Thursday March 1

Eagles of Death Metal

Still best known as the only consistent ingredient of Queens of the Stone Age, Josh Homme warrants a musical family tree all of his own, what with his days as part of Kyuss and collaborations with the likes of Screaming Trees, Foo Fighters, PJ Harvey and UNKLE.

This is his joint side project with occasional QotSA guitarist and childhood mate Jesse Hughes, formed back in 1998 their debut album, Peace Love Death Metal, appearing six years later.

They’re back again plugging Death By Sexy (Sony), cited influences that include T Rex, the Stones (right down to the sleeve parody), Little Richard, and James Brown very much in playful evidence on a set of 70s blues rock flavoured songs about girls, sex, girls, rock n roll and girls.

Opening with the swaggering I Want You So Hard where Eddie Cochrane meets Canned Heat and Marc Bolan, guitars are cranked up and tongues are crammed into cheeks as they pastiche the Kinks doing the Stooges on Cherry Cola, bang out an AC/DC riff for Poor Doggie, serve up cod country in whistle along Bag of Miracles, rockabilly on Chase The Devil and T Rex bluegrass slide with Solid Gold. No prizes for guessing what they attempt on Eagles Goth.

It’s all a bit of ramshackle mess really, but the guys are clearly having fun playing out their rock n roll fantasies and there’s no reason to think audiences won’t as well.

Support comes from The Spores, the oddball LA electro-slacker pop brainchild of bassist/writer Molly McGuire who uses seven hand puppets to perform her songs live. If this sounds like some performance art gimmick designed to distract you from noticing how thin the material is, then think again. Debut album Imagine The Future is packed with catchy, hook niggled tracks like Don’t Kill Yourself with its loud fuzzy guitars, the grunge electro Heat Seeker and a throbbingly funky blues Moonshine Down where Bjork meets Yello and Nine Inch Nails while reports of the live show, as rocking as it is theatrical, make it sound like something you really shouldn’t miss.

 7.30pm. £11. Carling Academy

Friday March 2

Inspiral Carpets

Still going strong some 20 years (minus a brief hiatus before reforming) after they first surfaced as part of the Madchester scene, Clint Boon hammering out the organ riffs and Tom Hingley taking care of the singing. They may not have bothered the charts since 1995 but classic tracks such as This Is How It Feels, Dragging Me Down and I Want You remain firmly lodged in the consciousness. With Keep The Circle, a download only album of singles B sides and rarities that include their first ever recording, Garage Full Of Flowers, available to coincide with the dates, expect a nostalgic night of fan favourites and, quite possibly, a sprinkling of new material for a long overdue follow up to Devil Hopping.

 6pm. £17.50. Carling Academy 2

Friday March 2

The Bees

Sauntering out from the Isle of Wight once more, the artful sextet arrive to entertain the natives with a selection of delights from their rather fine third album, Octopus (Virgin). Gone are the cover versions and eccentric instrumentals, and in their place come a platter of fine pop confections designed to put smiles on faces and skips in the walk. Who Cares What The Question Is? sets the musical frivolity mood from the opening with what could be best described as sounding like a cross between the Beatles and a circus jugband while Love In The Harbour takes Crosby, Stills & Nash to sea shanty land, Left Foot Stepdown brings mariachi brass and dub bluebeat to the party, Got To Let Go heads down New Orleans for a calypso jazz and Texas ska evening with Madness while Listening Man invents reggae gospel.

As you’ll gather, it’s as inventive as it is frolicsome, (This Is For The) Better Days sloshing around with soul folk, The Ocularist singing in Spanish to fingerpicking guitar and samba rhythm and Hot One! ringing out to the Merseysound of fire bells. Quite unlike anyone else around at the moment, they’ll bring you out in hives of happiness.

7.30pm. £10. Medicine Bar, Custard Factory

Saturday March 3

Po’ Girl

They’ve gained a member since their last tour, Awna Teixeira joining Diona Davies, Allison Russell and (barely catching breathing space between Be Good Tanya album and tour) Trish Klein for new album Home To You (Diesel Motor).

The sound’s not much changed though, still a down home mood of old school American folk roots music served up with banjos, mandolins, fiddles and acoustic guitar, except there’s perhaps a bluesier taste here and there while the goodtimin’ Go On Pass Me By adds clarinet and brushed drums to marry opry and hot club jazz, Green Apples mixes together violin and trumpet and 9Hrs To Go even has a midsection rap.

The burnished blues of To The Angry Evangelist addresses perverted faith, guns and Bibles (that’ll be one for George W then) but for the most part this is very much a road album, full of songs about yearning to be back home (Drive All Night), Old Mountain Line), the regrets and cost of life on the road (Angels of Grace, Home To You) and the one night stands (Texas) loneliness can throw you into.

For all the fiddle and handclaps of Old Mountain Line, it’s a predominantly melancholic collection of songs in search of spiritual, emotional and physical salvation, though by the time the girls leave the stage few will be left buried under any dark clouds.

8pm. £11. Red Lion, Kings Heath

Saturday March 3

Charlotte Hatherley

Having now permanently signed off from the Ash roll call, their erstwhile rhythm guitarist embarks on a full solo career with the release of her second album, The Deep Blue (Little Sister). As cuts like I Want You To Know and Very Young show, she’s not ditched the punky bubblegum girlie pop of her debut but she has expanded her horizons, adding a spikier edge to the hook friendly numbers while exploring different musical shapes on songs such as the Kate Bushy Roll Over, the Mercury Rev psychedelic cosmic surfing prog Be Thankful, a folk veined rolling Again with its vague Oriental colours and the moodily atmospheric swirling clouds of Dawntreader.

It’s an interesting pointer to her future musical development with an eye on audiences beyond the three minute pop rush buyers, but while she can surely craft a well constructed and complex melody, if some of the material here is any indication she might want to consider finding herself a lyrical collaborator to offer some second opinions.

 6.30pm. £8.50. Carling Academy 2

Saturday March 3

Richard Swift

You’d be forgiven for overlooking Swift’s double album debut, The Novelist/ Walking Without Effort, released here to fulsome critical praise but little promotional fuss. However, there’s no excuse now for missing out on the follow-up, Dressed Up For The Let Down (Polydor) which sees him getting the big push designed to make the world aware of this multi-instrumentalist LA singer-songwriter. Playing everything himself save for strings and brass, the album’s actually an ironic reflection on his failed early career in the music biz and the rejection that prompted severe panic attacks. He should have nothing to panic over now other than where he’s going to stack the inevitable trophies and platinum discs this release should generate. Musically, his influences keep good company with lo fi forlorn numbers such as vaudeville sashaying new single Kisses For The Misses, The Songs Of National Freedom and the skratchy Buildings In America summoning comparisons to the likes of Nilsson, McCartney, Randy Newman, Badfinger and Van Dyke Parks while reviewers have been falling over themselves to call him the new Rufus Wainwright. Make a point of catching him in this intimate setting now, you can be sure such chances won’t come again.

 6pm. £9. Bar Academy

Saturday March 3

Alterkicks

Spawned in Liverpool, this five piece outside make no bones about playing big music in the U2 manner. New single Good Luck (b-Unique) has guitars pealing like church bells, drums beating along and singer Martin Stillwell climbing to the top of rock’s scaffolding to deliver the tumbling verses and chorus. Their upcoming debut album also bears witness to the diverse influences of Love and The Beatles on their sound and while those vocals can become a touch irritating after prolonged exposure, this closing gig of the tour promises to be the stepping stone to far bigger things later this year.

 10.30pm. £2. Barfly

Saturday March 3

Joan Baez

Along with erstwhile beau Bob Dylan, the pure voiced soprano is one of the few remaining activist icons from the protest movement of the 60s, so seeing her perform is more than just a concert; it’s like making contact with one of the 20th century’s most vital musical and socio-political movements. Her repertoire is as wide as it is influential, embracing her own potent songs, political and romantic, folk tunes and often seminal interpretations from the work of others, not least Dylan himself.

Her appearance fortuitously coincides with the reissue of her classic live album, Ring Them Bells (Proper), recorded at the Bottom Line in 1995 and long since deleted. It’s a stunning collection that sees Baez both performing solo on numbers that include Suzanne, The Band Played Waltzing Mathilda and an unaccompanied The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, and duetting with Janis Ian on Jesse, the McGarrigles on Willie Moore, Mary Black (Ring Them Bells), Mary Chapin Carpenter (the self-penned classic Diamonds And Rust) and The Indigo Girls for a cover of Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right.

For the reissue, they’ve unearthed a clutch of previously unreleased numbers too, among them Baez doing Dylan’s You Ain’t Going Nowhere and extra duets with both Carpenter (Stones In The Road) and The Indigo Girls (The Water Is Wide), making it an even more essential acquisition for those updating their collection or investing in a copy for the first time.

 8pm. £29.50. Warwick Arts Centre

Saturday March 3

Enter Shikari

A hardcore/screamo trance metal outfit from St Albans dedicated to making a brutal, shouty, ripped throat noise but with dance electronics rippling behind the guitar assault, they’re not easy to ignore, a fact underlined by their sky crushing appearance at the Download Festival. Following on from recent single OK, Time For Plan B, they continue the good work with Anything Can Happen In The Next Half Hour (Ambush Reality) where the clash between angelic soaring vocals and throat ripping shouts calls to mind a meeting between Yes and Napalm Death. An album follows later this month for those with ears and minds brave enough to stand it.

 7.30pm. £10. Wulfrun Hall

Sunday March 4/Monday March 5

Nine Inch Nails

Having let six years pass by between Fragile and With Teeth, Trent Reznor isn’t letting the grass grow under his feet. A mere two years on, he and the new nails are back with album number five, Year Zero (Island). Unfortunately, it’s not actually being released to coincide with the tour so, while news is that it features such portentous titles as Hyperpower, The Beginning Of The End, Survivalism, The Good Soldier and The Great Destroyer, there’s no advance word on what they sound like. Not that anyone’s expecting any radical musical departures from the usual hammering rhythms, spitting angst, nihilistic world views, and expletive riddled screaming hard rock. Though I daresay breath is being held to see if they’ve developed the disco pop dance of The Hand That Feeds and Only You any further. Samples will be duly paraded tonight, assuming Trent doesn’t have one of his hissy fits and sulk off into the wings.

7.30pm. £22.50. Carling Academy

Sunday March 4

Kristin Hersh

With a CV that includes stints leading both Throwing Muses and 50 Foot Wave, Hersh is now on her seventh solo album, Learn To Sing Like a Star (4AD), indisputably one of her best and most accessibly effective yet. Although her Michael Stipe collaboration on Your Ghost is the closest she’s likely to get to commercial acceptance (she’s only ever had one hit album in the UK, that 13 years ago), that doesn’t mean there’s not tracks here that don’t deserve chart favour, not least the opening In Shock or the closing rumbling Velvetish drone of The Thin Man.

Favouring acoustic guitar with the occasional electric explosions, sandwiched between she boils up abrasive menace (the chugging Day Glo), sugar n vinegar pop (Peggy Lee), bell chiming brooding indie folk rock (Winter), prowling sexuality (the hypnotic Wild Vanilla sounding like something REM might have concocted) and loping seduction (Sugarbaby), all with that husky blend of the feral and the innocent.

Steeped in songs of loss, grief and the strength to carry on, it swoops between the hushed and the raggedly raw, even allowing room for three instrumentals, of which the bluesy punningly titled Christian Hearse promises to offer a live highlight (alone as ever with just an acoustic guitar) alongside the spare emotional collapse of the folksily woven Vertigo.

This is something of a coup for the club, so expect the queues to be forming several days in advance, but the wait will be well worth it.

 8pm. £13.50. Glee Club

Sunday March 4

Athena

Just over a year since she played at Warwick on the back of her five song debut EP, the classically trained Anglo-Greek returns with a new album, Breathe With Me (Embraceable), albeit one that reprises two(Green Eyes, Eden) of the same tracks.

However, this time she’s dumped any Greek material in favour of a collection of English language songs that also move away from her folkier influences and into a more mainstream introspective confessional female singer-songwriter sound. The result rather tends to smooth things out into album that while melodic too often doesn’t stand out in an already overcrowded, similar sounding field.

That said, there’s moments that do inject a distinctive personality, potential single hit Pretty Eyes drawing on slow Greek dance rhythms, the moody Shades Of Grey evoking thoughts of Melina Mercouri, the slow swaying Wooden Horse (Troy, of course) again summoning those Baez comparisons and, backed by spare piano notes, the fragile, brittle Breathe Again showing what she can do with emotion when she strips it naked and bruised.

To be fair, the album grows with repeated listening and there’s indications that she’s taken criticism of a certain lack of warmth to heart, but hopefully she’s not done away with the more robust Greek dances of her live set otherwise the one note downbeat tone may well prove something of an endurance test.

7.45pm. £12.50. Warwick Arts Centre

Sunday March 4

Air Traffic

The Bournemouth boys didn’t overly impress with debut single Just Abuse Me, sounding not unlike early Supergrass with a barrelling piano and romping guitars. Matters didn’t improve with the follow up Never Even Told Me Her Name, the Supergrass reference points now with a smidgen of added Jam smears on a song that simply didn’t go anywhere and left nothing to mark its passing. Now comes single number three, Charlotte (EMI), which despite the line ‘your face, my place’, fails to suggest they’ve been misjudged. A totally forgettable piece of indie poprock with the singer doing some sort of Artful Dodger impression, it’s hard to imagine the album ever surfacing except as a tax loss.

 7.30pm. £6.50. Little Civic

Monday March 5

Shiny Toy Guns

An LA quartet who mix up electro rock and pretentiousness (“Shiny Toy Guns are weapons of sharpness, the words cut, the melodies run our blood” they proclaim) with emo hearts, having re-recorded and released their debut album We Are Pilots no less than three times in different cinfigurations,  they’re also either perfectionists, short on songs or not unwilling to milk the fans. There was even a rumour that singer Carah Charnow was actually the voice on the Paris Hilton album. As if!

They’re currently touring the UK to sharpen up album awareness, firing off  tracks like the emo yearning Chemistry Of A Car Crash,  the tumbling bright sunbeam Rainy Monday and the 80s synth pop with a bit of goth thrown in of You Are The One that sounds worryingly as though they’ve a Flock of Seagulls album among the Depeche and Duran collections. It’s all a bit polished, but the tinkling boy-girl Don’t Cry Out where Charnow and Chad Petree trade off Human League style is ample evidence that they’ve got some real bullets in the chamber. 7.30pm. £5. Barfly

Monday March 5

Mastodon

Every bit as heavy as the name suggests, the Atlanta riffmeisters took heavy metal by the throat with the relesase of last year’s Blood Mountain (Reprise), a thundering behemoth of brain crushing guitars, pulverising drums and lacerating vocals on numbers that mix up their time signatures and tempos while etching a lyric world of beasts and monsters. Leaping into the fray with The Wolf Is Loose, it cuts a swathe through any opposition with the likes of Sleeping Giant, Circle Cysquatch, the self-cannibalism Siberian Divide, prog-metal Capillarian Crest and current single, the fantastical blood boiler Colony of Birchmen.

Veining the Sabbath bedrock with streaks of jazz and psychedelia, they take no prisoners so you’d best have a ready supply of bandages for those bleeding ears and ringing skull. 7.30pm. £12. Wulfrun Hall

Monday March 5

The Twang

The latest flag wavers for the revival of the Birmingham scene, the five piece have managed to rack up seriously impressive support slots and sell out dates without even releasing a record. Now they finally take to the streets with their debut release, Wide Awake (b-Unique), a track which, with its surging guitar storms and urgent delivery recalls nothing less than the halcyon days of The Alarm. An album waits in the wings, and they’ll be pulling down the barricades tonight to showcase the material and show the buzz is about much more than mere hype. 7.30pm. £6. Little Civic

Tuesday March 6

Gruff Rhys

The Super Furry frontman leaves the other Animals back in the pen for this jaunt to plug his feathery winsome solo album Candylion (Rough Trade). For the non Welsh speakers among us it is, unlike his debut, sung in English (well, save for a couple of native tonguers and one - the lovely Con Carino - in Spanish), but otherwise it’s still a playful feelgood bubble of songs that embrace hints of European psychedelic pop, Spanish folk music, South American rhythms, country and lazy English folk-pop, mixing up lyrics of  political comment (Cycle of Violence) with a hymn in praise of archaeology (The Court of King Arthur).

Burnished with his woodsmoke voice, it’s all warm and fuzzy with things like the title track taking you away to the innocent childlike worlds of Blue Peter, Playschool and Teletubby land while Lonesome Words spirits you off to the High Sierra and Gyrru Gyrru Gyrru sounds like Donovan leading a beach campfire singsong.

Ambitiously, the last track, Skylon!,  is a 14 minute Velvet Undergroundish drone backed story of a bomb disposal expert and a highjacking that probably requires chemical assistance to sit through without fidgeting and which, one trusts, is unlikely to form part of what promises to be a kaleidoscopic and sweet smelling live set. 8pm. £11. Glee Club

 Tuesday March 6

Zox

The opening night of their UK tour, the Rhode Island outfit (named after the drummer, if you ask) are back to further boost awareness of The Wait (Side One Dummy), their  sophomore album which confoundingly mixes up ska-rock of a Two Tone persuasion with the sort of college folk veined rock of Counting Crows while also tipping the influence hat to The Clash and The Cure (most notably so on Can’t Look Down). They also prominently feature an electric violin, though disappointedly less so than on their debut.

 It makes for an interestingly schizophrenic brew, at times laid back in a summer stream with such numbers as Anything But Fine, the REM tinged Satellite or  the jazzy-blues Fallen, at others jerking around the floor to the urgent ska of Thirsty, pop-punk Carolyn, the big noise Big Fish and an almost emo inclined Bridge Burning or Spades. They’re probably not destined for greatness, but they’re certainly worth sparing an evening for while they’re around. 7.30pm. £5. Bar Academy

 Tuesday March 6

The Draytones

An Anglo-Argentinean trio with a love of classic 60s British pop even the trad-jazz of the 50s, upcoming debut album Forever On (1965 Records) makes no bones about musically referencing The Beatles (Time), garage pop bands like The Swinging Blue Jeans (new single Keep Loving Me) and The Kinks (Four Years). Indeed, anyone who’s ever sat at home pondering what Ray Davies might have done had he been able to team up with George Formby should probably lend an ear to Out Of This World.

Elsewhere the tinkling lullaby pop of Not Alone picks up the urchin Mersey pop baton of the LA’s while the plinckety Chas n Dave eel pie sway of Trafalgar Square was clearly dressed by one of the Carnaby Street retro brigade. Cute, but make sure you’re wearing the drainpipes. 8pm. £5. Sunflower Lounge, Smallbrook Queensway

Wednesday March 7

LCD Soundsystem

Essentially a vehicle musical multi-hyphenate discopunk banner waver James Murphy, anticipation has been feverish for his follow up to his eponymous debut of a couple of years back. It’s unlikely anyone’s going to be disappointed by Sound of Silver (EMI), not even when, on the title track, he sounds worryingly like Phil Oakey. Now in his mid thirties, Murphy’s making no pretence of being some hip young dance dude, which is why the reference points here tend to hark back to his formative influences in the form of Kraftwerk, Bowie (specifically invoked on Get Innocuous and the come down wearied melancholia of New York I Love You) and, on Time To Get Away and first single North American Scum, the jittery neurotic staccato funk of  Talking Heads. And on the pulsing All My Friends that’ll be Pink Floyd getting the nod as he sings about setting controls for the heart of the Sun while Roxy Music and the Beach Boys make out behind him while Us vs Them deliberately references the cowbell psychedelia of The Chambers Brothers classic Time Has Come Today as reinterpreted by an electro spasmed David Byrne. And my word, yes, he’s even awooh-ing on Watch The Tapes!

Hard to say quite how it’s going to all fall into place live, but both the shows and the album seem destined to be making early entries into the year’s best of lists. 7.30pm. £15. Carling Academy

 Tuesday March 6

Spider Simpson

Taking their name from the orchestra fronted by Johnny Favourite in Angel Heart, this Birmingham five piece have been together for three years, supporting Stereophonics and singer Adam Zindani getting six of his songs on the soundtrack of Global Heresy, a straight to DVD movie about a  rock band  directed by Ipcress File’s Sydney Furie and starring Peter O’Toole and Alicia Silvestone.  They went on to grab the ears of both Kerrang Radio and Dave Grohl who invited them to record the album in his LA studio with his own producer.

That’s due out sometime next year, meanwhile they make their single bow with Heavy Metal Machine/I’m So Tired (Rampant), two samples of riff driving high energy infectious rock n roll that sound, not too surprisingly, a bit like Foo Fighters. We’ll be hearing much more from them, mark my words.

They share the night with fellow local lads, My Alamo, a Moseley (by way of Wales) four piece with a fondness for big, noisy guitar muscle flexing alt rock and vocals that suggest things are on the edge of explosive meltdown. Last year’s debut single, 1994, swirled thought of Foo Fighter, an association that, throwing in a Nirvana nod,  continues with the circling melodies of follow-up, In The Blood  (Seventh Star) and bodes well for the incoming album. 7.30pm. £4. Barfly

 Tuesday March 6

Lily Allen

She may have upset a fair few people with her mouthy attitude and behaviour, but Keith Allen’s daughter seems to be holding on to the fans and the style mags with her songs about the ‘harsh realities of life’. Musically, if you’ve heard LDN or Smile, you know what you’re getting, Larndan ska pop as much in thrall to Chas n Dave as it is Madness with cynical songs about how blokes are a waste of time, going out on the pull, drugs and sexual frustrations.

Those who can be bothered to listen will suspect her record collection also features albums by the Spice Girls, Shampoo, Streets and even Kirsty MacColl while it’s hard not to think of Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String during the carnival intro to new single Alfie, a song about her stoner brother that comes on like a German oompah band knees up. Whether this mix of novelty and grittiness is enough to sustain interest through an entire gig is another matter.

Support comes from Inara George and Greg Kurstin aka The Bird And The Bee, a California duo whose eponymous debut Blue Note album reveals them as practitioners of Brazil tempered summery loungecore bossa nova pop with dance floor beats. No Astrid Gilberto, George’s fluttery smoke and sugar voice becomes a touch wearying over the course of 10 tracks and Kurstin’s jazzy arrangements too often feel like they’re being clever for the sake of it, but in small doses numbers like the electro flurried Again & Again, a peppy 60s pa pa-ing pop I Hate Camera and the tropical Bananaramaisms of the unbroadcastable single F***ing Boyfriend slip down with a chill Bacaradi. 7.30pm. £15. W’hampton Civic Hall

Thursday March 8

Bryan Ferry

It’s 34 years since Ferry had his first solo chart success with a Roxy Music rework of Dylan’s A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall. And now he’s finally got round to recording a whole album’s worth of Bob’s tunes with Dylanesque (Virgin). However, it all sounds as if they came from the same session, Ferry applying his familiar coolly mannered breath quivering delivery and much the same sort of Roxy Music kick beat strut pop arrangements, albeit occasionally coloured with wailing harmonica and pedal steel. Occasionally, he’ll shake up the original, as with If Not For You which gets a mildly choppy blues rework and a slowed down piano blues Gates of Eden, but for the most he sounds like he’s doing it all as a chore rather than a passion. Knocking On Heaven’s Door is rendered even more lifeless than its dying narrator while turning Positively 4th Street into a piano ballad drains it of all its bite. “You’ve got a lot of nerve” he sings, apparently unaware of the irony. It’s not bad (The Times They Are A-Changin’ and Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues have an nagging chug to them), just all rather pointless and, if he’s ill-advised enough to include too many of the covers in what will likely be a wander through his past hits, then you fear that audiences may well start echoing the words of his lumberingly polished All Along The Watchtower, and look at each other muttering ‘there must be some way outa here’. 7.30pm. £45/£35. Symphony Hall

 Thursday March 8

Pigeon Detectives

Having dented the Top 40 with debut single proper, the stuttering shouty pub pop  I Found Out, the Leeds quintet now return with Romantic Type (Dance To The Radio), a further sample of their flurried punky pop droppings, marginally departing from the usual blueprint by slowing down the tempo a bit midway. Apparently influenced by the Stooges and the Stones, they sound more like a marketing department’s attempt to clone the Kaiser Chiefs, even down to touring with them and hiring their engineer to twiddle mixing knobs. They should feather their nest while they can.  7.30pm. £6.  Carling Academy 2

Friday March 9

Cowboy Junkies

The timing could be better. The band have just completed a new album, At The End Of Paths Taken, but it won’t be out for another month and although they’re over for live dates, it’s an acoustic tour so even if they do include any of the new material you’ll probably not get a real flavour of the songs. MySpace previews suggest it’s likely to prove one of their best with a throatily bluesy  Cutting Board Blues offset by the spare melancholy of Brave New World and the desert night atmospherics of My Little Basquiat with Margo Timmins in brooding form.

Quite what they’ll be including in this touring set (which features just Michael, Margo and Jeff Bird) no one seems to know, there’s not even any info on their own website, but stripped back to the basics they started out with for the Whites Off Earth Now, The Trinity Session and The Caution Horses albums, and likely to feature at least a couple of early classics such as Sun Comes Up, It’s Tuesday Morning and Misguided Angel, it’s going to be as essential as every show they’ve ever played. 7.30pm. £20. Wulfrun Hall

Saturday March 10

The Answer

The Zep, Free and AC/DC loving Irish quartet head out on their biggest headlining tour to date, lifiting the wailing bluesy rock of Be What You Want as the third single from Rise (Albert) on a package that also includes their rather fine live favourite cover of Aerosmith;’s Sweet Emotion.

They're' not doing any original, but they’ve got the art of old school riff swaggering down perfect complete with blistering guitar solos (the Zep-heavy Never Too Late even starts with one) and a clutch of driving beer drinking, skirt chasing rock n rolling crowd pleasers in the shape of Come Follow Me, Into The Gutter, and Leavin’ Today. Hopefully, they’ll have had time to start thinking about the follow up album too, with the chance of new material sneak previews waiting in the wings. 6pm. £11. Carling Academy 2

Saturday March 10

The Electric Cinema

A Watford four piece featuring brother and sister Dan and Rebecca Neale, their self-titled debut album (Sugarlow) ripples with the sort of hazy euphoric pop you might expect from Polyphonic Spree but with the more saccharine musical elements filtered through a sieve of Flaming Lips and Bright Eyes. Dreamy bliss soaked new single Cut Down is the sort of song that makes you want to throw back the windows and race down to the nearest field and gambol with the Spring lambs while elsewhere on the album Dan’s warm vocal breathiness and the ocean lapping keyboards of I Could Know All Of You, a stardust sprinkled Your Manga Eye and the 60s hinting pop of Monday Morning Radio and It’s Fire We Crave The Most are all designed to massage and soothe mind and spirit. And if, listening to Forecast For Tomorrow or So Hello/Goodbye you find yourself thinking of small screen sepia soundtracks, that’s possibly because the album was partly created as a musical accompaniment to the siblings’ 30 year old super eight family home movies which they use as part of the live show. Take your popcorn and soak up the sights and sounds. 8pm. £4. Actress & Bishop, Ludgate Hill Birmingham

Sunday March 11

Rose Kemp

After the Carthys and Watersons, it makes a change to get an album by the scion of one of folk's other families, mom and dad being Steeleye Span’s Maddy Prior and Rick Kemp. But anyone anticipating  trad folk in line with her heritage had better revise expectations. As with 2003 debut album Grace, much of her latest, A Hand Full Of Hurricanes (One Little Indian), is hewn from the rock face of English folk. Sister Sleep is a wonderful unaccompanied number that shows off her pure dark voice while her musical roots are clearly screwed between the bones of numbers such as Little One, the dark acoustic guitar strum of Orange Juice, the near a capella multi voice tracked Tiny Flower and the harmonium wheezing Sing Our Last Goodbye, which could easily be lifted from the Richard Thompson songbook.

 But, exploring ebb and flow dynamics,  she also stirs in potent elements of  pop, jazz and, on the sonic squall playout of Violence and the dissonant Dark Corners, the sort of scalding indie blues you’d expect from PJ Harvey or Cat Power, while Metal Bird transmutes from gentle breathy acoustic to full out noise. On Skin’s Suite she even dives into experimental electro ambience.

 Lyrically too, her songwriting muscles are developing further, filleting relationships with emotional rawness in and Sing Our Last Goodbye (‘how come I feel like I’m dying but nothing hurts?’) and Morning Music (‘I lost my best songs in my sleep when I was thinking I can’t wait to wake up next to you’) , or exploring her own demons and fears with Sheer Terror (‘I've already resigned my body to fate) and Dark Corners (“Oh how I miss my selves’). Even at its quietest moments, it’s a seethingly intense, brooding album, not always easy to listen to, but one that certainly deserves to be heard.  8pm. £5. Scruffy Murphy’s, Newton Street,Dale End

 Sunday March 11

Tim Finn

Having reunited with Crowded House brother Neil for 2004’s Everyone Is Here, Finn now gets back to the solo career with Imaginary Kingdom (Parlophone), another album unlikely to see off the inevitable Beatles comparisons with the dreamy Resting and the Across The Universe-like Astounding Moon splashes of Lennon, Still The Song and Midnight Coda burrowing into George Harrisonisms.

  As ever there’s more to the songs than simple pop structures, Finn enjoying playing with shifting tempos and unexpected chords but never in a  fashion that makes them difficult to slip down the ears, and if there’s nothing here that’s really likely to find a place in the pantheon of his earlier classics nevertheless the melancholic country tinged laments of Dead Flowers and Salt To The Sea (a bit Procol Harum actually) and the infectiously chirruppy Couldn’t Be Done should prove highlights if they turn up on the set list. 7.30pm. £18. Warwick Arts Centre

Monday March 12

Thirteen Senses

Having released impressive debut album The Invitation a couple of years back to new Coldplay comparisons, the Cornish crew are gearing up for the important follow-up.  The album, Contact (Vertigo), is due to surface in April and, in between old favourites like Do No Wrong and The Salt Wound Routine they’ll doubtless be roadtesting several numbers tonight, among them the anthemic mist curling swirl of Spiral, the yearning big music title track and the glorious pop rock rush that is first single All The Love In Your Hands. 7.30pm. £11. Carling Academy 2

Tuesday March 13

Pull Tiger Tail

Headlining MySpace’s new upcoming bands package, this trio  of ex Goldsmiths College students have been tipped as one’s to break big this year with their infectious indie pop romping. Having already build a strong following on the back of  last year’s single Mr 100 Percent, the upcoming tumbling hook snagging follow up Let’s Lightning should certainly do the business.

Joint headliners are Ali Love, the new outfit fronted by former Menswear style boy Chris Gentry who’s swapped Britpop for electro soul n new wave with influences drawn from Prince (listen to Rock n Roll) and Sly Stone on the one hand and the Ramones (K Hole) and Warren Zevon (Vincent Brain) on the other.  Support is Cornish electro-pop disco five piece I Say Marvin who’ll be unveiling their Kraftwerk punk single Powerdown alongside a diverse set that’ll also hopefully include the rather good vibrato folk-pop indie of Whale Song. 7.30pm. £8. Barfly

 Tuesday March 13

Jet

The Australian quartet are back for a second stint with new album Shine On, a second dose of  70s heads down rock boogie along the lines of  Rip It Up, Holiday, That’s All Lies and Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is, and tracks that ape Oasis in their fervent Beatles worship.  Indeed, Bring It Back, Come On Come On, the piano ballad title track new single and the arms swaying All You Have To Do are haunted by the ghost of John Lennon while Shiny Magazine and even Everlys homage Eleanor, are veined with McCartneyisms.

It’s not all so single-minded in the influences, Skin And Bones sounds like early barroom brawling Faces, complete with burring Ronnie Lane guitar, while there’s times when Stones rock n roll swagger pokes its head through the curtains. And if nothing here has quite matches debut hit Are You Gonna Be My Girl, with hooks, wit and sheer energy to spare they’re a good time that’s hard to resist. 7.30pm. £16.50. W’hampton Civic Hall

 Tuesday March 13

Tiny Dancers

Having scored praise for last year’s Lions Tigers And Lions EP with its handclappy Russian Snow  and the  glam stomping Going Away, the West Yorkshire quintet should effortlessly build on that with lurch-pop country tinged stomp along new single I Will Wait For You (Russian Doll), again lifted from the upcoming debut album 60s, though it’s likely that the tinkling lemonade fountain of Hannah We Know that’s the one you’ll find hard to dislodge from the brain on the way home. 7.30pm. £6. Little Civic

Wednesday March 14

June Tabor

It’s been a while since Tabor was around these parts, so it’s doubly good to welcome her back showcasing next month’s new album, Apples (Topic), joined by Andy Cutting, Tim Harries and Mark Emerson for a set of trad and contemporary material that adds further lustre to her already towering reputation as one of the leading lights of English folk.

Among the traditional material, you’ll find English love lyric The Old Garden Gate, The Auld Beggarman with a lonely farmgirl running off with the beggar who turns out to be a Scottish lord, Scottish love song The Rigs of Rye, Robert Burns’ Speak Easy and Soldier’s Three, a 17th century song about French mercenaries fighting in the Netherlands, and one of three numbers (alongside the perkier Au Logis De Mon Pere and Ce Fu En Mai) sees Tabor slipping into French.

  Of the more relatively contemporary tunes, My Love Came To Dublin’s an Irish lament and the closing Send Us A Quiet Night offers Christopher Somerville’s gentle sailor’s prayer for a calm sea and good weather.

  Arguably the album’s best moments though are the most recent; Standing In Line is a poignant tale of a young infantryman killed in 1917 while, pinned around Cutting’s accordion, opener The Dancing is based on 101 year old care home resident’s reminiscences about heading down to the Saturday night dance after a week in the textile mills.

It’s an unfussy, quietly powerful album of strong emotions and whatever she chooses to extract alongside her already potent repertoire can only but serve to enhance what will doubtless by a stunning evening.  7.30pm. £14. mac

Thursday March 15

The Deftones

Maybe its the fact Chingo Moreno was heavily into drugs, as well as sex and drink addiction, during the recording, but Saturday Night Wrist (Maverick) is even darker than the band’s usual albums. Certainly it’s an aggressively uncompromising sonic assault of massive guitars and tortured vocals with cuts such as Hole In The Earth, Rapture, new single Mein and Kimdracula ripping open the inner ear. Even ‘quieter’, more restrained numbers like Riviere, Beware, and the sexual imagery laden trippy beats of the lyrically squalid Pink Cellphone are coiled with tension with only an instrumental named for a Nintendo cheat code suggesting any sense of release and calm. Not, one suspects, something likely to be much in evidence at the gig. 7.30pm. £17.50. Carling Academy

 Thursday March 15

Hal Ketchum

A major diary date for country fans, this brings the twangy Nashville superstar to town at a venue probably little larger than the backstage dressing rooms he’s accustomed to in the USA. With over seven million album sales to his bank, Ketchum’s firmly mainstream, nothing up a string of hits since his breakthrough with Past The Point of Rescue back in 1991. Naturally, he’s never charted here but that doesn’t reflect his following among the UK’s country fans who’ll be hanging from the club’s rafters to hear him work through selections from his The Hits (Curb) collection, doubtless including Small Town Saturday Night, Sure Love, Hearts Are Gonna Roll and I Miss My Mary, punctuated by choice picks from his latest album, One More Midnight. 8pm. £22.50. Robin 2, Bilston

Friday March 16

Towers of London

Having enjoyed a brief moment of national notoriety for doing a bunk over the Big Brother wall, refusing to play servant to the Goodys, Donny Tourette gets back to the day job of being a glitter punk-pop star with his rather fun controversy baiting rock n roll band. Channelling the early days of the Stones as well as The Pistols and Stooges, they hit the road to whip up advance orders for June due debut album, Blood Sweat And Towers, and its advance guard single, the rowdy divebombing flurry that is I’m A Rat.  6.30pm. £8. Carling Academy 2

 Friday March 16

Idlewild

Back in action after Roddy Woomble’s solo folk album, Make Another World (Sequel) finds them now housed with Sanctuary after parting ways with EMI, looking to follow up Play Warnings/Promises, an album that sounded like vintage REM but which was greeted by lousy reviews and lousier sales. Sadly this means they’ve apparently having decided to throw all finesse and radio friendly melodic shading out of the window and get back to the sort of rowdy guitar rock that characterised the earlier albums.

As such it’s loud, fast, noisy and sounds like a band re-energised, rediscovering the rush of big thrashy guitars and surging riffs. Unfortunately, that also means it’s decidedly revisionist, content to satisfy fans who insist on remaining in the past rather than greeting new developments. Occasionally, as with the title track, In Competition For The Worst Time, the ruminative Future Works with its brass flourishes and the train-rhythm surge of Finished It Remains, it recaptures the Stipe-like glories to which they had ascended, but for the most this could be just any bunch of blokes with loud guitars trying to make an impression in a very overcrowded market. 7.30pm. £16. Wulfrun Hall

Saturday March 17

Corrine Bailey Rae

Having only released her double platinum, Grammy nominated debut album just over a  year ago, it seems a little early to be following up with a live collection that pretty much just recycles that same songs. But, save for a Billie Holiday styled cover of Led Zep’s Since I’ve Been Loving You,  that’s precisely what Live In London & New York (EMI) offers, albeit coming as a bonus audio disc with a DVD of the same performances (and promo videos). Certainly, it serves to confirm that the nominations (a Brit among them) and fulsome praise for the studio versions wasn’t undeserved, but really numbers such as Put Your Records On, Like A Star, Butterfly and Choux Pastry Heart don’t gain anything while the DVD suggests she needs to work a little harder to find a stage presence that will complement the voice. A curious filler release, but still well worth catching her in the flesh.

Further enticement’s provided by this year’s sensitive male singer-songwriter in waiting, Jack Savoretti. In keeping with the trend set by Paulo Nutini, he’s also Anglo-Italian (ok, Paulo’s Scottish, but don’t be picky) with a husky voice and a lifetime of experiences in his young years, all served up in emotion quivering songs accompanied on acoustic guitar.

These come nicely packaged in debut album Between The Minds (De Angelis) which, if you can forgive the fact Apologies borrows rather obviously from Wonderful Tonight and Without takes the soulful Verve influence a little too much to heart, is a rather fine, easy on the ear set of relationship and self-examining songs. Current single Dreamers should slip down a treat with James Morrison audiences,  while numbers such as No One’s Aware, Dr Frankenstein, the folksily strummed Once Upon A Street, Lovely Fool and Killing Man will also find favour among fans of Messrs Blunt, Ashcroft, Kitt, Drake and so forth. Dylanites might also warm to Soldier’s Eyes. He only slightly blows it by straining the voice to get angsty on Chemical Courage, but that shouldn’t stop him warming the CD pillows of impressionable twentysomething girls in the months to come. 7.30pm. £20. Carling Academy

Saturday March 17

Rainbow Chasers

The latest project from the grandfather of British folk rock, Ashley Hutchings, a man whose name links back to the likes of Fairport, Steeleye and any number of Albion Band variations. Here he’s hitched himself to three whippersnappers in the shapes of guitarist Mark Hutchinson of Tickled Pink, fiddle player Ruth Angell and viola player Jo Hamilton, both Birmingham Conservatoire graduates, the latter already well established as a jazzy folk solo performer around the local scene.

Two years back they made their album debut with Some Colours Fly, a somewhat mixed affair with Hamilton’s voice rather colourless and the songs pleasant but undistinguished affairs. However, the follow up, Fortune Never Sleeps (Talking Elephant) is rather better, having dumped the keyboards, Hamilton beefed up and the girls given more vocal prominence. And while Stanley’s Wake deals with the disappearance of traditional rural farm life, it’s also more of a songwriters and less of a folk album, the jauntily opening Looking For A Change decidedly having more in common with early Joni than any of Hutchings’ former outfits. Angell’s Surrounded By Strangers is a plaintive road song, Middle Eastern flavours inform the longingly wistful A Far-Off Bay while the band’s jazzy sensibilities surface on The Trunk Beneath The Bed (again a hint of Eastern phrasings in the vocals) and Jo’s achingly fragile love song to Scotland, Think Of Me.

With the a capella The River’s Tale showing off the quartet’s combined vocal prowess likely to prove a live highlight along with Angell and Hamilton taking the reins for the instrumental The Lost Bagpipe, punters should definitely find gold at the end of this particular rainbow. 8pm. £9. Red Lion, Kings Heath

Sunday March 18

Malcolm Middleton

Scottish miserablists Arab Strap may be no more, but its component parts seem to be alive and well. Middleton’s out on a jolly to promote his third solo release, A Brighter Beat (Full Time Hobby), one he describes as  'a pop album for people who hate pop music'.  Roughly translated, that means a set of fairly perky singsong tunes with a melodic exuberance belying titles like We’re All Going To Die (a joyous electric rockabilly romp) and the Nick Cave rollicking that is Death Love Depression Love Death.

However, for an album treating on mortality, loneliness and break ups it’s curiously upbeat, veining clouds of depression with dry humour while the love bursting anthemic Up Late At Night Again sounds like something Leonard Cohen might have written for Snow Patrol.

It’s hard not stop the feet tapping along to the folk feisty title track’s call to arms against apathy (“since you've gone and left me there's nothing here but a tenner in my pocket and fridge full of beer" he warbles in familiar deadpan Glaswegian) or the spangly ramshackle pop of Fight Like The Night but even slower tracks like the jazzy waltzing Four Cigarettes, Somebody Loves You are capable of putting an itch in the blood. How it’ll figure live and whether he’s going to be working as a one man band remains to be seen, but there’s no denying the nuts and bolts fit together perfectly. 8pm. £10. Glee Club

Tuesday March 20

Good Shoes

Having come on like dodgy union of Jilted John and Pulp on debut single The Photos On My Wall, the Merton pop combo do at least manage to demonstrate the Cure comparisons on the equally choppy staccato Never Meant To Hurt You (Brille). However, with accompanying cuts Valley Boy, Saturday and the somewhat fey It’s Impossible following much the same pattern, you have to start wondering of they only come in one size and fitting. 7.30pm. £7.50. Carling Academy 2

 Tuesday March 20

The Sounds

Swedish punk pop with a bisexual lead singer in Maja Ivarsson and a cocktail of rock, 80s disco and electronic that frequently throws up the Blondie references, new album Dying To Say This To You (Korova) wouldn’t have been harmed had it indulged in a little more variation rather than having much of the material stuck in a similar sounding rhythmic groove. Still, they certainly have attitude and know how to put together the churning jabbing guitar riffs that drive along acid pop tunes such as Queen of Apology, Song With A Mission, 24 Hours and Running Out Of Turbo. Indeed, were this 20 years earlier, Much Too Long and the Bananarama meets Erasure Tony The Beat might even have been dominating Top of the  Pops. As it is, they’ll have to settle for some indie cred and a clutch of leering lads down pushing at the stage. 7.30pm. £7.40. Bar Academy

Wednesday March 21

Faithless

Still built around the three pronged talents of Sister Bliss, Rollo and Maxi, they’ve long been regarded as the UK’s finest proponents of chilled pop, blissed beats and soft buttered rap. However, current album, To All New Arrivals (Sony), may be just too laid back for its own good, with even the opening Bombs sounding like Donna Summer on mogadon.

With electro noodling, widescreen musical vistas and lazy rhythms combining with a sense of faked passion, it’s all incredibly soporific with even the brighter patches, such as Music Matters and the folksy flavours of Last This Day barely repaying the effort of getting on your feet to sway to the vibes. 7.30pm. £25. NIA

Thursday March 22

My Chemical Romance

One of the year’s most anxiously anticipated tours, MCR arrive in the wake of their world conquering The Black Parade (Reprise) album, a rock opera concept about death that spills over with tumbling power pop chords, kicking the old emo label into the corner and  reinventing the band as a cross between Green Day and Rush. Opening with the sound of  a heart monitor beeping giving way to The End and the swaggering jumparound of, well, Dead, we’re in the cancer ward as album hero The Patient shuffles off this mortal coil on a journey into the afterlife accompanied by memories and flashbacks.

Ambitious? Utterly, to the extent of  the emotion shredding ballad Cancer that should be printed on ciggie packets, a cameo by Liza Minelli on the carnival nightmare of Mama, a glam pub brawl singalong Teenagers and the rock hard anthemic finale of  Famous Last Words.

There’s barely a moment here they’re not spraying out nail sharp guitar licks or driving a fist through hearts on something like the quite stunning emotion shredding stadium power ballads I Don’t Love You. Whether pinning you to the wall with the full on assault of House of Wolves and the slow building sudden Queen meets Blink explosion title track or reducing you to sobs with Disenchanted, this is grandiose, soul blistering pomp and circumstance rock music that you should drag your parents, grandparents and even your cats and dogs along to hear in its full blooded glory.

Support’s provided by New Jersey screamo rock pioneers  Thursday plugging comeback album A City By The Light Divided, keeping the screaming and hardcore melodic sensibilities intact but surprising with the likes of a glockenspiel or Telegraph Avenue Kiss,  a choir on We Will Overcome, and the fragile nerve fraying instrumental epic Arc-Lamps, Signal Flares, A Shower of White. 7.30pm. £17.50. NIA

 Thursday March 22

The Twang

A hometown gig for Birmingham’s current next big thing, they’ll be breaking out the chocolate boxes to celebrate the success of surging guitar storms debut single Wide Awake (b-Unique) as well as offering tasters for the upcoming album where, hopefully, they’ll stand revealed as slightly more than the new Alarm. 7.30pm. £6. Carling Academy 2

  Thursday March 22

Devon Sproule

This is the launch night for the Canadian born, Virginia based singer-songwriter’s new album, the first release from Coventry’s Tin Angel records, a label spawned from the increasingly legendary venue. Her fourth album, Keep Your Silver Shined draws thematic inspiration from Sproule’s recent marriage to fellow musician (and Tin Angel regular) Paul Curreri and musical influences from her explorations of jazz and swing.

Evocative at times of Victoria Williams, it’s a lazy sun dappled, gurgling creek of an album, opening to the back porch banjo n fiddle moonshine blues Old Virginia Block  and closing with the plaintive traditional The Weeping Willow where she harmonises with Curreri and a curiously uncredited Mary Chapin Carpenter to backwoods hymnal effect.

 Inbetween she also trades lines with hubbie (who also plays on most of the tracks) on his own wistful reverie Eloise & Alex, lounges in a hammock (lyrically and musically) for Does The Day Feel Long (where Leon Redbone meets Maria Muldaur) with its double bass and clarinet, and shuffles into a breathy bossa nova breeze for Stop By Anytime, a song surely hewn from the pages of Mark Twain’s picture book. And isn’t there just a hint of fellow countrywomen the McGarrigles on the playful delights of The Well-Dressed Son To His Sweetheart?

So homespun you can almost taste the apple juice and smell the lilacs drying on the wall, it’s peppered with images of nature and domesticity; orchards and a grocery list pinned by a  magnet on the title track, a basement full of wine at the jaunty lollopping 1340 Chesapeake, and noting how ‘a groundhog ate the lettuce’ on the gorgeous clarinet and accordion brushed Let’s Go Out.

Combining her finely sketched observational songs with the laid back effortlessness of the playing (a special plaudits to Nate Brown on drums), this could well be shaping up as one of the year’s best contributions to the library of American folk roots. Dress Sharp, Play Well, Be Modest she sings. She does and she is. Allow me to sing her praises then.  8pm. £6. Taylor John’s House, Old Coal Vaults, Canal Basin, Coventry

Friday March 23/Saturday March 24/Tuesday March 27

Westlife

Having done their (not entirely impressive) swing tribute to Sinatra and co, the  Irish boys follow up Face To Face with yet another covers album in the form of the rather unoriginally and blindingly obviously titled The Love Album (RCA). However, while it may be fashionable among cred conscious types to mock and knock, the fact is that the foursome have not only survived the departure of Brian McFadden but easily eclipsed his solo career.  And while they might fall on their faces were they to try and do hard rock or indie material, they’re pretty much at the top of the tree when it comes to delivering a romantic melodic ballad.

Case in point here with some classics trawled from over the decades, sterling, heart-melting and smooth like cream on a  Guinness versions of Joe Cocker’s You Are So Beautiful (To Me), Commodores hit Easy, All Out Of Love (featuring latest collaborator Delta Goodrem), Love Can Build A Bridge and Bonnie Tyler evergreen Total Eclipse of the Heart. They even manage to come away from You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling with dignity intact, and it’s not many who’ve attempted the song who can say that.

The highlight though is their cover of stadium swelling anthem The Rose, a rendition which almost, though not quite, stands toe to toe with You Raise Me Up from the last album. There’ll be so many lighters held aloft tonight, it’s a good job there’ll also be the buckets of tears to put out any flames. 7.30pm. £29.50. NEC

Saturday Mar 24

Young Knives

Emerging from the hotbed of indie rock that is, erm, Ashby de la Zouch sporting charity store tweeds, NHS glasses and sensible haircuts, the trio play angular art rock  in the manner of early XTC, Syd Barrett and later Pulp, write articulate lyrics with a sense of intelligent wit, craft infectious melodies that borrow from punk and pomp in equal measure, and have a bassist called House of Lords.

Debut album Voices Of Animals And Men (Transgressive) is a splendid affair with its English everylad songs about girlfriend’s parents (She Was Attracted  To), office boredom (Part Timer), small town depression (Loughborough Suicide), death (Mystic Energy), tailors (erm, Tailors) and how basically how life’s still a shoddy affair no matter where you go (Tremblings of Trails).

   Although there’s falsetto warbling moments when he sounds disturbingly like Feargal Sharkey (notably so on Weekends and Bleak Days), singer Henry Dartnall more generally comes across as a provincial pop mix of Damon Albarn and Andy Gill. They can certainly cut it. 7pm. £10. Carling Academy

 Saturday March 24

Dogs

Two years and a parting with Island Records on from debut album Turn Against This Land, now signed to indie label Weekender the London pups are limbering up to regain lost ground with their as yet untitled sophomore release. First taster comes with new single Soldier On, these days they appear to have been overcome with a desire to be Jam soundalikes, a comparison further strengthened by Dirty Little Shop. 

Fortunately, they do it rather well, so if the rest of the new material’s as infectiously urgent as this and proven old favourites like Selfish Ways and Tuned To A Different Station, then they may yet find a basket in pop’s kennel. 7pm. £8. Bar Academy

Sunday March 25

Moya Brennan

Scanning the track listings for new album Signature (BEO) and seeing the titles Purple Haze and Black Night, raises the intriguing prospect of the Clannad singer (yes, she’s changed the name from Maire for pronunciation’s sake) having come over all heavy rock and covering Hendrix and Deep Purple. Sadly that proves not to be the case, instead we’re still in the tried and tested land of  Christian and Celtic mist New Age layered ambience with those familiar keening medieval warbles and tinkling harp, the sort of ethereal chill out music usually to be found as soundtracks to myth based movies like King Arthur or Lord of the Rings, shampoo ads or Glastonbury cafes.

Loosely autobiographically inspired, Purple Haze turns out to be about her former drug hell and Black Night a reference to an abortion, while Hear My Prayer clearly announces itself as a song of finding faith while the less personally specific Tapestry and the Gaelic Pill A Run O  both concern sons and mothers.

Given that no one (well, no one other than sister Enya) does this sort of stuff anything like as well, if it’s your sort of aural soothing then the album’s probably one of the best things she’s done in recent years, Merry Go Round, Tapestry and Gone Are The Days as spiritually soothing as a mountain stream while, comparatively speaking,  Many Faces sees her almost in a boogie frenzy. Those already enthralled by her sound will be positively trance-whipped, others will find themselves merely comatose. 7.30pm. £18/£16.50. Wulfrun Hall

Monday March 26

Jethro Tull

Something of a first, this isn’t the usual Tull jolly but rather an acoustic tour, with Ian Anderson joined by long time band guitarist Martin Barre and guest violinist Anna Phoebe who’ll also be showcasing numbers from her own new album, Gypsy.

 As Anderson’s pointed out, a good third of the band’s recordings have been either entirely acoustic or featured acoustic sections, so this seemed like as good a time as any to underline the fact.

It also ties in with the release of  The Best of Acoustic (EMI), a compilation of their, well, acoustic material actually, underlining the baroque and English medieval influences to their work. Along with a couple of live recordings of new or unrecorded material (including anew version of One Brown mouse), the tracks include fairly well known numbers like Life Is A Long Song, Skating Away On The Thin Ice Of The New Day, Thick As A Brick, Jack In The Green and Fat Man, so chances are high that they, as well as more obscure material such as Broadford Bazaar, Cheap Day Return and Jack-A-Lynn, will figure in the set.

Anderson’s also rearranged some of  the more rock oriented material, so expect Aqualung, Locomotive Breath and My God to put in an appearance too, while he’s also promised to include numbers never previously performed in the UK making this something of a must for Tull devotees. 7.30pm. £28.50/£25.50. Alexandra Theatre

Tuesday March 27

The Horrors

Yes, they wear far too much eye-liner, back comb their hair like Russell Brand, dress like Dickensian undertakers with unfeasibly tight trousers and call themselves Faris Rotter, Tomethy Furse, Joshua Von Grimm, Spider Webb and Coffin Joe.

But they also make a glorious noise that throws together Nick Cave, Joe Meek, 60s garage of the Count Five persuasion, B52s angular funk, and psycho surf rock, plus they open their Strange House (Loog) album with a cover of Screaming Lord Sutch’s Jack The Ripper and have the brazen audacity to pull it off.

Rackety guitars, bleeding elbow organ riffs, big gothic persuasion lyrics covered in spiders’ limbs, a demented vocalist who sings like he’s leaning to one side and starting at you bug-eyed as blood foams around his lips, what’s not to love. Theatrical for sure, but also packed with nailgun songs of the calibre of  Gloves, She Is The New Thing, Count In Fives, the thundering Draw Japan, the Ramones smashing Sheena Is A Parasite and the spooky scary movie instrumental of Gil Sleeping. There’ll be no smooching while this lot are on stage, not unless you’re playing lip glue with a  skull. 7.30pm. £8.50. Barfly

Tuesday March 27

Kate Nash

Imagine a cross between Gary Numan, Fuzzbox, John Cooper Clarke and Flying Lizards and you might have an idea of where Ms Nash is coming from. Bigged up by Lily Allen, who clearly has a sense of humour, it’s hard to imagine quite what folk are going to make of this. Her debut single, Caroline’s A Victim is a three minute robotic drone with zombie drums and deadpan, colourless vocals basically intoning the title over and over to infuriating effect which, just to be contrary, comes with the totally different Birds, a fractured anti-folk love song that makes her sound like a Larndarn geezer gal version of Joni Mitchell.  Depending on what else she has up her sleeve, this could be a very interesting gig, Or a very short one. 7.30pm. £5. Little Civic

Wednesday March 28

Dolly Parton

With a ticket price that might make even the well heeled country fan wince, clearly the cost of Dolly’s wigs and support bras has gone up in recent times.  Still, she is a living legend with her own theme park and, in recent years, has releases a clutch of back to the roots albums rediscovering her love of bluegrass and mountain music.

However, its unlikely this is going to be a night in celebration of American traditional music but, accompanied as it is by yet another Very Best Of (Sony) compilation, a slick parade through her more mainstream country hits. Not that that’s a bad thing in any way, not when the track listing here includes such evergreen Parton classics as Jolene, Coat Of Many Colours, Love Is Like A Butterfly, Applejack, The Bargain Store. Here You Come Again, Potential New Boyfriend and, naturally, 9 to 5.

Although she’s prone to surfeits of Nashville luvvie gushings, that Parton’s not adverse to sending up her own image is another plus, that and the fact she’s a dynamite live performer if she can be persuaded to get of the country show conveyor belt and sing like she means it. 7.30pm. £65-£45. NEC

Wednesday March 28

The Rakes

You’d have to love them simply for having a track called The World Was A Mess But His Hair Was Perfect, but fortunately the East London lads have more to offer than droll titles. Two years on from Capture/Release, a debut album that gathered together influences from

Pulp to Squeeze territory to PiL punk to The Clash, they return with Ten New Messages (V2), documenting commuter angst and post 7/7 neurosis only this time sounding much more akin to The Strokes.

The aforementioned track sets the ball rolling with angry buzzing guitars, the subsequent numbers varying between similarly inclined flurries and the more mid tempo pacing of Leave The City And Come Home and the romantic Little Superstitions where those Madness/Squeeze reference points resurface.

  Current single We Danced Together climbs to a rooftop party to escape the oppressive moods with some indie disco likely to capture radio play. But there’s stronger material here, most notably so in the form of the train rhythm chugging Suspicious Eyes which perfectly captures the capital’s paranoia with one of the song’s characters a victimised innocent Muslim, and, companion piece, the nervy pulsing On A Mission sung in the persona of a suicide bomber.

  Packaged alongside things like the fear stewing behind the words of When Tom Cruise Cries or the clanking angular punk of Time To Stop Talking and Down With Moonlight’s stroboscopic military beat, the messages come through loud and clear. And you can dance to them too. 7.30pm. £12.50. Carling Academy

Wednesday March 28

McFly

Although the title Motion  In The Ocean (Island) sounds like it refers to committing some unsanitary pollution of the briny, the lads current album is another step forward in their quest for post teenybopper musical credibility following yet another Children In Need massacre with their cover of Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now.

Sure they still reference the Beatles but who, when they first appeared, would think that one day they’d have a track, We Are The Young, that would invite stadium rock comparisons to The Who and Val Halen!

Ok, they have rather let the whole Queen overkill thing go to their heads on the likes of Sorry’s Not Good Enough, Transylvania (a lyrical oddity which pairs Freddie Mercury with Brian Wilson) and Little Johanna is an ill advised  vaudeville outing that Davy Jones might have squeezed into a Monkees album, but Friday Night suggests they’ve also taken time to spin the odd Guns n Roses album, Home Is Where The Heart Is is pure Bon Jovi (Wanted Dead Or Alive, actually) while Walk In The Sun takes the volume and bombast down for a rather lovely country ballad.

And former No 1’s Please Please (a bizarre love letter to Lindsay Lohan) and the bouncy Star Girl (which features the nudge nudge line ‘there's nothing on earth that can save us, when I find love with Uranus’) are more than compensation for the wincingly embarrassing boy band jaunty 60s pop of Lonely.

They won’t ever find themselves with a Mercury Music Prize nomination, but  if they keep this up they can look forward to being the Children In Need houseband for a few more years yet. 7.30pm. £22.50. W’hampton Civic Hall

Thursday March 29

Damien Rice

His debut album was titled O, the follow up turns the knob up a few numbers to 9 (Heffa) but remains within the sphere of nakedly confessional emotions, Celtic soul, burning anger and trembling anguish. Yet, it's Lisa Hannigan's aching voice that's the first to be heard on the opening 9 Crimes, one of several numbers documenting a relationship falling apart, unfolding with a prickly sweetness.

Like Van Morrison, to whom he owes a musical spiritual debt, Rice can be a moody bugger, a self-confessed depressive for whom the glass is generally more half-empty than half-full. And yet, while Rootless Tree lulls you into a reverie before exploding with four lettered rage, there's heart-splintering tenderness blanketing much of the material here. Listen, for example, to the fragile, tentative bruised and raw piano ballad of illicit love, Accidental Babies. Or  the painfully fractured Elephant, a stripped down cry of loneliness  that practically has a nervous breakdown in front of your face. 

 The sexual angst exploding all over the ragged squall into which Me, My Yoke And I erupts might prove a bit much for those who prefer their Rice less grainy and gritty, but, like the skittish strummed pop of Coconut Skins with its opposing tugs of lust and God, it shows he's not confined to just curling up in the foetal position he occupies on Grey Room. Whether this, slightly more experimental and less comfortingly radio friendly album proves as accessible and successful as O remains to be seen, but it assuringly confirms Rice as a major if at times difficult talent.

 Providing equally solid warm up is Fionn Regan, a Dublin  singer-songwriter who also picks a rather fine guitar in the manner of  Bert Jansch and John Fahey. He’s back to give a second wind to The End of History (Bella Union), a  debut album that invites inevitable comparisons to Rice himself but also Loudon Wainwright (Hey Rabbit) and Paul Simon (Snowy Atlas Mountains).

  With lyrics steeped in melancholy, despondency and images plucked from rural nature on such numbers as the darkly urgent Hunter's World  or  end of relationship song Put A Penny In The Slot, he’s about much more than the current fashion parade. 7.30pm. £23.50. W’hampton Civic Hall

Friday March 30

Sugababes

Hot from their current Comic Relief collaboration with Girls Aloud on Run DMC’s Walk This Way, Keisha, Heidi and newish girl Amelle, hit the stage for their second major tour in twelve months, this time with a greatest hits set built around the current Overcrowded compilation.

The UK’s longest serving girl group, cynics never really expected them to last beyond a handful of singles and a first album, but then the likes of Round Round, Freak Like Me and Hole In The Head came along and more recently Push The Button, Ugly, Red Dress and last year’s Easy joined the tally of their top grade pop and r&b chart triumphs. Having proven they can also deliver when it comes to a live show, there’s no reason to suspect a second volume won’t be required in a few years time.

They’re supported by Dragonette, a newly emergent mostly Canadian quartet electronica pop just signed to Mercury records, presumably looking to do better this time than they did with The Modern.  To tie in with the dates, they’ll be releasing I Get Around, an 80s dab of squelchy electrorave with a hint of Blondie and sexually come hither lyrics delivered with dirty sweetness by Martina, whom, your ears might recognise, was the voice on  Basement Jaxx’s Take Me Back To Your House. Tasters for the forthcoming album are equally enticing, especially the purring kittenish dance track Competition, the seductive mid tempo True Believer and, despite sounding like a Supertramp backing track, the dreamy sun kissed shores of Another Day. And with Get Lucky, they clearly know their way around the same music hall ballpark as the Scissor Sisters too.  Ones to keep an eye on. 7.30pm. £23.50. NEC

Friday March 30

Cooper Temple Clause

Having parted ways with RCA and bassist Didz Hammond, the new five piece incarnation still have cause for cheer, having produced arguably their best and certainly most direct album yet in Make This Your Own (Sequel), marrying their old prog rock and electronic inclinations to a muscular pop rock accessibility. Urgent riffing Beatles meet Foo Fighters kick off single Homo Sapiens bulldozed its way into the Top 40 and while quiveringly melodic Undertonesy follow up Waiting Game didn’t repeat the trick, they can be fairly confident that rumbling new steamrollering release Head (a bit Ultravox, a bit Radiohead) should see them back where they belong.

 From the heated up mantra like hooks of Damage through the robotic electronic moodiness of Once More With Feeling to the soaringly melodic cascading summer pop that is What Have You Gone and Done?, a  Human league influenced Isn’t It Strange and the jaunty acoustic xylophone backed country-folk romp of Take Comfort, it’s a bristlingly confident album that fully deserves to find a place in the year end best of lists.

Newcastle lads Kubichek! open proceedings to showcase new album Not Enough Night. Unfortunately advance copies weren’t available so we can only hint at what to expect from current single Nightjoy (3030). However, since that’s a rather electrifying flurry of urgent circling Echo & The Bunnymen style guitars, keening vocals and a rather jubilant catchy chorus, the odds are in its favour. 7.30pm. £12. Irish Centre, Digbeth

Friday March 30

The Beat

Not to be confused with The English Beat which features original founder member Dave Wakeling, who will be over here later in the year supporting INXS, this version of Birmingham’s contribution to the Two Tone phenomenon includes co-founder Ranking Roger alongside former original members Everett Morton and Blockhead. They’re joined by Roger’s son, Ranking Junior Murphy on vocals, Neil Deathridge on guitar and bassist Andy Pearson with local jazz legend Andy Hamilton’s son Mark following in dad’s footsteps on sax. 

There’s apparently a new album lurking somewhere in the wings and with the recent revival of interest in the ska punk the band helped pioneer, they could well be due for a brief renaissance. However, chances are that for this tour new material is going to be thin on the ground with old hits such as Mirror In The Bathroom, Hands Off She’s Mine, Best Friend, Tears of a Clown and Too Nice To Talk To and  taking up the bulk of the set. However, whatever political fire they may have had back in the early 80s, it must be said that doing Stand Down Margaret these days is going to sound a little dated. Stand Down Tony, on the other hand....
  Sharing the bill and joining the boys on stage for a few numbers will be another two tone alumni in the shape of Coventry rude boy Neville Staples, erstwhile singer with The Specials, no doubt flipping through their back catalogue too. 6pm. £15. Carling Academy

Saturday March 31

Polly Paulusma

It’s three years since debut album Scissors In My Pocket, but unfortunately she’s not been in much of a position to capitalise on the acclaim. Two weeks after the release, she had a miscarriage then, becoming pregnant again after a summer of touring she miscarried again. Understandably, devastated, she began to think it was her choice of career, feeling guilty about simply picking up a guitar or trying to write a song. The good news is that she became pregnant a third time, giving birth to daughter Valentine on her own birthday. She’s also produced a second album, Fingers & Thumbs, which, she says, is heavily influenced by the traumas she’d been through and which fed into the writing with themes of guilt, responsibility, survival and hope.

  It’s not due for release until June, so this low key show’s something of a preview of  numbers that will include the slow, sorrowful This One I Made For You, the guitar shimmering soul folk Where I’m Coming From and, what sounds like an album highlight, the jangling folk pop Godgrudge sounding like a cross between Aimee Mann, Suzanne Vega and Richard Thompson.

Along with material from the first album (hopefully Perfect 4/4, Carry Me Home and Dark Side among it), she’ll doubtless also be featuring the download (and ltd edition 7”) single that’s available to tie in with the tour, the delicate slow tick tocking and slightly spooked folk of The Woods, inspired by The Brothers Grimm’s Hansel & Gretel and Hannah E Glease’s children’s story The Magic Tree In Winter. It’s good to have her back. 8pm. £3. Sunflower Lounge

Saturday March 31

Thea Gilmore

She’s become a mom since she last toured here, so you’ll probably get a few giving birth to Egan anecdotes between the songs this time. Other than that, chances are the set will pretty much follow the same pattern, drawing on numbers for her recent, and once again undervalued, album Harpo's Ghost with tracks like the tumblingly melodic folk-rock Contessa, the nervy rock Cheap Trick,  a  bluesy Everybody's Numb and the melancholic Red White And Black and world weary Slow Journey No 2  sharing space with nuggets from her luminous back catalogue.

 Opening the show will be Massachusetts born ethnomusicologist Erin McKeown, offering the prospect of an interesting evening of pop, punk, folk, tin pan alley, and New Orleans jazz culled from albums such as Grand (James, Slung-Lo, Civilians) and Distillation (Queen of Quiet,Fast As I Can) and  the more summery folk-rock material (Aspera, Bells and Bombs, We Are More) of  We Will Beocme Like Birds.

There’s also the chance that she might dip into her current album, Sing You Sinners (Nettwerk) which features her rearranged interpretations of  favourite tunes from the 30s to the 50s, among them  Judy Garland classic Get Happy,  Paper Moon, and Just One of Those Things. Whatever she settles on though, it’s going to be well worth hearing. 7.30pm. £14. Little Civic

Saturday March 31

The Mules

Formed at Oxford University, this oddball five piece started out playing covers of Dylan and the Flying Burrito Brothers before graduating to their own short sharp jerky cocktail of folk, blues, country, cow-punk, silent movie vaudeville, jazz and mutant skiffle. This and more has been gathered together on debut album Save Your Face (Organ Grinder), a meeting place between The Fall, Gang of Four and  Young Knives with hints of Talking Heads and Sparks, crammed with 15 shambolic, energetic art rock numbers spooled out with a raggedness that belies the musical abilities behind them.

There’s a couple of misfires in the funeral paced Live Feed and the demented carnival punk Seasonticketholder, but otherwise, while hardly what you’d call commercial, it defies you not to warm to the twisted charms of the lurching knees up Tule Lake Shuffle,  Ham Shank with its hot club Louis Jordan Egyptian shuffle swing, the fiddle frenzy title track, Devoesque alien abduction track We’re Good People, twisted funksting Polly-O or the deliriously quirky Plenty Warning. God knows what sort of racket they make live, but chances are they kick ass. 7pm. £6. Bar Academy