuated Alpha Male). Occasionally they even look past the clouds and find the sun shining down, evidenced here with the uplifting Grasscutter getting a fully arranged reprise from the mini album and made it through the rain launch single Northern Soul.

Opening proceedings are Brighton’s jangling strumalongers The Tenderfoot, essentially an outlet for singer-guitarist Darren Moon and his lolloping folksy indie pop reminiscent of such lo fi heroes as Hefner and the Gorkys. They’re trailing Vale Industrial, a summery debut mini album that’s managed to find itself a home at Sony despite the lack of anything that suggests they’ll be coining it in for the label yet awhile.

Still, occasionally evocative of Teenage Fan Club, its dreamily sung tinged despondent groove has its pleasures, most notably on the jaunty leafy finger picking folksiness of If You’be Got Nothing Nice To Say Don’t Say Anything At All, the offkey bounce In The Long Run and the splendidly languid Our Smoking Friends.

7.30pm, £7. Glee Club. Mike Davies

back to top of page

---

Sunday March 6/Monday March 7

Westlife

Bad enough for Jamie Cullum to be crowned the new king of swing, but do we really need boy bands trying to climb aboard the Michael Bublé bandwagon? Apparently having convinced themselves that an ability to croon dreamily lilting love songs that might otherwise find their way into Daniel O’Donnell’s career and do a half decent cover of Uptown Girl qualifies them as to take a tilt at Rat Pack sing n standards, they’ve recorded Allow Us To Be Frank.

Depressingly it’s sold truckloads, but one likes to think not to any household old enough to have actually heard of Sinatra and possessed of a modicum of musical self-respect. If the album sleeve makes for grim reading knowing that they’ve tackled the likes of Fly Me To The Moon, Mack The Knife, That’s Life, Let There Be Love and I Left my Heart In San Francisco (which has nothing to do with the Rat Pack years whatsoever), the actual experience of sitting through them is much much worse.

Slickly arranged and orchestrated perhaps, but the boys simply have no feel for the songs whatsoever and are, quite simply, not sufficiently accomplished enough vocalists to try and impersonate Nat King Cole. As the truly painful Clementine demonstrates. not only are they no Bobby Darin, they’re no Kevin Spacey either.

Doubtless the place will be packed with those who, knowing no better, think this is classy sophistication that really does recapture those Vegas years. Hopefully though the performances will be drowned out by the sound of Frank spinning in his grave.

And as if the chance to miss hearing them murder Summer Wind wasn’t incentive enough to arrive late, the support act is Russian R&B diva Alsou whose frighteningly mistitled debut album Inspired is being trailed by Always On My Mind, not a cover of the Pet Shop Boys song but a thuddingly dull disco number that sounds like a particularly bad Donna Summer reject.

7.30pm, £27.50. NEC. Mike Davies

back to top of page

---

Monday March 7

The Raveonettes

Though headlining the Jim Beam tour, this doesn’t actually tie in with anything new from Denmark’s pastiche boy girl retro pop duo Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo. However with new album Pretty In Black due in May and first single Love In A Trashcan out in April, this should provide an early showcase of tracks like Seductress Of Burns, My Boyfriend's Back and Here Comes Mary for those advance orders.

And they will, of course, be digging deep into reminders of last outing Chain Gang Of Love where The Velvets and Jesus & Mary Chain meet The Dixie Cups and Ronettes in a Spectorised churn of feedback and fuzzy jingling guitars. Candy dipped psychedelic bubblegum at its chewiest fun.

Joining them for the tour are Dogs, a bunch of Blur wannabees whose current single, She’s Got A Reason sounds like the spoken bit of Parklife having been fed through a Sex Pistols chorus hook. And, completing the tour bus quota are Cooper Temple Clause-alikes The Boxer Rebellion who’ll be providing an early look at their own debut album, Exits, due in April and upcoming single All You Do Is Talk.

 7.30pm, £8.50, Carling Academy 2. Mike Davies

back to top of page

---

Monday March 7

Ray Lamontagne

The sandpapery voiced New Hampshire born singer-songwriter pretty much filled the place last time round on advance word of mouth alone. Having shown what he can do, expect the doors house full signs to be up early. He’s back to give another stir to Trouble (Echo), a debut album of soul n roots songs of love’s healing, heartache and human concern that

happily acknowledges the influences of Van Morrison (, the title track new single), Dylan (Hannah), Ted Hawkins (Hold You In My Arms), Otis Redding (Shelter), Stephen Stills (How Come, Forever My Friend), Loudon Wainwright (Burn), and Neil Young (Narrow Escape).

Intimate, dustily world weary Americana blessed with a lived in voice that could make rocks weep, if you’re looking for quick comparisons, then David Gray and Damien Rice would probably be convenient reference points, but even they would be hard pressed to approach the trembling emotion and stark beauty at the heart of Narrow Escape, the bruised and shaken love of Jolene or the aching lullaby that is All The Wild Horses. Arrive early.

8pm, £8.50, Glee Club. Mike Davies

back to top of page

---

Monday March 7

Sondre Lerche

Out of Bergen, hotbed of Norwegian musical cool after spawning both Royksopp and Kings of Convenience, Lerche made an impressive bow over here a couple of years back with his Faces Down album and the hints of early Bowie and Al Stewart to such folksy pop numbers as Suffused With Love and the strong shades of Bacharach and Cole Porter evident on Modern Nature and Dead Passengers.

He’s back now with Two Way Monologue (Virgin), a more sophisticated but less immediate collection of dreamily melancholic pop that could have come from the score of some 60s Paris romance movie. Reminiscent perhaps of Prefab Sprout spliced with a touch of Nick Drake and, on Wet Ground in particular, Brian Wilson, it’s designed to be languid though, just to keep the blood flowing it also take off into jazzy grooves with It’s Our Job and the relaxed Steely Dan feel of Days That Are Over.

The awkward and often unintentionally surreal English lyrics don’t bear listening to too closely ("I'm optionless and turkey-free and blind," just one choice nugget), and you have to wonder if Lerche’s swoonsome swing might not verge on the slumbersome in the live setting, but I think it’s probably worth taking the risk.

7.30pm, £8, Bar Academy. Mike Davies

back to top of page

---

Tuesday March 8

Lemon Jelly

For their last album Fred Deakin and Nick Franglen included a sample of Enn Reitel doing a children’s nursery rhyme and actor John Standing reeling off a list of towns, cities and countries. For their new one, ‘64-’95 (XL), they’ve taken a sample per track from favourite records dating between 1964 and 1995. Thus, for example, Only Time has a half-speed John Rowles singing If I Only Had Time and If Stay With You makes use of Gallagher and Lyle’s I Wanna Stay With You while elsewhere there’s metal merchants Masters of Reality, R&B star Terri Walker and, on the closing Go, even William Shatner.

Processed into hypnotic Jellied dance grooves that run the gamut from the menacing psychedelic industrial throb of Come Down On Me and the dreamy pop of Make Things Right to the techno of The Slow Train and the Euro bombast that is The Shouty Track. On disc things have a tendency to run on a considerable way past their interest limits, but in the live setting such extended ambience can only serve to further the euphoria.

7pm, £15, Carling Academy. Mike Davies

back to top of page

---

Tuesday March 8

Cherryfalls

Making an early bid for the stadium swaying anthem crown of 2005, the London boys are about to release what could prove this year’s Yellow in the shape of new unrequited love song single My Drug. That should take pride of place in tonight’s set, ably surrounded by material from upcoming debut album Winter/Winter (Island) that’s already drawn assorted comparisons to U2, Ryan Adams and Buffalo Tom.

Certainly the likes of rattle along indie chugpops In Your Arms Again and Standing Watching and the lighters aloft balladeering moments of a chiming Buy Yourself A Dream, Mirror Smile, Stars Fill Your Eyes and live favourite El Pussy should swiftly seem them promoted to bigger stages in the wake of the inevitable new Keane reviews.

 7.30pm, £5, Bar Academy. Mike Davies

back to top of page

---

Wednesday March 9

The Mars Volta

Formed by former At The Drive-In members singer Cedric Bixler Zavala and guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez with the stated intent of tearing down musical limitation and pigeonholes, their debut album, De-Loused In The Comatorium rubbed together Fugazi, Zeppelin, Rush and Santana in a furious punk blues metal assault cut through with Latin r&b psychedelia. Inspired by the life and times of an artist who spent a week in a coma after overdosing on morphine and then committed suicide, it offered space jazz, blistering prog rock, screaming riffs and narcotic Eastern blues. Now they’re back with Frances The Mute (Universal) and in no less uncompromising a mood for another quasi concept album, this time inspired by the story of a man searching for his biological parents, written up in a diary found by Jeremy Ward, a former band member who died of a drugs overdose.

Dealing in themes of abandonment and addiction and fuelled by the in the moment response to Ward’s death, it’s ripe with electronic cacophony, spitting guitars, moody Santana-esque prog salsa work outs, battering percussion, jagged rhythms, grand Rush-like prog soundscapes, post-rock blues wailing and fractured jazz but equally veined with full blooded rock melodies and haunting atmospherics.

It’s a heady concoction that, yet again, is almost impossible to soak in without repeated plays revealing the shadings and subtle musical connections between tracks, especially since L’Via L’Viaquez is twelve minutes, there’s two suites (Cygnus ..Vismund Cyngus and Miranda That Ghost Just Isn’t Holy Anymore) of over 13 minutes each while Cassandra Geminni clocks in a staggering 32 minutes of emotive power and wildly contrasting tempos and styles. It’s exhausting work and often lyrically pretentious and overblown, but it’s never predictable and certainly never less than exhilaratingly intense. God alone knows what its going to be like in the flesh, but they’re definitely going to find it a hard job to squeeze everything into even a two hour set. Especially if they take off on any jams.

7.30pm, £13.50, Carling Academy. Mike Davies

back to top of page

---

Wednesday March 9

Laura Veirs

Following the huge success of Troubled By Fire and Carbon Glacier, the geologist turned singer-songwriter’s semi-autobiographical second album, The Triumphs And Travails of Orphan Mae (Bella Union) has finally been given a UK release. As the title might suggests, it’s a concept work, constructed around the times and troubles of the titular Mae during the days of the Old West. It also provides the blueprint for the frosty American folk blues that she would perfect over the course of the next two albums, the sparse old school backwoods feel of the music and arrangements and the calm, detached spooked quality of her vocals occasionally underpinned by subtle use of electronics.

Given the formative explorations of the nascent sound, it’s inevitably not as strong as what would follow, her songwriting abilities still finding their feet. Even so, couched in wheezy pump organ and banjo, there’s much to savour in the likes of Jailhouse Fire where she torches the place after being half stripped by the local brutes, the trad sounding Black Eyed Susan with its echoes of Gillian Welch, a scuffed lurching Montague Road and the marvellous Raven Marching Band with its remarkable mix of celestial, apocalyptic and romantic imagery.

Though unlikely to contribute much to the set list, it affords a fascinating glimpse of her muse taking shape, and to underline why she’s one of the most exciting names working in Americana music today.

Opening the night will be LA’s Gina Villalobos introducing ears to Rock n Roll Pony (Laughing Outlaw), a debut album of swaggering alt-country that’s had her favourably compared with Lucinda Williams and hailed, rather over-enthusiastically, as the best voice in country-rock. She’s not that good, at least not yet, but she certainly knows her way around the sort of ringing guitar chords that made Tom Petty and Roger McGuinn stars, the likes of the big building California, Not Enough, What I’d Give and the soaring big rock climax of Can’t Come Down custom built for highway cruising with the hood down. She does a darn fine rousing version of World Party’s Put The Message In The Box too,

She’s no slouch on the jukebox ballad moments either, the desert keening mood of We Got It Slow, pedal steel drenched lament Faded and the dusk and dust road shrug Trying To Find You all stand out moments. Well worth saddling up for.

7.30pm, £8.50, Glee Club. Mike Davies

back to top of page

---

Thursday March 10

Athlete

Not content with releasing potential single of the year with Wires, they’ve put in an early bid for the album trophy too. Building on the strengths of their Vehicles and Animals debut, Tourist (Parlophone) again conjures thoughts of Coldplay, Beck, Gomez, and, in Joel Potts’s vocal phrasings and timbre, Peter Gabriel. As with the single, it’s a generally forlorn, melancholic album, tinged with ennui and world weariness wrapped in lush but understated melodies that worm their way inside the brain and under the skin.

The jaunty Modern Mafia and If I Found Out with its gospel choir pick up the pace but generally mid tempo balladry dominates, Yesterday Threw Everything At Me a musical mirror of Wires, Chances, Trading Air and the bruised scuffed heart of Street Map all things of beauty. A couple of moments let the side down, the title track sometimes a little too reminiscent of Phil Collins for comfort, but when faced with such tumultuous emotional splendour as end of tether Twenty Four Hours and the epic swelling Half Light, their ascent to the mountain top is clearly unstoppable.

7.30pm, £14, Carling Academy. Mike Davies

back to top of page

---

Thursday March 10

Josh Rouse

Last time round he was singing the praises of 1972 with an album named for the year he was born, now he’s back with Nashville (Rykodisc), a similarly sun-kissed West Coast burst of nostalgia written in a bittersweet love letter farewell to his home for ten years after a broken marriage and a run in with alcohol.

Lyrically it’s a mix of downbeat and optimism, promise and disillusion, but with the sun managing to peek through even the clouds of end of relationship trilogy My Love Has Gone, Saturday and Sad Eyes. Musically Rouse makes no bones of acknowledging such influences as Eric Carmen, Paul Simon, David Gates, Boz Scaggs (on Why Won’t You Tell Me What) Carly Simon and, as a longtime fan, also The Smiths (Bigmouth Strikes Again specifically) on Winter In The Hamptons.

Maybe it’s having weights taken off him, but the album positively skips and shuffles with a light breeze even when he’s slipping into accusatory self-delusion on Streetlights, bubbling with emotional longing and insecurity on It’s The Nightime or recalling his two faced treatment of the weird but proudly dignified girl at school on Middle School Frown.

It may not be quite up to the standard of 1972, but sounding deceptively inconsequential while veined with palpable heartache and wistful regrets, it’s still a gorgeous helping of intelligent soft pop that, fleshed out by gems from the repertoire, promises to make for a rather splendid night out.

7.30pm, £13, Wulfrun Hall. Mike Davies

 back to top of page

---

Friday March 11

Mercury Rev

Shimmering spacey splendour comes to town, floating in on chemical clouds with Jonathon Donahue and company making their first visit since the release of The Secret Migration (V2), the considerably more euphoric sequel to All Is Dream.

If you weren’t camped out at your local record store to get your hands on this the moment it reached the racks, then it’s probably pointless extolling the pastoral New York joys, the quasi-mythical themes and images, or the dreamy cosmic melodies to be found within.

Those converted to the Rev ecstasies will however, be irradiated by the graceful intensity of the layers of guitars, the transcendent piano, the soaring crescendos and epic grandeur swirling through the likes of First-Time Mother’s Joy, Diamonds, Secret For A Song, The Climbing Rose or the Spector inclined In A Funny Way.

Some have winged that the band have become a little complacent, content to remain within their well defined parameters. But, if that means they continue to make such dreamy, dark beauty as Black Forest or the psychedelic kaleidoscope of Across Yer Ocean, then long may their repeat button continue to function. Embrace and fly.

6.30pm, £15. Carling Academy. Mike Davies

back to top of page

---

Friday March 11

Paul Curreri/Devon Sproule

Curreri’s a 28 year old Virginian singer-guitarist much touted by Kelly Joe Phelps with whom he shares a feeling for lazy back porch rural blues, keenly evidenced by current album The Spirit of the Staircase (City Salvage Records) where his warm, lived-in voice curls like woodsmoke around a bunch of reflective songs that serve to reaffirm his faith in the music that first inspired him to pick up a guitar and the humanism that says light will always shine through. Playfully ambling and quietly thoughtful alike, hearing him pick and sing his way through Middledrift’s lament and Something Comes should put a spring in your step.

He’s joined by labelmate fellow Virginian, occasional collaborator and wife to be Sproule (who provided the inspiration for his Songs For Devon Sproule album) who, aside from joining him for a few numbers, will be spotlighting her own Upstate Songs on which he also plays guitar. An album of country blues hued folk-pop that conjures thoughts of Victoria Williams and Michelle Shocked on self-penned nuggets such as the marvellous traditional sounding Plea For A Good Night’s Rest, the subtly electric shaded bluesy melancholy of Should Have Been Snow and the violin enhanced Tristan and Isolde as well as her jazzy scat treatment of the standard My Baby Just Cares For Me.
The names may be unfamiliar here as yet and chances are the gig’s not going to be too oversubscribed but this evening of solo slots and shared stage should go some way to ensuring the word spreads enthusiastically enough to ensure a return visit to a fuller house.

8pm, £6. Glee Club. Mike Davies

Sunday March 13

Engineers

Somewhere between showgazing and Brian Wilson with hints of Mercury Rev, the London quartet’s self-titled debut album (Echo) has been earning them a wealth of new big things accolades. So laid back and fluffy as to make Air seem like Motorhead, numbers such as Said And Done, last year’s shimmering cosmic floating single Home, the current slow rising dreamy wash of Forgiveness, the slightly folk tinged How Do You Say Goodbye? and the delicate trippy narcotic swirls of Come In Out Of The Rain all enfolding you in the arms of their gentle hush. They spread their wings and fx pedals into sonic tempests towards the end of the seven minute One In Seven, but otherwise this is designed to massage your temples not crush them.

7pm, £6, Bar Academy. Mike Davies

back to top of page

---

Sunday March 13

The Wonderstuff

Back and thriving after the initial seasonal reunions and now hung around the core membership of Malc Treece and Miles Hunt, this takes another trip round the nation’s motorways on behalf of current album Escape From Rubbish Island (IRL) where Hunt parades his cock rock influences (the title track struts like the Stones), love of the Beatles (new single Bile Chant borrows from George Harrison's Within And Without You) and growing fondness for Americana.

Both very much in the classic Stuffies mould and, in the moody Eastern-flavoured Head Count and the fabulous Celtic hued anthemic ballad Love's Ltd, it’s far beyond anything the old line up could have attempted.

The usual sharp, biting lyrics and contrasting mix of self-assertiveness and self-criticism (Better Get Ready For A Fist Fight, You Don't Know Who, Was I Meant To Be Sorry, ) are present and correct while if anything Hunt's melodies have grown even stronger over the years, producing what's arguably the best thing he's done since the band's debut. Of course, it should also be said that his borrowings have become a lot cockier, Another Comic Tragedy sounding not a million miles away from Aztec Camera's Somewhere In My Heart! And, I don’t have to remind anyone, they’re a bloody great live band too.

7.30pm, £16.50, W’hampton Civic Hall. Mike Davies

back to top of page

---

Sunday March 13

 Bright Eyes

When you release two totally dissimilar sounding independent label singles from two simultaneously released albums and not only does one of them go straight to the top of the American charts, but the other goes in at No 2, then you can pretty much smile and reckon you’ve probably arrived on the music scene with something of a splash. Not that Conor Oberst is exactly some wet behind the ears newcomer. At 24 he’s been making music and writing songs for 11 years, formed his own Saddle Creek Records and first caught everyone’s attention three years back with concept-album Lifted, or The Story Is In The Soil, Keep Your Ear To The Ground.

Fronting a fluid line up that swells and shrinks to suit the occasion, he’s had his songs featured on The OC, he’s dated Winona Ryder, he hangs out with Joaquin Phoenix, joined Springsteen on the Vote For Change tour and been regularly hailed as the new Dylan. His songs, frequently picking away scabs of self-loathing and lighting paths out of adolescent angst, have become anthems for young America while his albums have captured the ears of both the rootsy Americana audience (Emmylou Harris sets the seal of approval by duetting) and those drawn to more electropop tones.

The former’s marvellously packaged on I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning, the album from which came the plaintive Lua with Oberst’s hushed and bruised voice meditating on a collapsing relationship. A generally stripped back, acoustic strummed affair that evokes the Dylan days of the Greenwich Village protest 60s on the opening At The Bottom of Everything, it rolls along on honky tonk pedal steel on Train Under Water, mixes social comment and relationship observations on the spare Land Locked Blues, builds from bedsit broken heart acoustic gloom to raging storms with Poison Oak, picks its way through optimism on First Day of My Live and cranks up the band to make the Dylanish train rhythmed Another Travellin’ Song sound exactly as you’d expect from the title. And he leans on Beethoven for the passionate closer Road To Joy.

Meanwhile, over in the Digital Ash in A Digital Urn corner, he’s letting his more experimental side find _expression, the chugging synth-folk pop No 1 hit Take It Easy (Love Nothing) surrounded by tracks that involve atmospheric electronic noise, angular rhythms, and samples on songs that plumb even more haunted depths than its companion piece.

Arc of Time sounds like Marc Bolan working with Depeche Mode and I Believe In Symmetry is noisy scratchy 80s electropop but, with an intro that recalls Don McLean, Oberst’s folk sensibility still underpins the album and whatever contemporary textures he etches them with, the fact remains that it’s the songs that shine through.

He’s set himself one hell of bar to live up to but, as this undoubted sell out gig will demonstrate, the man is clearly more than capable of enduring greatness.

Support comes from Rilo Kiley, a jangling indie pop LA outfit fronted by Jenny Lewis who’s clearly listened to a few Pretenders and Stevie Nicks records in her day. Following on from their More Aventurous album earlier this year, they take their assault on UK ears a step further with its first single, the irresistible guitar rush and tumble sex pop of Portions For Foxes. The hunt is on.

7.30pm, £12.50, Wulfrun Hall. Mike Davies

back to top of page

---

Tuesday March 15

Pete Williams

Fresh from the recent Bureau reunion/belated album launch shows, Williams now does his own solo thing to spread the word on his debut single, the French Gypsy tango sounding debut single Black. You can hear the old influences still in there, but it’s far from rehashing what’s gone before, coming paired with the Eurocabaretish Trust Me and a somewhat Costello like soulier I Said I’d Be The 1 with its clattering percussion and drowning piano. Unlikely to translate into any major new career perhaps, but nice to have him around.

8pm, £7. Glee Club. Mike Davies

back to top of page

---

Tuesday March 15

The Chemical Brothers

Opening up with the urgent social protest comment hip hop of Galvanize featuring Q-Tip and a Middle Eastern string sample, Push The Button (Virgin) is ample testimony that the Chems remain a potent, pioneering force in contemporary dance. Reuniting with Tim Burgess for hook laden electronica workout The Boxer, linking arms with Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke on the weebles n funk throbber Believe, dribbling Latin flavours into Shake Break Bounce and Hold Tight London, doing the roboman with The Big Jump, sounding all Occidental gone psychedelic spag for Marvo Ging and hitting the Glastonbury bliss head groove for the instrumental Surface To Air. Would you like to come inside, they tempt. You’d be a fool to resist.

Support’s provided by New York trio Secret Machines who pursue their claim to 2005 big things with current album Now Here This Is Nowhere flaunting their psychedelic and prog rock colours and an ability to swing from Spiritualised meet Pink Floyd fragility (The Leaves Are Gone) and delirious pop rush (Sad And Lonely) to the Kraut rock title track and the My Bloody Valentine reborn of Road Leads Where It’s Led.

7.30pm, £20, W’hampton Civic Hall. Mike Davies

back to top of page

---

Wednesday March 16

Erasure

Remembering just how many classic electropop anthems Vince Clarke and Andy Bell have notched up in the course of their career makes listening to current album, Nightbird (Mute) an even more depressing experience.

A collection of nocturnal odes to romance, bruised or joyful, it does the familiar Erasure formula of uplifting dripping melodies and Bell’s knowing camp but the majority of the songs simply don’t measure up, All This Time Still Falling Out of Love and new single Don't Say You Love Me sounding like something OMD might have rejected. There’s a couple of half decent moments with Breathe and Let's Take A Rocket To The Moon, but mostly this will just have to scrabbling back through the collection to listen to the likes of Chorus and Run To The Sun again. Leave your spangly trousers at home, they’ll only show how much sparkle the boys have lost.

Support’s forber Dubstar singer Sarah Blackwood and Alan McGee’s missus, better known as Client, an electronica duo with a thing for stewardess style uniforms and Human League fetish, but not, in the light of depressingly successful single Pornography, the songs or the wit to match.

7pm, £22.50, W’hampton Civic Hall. Mike Davies

back to top of page

---

Friday March 18

Ani DiFranco

Nominated for a brace of Grammys for her stripped down solo album, last year’s Educated Guess gathered together songs and spoken poems for a smokey, jazzy-bluesed, nakedly raw trawl through the response to being ‘knocked off my platforms’ with the break-up of her marriage, working through lack of self-worth on Swim and the emotional aftershock rippling through the likes of Bodily and You Each Time but eventually emerging reburnished in her own identity.

She returns now with her 19th, Knuckle Down (Righteous Babe), a return to fuller band sound and collaborative work, produced by Joe Henry and, according to American reviews, again examining herself and her emotional recovery in the wake of the divorce and her father’s death but bringing warmth with the use of strings, Studying Stones shading the sound towards Americana and Seeing Eye Dog taking a cue from the clanky shuffle of Tom Waits. She’s performing solo here, so the nerve endings should be fully exposed.

8pm, £14.50. Warwick Arts Centre. Mike Davies

back to top of page

---

Saturday March 19

Judas Priest

Back together at 15 years and, it has to be said, not entirely brilliant separate careers, the definitive line up of Rob Halford, KK Downing, Glenn Tipton and Ian Hill have recruited Scott Travis on drums (Dave Holland being somewhat inconvenienced after being found guilty of sexually abusing a teenage boy with special needs) and knocked together comeback album Angel of Retribution (Sony).

Since these projects usually tend to be embarrassing affairs with washed out rockers trying to live off past glories, expectations weren’t high but the good news is that, opening in thundering form with Judas Rising, this is up there with their vintage days of Hell Bent For Leather, Stained Class and Sin After Sin, Downing and Tipton’s guitars on blistering form, Halford’s voice in classic shape. There’s the usual litany of demons and angels, hell, salvation and the like littering the lyrics, but then it wouldn’t be heavy metal or Priest if there weren’t.

But, while clearly rooted in old school metal, there’s a strong melodic sensibility at work here too. Listen to the anthemic Worth Fighting For, easily one of the best things they’ve recorded and unexpectedly veined with a Bon Jovi touch of country. Elsewhere the driving welter of Deal With The Devil and Demonizer tower tall, while Angel finds them in delicate acoustic guitar ballad mode for likely to prove a live highlight and the album closes in the grinding dark hued epic prog folk-metal Loch Ness. Although they could build a crowd storming set out of this album alone, you can be pretty sure that they’ll be marking the reunion with some golden moments too, Breaking The Law, Living After Midnight and, hopefully their classic version of Diamonds and Rust, all on the agenda. Time to get out those leathers, chains and studs again, as the opening track says, the Priest are back and this is Judas Rising.

7.30pm, £29.50, NEC. Mike Davies

back to top of page

---

Saturday March 19

Good Charlotte

Maryland's answer to Blink 182 should have considered themselves lucky to have done so well out of overly hit album The Young & The Hopeless with its, chiming guitars, ska, bubblegum punk melodies and the usual high school litany of girls, boys, good times, bad times, being misunderstood, broken families and, suicidal tendencies.

But that was a masterpiece compared to follow up The Chronicles of Life and Death. Opening with the portentously titled mock Brecht/Weill of Once Upon A Time:The Battle of Life and Death, the Charlottes clearly wants to be taken seriously. A concept about, er, life and death no less. Pity then that their abilities and ambitions are so many worlds apart. Run of the mill pop punk (Walk Away, Mountain) shares CD space with a painfully bad stab at hip hop on I Just Wanna Live, the right on we care for the world pompous bombast of We Believe, stabbing violins lacing Predictable, and the furrowed brow sub Radiohead dirge that is In This World (Murder). "Tell me the truth, even if it hurts me’ sings colourless vocalist Joel Madden on The Truth. Ok, it’s crap.

Support comes courtesy of Boston punk-pop crew The Explosion arriving proud parents of major label debut Black Tape (Virgin), a flurry of alienation, angst and anger channelled into three minute bursts of flying guitars and whipped up chorus friendly melodies. There’s nothing new about their man the barricades fists in the air stormers - they occasionally recall The Alarm - other than a hint of al-country impregnating several of the melodies (Grace and Hollywood Sign) while Heavyweight leans on pure 60s pop. They parade social slogans and issues a little too much like commercial flags but you can’t deny they do it with ridiculously infectious verve.

7.30pm, £15, Carling Academy. Mike Davies

Sunday March 20

Equation

Although they made a bit of a splash in America, despite excellent albums Equation have always fared better here in their individual components than as a band. Formed by Lakeman brothers Sam, Sean and Seth with Kathryn Roberts and Cara Dillon (replacing Kate Rusby) and rooted in traditional English/Celtic folk influences but not averse to pop and jazz touches too, there’s been several line-up changes over their 10 year career. With only Kathryn and Sean remaining from the founding days, they’re joined by current members James Crocker on guitar and the rhythm section of Darren Edwards and Iain Goodall for this anniversary jaunt that’ll doubtless range far and wide over their excellent repertoire.

 8pm, £9. mac. Mike Davies

 back to top of page