Birmingham Gig Guide - News and Reviews

Tuesday May 2

Bic Runga

It’s two years since Chinese-Maori New Zealander Briolette Kahbic Runga toured these shores on the back of then current release Beautiful Collision. At the time few were too aware of her so it was something of a low profile appearance but, while she’s not yet reached anything like her status back home, word has spread sufficiently to suggest demand for tickets will be reasonably high.

She’s back to boost her following with her third album, Birds (Sony), a collection that finds her in dreamy torch and jazz vein, her breathy voice feathered by gentle melodies and songs smoked with melancholy. You’ll not be thinking of Bjork or Dido this time round (though Say After Me does still conjure Janis Ian), but there’s plenty of evidence of her early Carpenters ballad influences and, on the title track arrangements, her Chinese roots.

Much also suggests the moods of 70s Gallic romances with If I Had You waltzing with Francois Hardy and Captured surely haunted by the ghost of some Johnny Hallyday noir thriller.

It’s Over points to her Shirley Bassey collection while No Crying No More favours dusty Southern folk blues, and while Winning Arrow is Cardigansy 60s pop and Blue Blue Heart has a cabaret skip to its step, the mood of the evening is more likely to be set by the slower, more fragile moments such as the brushed and hushed rumble of Ruby Nights with its David Lynch aspirations. But if the evening’s not going to be big on decibels, like the album title, it’s assuredly going to take wing.

8pm. £10. Glee Club

Tuesday May 2

Howling Bells

The Sydney quartet return, this time clutching copies of their self-titled debut album (Bella Union), a whole set of material that, like recent single Wishing Stone, is splashed with neo-noir night time urban soundscapes, vocalist Juanita Stein variously calling to mind Debbie Harry and PJ Harvey on cinematic songs that lurch from the juddering blues rock of Low Happening and Velvets riffing new single Blessed Night to the devil’s country folk of Broken Bones, the strung out folkadelia that stains A Ballad For The Bleeding Hearts and the 60s West Coast flavours of In The Woods. And, just to show they have a pop sensibility beneath those acid folk clothes, there’s the insidiously catchy The Bell Hit too which is, basically, My Bloody Valentine dating Mazzy Star.

It’s all a little one level pitched and you wonder if they ever take off the harness and really let rip, but be assured this is the last time you’ll find them in such intimate confines.

7.30pm. £6. Bar Academy.

Tuesday May 2

Story One

They’ve been dubbed industrial strength post-Coldplay, which is rather overstating matters, but the Nottingham quartet certainly have a way with big slabs of vaulting soundscapes and vocals that rise from rumbling depths to angelic peals. That said, while it goes through all the right swoop and soar moves, new single Out Of Season (Shy) does tend to be rather hollow bombast and, like equally chest swelling forthcoming album cuts Count To 3, Beggar’s Belief and Lanes, trying too hard to persuade you they’re Keane’s tougher younger brother; with a violin. That said, it’s probably going to be hard to avoid hearing these or sensitive acoustic ballad Disposable across the nation’s airwaves in the coming month, so for at least a while they can be confident of basking in next big thing glory.

7.30pm. £4. Barfly

Wednesday May 3

Darren Hayes

Formerly of soft rock combo Savage Garden, the Aussie singer-songwriter struck out solo three years ago with the somewhat disappointing Spin, recovering his stride with confessionally autobiographical follow up The Tension and the Spark turning an old school pop electronica gaze on the less sunny sides of success and relationships.

Since then, though he’s been pretty quiet and there’s no new release looming to coincide with this tour either. Instead, A Big Night In With Darren Hayes will be a wander through past material, both solo numbers like Popular, Dublin Sky and Love And Attraction, and, since there just happens to be an import Savage Garden compilation, Truly Madly, Completely doing the rounds, alnost certainly Truly Madly Deeply and So Beautiful too.

Support will be former Goya Dress singer Astrid Williamson now ploughing a solo path as singer-songwriter. Following the rechristened aborted band project Boy For You and her eponymous debut proper, she’s back with her third release Day of the Lone Wolf (One Little Indian), an album that fleshes out the acoustic folk-pop bones with string arrangements and, on tumblingly catchy first single Superman 2, a full rolling rootsy pop-rock feel that conjures a lighter Sandy Denny.

A self-confessedly heavily sexual album with songs like the suggestive baroque ballad True Romance, the predatory moody night sky moods of Reach or the waterfall cascades of Tonight, and the prowling Amaryllis, it’s also headily seductive, as even a brief listen to the minimalist flavours of piano instrumental Carlotta, the breathily evocative Siamese and the dank Another Twisted Thing will readily reveal.

Hopefully, after being fed a steady diet of apathy by the public, while it may prove an uphill struggle this should be the one that finally gets her the attention she deserves (especially with her electrifying cover of Snow Patrol hit Run on the single release) although, you have to say that this really isn’t the sort of audience to whom she should be playing.

7.30pm. £25. W’hampton Civic Hall.

Thursday May 4

It’s Jo and Danny

Two years down the road from Thugs Lounge, the husband and wife founders of the Green Man Festival are back out on the road with follow up The Quickening (Double Snazzy). Not, one would trust, anything to do with The Highlander sequel, they’ve stripped back from the production polish but it’s basically the same summery grooves, strummed guitars and lapping lazy melodies that’s characterised their output to date, but this time with more folk emphasis and added use of traditional instruments. Indeed, they’ve even re-recorded versions of Thugs’ Dying Kiss and Real Thing without the clutter.

To be brutally honest, it’s not going to change anyone’s life or earn pride of place in their CD collection, Jo’s voice is a bit monotone and it does tend to pick a pace and flavour and stick with it. But as watery, leafy, mossy hillside and dappled riverbank folk pop goes it’s an undeniably attractive listen, the uptempo hand percussion Spoken Word, rustic folk fair swayer God’s Closed His Eyes and Swollen River with its pipes and accordion all lovely in an unassuming sort of way. To be listened to with organic cider accompaniment, I suspect.

8pm. £7. Glee Club

Friday May 5

Mystery Jets

The Eel Pie Island outfit whose 55 year old guitarist is the spina bifida victim singer’s dad, the Jets serve up an interesting mix of early Floydian prog folk, shanty, pop, dance and harmonies that will bring to mind any number of reference points and yet still retains a unique flavour. Drawing on life in their native habitat and dealing with the big themes of love, loss and death, debut album Making Dens (Island) is a musically eclectic affair that leapfrogs its way from the beer swigging Kinks meets Smiths chugger The Boy Who Ran Away and the Madness in a ballroom Purple Prose to the bedridden emotional dependency number Little Bag Of Hair’s surf breezed pop and the tribal clatter of Zootime. Only the prog seems to have resisted the lure of the studio.

It can be a bit of an exhausting affair, following them through their ever changing musical worlds, one minute swaying to the Weimar cabaret shades of Horse Drawn Cart, the next kicking up heels to the bustling Dexys scuffle of Alas Agnes, even more so with their exuberant live performances, but you’ll never have pause to be bored.

Opening proceedings are Delaware’s The Spinto Band back for a second flurry with debut album Nice and Nicely Done’s catchy cocktail of nu-indie guitar pop and influences that run the gamut from Brian Wilson and Talking Heads to Yo La Tengo and 10cc.

7.30pm. £9. Carling Academy

Saturday May 6

The Bills

They hail from Canada’s Vancouver island but draw on a pot pourri of influences that embrace Americal bluegrass, ragtime, Romany gypsy, jazz, Balkan folk, Celtic, and Latin as well as native folk. This and a lot more comes packed into their current album Let Em Run (Borealis), a marvellous 15 track collection of acoustic roots where fiddles, accordion, mandolin, guitars and double bass join forces in a breathtaking display of virtuosity.

It’s quite a mix too, juggling knee-lifters like old time mountain music Old Blue Bridge, Cajun dance persuader Nowhere To Be and Quebecois fiddle swinging Oeil Au Buerre Noir with the more reflective moments of Which Way Away, the parched folk When The Bucket Runs Dry and a capella sea shanty Barnfield's John Vanden. And let’s not forget the instrumentals, the rousing reels of Cambridge Set, squeeze box showcase The Traveller and a marvellous reading of Hoagy Carmichael chestnut Stardust given a gypsy flavour with mandolin and fiddle. There’ll be toes tapped and legs slapped tonight.

8pm. £9. Red Lion, Kings Heath

Sunday May 7

Adem

Here a couple of years back to support his debut album Homesongs, the London acoustic songster and sometime Fridge member returns now with the follow-up, Love and Other Planets (Domin0o). Where that dealt with home, this explores themes of space, as in around, between and within us as well as, you know, out there. While he does sort of relatively rock out a bit too on Something’s Going To Come and the lyrically clever X Is For Kisses and You and Moon has definite hip hop and Latin rhythm inclinations, for the most this is no less hushed and fragile than its predecessor with its leafy folk moods.

And if titles than include Sea of Tranquillity and Last Transmission From The Lost Mission set off alarm bells about some sort of 70s sci fi folk prog concept album, rest assured that, while Warning Call may well be about aliens telling us that we’re buggering up the planet and These Lights Are Meaningful assures us we’re not alone in the universe, as the title implies it’s really emotionally rooted in metaphors for love.

Bearing that in mind, Launch Yourself is really a song about being dumped and the shimmery, euphonium backed title track and the pulsing Spirals are both caught in the reverie of the immensity of love. He shuts up shop with Human Beings Gather ‘round, a quiet, wistful glockenspiel tinkled drone about the end of the world that yet finds hope that the vastness of beyond remains infinite and everlasting. Take oxygen, music this beautifully rarefied will leave you gasping.

He’s joined tonight by highly praised but, at least over here, little heard Dublin singer-songwriter Ann Scott looking to open ears as to why her Poor Horse album’s been voted one of the 100 best Irish albums, and fellow Dubliner, the Malta born Andrew Crowley who, along with Adem is part of the fence collective.

Also here, and a good bonus reason to get along, is a rare appearance by "part-time New Yorker, part-time Dubliner" Katell Keineg, the Welsh born singer-songwriter serving reminder of the 2004 released High July.

It’s a bit of a stunner. What's The Only Thing Worse Than The End of Time? is a slow-burning Cohen-esque brooding slice of Celtic darkness and guitar shuffle, Beautiful Day hummable summery folksy pop while On Yer Way opens in dreamy cloud kissed spaces before evolving into a clangy seven minute affair.

Jazzy folk inclinations are evident on the acoustic Captain (Steal This Riff), Brother of the Brush is a simple backwoods country tune sung in the unlikely persona of Gaugin and Seven League Boots sounds like something from the Judy Collins sings the Jacques Brel songbook with burping brass.

Hers is the music of the earth and sky, simple, textured, capable of sparse, tear-stained fragility and storming tempests, that intricate voice, subtle, sensuous arrangements and lyrical depth and emotion coming together with heart-shuddering effect. It's taking longer than it should to become the major international star that is her talent's birthright, but she's getting there.

8pm. £8. Glee Club

Sunday May 7

The Streets

Three albums in and the backlash has hit. Having risen to superstar status and lauded at every move, Mike Skinner’s found fame to be not as sweet as he’d fancied. Hence The Hardest Way To Make An Easy (679) where he spends his time whinging on about what a hard life he’s got, an album that many have dismissed as self-indulgent self-pitying whining. Well yeh, it is and, after the sad sack tales of being a dreamer slapped in the face that fuelled the first two albums, it is a bit hard to sympathise with him as he goes on about how he started taking loads of drugs and acting like a prat in a whirl of self-loathing and paranoia. It’s hard to see how those who identified with his past life and songs about getting dumped are going to relate to things like Prangin’ Out, Hotel Expressionism and When You Wasn’t Famous. And. there’s also the hard truth that there simply aren’t as many strong tracks here as on A Grand Don’t Come For Free. Indeed, Can’t Con An Honest John is almost unlistenably tedious.

That said though, he’s not lost his dry ironic sense of humour and it’s clear much of this is also a send up of the complaining rock star while numbers like male infidelity number All Goes Out Of The Window, Two Nations, and the title track are on a par with anything he’s done. On top of which the disarmingly poignant Never Went To Church about the death of his father and the role religion plays in our lives is easily the best thing he’s ever written and likely to reduce you to a sobbing wreck.

He’s going to have to work extra hard live though to convince fans to stick with him and there’s a definite sense that he may well be walking himself up a cul de sac.

7.30pm. £21.50, Carling Academy

Sunday May 7

The Upper Room

After a pleasant but unmemorable debut with All Over This Town, the quartet return with guns blazing for the follow up, Black And White (Sony), a slice of chiming, circling guitar pop with a ridiculously catchy chorus that instantly lodges in the brain. All delivered by frontman Alex Miller in a slight nasal soaring tremor, this is what the Byrds might have been had they come from Brighton. An album is due in August, if it’s half as good as this you may want to take up permanent lodgings.

7pm. £6. Bar Academy

Sunday May 7

Scott Matthews

Hailing from Wolverhampton but with his spiritual roots in the muddy deltas, Matthews is looking to establish himself as a sort of Black Country amalgam of Beck and Ben Harper with heady traces of Robert Plant for good measure. His debut album, Passing Strangers (San Remo), offers a solidly muscular folk, delta blues, rock and world music, particularly notable for the use of tabla, violin and cello on the bluesy Dream Song, the strong percussion driven rhythms of The Fool’s Fooling Himself (lots of nods to Zep here), the leafy folk of Eyes Wider Than Before and the slide guitar work of Blue In The Face Again and Sweet Scented Figure.

There’s a lovely woodsmoke laziness to the title track and Prayers and if the album tends to drift and fall away rather in the second stretch over numbers like Earth To Calm and the finger-picked folk White Feathered Medicine, there’s ample here to suggest he’s a name well worth keeping an eye on.

7.30pm. £4.50 mac

Monday May 8

Don Williams

It’s a farewell tour for the laid back Texan country star who’s apparently hanging up the stetson, at least as far as the UK’s concerned. It also happens to coincide with the release of The Definitive (Universal) , a compilation of hits that’s likely to form the basis for the set’s wander across his back catalogue years of fan favourites.

Arguably, his best work encompasses his first few albums with such classic songs as I Recall A Gypsy Woman, Amanda, You’re Me Best Friend, and ‘Til The Rivers All Run Dry. With the exception of Some Broken Hearts Never Mend, the material from the later 70s and 80s significantly there’s no tracks from the 90s here) is pleasant enough but somehow the likes of It Must Be Love, Love Is On A Roll and Good Ole Boys Like Me lack the same memorability factor. His version of Wonderful Tonight, released a couple of years back, fits him like a glove and suggested a return to form that never really materialised, so perhaps the decision to put his boots up and take it even easier has come at the right time.

7.30pm. £27.50/£25. Symphony Hall

Monday May 8

Blackbud

Having just completed their debut album, From The Sky, due for release next month, the Wiltshire trio hit the road to let off some steam and showcase the upcoming material. There’s no details yet as to the album track listing, but it seems certain to build on the band’s already glowing reputation for writing songs that variously conjure references to Giant Sand, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jimmy Page, Neil Young and Jeff Buckley. It’s trailed by excellent first single Dancing Barefoot (Independiente) which, with its influence of mellow Hendrix, further serves to confirm them as one of the most exciting new names for 2006.

7.30pm. £6. Barfly (+ Little Civic, Tue 9 .7.30pm. £5)

Monday May 8

Boy Kill Boy

Having cracked the Top 30 with unremarkable debut Vertigo single Back Again where Duran met Morrissey, the lads headlining the NME New Bands tour and follow up with a rework reissue of their former limited edition release Suzie, a track which does little to persuade they’re not just a bunch of Smiths copyists who got lucky.

Howling Bells

Sharing the tour bus there’s a swift return by Sidney’s Howling Bells, here barely a week ago on a headlining stint to launch their self-titled debut album (Bella Union), and, likely to be the most fun of the night, teen Welsh combo The Automatic, following on from their recent rollicking punk-pop single Raoul.

The Automatic

7.30pm. £10. Wulfrun Hall

Tuesday May 9

Dresden Dolls

Bostonian duo singer-pianist Amanda Palmer and drummer Brian Viglione were last over a couple of years back, promoting their eponymous debut, a highly theatrical affair rooted in the Weimar cabaret of 30s Germany and sounding like a fractured cocktail of Tori Amos, Patti Smith, Queen and Ute Lemper.

They’re back to engage ears with their latest, Yes, Virginia (Roadrunner), an album that holds to the if it ain’t broke maxim.That said, there is a perhaps stronger pop melodic sensibility in evidence on tracks like jaunty lurcher My Alcoholic Friends, Sex Changes a staccato stomper that The Darkness might consider fair game and slinky barroom piano tango Mandy Goes To Med School.

Lyrically they continue to poke around in the darker recesses of the psyche, touching on themes of identity crisis, back alley abortions, sex (the bitter despair of First Orgasm), rejection (Me & The Minibar particularly potent) and, on Mrs O (a song inspired by a 1897 child’s letter to the New York Sun questioning the existence of Father Christmas, Holocaust denial.

Some may miss the rough edges and more experimental touches of the debut and there’s a couple of tracks here that don’t really live up their ambitions (the overlong, rather meanderingly dreary Delilah for one), but this is still thoughtful, musically provocative stuff and coupled with their flair for live theatrics guaranteed to provide a stimulatingly memorable gig.

7.30pm. £12.50. Carling Academy 2

Tuesday May 9

Josh Ritter

Always a welcome visitor to the club, Ritter's latest, The Animal Years (V2), rings a few changes in terms of both musical style and content, bearing both a rougher musical edge and a more mainstream accessible approach while equally loading up with literary emboldened and lyrically hard hitting tracks that reflect his anger and confusion at the current political state of his country.

Thus the opening Girl In The War is a chiming piece of weary Springsteenesque folk-pop about Iraq that reverses the usual man at the front girl back home scenario while Thin Blue Flame is a near ten minute track that unleashes his frustrations with the Bush administration, an absent God and the general self-destructive nature of a world where religious has become a battle cry for war while, as the song builds to a climax, trying to find the moments of hope to hold on to.

It's not all so earnest and righteously angry, Idaho is a simple largely unaccompanied hymn to his home state that evokes Springsteen's Nebraska and Young's Harvest while the rootsy old school Americana of a Dylan-like Lillian, Egypt and the train chugging rhythms of A Good Man offer relatively straightforward love songs.

But perhaps the best numbers here are Wolves and Monster Ballads. The latter, with its brushed snare and organ hum, sounds not a million miles from nostalgia hued sepia days of I'm On Fire while the former is a joyous song of love recalled in time of duress. "Tell me I got here at the right time" he sings on the closing emotional notes of Here At The Right Time. He did, he has. You should too.

Support comes from former Swedish footballer Nicolai Dunger, last heard over here three years back with his Tranquil Isolation album and its stripped back porch folk-soul blues and Van Morrison/Tim Buckley influences. Since then he’s recorded Here’s My Song, You Can Have It...I Don’t Want It Anymore but it remains unreleased in the UK. Doubtless, he’ll be dipping into it tonight, offering up such numbers as White Wild Horses, The Year of the Love And Hurt Cycle and Hunger, whetting the appetite for its hopeful arrival via his US label Rounder, before the end of the year prior to which there should also be a Best Of collection to keep the flame burning.

8pm. £12. Glee Club

Tuesday May 9

iLiKETRAiNS

The Leeds quintet do like to go in for biographical epics. Their last single, A Rook House For Bobby sketched the troubled life of chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer and now comes Terra Nova (Fierce Panda), a suitably grandly glacial guitar backed account of Captain Scott’s doomed 1912 Antarctic expedition. It’s lifted from next month’s debut album which promises further excursions into vast sonic landscapes, much of which will be showcases tonight with the band decked out in their trademark matching British Rail uniforms while antiquated projectors provide a film backdrop of trains, snow, chess and much more.

7.30pm. £5. Barfly

Tuesday May 9
The Longcut

Dubbed 'angular post-rock noiseniks', the Manchester trio haven't exactly been in a hurry to release their debut album. Debut single Transitions surfaced towards the end of 2004, followed by The Quiet Life in mid 2005, since when nothing. However, A Call and Response (Deltasonic) will finally see the light of day next month, hence this advance bout of dates to lay the ground. As you might anticipate from their intoxicating amalgam of New Order, U2, Mogwai,, Massive Attack, and Sigur Ros, it’s a vast, intense affair, opening with the surging A Last Act of Desperate Men and its clattering guitars and vocals beamed in from space before taking otherwordly orbit with Gravity In Crisis and its early Muse-like inclinations, then it’s on to the infectious breakbeat instrumental Holy Funk, a tinglingly cascading A Tried And Tested Method, the squirping acid hose cruncher A Quiet Life, A Kiss Off’s jangling hypnotic sonic fuzz, the spacy swirls of Lonesome No More, and Vitamin C’s New Order dance pop before shutting up shop with another instrumental, the fractured cocktail of serenity and rage that is Spires. With half of the tracks clocking in at over five minutes, and likely to expand further played live, it promises to be exhilirating night.

7.30pm. £6. Bar Academy

Wednesday May 10

Clayhill

Fronted by Gavin Clark, formerly of underrated rootsy blues outfit Sunhouse, with ex Red Snapper bassist Ali Friend and Ted Barnes providing guitar, this is something of a launch gig for their sophomore album, Mine At last (East Sleep).

Like its predecessor, Small Circle, it’s an acoustic based collection of soulfully forlorn songs about failed relationships and the humdrum nature of life, firmly impregnated with the acid folk influences of Nick Drake and Tim Hardin. It’s all very English, often (as with Hang On) conjuring grey afternoons with rain dripping from trees and suburban roofs, and while Suffer Not and White of the Eyes shows they can turn on the heavier side if the mood takes, Buy Me A Suit borrows the Keep On Running riff and Halfway Across is a perky slice of jaunty guitar folk pop the dominant pace is mid to slow tempo weary balladry, at its finest with Lying Breed and the closing After The Slaughter which should respectively send shivers down the spines of Deacon Blue and Blue Nile admirers. To be honest, it’s hard to see it selling in large quantities, but those who do discover it and the band are going to be very content indeed.

8pm. £7. Glee Club

Tuesday May 9

Dick Valentine

Taking time out from his day job as frontman for the increasingly underwhelming, underperforming Electric Six, Valentine arrives guitar case in hand for a one man wander through the band’s back catalogue, throwing in sneak previews from the upcoming album as well as unreleased material and the odd cover or two. So, if you ever wondered what Danger! High Voltage or Naked Demons Of Your Mother might sound like done folksily acoustic, here’s your chance to find out.

Opening the show is Freddie Stevenson, a Scottish troubadour who seemingly doesn’t believe in providing any background biographical info. Suffice to say, he’s got a debut album, Body On The Line, due the end of next month, preceded by current single, If You Don’t Kiss Me (Juicy), a breezy piece of Radio 2 friendly pop with a catchy chorus hook that does at least make you want to learn more.

7.30pm. £6. Barfly

Tuesday May 9

Mohair

A new bunch from Bushey with ambitions to take on the world, the name might suggest Mod but their Small Talk (Ear Candy) album is much more grandiose than that, with surging rock riffs, spraying guitars and thumping rhythms. The squally Everything I Want has a manic rockabilly beat, like Stray Cats mating with The Glitter Band, Keep It Together evokes Queen, Little Voice erupts with a hint of garage rock stapled to chancer indie pop and Life goes for the big epic sound.

The production lets the side down, muddying things too much to allow the multi-layered arrangements and vocals on something like the soaring ballad Thin Air to really come through and I should point out that End of The Line’s jerky stabbing guitar lines and vocal phrasings sound incredibly like Sonny & Cher’s Little Man. But Keep It Together has already given them a No 1 in Bosnia and while it’s likely that’s the only chart topper their career’s likely to produce, their vibrant attack, enthusiasm and upbeat approach should certainly keep them on nodding acquaintance with the lower reaches of the Top 40.

7.30pm. £6. Bar Academy

Wednesday May 10/Thursday May 11

Hard Fi

Drawing on the not so glittering joys of living in Staines debut album Stars of CCTV (Atlantic) emerged ( to glowing praise for its tales of crap clubbing (Living For The Weekend), being broke and ducking out on your pregnant girlfriend (Cash Machine), the death of friends in Iraq (Middle Eastern Holiday) and being banged up in the local Young Offenders' nick (Feltham Is Singing Out).

Musically the influences are readily apparent. Tied Up Too Tight might prompt comparisons to Gorillaz but the roots stretch back much further to the white reggae infusions of The Clash and The Specials. Indeed, switch Staines for Coventry and you could be back in the 80s with Jerry Dammers bemoaning the state of his slab of the nation.

Musically they stick fairly close to a diet of dub friendly hip hop, soul-funk, skanking beats and disco, bringing a solid pop sensibility to the lopingly anthemic title track, Hard To Beat and current single Better Do Better’s tale of an ex trying to restart the relationship. But it’s an impressive first step that’s clearly hooked the mass audience’s attention. Now all they have to do is chuck out the record collection and come up with a second album that will show they have a lasting identity of their own.

7.30pm. £17.50. W’hampton Civic Hall

Thursday May 11

The Kooks

Following up recent chart success with Naive, the Brighton indie popsters head back on the road for a continued reminder of debut album Inside In/Inside Out with its sharply written songs of youthful frustration and screwed up relationships. A throwback to the 60s and 70s with comparisons to everyone from The Jam and The Kinks to Dexys and The Strokes, it’s not actually offering anything new but when they sharpen their pop razor on something like the simple acoustic Seaside, the rollocking goodtime summery strum She Moves In Her Own Way and You Don’t Love Me’s big beat 60s r&b pop staccato jitters their future looks promising indeed.

Support act is Dan Sartain, a scrawny native of Birmingham, Alabama who plays ragged punk garage rockabilly like a bad boy 50s version of Iggy Pop weaned on bootleg Johnny Cash and Link Wray records. Playing pretty much everything himself, Dan Sartain vs The Serpientes (One Little Indian) is a snarling rumble of fuzzy twanging guitars, throbbing bass and pistol whipping percussion that, on I Could Have Had You especially, sometimes sounds like it was recorded after several days under a desert sun. He plays the musical field too, the three part Walk Among The Cobras slides from a train from hell rhythm to a dry boned punk blues stagger, PCB 98 whipnecks like The Cramps in spasm, while Metropolis hikes a jazz blues shuffle, Auto Pilot is a strummed campfire love song and Romance sounds like the scuzzy, strung out sibling of Little Red Rooster. With the distortion pedal cranked up live, he could prove a hard act to follow.

7.30pm. £9. Wulfrun Hall

Friday May 12

Amy Wadge

Avon by birth, Wadge’s talent as singer-songwriter and performer has long been recognised by her adopted Wales. It’s taking a little longer to spread the word beyond the borders. However, No Sudden Moves (Manhaton), her follow up to Woj, should go some way to remedying that with a strong collection of melodic, folksily AOR songs, three of which were co-penned with producers Gary Christian and St Etienne’s Guy Batson.

The Carole King and Indigo Girl references remain strong on numbers like Free Fall, Always and the stand out Pulling Me In while Fairweather Friend and the title track suggest Sheryl Crow’s mellower moods and Here In My Hands even has a touch of Bonnie Tyler about her husky delivery.

A poetic lyricist, the songs too have grown in stature. The material on Woj was solid, but she’s moved to a new level with things like the jazzy flavoured easy rolling Always, the emotionally drained Shattered, Play It Again’s poignant farewell to a late friend and the Brill Building airiness of the other man’s grass themed USA, We’ll Wait & See , the Welsh version of which reached No 9 in the native charts. Indeed, it says much that her wistful piano interpretation of the Manics’ Design For Life slots in seamlessly among her original material. It may take some concerted gigging and a leg up from Radio 2 airplay to crack the territories beyond the land of song, but as the album suggests, she’s in no hurry and her time is definitely approaching.
A bonus comes with guest support Elaine Palmer, the Yorkshire singer-songwriter discovered by Clint Boon of Inspiral Carpets who released her debut on his own label.

Now signed to Cosmos, her follow up, Waves, is due next month so this is a useful showcase taster of what to expect.

It’s a more wide ranging affair than Into The Spotlight, featuring members of Lamb on double bass, cello, drums and electric bass while Palmer takes on classical guitar, accordion, harmonium, chimes, and piano duties for a set of songs that run from the intimate In To You and Homefair Blues to the relatively more full-blooded arrangements of the shuffling Blue Sky and tinklingly countrified uptempo In Your Company.

Her soothing, plaintive voice still evokes thoughts of Melanie and the folksily romantic songs remain rooted in exploring the ups and downs of relationships and self-confidence, their textures firmly influenced by the fact she wrote them in a reflective mood while living on the coast. Taking its cue from the title, the album has a gentle lapping quality, rippling, ebbing and flowing through sometimes uncertain emotions, searching for that sense of security, solace and belonging that informs Harbour of Refuge and the shimmeringly lovely closing track, Resting Ground.

Ideally, the likes of Terease, Morning Love and the back porch strumming hymnal Some Deadly Sin should be listened to with a chilled white wine by your side as you sit outside in the early morning salty tanged air, letting the fresh breeze of dawn brush your hair and the smell of lilac curl into your senses, but what the hell, it still sounds great in the living room too.

8pm. £6. Glee Club

Saturday May 13

Great Lake Swimmers

A vehicle for Toronto-based singer-songwriter Tony Dekker, their eponymous debut album (Fargo) was in the grain silo of an abandoned farm, the follow up, Bodies and Minds, in a lakeside church, both reflecting Dekker's rural sensibilities. His ghostly voice and acoustic guitar variously augmented by piano, drums, lap steel, banjo and, accordion, both find Dekker pouring out tales of loneliness, despair, emotional numbness, manic depression and the search for spiritual transcendence in songs that call to mind Neil Young and Gram Parsons.

Given an almost non-existent profile here, chances are the gig’s not going to be too crowded, but with songs such as The Man With No Skin, This Is Not Like Home, Song For The Angels and I Saw You In The Wild likely to figure on the set list, the curious and the already aware should look forward to something of a treat.

6pm. £7. Bar Academy

Saturday May 13

Dave Matthews

Surprisingly under-publicised, this is one of just three acoustic solo gigs the American singer-songwriter’s playing in the UK. Fairly huge in the USA where they’ve even inspired guitar tribute and karaoke albums, the Dave Matthews Band has never really taken off over here, only managing one Top 40 hit, The Space Between, five years ago. Middle of the road rootsy soft rock with world music influences and more than a jamming touch of the Grateful Dead about them, Matthews certainly has an abundance of albums and songs to draw on and the faithful will assuredly be out in relative force to see what songs from the hip hop and jazz rock flavoured current album Stand Up sound like stripped back to the basics.

6pm. £25. Carling Academy

Sunday May 14

Durutti Column

Some 30 years on from the band’s formative days as left field musical experimentalists on the Manchester music scene, guitarist Vini Rielly’s still busy decon0structing and reworking musical genres for his small but devoted following of admirers. Arguably his most commercial venture, new album Keep Breathing (Fulfill) was soaked in influences of African hip hop, Jewish Kletzer music and the 1930’s piano works of jazzman Art Tatum. You’ll also find strong traces Bert Jansch and John Fahey, a sample from a school choir on the hauntingly airy Maggie which sounds like it could have been lifted wholesale from some 60s English folk album, a guitar and sampler rescoring of Avro Part’s Agnus Dei with vocalist Helen Farley-Jones singing in Latin, classical Spanish guitar arpeggios with Gun, a touch of Floydian prog for It’s Wonderful and Nina, and a shimmering meld of krautrock, electronica and gospel on the dreamily intoxicating seven minute Let Me Tell You Something.

Ghostly and slightly threadbare, Reilly’s own vocals take some getting used to, but bring a strange hypnotic magic to something like the achingly reflective Helen and lend a touch of sweetness even when he’s having a go at reality TV or talking about depression and suicide.

Not one for the casual listener, Reilly does rather require you to work with him and let his music permeate you, but if you have the persuasion this could be a rather mesmerisingly night.

7.30pm. £14.50. Glee Club

*****CANCELLED***** Monday May 15***** CANCELLED*****

Richard Ashcroft

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

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

7.30pm. £20. Carling Academy

Monday May 15

Texas

Having regained lost ground with last year’s well received tour and new album Red Book, Sharleen and the boys aren’t about to let things slide, So it’s back on the road for a second flurry of stadium nights to remind why, on top form, they remain one of the best, most consistent outfits in the country.

For those who somehow failed to catch the revival, seek out the album and wrap your ears around the stunning Kate Bush inclined What About Us, Can’t Resist’s Moroder eurogroove evident, the jangling pop cascades of Masterthief and the luminously beautiful moments of the whispering country soul title track and the retro soul of Sleep featuring the Blue Nile’s Paul Buchanan. Then do your damnedest to get a front row seat.

7.30pm. £26. NEC

Monday May 15

The Earlies

Melding Brian Wilson’s soft melancholic psychedelia into Flaming Lips blissed out cool, Mercury Rev cosmic zen and baggy Air floatiness, their debut album, These Were The Earlies juggled the dreamy flavours of Wayward Song drifting on clouds of flutes with the likes of The Devil’s Country clanking along like some Hare Krishna party down the swamp. God news then that a follow up is imminent and they’ll be previewing material on the current tour, playing the new songs live for the first time. Show opener guests are Midlake, a five piece from smalltown Texas who’ve attracted comparisons to Flaming Lips, Granddaddy and Mercury Rev. You’ll hear those references in new album, The Trials of Van Occupanther (Bella Union), but also the influence of Fleetwood Mac, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and (on Roscoe especially) CS&N on a sound that is both contemporary and steeped in the late 60s and early 70s.

Dealing with themes of retreat from the modern world, it’s a folksily pastoral album that takes its title from the figure of a village-dwelling reclusive, ostracised scientist while the songs talk of the changing seasons and getting back to the earth. The band do crank up the rock heat here and there, nudging the guitars into buzzing flurries on In This Camp, Head Home and Young Bride, but it’s the more reflective, often keyboard based, numbers that really see them glow. The dreamy Bandits, a driftingly lazy Van Occupanther with its woodwinds, the cloud-tipped harmonies of Branches and the softly strummed quilted folk of Chasing After Deer all offer a musical and spiritual balm to wash away the grime of the rat race.

7.30pm. £9. Barfly

Monday May 15

Protest The Hero

They hail from Ontario and play fast, hard in your face socially aware rock in the vein of System of a Down. They also do the concept bit, debut album Kezia (Vagrant) built around the execution of the titular female character as seen from three different perspectives, that of the priest, executioner and the victim. Each character gets three songs, with the tenth track a retrospective finale.

Which, put into practice, means savagely brutal blistering guitar riffs and percussion, howled vocals and themes of morality, empowerment and attitudes towards women wheeled out through titles such as She Who Mars The Skin of Gods, No Stars Over Bethlehem, The Divine Suicide of K. and, to wrap it up, A Plateful of Our Dead. It’s ambitious, relentless stuff that never pauses for breath, demanding intense mosh pit thrash action before spitting you back into the street, raw, drained but, undoubtedly, exhilarated.

7.30pm. £12.50. Wulfrun Hall.

Monday May 15/Tuesday May 16

Radiohead

It’s a while since Thom Yorke and co played venues this size, but it’s not some back to their roots movement rather a chance to warm up prior to headlining the V Fest. Still, whatever the reason, any chance to get relatively up close and personal and see the cerebral cortex throbbing as they delve into their minimalist intricacy and difficult ambience as they work their way through the complexities of Amnesiac and Hail To The Thief has to be worth it. Or did you think they were suddenly going to throw in experimentalist towel and start playing Creep, Fake Plastic Trees and No Surprises again.

7.30pm. £32.50. W’hampton Civic Hall

Tuesday May 16/Wednesday May 17

Take That

Probably not back for good, but certainly back for the cash after less than spectacular solo careers (Robbie there in hologram spirit only), the reunion has sold out shows with truckloads of Never Forget: The Ultimate Collection CD and DVD flying out of the stores.

So, here we are Messrs Barlow, Orange, Donald and Owen, a little older and with not quite as many dance moves as they once had, primed to plough their way through what remains a very impressive hits collection.

So yes, there’ll be nostalgia in the air as you struggle to remember how the likes of Sure, I Found Heaven, Why Can’t I Wake Up With You and Promises actually went, while enthusiastically singing along to Never Forget, Everything Changes, Babe and Pray. And at least this time, they won’t be drowned out by hundreds of screaming tweenies.

Lulu won’t be along for Relight My Fire, but the band will have it in the set, her part being taken by special guest support act Beverley Knight, the Wolverhampton soul pop star going through her own greatest hits collection, Voice (Parlophone), with the likes of Come As You Are, Made It Back, Shoulda Woulda Coulda, Flava of the Old Skool, Gold (her only top 10 entry) and her current cover of Piece of My Heart which takes the original Irma Franklin template and gives it a run for its money.

7.30pm. £35/£25. NEC

Wednesday May 17

Howe Gelb

Now here’s a rare treat. The sometime frontman of undervalued cult desert country outfit Giant Sand, Gelb’s warped country has remained consistently inventive, unfazed by a career that’s rarely put its head above the cult ramparts. No more so than the album he’s touring here, ‘Sno Angel Like You (Thrill Jockey) teams him on record and on stage with Canadian gospel choir Voices of Praise, not for the theme and content but for the sound. So, despite titles like Robes of Bible Black (a classic old school country chugger), Love Knows No Borders and Paradise Here abouts, don’t be put off thinking you’re going to get a night of testifying and salvation (though musically, Gelb could give your soul a makeover), rather this is more in the same secular mould as the recent Jenny Watson album, taking Gelb’s dust throated country and filling it with the full blooded harmonies power of a choir reaching for the rafters.

Opener Get To Leave is typical Gelb with its parched burr and tumbling folksy melody while That’s How Things Get Done is a ragged, throaty guitar blues jerk, The Farm a classic Cash-style box cars rhythm and Worried Spirits a clanky, swamper but all are transformed into something extra with the choir’s input. It blazes like a beacon on disc, one can only imagine how incendiary the live set is going to be within the Glee’s confines.

8pm. £13. Glee Club

Wednesday May 17

Hot Chip

Freshly returned from their US jaunt, the casio popsters are back to launch their sophomore album, The Warning, and new single And I Was A Boy From School. It’s pleasant summery stuff with all the frothy technopop bells and whistles and krautrock lite 80s electro you might expect, tracks like the strobey Arrest Yourself, the Human League-like No Fit State, cool Isleys soul Look After Me and the beats clinking Just Like We probably ideal for the less energetic dancefloors. But even though Careful might flex some throatier muscles, it’s all rather limply insipid. "Hot Chip will break your leg", they sing on the watery Occidental flavoured The Warning. More like tread on your toe and apologise for hours afterwards.

7.30pm. £9. Carling Academy 2

Thursday May 18

The Zutons

The weather can’t seem to make up its mind, but the scousers are officially in summer mood with fab new album Tired of Hanging Around (Deltasonic), the sun positively beaming through on the Kinksy lurching Valerie and It’s The Little Things We Do. Odd then that the songs seem to be overflowing with paranoia and a sense of threat, How Does It Feel? heavy with despondent lost love glumness, Secrets all nervy neurosis, Oh Stacey’s bouncy jaunt masking a story of suicide and You’ve Got A Friend In Me a song about stalking told from both perspectives.

But whatever the lyrics might be asking you to ponder, the music is talking straight to your twitchy limbs, Why Won’t You Give Me Your Love a glamrock stomp that vaguely recalls The Beatles’ Got To Get You Into My Life and the title track a happy dancefloor meeting between Dexys and Teardrop Explodes. So, while they may be feeling miserable buggers, you don’t have to.

7.30pm. £16. Carling Academy

Thursday May 18

Martha Tiltson

Daughter of West Country singer-songwriter Steve, Tiltson’s Bimbling album is unsurprisingly well steeped in folk tradition influences, but, as on the skittering rhythms of Tribal Kidz also tuned to the world culture vibes of Glastonbury.

As political as often as she is romantic, her breathily husky voice weaves magic around such self-penned stand-outs as Over To Ireland, an itchily shuffling Seagull, sensual cello and violin coloured love song Firefly where she sings of the love filling up her belly, liltingly melodic fairytale Mary and the Prince and the marvellous Red, redolent of wet leaves, spider-webbed hollows, ricks and shadowing clouds over fields.

Although not commerically available, she also has a new album, Ropeswing, available on free download (at www.pondlifestudios.com) for a limited time, featuring such tracks as Frizzby, A Surfer Courted Me, Kinvarna Corporations and Cobwebs, doubtless previews of which will find their way into tonight’s set list, further confirmation that the Tilston name seems set to dominate the English folk scene for another generation.

8pm. £7. Glee Club

Thursday May 18

The Divine Comedy

Neil Hannon's been off the scene for a while, but this tour with an 8 piece band marks a return with the eagerly anticipated follow up to 2004's Absent Friends. It has to be said that the single Diva Lady, isn't especially exciting, a typically witty lyric about the J-Los and Mariah Careys of the world but set to a one note melody line that never really goes anywhere. However the album, Victory For The Comic Muse
(Parlophone), doesn't disappoint with its English languid ennui and orchestral pop. Opening with To Die A Virgin, a clumpingly sassy vaudeville pop songs about ayoung lad who might be on a promise that calls to mind a cross between Madness and Pulp, it follows on with the banjo plucking hoe-down tribute to Mother Dear, the brass flecked mariachi pop of Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World (about girls not the
cosmos), and the cascading soft reveries of The Light of Day where Hannon sounds like a choirboy Morrissey.Generally treating themes of love and loneliness, much here calls to mind early Scott Walker, most notably the Brel-like The Plough, the tinkling early morning moods of the part spoken Count Grassi's Passage Over Piedmont and, arguably the album's stand out, A Lady of A Certain Age where he paints a poignant portrait of an English widow, her celebrity days now faded, abandoned by her late husband who went off with his mistress and mostly unvisited by her son in Surrey.He also drops in a cover, a flamenco-like gallop through the old
Associates hit Party Fears Two that seems likely to prove something of a
live highlight and, were he not already spoiled for choice with his own songs, a future hit single.Audience unfamiliarity with the material will probably limit previews to
just a few selections inbetween better known past nuggets but it's a fair bet that, once the album's permeated the charts and radio consciousness he'll be back for a tour of the bigger venues and a more expansive flourish.

Support are noisy punk six piece Louie whose current single, Dead Man (Fallout) is a surging flurry of urgent guitars that goes a fair way to living up to the Clash and Buzzcocks comparisons.

8pm. £6.50. Barfly

Friday May 19

Presidents of the USA

Having resigned from office at the end of 97 after racking up such Southern rock hits as Kitty and the excellent Peaches, the Seattle trio returned to the musical White House two years back with Love Everybody (Pusa), putting its tongue firmly in the pop punk cheek with 18 chewy tracks lining up for spots in the next frat boy teen comedy soundtrack.

Still playing their two string guitar and three string bass, it comes out of the traps firing with the manic title track, sounding like the MC5 but more melodious before getting down to business with a Blink-like tale of Some Postman hoarding everybody’s love letters and songs about rampant male hormones (Poke and Destroy, Drool At You), celebrity (the Jonathan Richman sounding Naked and Famous), rock n roll parties (Shreds of Boa) and I daresay a lot of drugs (Munky River).

Clearly having found favour among new voters, they’re back on the campaign trail with a welcome re-release of their self-titled debut album that, along with the aforementioned Kitty and Peaches, also features Feather Pluckn, which sounds like Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth, and their cover of MC5’s Kick out The Jams.

As catchy as they’re often cheerfully immature, these are the ones to cast your vote for.

7.30pm. £13. Carling Academy

Friday May 19

Boo Hewardine

Aside from releasing his own beguilingly lovely solo albums, Boo’s also provided well over 400 songs for other artists. So, in response to requests to hear his versions, he’s put together Harmonograph (Mvine), a 12 track acoustic collection of songs, some co-penned, that range from the well known to the previously unrecorded.

You’ll be familiar with Patience of Angels from the Eddi Reader version, and there’s a couple of others here that she’s covered, the yet to be released dreamily chiming Ontario, the funkily chugging Nameless, and, featuring Indian harmonium and harp, Sugar On The Pill.

Elsewhere, Butterfly On A Pin is rescued from Hepburn oblivion, Slow Learner returns to original simple Clive Gregson-esque shape after being taken on by the Nashville Bluegrass Band, while Sing To Me remains an unissued recording by Rosalie Deighton.

Few will have heard many of the cover versions, so you can happily forget about drawing comparisons and just lie back and soak up Hewardine’s gentle breathy drifts through such joys as The Girl Who Fell In Love With The Moon and tinkling pop gem Weatherman, the live set doubtless mixing and matching with songs from his own extensive back catalogue.

8pm. £10. Glee Club

Saturday May 20

Morrissey

Having returned from the wilderness with a vengeance on You Are The Quarry, two years later young Stephen tops even that with Ringleader of the Tormentors (Attack), an album that sees him in rampant sexual mood for the first time in his musical career, caught by surprise to find ‘explosive kegs between my legs’ on the melancholic Dear God Please Help Me while a tautly rocking You Have Killed Me is all cherry popping confessions.

This sexual awakening has also put blood in his musical cheeks, with tracks like I Will see You in Far-Off Places, the T-Rex influenced In The Future When All’s Well, a clattering military beat The Father Who Must be Killed, The Youngest Was The Most Loved and a storming I Just Want To See The Boy Happy all fierce, muscular rocking songs.

There’s still typical Morrissey vinegar here of course, but even as he sings Life Is A Pigsty or "I see the world, it makes me puke" (on To Me You Are A Work Of Art) he offsets the lines with bursts of romantic optimism, something few would ever have expected to hear on one of his records.

At Last I Am Born, he declares, and the album bristles with life and confidence, swagger and energy. If he’s still in the same mood, the gigs should be unlikely partying in the aisles affairs, though it’ll be interesting to see what take this new life brings to those old miserable anthems.

7.30pm. £29.50. Symphony Hall

Saturday May 20

Taking Back Sunday

The New York emo rockers band motor in to add weight behind new album Louder Now (Warner), a solid attack of dual vocals, hooks, big choruses and major guitar piled melodies. The tickingly rhythmic soaring midtempo MakeDamnSure is lifted as a single to go with the tour but they were certainly spoiled for choice with the likes of hardcore assault Spin, a limb jerking What’s It Feel Like To Be A Ghost and the hammering infectious quiet-slow slogger Up Against (Blackout).

They have their quieter patches, of course, Divine Intervention the obligatory acoustic ballad, but this isn’t a band that wants you swaying to yourself in the corner, they’ll be expecting some serious body crashing action when they crank into Twenty Twenty Surgery (another single contender), the slow surging Miami or a crash and burn Error Operator, channelling angst and aggression into dance floor sweatboxing. The weekend starts here.

6pm. £13.50, Carling Academy

Sunday May 21

Status Quo

Having had to cancel their annual Christmas bash following Rick Parfitt’s illness scare, they’re back now for this special one off to be recorded for a live DVD. Which, of course means, they’ll be ploughing through a pile of greatest hits. But as current album The Party Ain’t Over Yet (Sanctuary) shows, they’re not entirely relegated to relying on old glories for the aged air guitarists and boogie jean brigade to keep the pulse beating.

Indeed mixing up the excellent country pop of the title track (which wouldn’t be out of place in a Mavericks set) and the instantly recognisable catchy Quo pop of the Buddy Hollyish All That Counts Is Love with a bluegrassy Nevashooda, the goodtiming 12 bar boogies Stupid Cupid and You Never Stop, it also takes a nod back to the earlier days with Gotta Get Up And Go a close cousin of Down The Dustpipe and both Bellavista Man and Goodbye Baby reminders of their days as a real blues band.

For a while it was fashionable to treat them as a joke, but if they’re going to keep recording things like this then it’s the Quo who’ll be having the last laugh.

7.30pm. £28.50. NEC

Sunday May 21

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

The New York art school trio return with musical teeth still bared but more polished for Show Your Bones (Fiction), a second album that finds them in minimalist but graunchy garage mood, turning up the choppy guitars and getting heavier with the drums while Karen O reaches deep inside her lungs to find those intense yowls.

The slow glam of recent single Gold Lion (which oddly sounds like Suzi Quatro taken at half speed and fronting The Pixies), the slow deliberate rock of Fancy, a punky Honeybear and the mutant rockabilly of Mysteries suggest these aren’t a band you want to argue with over the soundcheck. But they’re capable of twisting the emotions around your spine too with the acoustic then explosive Warrior and Cheated Hearts, a raging ballad that serves as this album’s answer to breakthrough track Maps. And they still manage to top that with the cathartic closing Turn Into as guitar riffs and piano take it to the roof. Affirmative action in the flesh.

7pm. £13. Carling Academy

Monday May 22

Paul Buchanan

If you don’t recognise the name, Buchanan’s the front man and writing axis for The Blue Nile though, one presumes, contractually unable to tour under that name. Not that the Scottish trio are exactly known for constant gigging or a saturation of releases; in 25 years they’ve only made four albums.

Regardless, backed by a full band, whatever name you call it this will doubtless be a night of Blue Nile material, stretching back to embrace such beloved classics as Tinseltown In The Rain, Let’s Go Out Tonight and A Walk Across The Rooftops but with the emphasis likely to be on material from the recent High album.

As ever it’s rich with sublime, melancholic cinematic songs, the music imbued with the soul of rain washed city streets, early morning rooftops and the forlorn, regret-stained hearts of the lost and lonely, Buchanan's weary, cracked voice the watershed of Springsteen, Randy Newman and Ricky Ross.

Indeed, sharing the same sense of compassion, storytelling, melodic structures and emotional ache, it's hard to escape thoughts of the Boss on the inexpressibly wonderful acoustic ballad I Would Never, the hopeful Everybody Else and the downcast disillusion with the American Dream that unfolds on Because of Toledo.

Although sepia hued ballads such as Days Of Our Lives are the band's backbone, they can do uptempo too, She Saw The World propelled by an urgent melody built around tickling percussion, beat box and piano.

Sure to be an evening of exquisite songs and fine melancholy, given Buchanan’s track record for live appearances the chances of it coming around again in the near future can’t be high so you’d be advised not to miss this at any cost. Especially given the chance he might well throw in his beautifully unrecognisable slow dance interpretation of Mel C’s Soul Boy.
7.30pm. £19.50. Symphony Hall

Monday May 22

Dinosaur Jr

Well, this is a reunion few might have anticipated. Having buried assorted hatchets, J Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph are back together, touring the material with which they pioneered loud, feedback drenched indie guitar rock.

It’s been some 16 years since this line-up played together, since which time Barlow formed Sebadoh and, after a new version of Dinosaur finally fell apart, Mascis pursued a solo career. However, two years ago he regained the rights to their SST recordings, and the trio reformed to promote the reissues of Dinosaur Jr, You're Living All Over Me and the seminal Bug.

So it is that they’ve slipped a handful of UK dates around their appearance at All Tomorrow’s Parties, providing the old faithful and more recent converts with a chance to relive the aural explosions of tracks like Freak Scene (also reissued as a single), Just Like Heaven, Little Fury Things, and Let it Ride.

It’s debatable whether they’ll include tracks from the albums Mascis recorded without Barlow, so no The Wagon or Out There, but there will doubtless be previews of the all new material they’ve recorded for the comeback album due later this year. But really, they could play their grocery lists and this would still be indispensable. Openers are LA girl trio The Like, back to remind ears about debut album Are You Thinking What I’m Thinking? (Geffen). With the solid hard pop melody of crunchy chorus packed June Gloom and the riff swaggering What I Say And What I Mean, it’s not difficult to see how they’ve earned comparisons to a harder edged The Bangles and with the likes of the emotive melancholia of Bridge To Nowhere, a brooding Once Things Look Up and live stormer Under The Paving Stones, there’s every reason to get Like-minded.
7.30pm. £16.50. Carling Academy 2

Monday May 22
The Answer

With riff roasting goodtime rock 'n' roll single Into The Gutter out next week and debut album Rise following later next month, this is another chance to warm up pre sales orders for Ireland’s Zep, Free and AC/DC loving quartet who’ll be doing their staple diet of riff roasting old school bluesy rock.

Support is Icelandic hard rock outfit Sign who, judging by their Thank God For Silence album (R&R) and riff driving, guitar soloing headbanger tracks like Lift Me Up, When Demons Win and, er, Never Stop Rockin’ have clearly spend an unhealthy amount of time in front of their bedroom mirrors pretending to be Iron Maiden.
7.30pm. £6. Barfly

Monday May 22

Chris Stills

Over here as support to Clayhill, as you might have guessed this is the son of Stephen Stills, his mother French chanteuse Veronique Sanson. No real surprise then to find him getting all bilingual on his eponymous upcoming album (V2) where he looks to explore the musical ties between his twin cultures of California rock and French chansons.

If there’s little of his father’s funkier rock influences, you can certainly detect the laid back melodic vibe aspects on numbers such as the dreamy When The Pain Dies Down, the folksy swayer Landslide and the rippling Golden Hour. Elsewhere the likes of For You with its soaring soulful vocals, a bluesy Story Of A Dying Man, French sung Kitty Catty and a mellow Sweet California may well call to mind Jeff Buckley and Flying High the soul pop of Hall & Oates.

The Live In Paris EP shows that he can turn things up more on stage, Say My Last Goodbye a slightly rockier affair but, whether working solo or as a trio, still tends to keep the groove nice and easy. He’s still to really establish an individual identity in the manner of, say Rufus Wainwright, but there’s certainly a talent here worth hearing and nurturing, though it must be said, hearing Band classic The Weight sung in French does rather rob the song of much of its charm.
7.30pm. £6. Little Civic, W’hampton

Tuesday May 23

Nerina Pallot

Having had things turn pear shaped with label wrangles in the wake of her Dear Frustrated Superstar debut, the London born half-French/half Indian singer-songwriter channelled the experiences into her into her current release, Fires (Idaho), where songs such as Mr King (a touch Kate Bush), Heart Attack ( a grown up Avril), Damascus and the soaringly defiant Learning To Breathe all deal with being walked over and getting back on your feet. It’s politicised too, opening up with the fairly self-explanatory swaggering burst of powerpop Everybody’s Gone To War.

Again conjuring such names as Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones, Paul Simon, Carole King, and Steely Dan, it’s a polished, sophisticated affair, bursting with pop bounce on All Good People, sly dancing on the classy piano ballad prickly love song Geek Love and showing off her vocal dynamics on the moody atmospherics of the six minute Nickindia. How much space she’ll have to stretch out here is uncertain, but if you’ve not heard of her before it’ll be worth whetting the appetite.

Opening up will be Breaks Co-Op whose debut album, The Sound Inside (Parlophone), is a throwback to the vibes of the summer of love with its blissed out grooves, new agey ambience and dreamy CSN&Y harmonic vocals set to hip hop beats and shuffling lo fi folk acoustic lopes.
8pm. £11. Glee Club

Wednesday May 24

Sarah Harmer/Vienna Teng

Sarah Harmer

Vienna Teng
An acoustic double bill to promote the Zoe label signings' new albums, this should figure large in the diary for anyone who counts themselves admirers of classy Americana. Raised on a Southern Ontario farm, with bluegrass in her veins and, one suspects, several Dolly Parton albums in the bedroom, Harmer's I'm A Mountain is steeped in old tyme country flavours but full of contemporary concerns.

Social issues find _expression in Goin' Out which addresses AIDS and the strummed acoustic Escarpment Blues environmental concerns about the Niagara Escarpment, a World Biosphere Reserve for endangered species under threat from multinationals who want to open quarries.

Themes of personal strength and renewal are mapped out in the spiritual and emotional topography too. Catchy newgrassy The Ring thanks a friend for inspirational support, the choppy Phoenix talks of regeneration, an image picked up again on the barroom waltzing Oleander where the return of the blossoms after the winter serves as metaphor for the ability to endure. Nature provides the balm too in the closing hymnal How Deep In The Valley where the tranquillity of the landscape fills you with the grace to accept that which you know. But she's playful too; the title track a hot fiddling bluegrass tune that sees her finding strength and refuge in a Wal-Mart shopping mall!

It's a simple, but disarmingly lovely, poignant album fresh with the tang of pine trees, dust roads and mountain streams, as bountiful to the soul as the landscapes that have inspired it.

If Ben Folds were Shawn Colvin, the result might be akin to California pianist singer-songwriter Teng whose Warm Strangers deals with the big themes of love, death, and rising over adversity through a mix of meditative folksy ballads and more uptempo, pop inclined numbers.

A fine pianist and blessed with warm, emotion flecked vocals, the songs range from the classical flavoured slightly Tori-esque My Medea that talks of the 'mild depression' syndrome from which she suffers to the Billy Joel-like rolling Shasta about a girl who's decided not to have an abortion and Homecoming’s heart-aching story of a lonely trucker. She’s also got the unbridled confidence to sing Taiwanese lullaby Green Island Serenade in the native tongue.

It's a classy album, hallmarked with quality but two numbers particularly stand out. Drawing on the unaccompanied folk heritage, Passage is a stark song sung in the voice of a car crash victim noting the effect of their death on those left behind, while The Atheist’s Christmas Carol is a hymnally beautiful song of hope, grace and emotional salvation that sends shivers down the spine. If she sings either, it’ll be worth double the admission price.
8pm. £10. Glee Club

Wednesday May 24

The Handsome Family

Over the years they’ve been musical partners Brett and Rennie Sparks have built a reputation as one of the world’s finest purveyors of melancholy Americana, their music conjuring images of dust hung desert nights and Appalachian mountains silhouetted against the evening sky as they sit round the camp fire singing songs of loss, death and damnation.

So, a surprise then to see new album Last Days of Wonder (Loose) a relatively more upbeat affair, noting a world waltzing towards self-destruction but celebrating the small and infinite moments of beauty and wonder that nature provides to soothe the soul’s fears.

Using such instruments as mellotron and wine glasses and drawing on the sepia tinted worlds of hillbilly, tin pan alley ballads, cowboy country, western slow waltzers and, on Beautiful William, even medieval tunes, Brett crafts the careworn honky tonk melodies upon which songs like Somewhere Else To Be, Bowling Alley Blues (very George Jones) and Your Great Journey are built.

Meanwhile, Rennie takes lyrical inspiration from the life of Nicola Tesla, the electrical engineer and scientist who invented alternating current transmitters but whose ambivalence to the world let him to become a recluse in his hotel room, unable to bear the touch of human skin. However, as she notes in the waltzing Tesla’s Hotel Room from where comes the album’s title, one day he opened the window and befriended pigeons, finding his way back out of the darkness. It’s that contact with the universal her songs explore.

Unfolding in airport lounges (the throaty Neil Young-like All The Time In Airports), bowling alleys (Bowling Alley Bar) and graveyards (White Lights), she tells stories of hunters shooting prey that transforms into their true love (Hunter Green), of shoes hung over telephone wires (These Golden Jewels) and post apocalypse life (After We Shot The Grizzly), striking emotional chords from such images as a black glove on the cliffs, broken cheap sunglasses, and ‘a small bag of onion rings’.

Existential, metaphysical, whatever, the Sparks dig beneath the dry clay and turn dulled stones into diamonds. A thing of wonder indeed.
7.30pm. £10. Little Civic

Wednesday May 24
Jason Mraz

The Virginian singer-songwriter returns to the area for another reminder of current album Mr. A-Z (Atlantic), a lyrically wry album that could well see him marked as America’s answer to James Blunt.

As Did You Get My Message?, Clockwatching and Please Don’t Tell Her all indicate The Ben Folds influences are in evidence, but you’ll also hear Paul Simon on the Latin tinged sway of Life Is Wonderful, and on the funky lyrical silly hip hop pop of Geek In The Pink, maybe even a touch of boy band soul pop.

There’s plenty of dipping between musical styles with Forecast a lazy jazz lounge piano ballad, O Lover a hip swivelling Latin groove, Bella Luna a vocally high pitched Spanish flamenco ballad (with those hushed smoke Simon phrasings again) and Song For A Friend an eight minute slow jazzy soul number. Mix these with the country blues of Curbside Prophet, the horny r&b No Stopping Us and the acoustic intimacy of The Boy’s Gone from the last album, and this promises to be something of a special night.
7.30pm. £14. Wulfrun Hall

Wednesday May 24
Roddy Frame
Two years on from Surf, the former Aztec Camera man is back with a third solo album and one man tour. There’s no surprises up the sleeve here, Western Skies (Redemption) another collection of soulful pop laced with laid back, late night melodies and Frame’s emotive burr only this time with a more wryly melancholic collection of songs about charting the end of relationships.

The mood’s laid back and late night, deftly characterised by the title track, an acoustic rework of the original chill out electronica version from the Lazyboy album, and the Latin sway flavours of The Coast and Marble Arch. She Wolf has a touch of swampy slide blues but remains firmly within the ballad field, Tell The Truth is in the classic mould of the soft shuffling country tinged Aztec tracks while the likes of Dry Land, Shore Song and Rock God all have their homes on Killermont Street.

With the exception of the playful self-mocking Portastudio where he sings "I'm so vain. I thought this song was about me", Day Of Reckoning is the album’s only real concession to uptempo. A typically great Frame pop song of rolling piano and guitar chords and a melody line that’s served some of his best songs, it makes you wish he’d get back to fronting a full band sooner rather than later. Meanwhile though, this and a set of vintage Frame evergreens, will do nicely thanks.
7.30pm. £17.50. Warwick Arts Centre

Thursday May 25

Spiers & Boden

Now this could be an interesting one. Melodeon player John Spiers and guitarist Jon Boden are founder members of 11 piece folk outfit Bellowhead as well as working as a duo, in both instances delivering interpretation of trad English folk. However, Boden’s just released his first solo album, Painted Lady (Soundpost), which, while still retaining a link to such traditions, is also something of a striking departure. Clearly taking cues alike from the clanking, clattering folk blues of Tom Waits (just listen to Get A Little Something), the fragile work of Nick Drake, Kate Bush and, on Drunken Princess, even Roy Orbison, it’s nothing if not an eye-opener.

Blending instruments like concertina and fiddle with moog and harmonium, the aural moods are thoughtful and captivating. Shifting between the dark folk shadows of Broken Things to the pop sensibilities that vein Josephine and True Love, the brooding gothic Americana of Blue Dress, throaty distortion fuelled jaggedly angular Pocketful of Mud and the reverb fuzzed guitar folk-punk of Lemany and Win Some Lose Some Sally, it’s a brave, muscular and intensely passionate work.

How much might surface tonight remains to be seen and quite what the folkies are going to make of it, is anyone’s guess but the soaring ballad title track should certainly find him a fair few new fans among the Coldplay audience.
8pm. £9. Glee Club

Friday May 26

Girls Aloud

Against all expectations and to the dismay of cynics, the PopStars winners have not only survived beyond the initial frenzy of Sound of the Underground but proved remarkably durable, gaining rather than losing fans. They’re now on to their third album, Chemistry (Polydor), continuing to deliver smart, sharp and spangly pop like Long Hot Summer, Whole Lotta History, See The Day and Biology all of which have, like past singles, proved Top 10 hits. Indeed, they could keep mining the album, the stomping Models, the bullet-train rhythmed disco punk Waiting and soulful cover of DC Lee’s Save The Day all likely contenders.

And while they have a writing team that continues to marry infectious dance beat melodies with witty lyrics (Racy Lacey, anyone) and arrangements that, as on Wild Horses, manage to get away with a girl choir intro to a chopping club beat, it’s hard to see them spluttering out anytime soon. Which, is actually, rather good news.
7.30pm. £24. NIA

Friday May 26
Cooper Temple Clause

It’s been three years since the release of their Top 10 album Kick Up The Fire, And Let The Flames Break Loose, almost as long since they last toured the UK. The silence ends now though with. trimmed down to a five piece with the departure of bassist Didz, the imminent release of Make This Your Own, an album that sees them put the emphasis less on electronics and effects and more on guitars and piano. Certainly, after the murmuring electronica, ballads and moody atmospheres that characterised the last album and things like the six minute acoustic haunted psychosis whisper of I Want You To Think I Could Be, the single, Damage,comes as something of a surprise. A veritable pop song with a driving beat, riffs, hooks and chorus it fairly rattles along, prompting the urge to dance rather than sit in the corner scratching your head and trying to connect with the universe. If the rest is in the same vein, they won’t find any problem recovering and possible lost ground. Returning to play to the crowd for the third time in less months, support comes from Howling Bells.
6pm. £11.50. Carling Academy 2

Saturday May 27

Hypo Psycho

It’s a pretty rubbish name really, but this London based ska-punk quartet more than make up for things with their songs. Sitting comfortably alongside the likes of Bouncing Souls and Bowling For Soup but also happy in the company of Sum 41, Green Day and Red Hot Chilli Peppers albums, their debut album, Somebody Someday (Believe Music could have flown in from California with its chewy vocals and songs about teenage angst and trying to cut it in a dog eat dog world. But while the cleverly written Bored ("I’m borderline and I’m bored with that too") sounds like Camus for the Blink 182 generation, there’s also an English pop sensibility bubbling through things like Stalker Girl and the choppy skanking London Undone.

They sound fresh, energetic and suitably angry, they write catchy poppy melodies and on the title track (available as free download from www.hypopsycho.com) they also prove themselves very capable of writing a teen rock scarf waving stadium ballad to light the way out of dead end lives. They also happen to do a pretty decent ska-rhythm cover of Lady Madonna that sounds like it could be a bit of a live stormer.

They’ve been building a growing reputation with past singles getting the right airplay and making an impression on indie charts. Now it’s time to cross into the mainstream consciousness, and this sounds like the album to do it. One of the band happens to be a trained anaesthetist, but while they may have a track called Blissfully Sedated there’s no chance of anything they play here putting anyone to sleep.
8pm. £5. Bar Academy

Sunday May 28

Soundstation Festival

Boy Kill Boy
Hot on the heels of Gigbeth comes another new