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ARCHIVED REVIEWS May 2008 Previews by Mike Davies Thursday May 1 Lightspeed Champion
Formerly guitarist with London art
punks Test Icicles, Houston born Dev Hynes continues to plough
his rather different solo furrow of country tinged, strings
laced, acoustic indie pop with debut album Falling Off The
Lavender Bridge (Domino).
It’s a bit unfortunate for Australian
quintet support Operator Please and
their nasally singer Amandah that the B52s have decided to
resurrect themselves since that’s exactly who they appear to be
emulating on their Yes Yes Vindictive (Brille) album. Cases in
point Zero, Zero, Get What You Want, Ghost and that annoying
single Just A Song About Ping Pong which are all jittery new
wave funky punk with angular rhythms, sometimes throwing a
twitch of Debbie Harry into the pot for good measure. Thursday May 1 Maccabees
Back on the road for the first time since last year’s acoustic ukulele calypso lilt single Toothpaste Kisses, there’s no news of any material yet to build on the Brighton art rock outfit’s debut album Colour (Fiction), so it’s just going to a case of rearranging the set running order for one more outing of things like the naggingly catchy rompers Tissue Shoulders, O.A.V.I.P., and Happy Faces and the slower shades of Good Old Bill. But any band who can come up with something as scurryingly wonderful as First Love are always going to be worth cherishing. 7.30pm. £11. Barfly Friday May 2 Matchbox Twenty
Slimmed to a quartet and back together after Rob Thomas’ successful solo sabbatical, this is something of both a reminder visit and a look at trying to crack the hitherto elusive UK market. As such it coincides with Exile On Mainstream (Atlantic), a collection of their US hits and half a dozen new songs. It’s as good a time as any to catch up on missed opportunities like Long Day, Push, 3AM, Bent, If You’re Gone and Real World, but it’s actually the new material that’s the biggest incentive. These come bursting out of the stable with the swaggering How Far We’ve Gone looking to grab any Bon Jovi fans in its path while I’ll Believe You When and If I Fall both take their cues from ringing 60s guitar pop, the latter a meeting between the Searchers and The Who. All Your Reasons is tumbling singalong friendly hood down driving urgency and These Hard Times is a slow shuffling, aching voice FM rock ballad. Ironic really that the tracks that have yet to be hits are the ones that sound most as if they deserve to be. 7.30pm. £25. NIA Friday May 2 Vampire Weekend
Making World Music for the 21st Century dance village, the geographical genre hopping New Yorker university grads are now the cool name to drop among the hipper hip-swayers with the release of their eponymous debut album (XL). Building upon the African percussion and soukous guitar style foundations that rejuvenated Paul Simon’s career, they throw in harpsichords, strings, and whatever to create a joyous noise that defies you not to start shaking a leg, Their academic roots poke through too with songs about punctuation (Oxford Comma), Ivy League lifestyles (Campus), Victorian Imperialism (Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa), and neo baroque architecture (the 50s doo wop lounge meets art-rock Mansard Roof) mixing it up with the more usual tales of student life and love. With M79 bringing together European classical chamber music and Zimbabwean pop, Walcott taking steel drums to the 50s prom, and Bryn and A-Punk relocating the Talking Heads to Soweto, they make afro-pop trendier than its been since Graceland. 7pm. £10. Carling Academy 2 Friday May 2 Eamon Hamilton
Brakes fans will recognise this as the singer, taking time out for some solo acoustic dates while putting together the band’s next album. As such, you can expect to hear try outs of new numbers alongside stripped down versions of songs from Give Blood and Beatific Visions, likely among them Heard About Your Band, All Night Disco Party, Porcupine Or Pineapple, honky tonker If I Should Die Tonight and autumnal pop No Return, Apparently he’s even been doing a version of their indie disco hoedown The Spring Chicken. 7.30pm. £7. Glee Club Saturday May 3 Dans le Sac vs Scroobius Pip
The Essex birthed duo lit up the dance floors last year with their singles, a clattery Thou Shalt Always Kill, the throbbing swaggery Beat That My Heart Skipped and Letter From God To Man, so now they’re preparing to keep the thrust going with their debut album, Angles (Sunday Best). Mixing together the hip hop beats of Rappers Battle and Development, the punk rants of Back From Hell and Fixed and the moodier street poetry of Magician’s Assistant, they’ll be previewing things tonight, along with new single Look For The Woman (Sunday Best), a Streets-style wry love song about trying to close the gap in a widening relationship.
Support’s provided by Manchester’s techno-pop crew The Whip plugging away at the Joy Division/New Order influenced debut album X Marks Destination (Southern Fried), Frustration sounding like a lost Ian Curtis track while Fire, Save My Soul and the fabulous Sirens all bear that New Order stamp. 7pm. £10. Carling Academy 2 Saturday May 3 Harvey Andrews
One of the folk circuit’s national treasures, Stetchford born Andrews recently turned 65 but still keeps up a gigging schedules the Stones would envy. He’s a welcome regular at the Red Lion and his set’s are always guaranteed to provide a strong mix of music and his very funny anecdotes drawn from a professional career now 42 years old. With some 14 albums’ worth of material on which to draw, second guessing the set list is impossible but there’s always fingers crossed it will include the likes of Margarita, Spring Again, Punch And Judy Man, If It Wasn't For The Song and You Knew We Were Coming. Those catching up on what they’ve missed might care to seek out the recently issued I’m Resigning From Today, a two disc anthology of his early Transatlantic recordings from the 60s and 70s that includes some find Harv classics, among them his Tony Hancock tribute Mr Homburg Hat, Song For Phil Ochs, his cover of Paul Simon’s A Most Peculiar Man, Buy Me A Rifle, Death Come Easy and the previously unreleased England My England and Davy. 8pm. £10. Red Lion, Kings Heath Sunday May 4 Adele
Tottenham 19 year old Adele Laurie Blue Adkins’ single Chasing Pavements was a classy example of torch r&b illuminating her love of Jill Scott, Dusty Springfield and Peggy Lee. You’ll hear much the same class on her debut album, 19 (XL), a jazz-soul journey through the highs and lows of teenage love that flows from the summery acoustic folk infused Daydreamer, the skittering beats of Cold Shoulder and My Same’s bluesy swing through a lovely piano ballad cover of Dylan’s Make You Feel My Love, to the funky Hammond soul pop Right As Rain and dramatic folk-soul strings laced debut single Hometown Glory. The Winehouse comparisons have been inevitable, tending to prompt some snide dismissals of her as label bandwagon jumping while Duffy has already taken her place in the flavour of the month lists. However, while it’s true to say she needs time to develop and find her authentic voice. as well as make a stand against some of the more MOR production imposed on the material, this is an impressive first step which should keep her from slipping quietly into the shadows of the next sassy soul girl hype. 7.30pm. £15. Alexandra Theatre Sunday May 4 Carina Round
Slow Motion Addict looking like it’s destined to remain unreleased in the UK now she’s out of her InterScope deal, she’s busy working on the follow up. So you can expect these full band dates to roadtest some of the new material alongside already proven live favourites like The Disconnection, Come To You and the pagan mood of January Heart. Listen up for the spooked but dreamy gospel blues of the delicate Backseat and a languid swamp groove Thief In The Sky where Kate Bush and Bjork swap saliva to a chorus of tremulous tribal yelps and handclaps. If you’re luck’s in she might also throw in her tremendous PJ Harvey blues style sleaze and sweat deconstruction of Donna Summer’s Hot Stuff. The woman’s a star, so when is the world finally going to accept the fact!
Support comes from Pennsylvania’s Ari Shine, whose upcoming A Force Of One (Bongo Beat) album struts like vintage Elvis Costello, spitting out those jerky new wave guitar riffs and sneer tipped vocals while also conjuring the power-pop of Rick Springfield, with a sheen of electro. Unlikely to find himself in the major leagues, but numbers such as the punchy Cooler Than Me, Flirtation Device, the chunky Keep You In Cabs and the catchy hooks of Most Popular Girl In The World should make for an energetic life set. 7.30pm. £8. Barfly (+ Wed 7, £8. Little Civic) Sunday May 4 White Rabbits
Over from Brooklyn, the two drummer six piece seem set to make an instant impression with Fort Nightly (Fierce Panda), a debut album that mines such diverse influences as The Specials, Cold War Kids, Bow Wow Wow, 10cc, Sparks, Kid Creole and Randy Newman (whose Beehive State they cover) to catchily melodic and densely textured effect. You’ll hear shades of ska (March Of The Camels), some Eastern rhythms (Kid On My Shoulders), Latin, (Navy Wives), and calypso (I Used To Complain Now I Don’t) stirred in with the retro pop, surf guitars and general leg shaking tunes. The crunchy martial beat Take A Walk Around The Table and the New Orleans party march Cotillion Blues (which sounds a lot like they’re revisiting Dylan’s Rainy Day Women), suggest they have a well developed sense of the theatrical too which promises to make their instruments swapping live set even more of a sparky affair. This is the last night of the tour so they should be well honed, and you can be sure they’ll be back before long in rather bigger surroundings. 7pm. £6. Bar Academy Sunday May 4 Ejectorseat
Signed to Taste Media, the recently resurrected original home of Muse and One Minute Silence, the Derby quartet are looking to follow the career trajectory of their forebears with new single Not My Girl. Fizzy electro-sheened not even three minute indie pop that wears its Suede and Manics influences boldly on its sleeve, accompanying tracks To Be More Animal and Hopeless And Emotionless are less convincing since they both seem to share roughly the same tune, but they’re worth checking out. 7.30pm. £5. Little Civic Monday May 5 Royworld Swiftly following up the Buggles sounding Man in The Machine and its Roxy influenced Elasticity b-side, Somerset brothers Rod and Crispin Futrille seem to have taken something of a major diversion into the record collection with Dust (Virgin) which, rather worryingly, seems to recast them as Asia. Rethinks in order. 7.30pm. £6. Bar Academy Monday May 5 Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Turned 50 and fourteen band albums in, Cave is like a good wine that only gets better with age. Following on from the sleaze blues Grinderman project (the Bad Seeds in all but name) and his soundtrack for The Assassination Of Jesse James (in which he also cameos), he’s back with the boys for their follow up to 2004's doubleAbattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus. Although the title track sounds oddly a lot like David Byrne, he’s in molten hellfire preacher mood with Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! (Mute), the guitars forged in white heat furnaces, Warren Ellis’ organ testifying from a lava pit. Fuelled by themes of resurrection, damnation, alienation, and, of course, sex, it’s music for the night, soundtracks for back alleys, railway yards and the devil’s own basement bars, industrial clanking, piston jabbing, gallows black but also at times (Moonland, Hold On Tou Yourself, Jesus Of The Moon) sorrowfully tender, this is Cave on classic (if at times self-mocking - assuming you can’t take We Call Upon the Author to Explain too seriously) form. There’s signs here that he may be looking to trawl in a wider listening base, Albert Goes West almost an Iggy meets Lou rocker while More News From Nowhere is a dusty folk blues with back up harmonies that might not sound out of place in a Springsteen set. Stalwart fans though will be happy to hear them in classing rutting mode with Lie Down Here (And Be My Girl), filtering the Doors with Midnight Man and shivering the hairs on the neck with a spooked Night Of The Lotus Eaters. Given the fun it sounds like they had recording it, they’ll doubtless be keen to include as much of the new stuff as the set list can contain, but there’ll surely be room for a decent dose of Cave classics and, if your’re good, maybe even No Pussy Blues from Grinderman’s sordid debauacheries. 7pm. £25. Carling Academy Monday May 5 Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
While folk music has always been a major part of Plant's musical repertoire, both as part of Led Zep and solo, he's never really been seen as a big country fan. So, on paper at least, a collaboration with the queen of bluegrass sounds an unlikely proposition. In practice, however, Raising Sand (Rounder) is a stunner.
Although they both had input, it was
producer T-Bone Burnett who
was largely instrumental in choosing the material, from blues to
country to rockabilly (a joyous cover of the Everlys' Gone,
Gone, Gone) and folk, pitching each songs more normally
associated with the other's traditions, Plant taking on Doc
Watson country with Your Long Journey, Krauss digging the Delta
for Little Milton's Let Your Loss Be Your Lesson. Tuesday May 6 Hadouken
Currently the top name on the nu rave grime pop, the Leeds outfit follow Not Here To Please collection of early bits bobs with the all new Music For An Accelerated Culture (Surface Noise) which, as the title might suggest, is a soundtrack banging it out on the dance floor and bingeing it up down the bar. There’ll be plenty of tut-tutting about their celebration of the modern hedonist’s lifestyle, succinctly pinned with the Prodgy-like Get Smashed Gate Crash and Liquid Lives, but limb-contorting, sweat gushing, rubber-legged party heads will be too busy doing the dervish to those and the likes of That Boy That Girl, Crank It Up and What She Did to bother about moralists. And, as is aware that such states are passing phases, Driving Nowhere and the glamslam Mister Misfortune show they’ve got an eye on stockpiling more mainstream inclined pop tunes too for when the winds of change blow their way.
Providing the bedrock for them to build on, special guests are German teenage trio MIT whose Coda (Half Machine) album offers ten tracks of minimalist electro punk Krautrock that, almost inevitably, references such pioneers as Kraftwerk, Neu and Daf on such Berlin club packers as Park, Beispiel, a stomping Gebaut and the catchily titled Tangerine Dream tickled Gibt es Denn Keine Anderen Grunde. 7.30pm. £11.50. Carling Academy Tuesday May 6 Late of the Pier
Heading up the Levi’s Ones To Watch tour, the Castle Donington outfit are an intriguing melange, their new single The Bears Are Coming (Zarcorp) a bizarre cocktail of vaudeville, Elvis, Afrobeat and burbling electronica. Given their previous Space And The Woods remodelled Gary Numan’s Cars and Bathroom Gurgle revelled in glam drums, they clearly have no truck with pigeonholes.
Sticking around the Midlands, The Displacements hail from Leicester and follow up the Eastern European mazurka rhythmed Lazy Bones with new single, Down And Out (Stiff), a more straighthead slice of retro sunny Britpop.
And then there’s Cazals, a London based guitar dance pop five piece that everyone seems to be falling over to call the next big thing. Signed to French label Kitsune, they’re previewing debut album What Of Our Future, an enjoyable if not entirely jaw-dropping set of catchy electro based power pop with lots of beats and burbles to go with the guitars and posturing vocals. You can see why the French like them, they’re a bit like Air if Air where punkier, but they also tend to recycle different variations on the same melodies so that numbers like New Boy In Town, Life Is Boring and A Big Mistake can sound a bit samey in places. Still, new single Somebody, Somewhere is good shouty chorus stuff and We’re Just The Same strikingly rings the changes with a mid-tempo jog reminiscent of the mellower moments of early Costello or Howard Jones. Worryingly though, quite a few of the numbers have faint echoes of Spandau Ballet, a suspicion confirmed by the fact they actually include a swaggering laddish cover of To Cut A Long Story Short. 7.30pm. £7. Barfly Wednesday May 7 Colin MacIntyre
Formerly operating as The Mull Historical Society, the Tobermoray songster’s ditched the pseudonym along with the optimism of past albums. But he’s stuck with those Beach Boys, Mercury Rev, Todd Rundgren, and XTC influences for his first solo album The Water (Pebble Beach), an album that turns its attention to celebrity culture (You’re A Star, Famous For Being Famous), politics/religion ((Future Gods And Past Kings, Faith No 2), self-examination (Stalker) and, of course relationships. Unfortunately, he seems to have lost the knack for a memorable melody somewhere along the way, without which his reedy voice becomes somewhat lost amid the rockier tracks or exposed as thin on the quieter tracks. There’s some pleasant touches as tuba, harmonium and cello weave around the mix, while the lengthy Pay Attention To The Human brings together his hometown high school girl’s choir and Tony Benn, who recites his humanist poem over the closing notes, but ultimately the charm’s no longer there. 7.30pm. £10. Barfly Thursday May 8 Johnny Flynn & The Sussex Wit
The first UK artist to land a US deal with American label, Lost Highway, home to Ryan Adams, Lucinda Williams, Shelby Lynn and the late Johnny Cash, things are clearly going well for the Johannesburg-born, Wales-raised new nu-folk contender and occasional Shakespearean actor. Following on from catchy strummed single The Box, they head out on a headline tour to plug debut Vertigo album Alarum. No promo copies were made available, but from the brief clips of Tickle Me Pink, Cold Bread and Brown Trout Blues on his MySpace page you can expect more of the cider swigging English folk and backporch southern American roots blues. He’s been likened to Nick Drake fronting the Pogues, which, while not entirely accurate, should be reasonable incentive to discover further. 7.30pm. £7. Glee Club Thursday May 8 Backstreet Boys
Down to a quartet after Kevin Anderson’s departure and hardly boys now two of them have turned 30, but otherwise things remain much the same for America’s stadium rock version of Take That. Re-emerging in 2005 after a three year absence, comeback album Never Gone saw them reaching out to a more FM rock audience and now follow up Unbreakable (Jive) travels further down the road with a relentless onslaught of piano driven lovelorn power ballads clearly aimed at the Bon Jovi/Eagles market. As such, the likes of Something That I Already Know, Helpless When She Smiles,, You Can Let Go and the soaring Inconsolable do the job with unbridled efficiency with Love Will Keep You Up All Night surely a close relative of Aerosmith’s Don’t Want To Miss A Thing. And, by way of relief from the heart-wringing anthemics, Any Other Way, One In A Million, Panic, the electro grooved Everything But Mine and Treat Me Right offer some light uptempo funky rock and beats. Ultimately, it’s going to be but like sitting through an hour or so of Back For Good on repeat play, but there’s plenty of folk out there willing to pay good money for that. 7.30pm. £30/£25. NIA Thursday May 8 Black Lips
A lo-fi retro-blues outfit from Atlanta whose live antics (vomiting, urinating, nudity, inter-band snogs, and a chicken) have seen them banned from numerous venues, they’re mates of Jack White and take influences from the garage rock of the Stooges, Troggs and early Stones. They’re in town plugging new countrified power pop single Bad Kids (Vice), lifted from the Good Bad, Not Evil album from which they’ll also likely to chucking in Jaggerish slow lurch, low slung blues Veni Vidi Vici (Vice), hurricane song Oh Katrina where Iggy meets Sam the Sham, the rockabilly twanged Cold Hands and How Do You Tell A Child That Someone Has Died, the song inspired by the death of original founder member Ben Eberbaugh. 7.30pm. £3. Club NME, Custard Factory Thursday May 8 Eastern Champions Conference
From Philadelphia with occasional Radiohead inclinations shadowing its garage rock and avant folk, the keyboard driven trio are busy establishing a foothold over here with current album Ameritown (Island). Single Sedative offers juddery garage swagger with hints of early Free, Noah hints at Thom Yorke fronting Smashing Pumpkins while To The Wind tosses in some gypsy folk punk, Some Sorta Light adopts a wasted country sway and Rabbit Hole feels oddly like the Hey Jude playout. On this showing, they’ll be staying here a while longer to cater to bigger venue demands. 7.30pm. £5. Little Civic (+ Sat 10 8pm. £5. Jug of Ale) Friday May 9 Jesse Malin
After his excellent if overlooked The Fine Art of Self-Destruction and Glitter In The Gutter, the nasally voiced punk frontman turned singer-songwriter takes a swerve from his self-penned Springsteen cum Young material for an album of covers. On Your Sleeve (One Little Indian). Alarm bells often go off in such circumstances, especially when the result’s something like Patti Smith’s recent embarrassment, but for the most Malin succeeds in coming up with one of those rare diamonds among the usual pile of nutty slack. It’s an interesting mix of the familiar and unknown, reinterpreted rather than regurgitated, he gives a bouncy Americana reading to Neil Young’s Looking For Love, gives Sam Cooke’s Wonderful World a soft acoustic reading, offers a weary laid back treatment to Everybody’s Talkin’, turns Jim Croce’s Operator into a more uptempo guitar tune and puts the Stones’ Sway through the electro mixer. Eleswhere he does Ramones (Rock n Roll Radio), Clash (Gates of the West), Elton (Harmony), Lou (Walk On The Wild Side), Simon (Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard), Tom Waits (a fine I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love with You) and, on a more contemporary note The Kills (Rodeo Town) and The Hold Steady (You Can Make Them Like You). Not everything works, not everything suits Malin’s high pitched voice, but generally speaking you’ll not get in a huff when he slips this in the set list between nuggets of his own like Black Haired Girl, Queen of the Underworld, Almost Grown and Downliner. 7pm. £10. Carling Academy 2 Friday May 9 Eliza Carthy Band
The launch tour for her new album, Dreams of Breathing Underwater finds Carthy working from trad forms but twisting them around, mingling English and American traditions as, for example, on Follow The Dollar which marries English folk singing with gutbucket blues riffing. Then there’s Two Tears with its West Country sounding wheezing squeeze box and scraping fiddle lurch and a melody that borrows from the traditional romantic love song, but has a lyric that namechecks Marianne Faithful. Elsewhere Rows of Angels has percussive beats and touches of dub, Mr Magnifico is a mariachi flavoured number with brass and spoken poetry between Carthy’s Deitrich styled cabaret chorus surges, Like I Care has zydeco feel squeeze box, Lavenders is all Spanish baroque, Little Bigman a cider swigger morris dance tune, Hug You Like A Mountain visits Eastern European wedding/funeral folk music and Oranges And Seasalt is a great vaudeville singalong with some shanty shaken over it. In short, quite possible the most adventurous and best album she’s yet made. The gig should be revelatory. 7.30pm. £14. W’hampton Civic Hall Bar. Saturday May 10 The Wombats
Following last year’s rowdy bounce pop Kill The Director and Let’s Dance To Joy Division and debut album A Guide To Love, Loss & Desperation (14th Floor), the Scousers continue their momentum with current single Backfire At The Disco. With their flurried guitars, snotty nasal vocals, indie pop carousel waltzers and witty teenage tales of love and sex, the likes of Little Miss Pipedream. Moving To New York, the stomping Help Me Rhonda meets Kaiser Chiefs Dr Suzanne Mattox PhD and Party In A Forest, are all proven live flor-fillers while their silly short doo wop handclapping Tales Of Girls, Boys And Marsupials has become something of a pub chant. 6pm. £13. Carling Academy Saturday May 10 The Castanets
Sounding like Neil young singing underwater, in an echo chamber, former surfer Raymond Raposa is the guiding light to this NewYork avant-folk outfit whose In The Vines (Asthmatic Kitty) album runs the gamut from icy electronic weird out (Rain Will Come) to keening backporch spiritual (This Is The Early Game) to strummed country (Westbound, Blue), from acoustic tribal rhythms (Strong Animal) to hymnal folk soulfulness (The Swimming). White noise and electronica would, on the face of it, seem incompatible with stripped down dark Americana but listening to the six minutes of Three Months Paid the background electric hum and synthesised wind noise works with the flutters of chimes, tapped echoey percussion and Raposa’s cracked voice to create something quite hauntingly magical. Devotees of Lamb Chop and Iron & Wine alike should swoon over the timeless slow waltzing The Night Is When You Can Not See while Sounded Like a Train, Wasn't a Train is a simple two string metronome guitar figure that gradually gathers around it tremulous synth horns and a desert hum to produce striking spooked gothic country. Sparse, fatalistic and melancholic (Raposa spend a year suffering depression after being mugged prior to recording the album) but tinged with redemption, it’s an unexpectedly beguiling work that suggests this is a gig well worth travelling to catch. 7.30pm. £8. Tin Angel, Taylor John's House, Canal Basin, Coventry Sunday May 11 Captain Phoenix
Fronted by Ben Burrows, younger brother of Razorlight drummer Andy, this lot make summery Southern tinted soul-pop mingled with British indie rock, driven by catchy infectious melodies with nagging chorus hooks. However, Life.Temper.Riot (Kind Canyon) rather undermines the chance of things like the sunshine jaunty Stand By and the jazzy heat haze pop of Same Old Story dominating the Radio 2 airwaves by including some unnecessary expletives. Still, they can always make up for that with Didn’t Know Sam, suburban strummer Blackheath, the Squeezy Living On The Guestlist or Where Did You Go providing the perfect soundtrack for some tanning on the beach while Baby’s Back takes on a Jean Genie glam stomp, Loneliness parades their Lennon influences, Find The Time dips its toes into lush ELO waters and Water/Sun takes a folksy shuffle through Andy’s contribution to the song set. If they realise swearing’s not only not big and not clever, but not a great career move when you have such commercial sensibilities, they could become a solid proposition for major success. 7pm. £5. Little Civic Monday May 12 MGMT
The latest American sun-kissed stoner college rock outfit to be invited into the next big thing paddock with their 70s filtered psychedelia squelchy synth-pop and its borrowings from Bowie, Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, Bolan and the brothers Mael. The swirly pitched perfect Time To Pretend set the Brooklyn boys’ ball rolling with its fuzzily warm ode to hedonism, then the Oracular Spectacular (Columbia) album revved up the momentum with Weekend Wars conjuring memories of 60s Neil Young, Kids bouncing along on a belching synth line and a cocktail of glam and acid, Electric Feel coming over all Europhunk, 4th Dimensional Transition plunging headfirst into memories of Klaatu and Sparks with some added tribal drumming and tinkly carousel keyboards while Of Moons, Birds & Monsters, The Youth and The Handshake curl up under the blankets and snuggle close to the Lips and Lennon as clouds of flowers and sweet smoke billow around them. Enjoy while the incense stick still burns in their favour. 7.30pm. £10. Carling Academy 2 Monday May 12 Jonah Matranga
Back in town for another helping of debut solo album And (Xtra Mile) with its summery sounding songs of love and loss, dressed up with piano, strings and, on Not About A Girl Or A Place, jangling 12 string guitar. Aside from the power pop and folksy ballads mix supplied by the likes of I Want You To Be My Witness, Every Mistake and the fragile Fathers And Daughters, he’ll also be trawling his back catalogue for material from his more punk inclined days with such outfits as Gratitude, Far, and New End Original. 7.30pm. £7.50. Barfly Monday May 12 Willie Nelson
Providing the 75 year old country outlaw doesn’t get busted for cannabis possession again before he leaves or on arrival, this looks likely to be one of the remaining chances to catch the living legend before he decides he’s had enough of traipsing around the globe. Given he’s released dozens of albums, the set list could include pretty much anything from a recording career of over 50 years. However, it’s a reasonable bet that he may include such classics as Always On My Mind, Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain, Crazy and Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys and Till I Gain Control Again along with a smattering of tracks from his latest collection, Moment Of Forever (Lost Highway). Clearly demonstrating he’s still got an edge, it’s enveloped in a dark cloud of anger and protest with Nelson laid back but solidly felt interpretations of Dave Matthews' Gravedigger, Dylan’s Gotta Serve Somebody and Randy Newman's Louisiana balanced by the funky relationship themed Takin’ On Water and a world weary take on the evergreen Keep Me From Blowing Away. 7.30pm. £32.50/£30. W’hampton Civic Hall Tuesday May 13 Cancer Bats
After demolishing heads last year with the Birthing The Giants album, the Canadian quartet are back to sonically stove in a few more skulls with their latest gathering of high octane hardcore metal and piledriving Black Flag style punk on Hail Destroyer (Hassle).So more blistering bass and coruscating guitar riffs then as rage, disgust and defiance spill over in relentless mosh and metal assaults that are Harem of Scorpions, Deathsmarch, Sorceress, Let It Pour and Pray For Darkness. They do ease up on the party hammering for a moment, but given their idea of a ballad is a weltering blues swagger titled Lucifer’s Rocking Chair you shouldn’t expect to be slow dancing at anytime during the set. 7.30pm. £7. Barfly Wednesday May 14 The Bluetones
It’s 12 years now since debut album Expecting To Fly entered the charts at No 1, since when they’ve amassed 11 top 40 singles (13 in total with those prior to the album) and two further Top 10 albums plus a singles collection and, while it’s fair to say their success and profile has waned (the last two studio albums failed to set the world alight), they’ve never thrown in the towel. And they’re back again now with another compilation and tie-in tour. It’s the second retrospective in three years but The Bluetones Collection (Spectrum) is the first for which the band has selected the tracks and, other than obligatory inclusions like Slight Return, they’ve mostly avoided duplication, so you get things like The Last Of The Great Navigators, Tiger Lily, The Fountainhead and Sail On Sailor. However, given these aren’t exactly the most glittering diamonds in the band’s mine, you have to hope they’ll be a little more audience friendly with the live set list. 7.30pm. £12.50. Carling Academy Wednesday May 14 The Thirst
Featuring brothers Mensah and Kwame on vocals and bass with schoolmates Mark and Marcus on rhythm and drums, the Brixton boys blend old punk with Afro-Carribean flavours, hip hop and drum & bass influences to produce a sort of funky Arctic Monkeys filtered through inspirations taken from The Jam and Specials. Signed to Ronnie Wood’s label, current single Sail Away (Wooden) has an urgent hot summer jam vibe but upcoming debut album On The Brink needs to be more persuasive if they’re going to get quenched. 7.30pm. £5. Barfly Wednesday May 14 Marissa Nadler
Raised in Massachusetts in an artistic family, Nadler studied illustration and painting at university before adding music to interests that included woodcarving and encaustic art. Making her recording bow in 2004, she’s very much of the American Gothic tradition, her dreamy melancholic songs rooted in folk but coloured with electronics. Rock n roll she isn’t, her latest release, Songs III: Bird On The Water (Peacefrog) a fresh, ethereal and gossamer light collection that, backed by mandolin, cello and harp and taken at an almost narcoleptic pace, prompts comparisons to Vashti Bunyan. Nadler’s pure crystal mountain waters voice is a thing of beguiling wonder, drawing you into her leafy arbours and caverns as she weaves magic around Leonard Cohen’s Famous Blue Raincoat or mesmerises with self-penned tales of loss and love, life and death such as the haunted Diamond Heart, Dying Breed, the trad hued Thinking Of You, an almost hymnal Silvia and the sorrow slung story of Leather Made Shoes. Be prepared to be intoxicated. Especially if she does her cover of Neil Young’s Cortez The Killer.
Support comes from Jesse Sykes whose , the Seattle singer-songwriter androgynous whispery rasp of a voice jumbles shades of Melanie, Marianne Faithful, Grace Slick, and Janis Joplin into a melting pot of churning emotions. She’ll be showcasing current album Like, Love, Lost & The Open Halls of the Soul (Fargo), a set of dark country soul songs of isolation, loss, regret, fraying nerves and fragile hopes of love and connection. And if there's few tunes you’ll find yourself humming on the way home (the Beatles echoes of You Might Walk Away the closest), equally there’s few that don't seep inside you as you listen. Give an ear to the tremulous desperation of The Air Is Thin that suggests an alt-country Peter Gabriel, the ache of Eisenhower Moon with its Midnight Cowboy harmonica, or the emotional desolation of Aftermath where she sounds like Janis Ian after three nervous breakdowns, and discover new subtleties with each curl of her voice.7.30pm. £7. Glee Club Thursday May 15 Mystery Jets
Blaine Harrison’s dad may no longer be part of the touring line-up, but the lads don’t need any gimmicky angles to sell themselves or their music. Certainly not in the light of sophomore album Twenty One (Sixsevenine), a marvellously skewed collection of songs that tip the hat to 80s synth pop (Two Doors Down), Syd Barrett era Floyd (Umbrellahead), 70s summery pop soul (Young Love) and, on Flakes, the quivering big ballad emotions of Chris Martin. The Duran strokes to MJ might be a little overcooked and the slightly Haircut 100 meets The Smiths of Half In Love With Elizabeth could do without the vocal whoops, but the likes of the smartly observed Veiled In Grey and the high-voiced, high-strung suicide themed piano ballad 21 are more than enough to keep on the contenders list for another year. 7.30pm. £10. Barfly Friday May 16 Jack Savoretti
Having done a decent job of impressing ears with debut album Between The Minds (De Angelis) and its melding of Blunt, Ashcroft, Drake and Dylan, the husky voiced Anglo-Italian’s selling it a second time, now with an added unplugged CD, four new songs and the inclusion of bonus track Gypsy Love. Stripped down to acoustic basics Without exchanges the Verve soul influences for a more wearied naked confessional ballad that sits more obviously along the regret-hued folk inclinations of Dr Frankenstein. Of the new material, One Man Band is firmly in train-hopping Eric Andersen territory, Russian Roulette a spare strummed torch song with gypsy guitar notes and Lucy a lot like Van Morrison folk-soul without the Celtic gospel. And, for that fourth cut, he turns in a finely bruised heart live version of Johnny Cash’s Ring Of Fire that you’ll have to insist he includes tonight before he leaves. 7.30pm. £7.50. Glee Club Friday May 16 Caribou
The musical alter-ego of maths PhD Dan Snaith. this should take you back to the summer of love days of the mid 60s with choice cuts from his Andorra (CitySlang) album, the likes of Sandy conjuring the psychedelic harmony pop of Sagittarius while After Hours evokes early Floyd and She’s The One, Desiree and Eli are all day-glo LSD dreamy spaced bliss outs. Pack the beads and joss sticks and let the sunshine in.7pm. £8. Barfly Friday May 16 Pendulum
Now based over here, the Aussie drum & bass outfit would clearly seem to have set their sights on stadium seating if recent Top 10 single Propane Nightmare was any indication of things in store with the In Silico (Warner) album they’re launching here. However, dance beat addicts will be glad to hear that, while more rock oriented than Hold Your Colour, Showdown, Granite and Midnight Runner reveal they’ve far from ditched their Freestlers and Prodigy colours. 8pm. £20. Custard Factory Saturday May 17 All Time Low
Apparently one of the hottest new outfits currently spraying guitar licks across America, with the snotty vocals, buzzing guitars, circling melody lines and singalong hooks the Maryland four piece don’t sound a million miles removed from such acknowledged pop-punk influences as Blink-182 and New Found Glory. Having just played the Give It A Name Festival at Earls Court, they now headline their own dates in support of debut album So Wrong, It’s Right (Hopeless) and new single Dear Maria, Count Me In. Like that, numbers like Let It Roll, Six Feet Under The Stars, This Is How We Do It, Shameless, Vegas and Come One, Come All are infectiously catchy but resolutely generic and often melodically samey. Remembering Sunday is a token nod to the open heart ballad, but they’d be advised not to stake their future on such offerings. Still, they don’t pretend to be anything than what they are, they seem to have an awareness of irony and they clearly are dab hands at putting together radio friendly high school pop rock for budding punks and emos who have already become bored with Cute Is What We Aim For. 6pm. £9.50. Carling Academy 2 Saturday May 17 Little Man Tate
Having worn the songs from debut album About What You Know down to the bone, the Sheffield quartet are out laying the ground for the second wave with meet and greet introductions to material from the as yet untitled follow-up. Having already paved the way with the stadium arm-waving balladry of Boy In The Anorak, a second taster arrives with the far rowdier slashing guitar and Jam jerky riffing new single What Your Boyfriend Said (Yellow Van). 7pm. £10. Wulfrun Hall Sunday May 18 Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong
One of the year’s silliest names perhaps, but Lean and the lads make a sunnily catchy noise festooned with poppy hooks and bubbling melodies. Having impressed with the calypso flavoured Lucio Starts Fires and the jerky bright Jam pop of Lonely Buoy, they now pull out the stops for debut album Where Do You Go (Mercury). Judging by the choppy title track, the circling guitars that hover around a staccato beat Baby and the jubilantly euphoric Light And The Dark, it’s a harder edged affair than the singles suggested. But, as Brooklyn and Dear Rose demonstrate, they’ve not lost any of that effervescent pop sheen in the process. If the weather holds, they could be having a better summer than most. 7pm. £8. Carling Academy 2 Sunday May 18 Melanie
A rare appearance by the definitive 60s hippie flower child, now 61 Melanie Safka first found fame in France where her 1969 single Bobo’s Party was a No 1 while later that same year Beautiful People was a hit in the Netherlands. An appearance at Woodstock led to her signature song Lay Down (Candles In The Rain) and provided both her first Us Top 10 and became an international smash. Following up with Peace Will Come and her dramatic cover of Ruby Tuesday, she became the toast of both the 1971 Isle of Wight festival and Glastonbury. The following year saw her biggest UK and US hit with Brand New Key, the song she’s probably best known for here (if only because of the Wurzels parody Brand New Combine Harvester) while she set a record Stateside by becoming the first female performer to have three concurrent Top 40 hits with that, official follow up Ring The Living Bell and the reissued Nickel Song. However, stepping out of the spotlight in 1973 to become a mother, she’s never really recaptured that success. To be totally honest, her output over the years hasn’t exactly been consistent. Early albums such as Affectionately, Leftover Wine, The Good Book (which features a stunning version of Chords of Fame), Gather Me and Madrugada are outright classics as are 1983’s Seventh Wave and the recent ‘comeback’ Paled By Dimmer Light with such songs as I Tried To Die Young, Make It Work For Me and the anthemic guitar ringing (courtesy son Beau) And We Fall. But not everything measures up to those standards. In recent years there’s been too many lacklustre re-recordings (studio and live) of her old material and, while Paled... features a splendid version of U2's I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For and Madrugada a spine-tingling take on Jim Croce’s Lover’s Cross, her Moments Of My Live covers album features, to be honest, painful versions of, among others, Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?, I Will Survive and You Keep Me Hangin’ On. Be that as it may, the tremulously emotional voice is still in fine fettle and she still knows how to invest a performance with spirituality and drama, and with a treasure trove of material to draw on that also includes What Have They Done To My Song, Ma?, Tuning My Guitar, The Actress and Babe Rainbow, this has to be an essential night out for 60s nostalgists. 7pm. £22. Wulfrun Hall
Monday May 19 Give It A Name Tour
Another package of largely unknown hopefuls looking to crack the UK market, perhaps the ‘best’ known here will be Four Year Strong, a Massachusetts pop n mosh outfit featuring Dan O' Connor formerly of thrash metal crew Bury Your Dead. Which probably explains why the Rise Or Die Trying (Hassle) album mixes in a fair amount of spitting metal amid the Fall Out Boy thrashy punk on things like Prepare To Be Digitally Manipulated, Abandon Ship Or Abandon Hope, Heroes Get Remembered, Legends Never Die and Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Hell. Hard, aggressive riffs certainly, but really there’s nothing here that’s not been done better before. Sharing the dressings rooms with Meg & Dia and The Color Fred will be Tallahassee’s Mayday Parade. Signed to Fearless, the label that discovered Plain White T’s, they’re pretty much into the Fall Out Boy sound too, debut album A Lesson In Romantics a hefty spraying of riffs and hooks with urgent strained emo-ish vocals, battering drums and sneery guitar noise. Exposing the weaker side of the vocals, Miserable At Best and You Be The Anchor.....doesn’t suggest they have a huge future with ballads but when they hammer down for Jamie All Over, When I Get Home, You’re So Dead, Walk On Water or Drown and the circling punk fizz of Champagne’s For Celebrating (I’ll Have A Martini), they do a reasonable job of emulating their influences. But with titles like If You Wanted A Song Written About You All You Had To Do Is Ask and I’d Hate To Be You When people Find Out What This Song Is About, they’ll spend half the set just announcing them. 6.30pm. £5. Carling Academy 2 Monday May 19 Guillemots
After being feted to the skies for Through The Window Pane, Fyfe Dangerfield and co must be amazed at how quickly the wind can change in view of the slatings they’ve received for follow-up album, Red (Polydor). They’re probably bemused by the criticisms and sniffy public response. And rightly so. The truth is that this is every bit as good as their astonishing debut and, if anything, even more ambitious and musically diverse. Opening track Kriss Kross is a massive melody drenched orchestral pop song that makes Jeff Lynne sound lo fi, then the album’s electronic bias kicks in with Big Dog, a slice of sleazy Prince funk with an Eastern riff and a huge chart friendly clattering chorus grab. Then they take it down for the plaintive 80s with ethereal wash and brushed drums of Falling Out Of Reach, before pumping the energy back to a noisy Glitter Band glam stomping Get Over It with its shouty title line and wooo oooh backups. More electro then in the bleepy marchalong Clarion which swells into a sort of latter day Brill Building tower of pop with George Michael peaks and Oriental ripples. The dance floor takes prominence on Last Kiss, a concoction of throaty bass, Anita Ward disco and medieval cum oriental shades behind a strings laced Toxic beat and unstoppable barrage of drums. It’s exhaustingly good. Lush soaring Cockateels is a James Bond theme for a Bollywood 007, Words a restrained aching stadium folk ballad with harmonica and tinkling keyboards, Standing On The Last Star another pinch of Eastern spice sprinkled over falsetto soaring midtempo Johnny Marr big pop, and Don’t Look Down a padding percussion. starry sky number that lulls you with a gentle, folksy set up before suddenly Greig Stewart’s drumming fireworks explode all around you as it takes off into the universe. Which leaves Take Me Home to see things off with a glorious slow surf into the twilight heavens, firebugs twinkling in the sky, fading away to Fyfe’s baying at the moon. C’mon people, wake up, what’s not to love!
Support is Royworld who, in the wake of current single Dust, will be unveiling their debut album and trying to persaude you they aren’t just some Buggles/Asia fans who struck lucky.7.30pm. £14. Wulfrun Hall Tuesday May 20 Quireboys
Still fronted by Rod Stewart (when he was good) soundalike Jonathan Gray aka Spike with fellow founder member Nigel Mogg on bass, although the rest of the line-up’s been fluid and there’s been a couple of hiatuses, they’ve been active for the past 24 years, cranking out your basic barroom rock n roll from the old Faces/Stones/Frankie Miller blueprints. Surprisingly, in all that time they’ve only made five studio albums, the latest of which, Homewreckers and Heartbreakers (SPV) is being launched with this tour. Advance copies weren’t available but if the Maggie Mae-like Mona Lisa Smiled is any indication, then they’re on vintage form. It promises to be a beer swigging, hot sweating rocking night since they’ll be joined by former Georgia Satellites man Dan Baird and Homemade Sin. He’ll doubtless be including his old band’s biggest hit, Battleship Chains, and hopefully there’ll be room for a couple of showcases from Warner Hodges, the former Jason and the Scorchers guitarist who’s now part of the line-up. He’s just released his own solo debut, Centreline (Jerkin’ Crocus) on which Baird also figures on guitar as well as co-writing Whole Lotta Fun.
Pretty much in the Scorchers vein of guitar slinging rebel rock n roll country, it’s meat and potatoes stuff but promising a solid live workout as they rip it up on such tracks as the guitar boogieing I Love You Baby, a bluesy swaggering She’s Tuff, and Gimme, Gimme, throwing in old Scorchers flag waving nugget Harvest Moon and a swayalong cover of Merle Haggard’s Branded Man for good measure. 7.30pm. £12.50. JBs, Dudley Tuesday May 20 Delays
Parting company with Rough Trade after excellent but underachieving albums Faded Seaside Glamour and You See Colours, the Southampton outfit have linked arms with Fiction and return with their best work yet in the shape of Everything’s The Rush. Sure Pieces, One More Lie In and Silence finds them in power ballad mode, but pretty much everything else is vibrantly uptempo pop, suffused with a star-spangled euphoria and lashing of orchestral arrangements. With subjects matters like OCD, the lyrics might not always be the sunniest, but No Contest, with the guys whoo oooing in the background makes The Feeling sound like Leonard Cohen while the opening triple wide-eyed whammy of Girl’s On Fire, Hooray and the glorious tingling aural waterfall of Love Made Visible are three of the most heart-burstingly ecstatic pop songs you’ll hear all year. And the cascading synth pop Touch Down, the surf n sun Jet Lag and the falsetto tumbling ode to love The Earth Gave Me You run close behind too. If you had to place bets on the pop soundtrack to summer 2008, then this would surely be the one to put your money behind. 7,30pm. £12.50. Carling Academy 2 Tuesday May 20 Storys
Welsh-Italian singer Steve Balsamo must wonder if he's cursed to have things given to him with one hand and taken away with the other. First he lands the West End lead in the Jesus Christ Superstar revival and follows it up by being signed to Columbia only to have his first single stall outside the Top 30 and his debut album sink without trace. Parting company with the label, he forms The Storys with a bunch of fellow Welshman, including fellow vocalist Andy Collins. They record an album and release it on their own label. Then along comes Korova offering a deal. Reviews are good, they land a support slot on the Elton John tour and set about recording a follow-up. The future looks bright. Then Korova goes under, putting them back where they started. But as it turns out, things might actually have worked in their favour. Releasing through their own Hall label, they're able to keep control of what they want Town Beyond The Trees to sound like, adding strings for a final polish. But while it may be another new beginning, the band have stuck with what they've proven to do best. Namely, a close harmony soft rock counterpart to the West Coast sounds of The Eagles, CS&N, Jackson Browne et al. Indeed, on the opening Long Hard Road, Balsamo sounds uncannily like Don Henley while Nobody Loves You and the stunning Trouble Deep could easily have been outakes from Hotel California. Elsewhere you find yourself thinking of either a Bon Jovi stadium ballad on the lovely You Couldn't Make It Up while Evangelina (Seven Days) jangles down the highway with the hood down and harmonica wailing, Alone builds to anthemic status on sweeping strings and the title track takes it right down to a plaintive fingerpicked acoustic song about a guy on death row writing to his unborn child. Across the water they could easily take on the countrified soft rock market leaders at their own game while here, without a hint of cynicism intended, they may well make their name as the thinking music lover's Westlife. 7.30pm. £9.50. Glee Club Wednesday May 21 Jens Lekman
Currently living in Australia, the Swedish singer-songwriter has the same romantic grandeur as Stephen Merritt, Belle & Sebastian, Jonathan Richman and early Scott Walker, the latter clearly evident on And I Remember Every Kiss, the opening track to current album Night Falls Over Kortedala (Secretly Canadian). Singing songs of heartbreak that banish any whiff of cynicism about love’s splendour, there’s a touch of the Latin dance floor to the hip swirling jazzy Sipping On The Sweet Nectar, the Richman goes mariachi rumba of Into Eternity and the slower sway of A Postcard To Nina while a jaunty The Opposite of Hallelujah (think of a tap dancing Dexys), a handclappy spring in the step I'm Leaving You Because I Don't Love You and the wonky sax that peppers the goodtiming Friday Night at the Drive-In Bingo are all geared to get the feet moving. And, come on, you have to love a guy who writes a song about cutting your finger after being startled by a girlfriend’s hug (Arms Around Me) or, with Shirin, pens a soaring Four Seasons-ish celebration of his hairdresser. You might get a bit of a sugar rush from the show, but he’s worth the musical calories.
Support’s provided by Jay May, back for another reminder of her melancholically lovely debut album Autumn Fallin’ (Heavenly) and such delights as new single Ill Willed Person, the carnival whirligig of You’d Rather Run and the wistfulness of You Are The Only One I Love. 7.30pm. £11. Glee Club Thursday May 22 Westlife
Having played two sell out shows in March, they return for a third stadium packer for a set of their biggest hits (Flying Without Wings, Against All Odds, You Raise Me Up) and selections from the current Back Home album, most likely to include sentimental daddy song I’m Already There, Home, and recent underperforming single Us Against The World. 7.30pm. £32.50. NEC Wednesday May 22 Sarabeth Tucek
Exhibiting such diverse influences as Cat Stevens, Simon & Garfunkel, Neil Young, The Velvet Underground, Elliott Smith, Dylan and Joy Division, Miami born Tucek’s stepping out of the backup singer shadows with brittle but beguiling eponymous debut album (Echo). The Nico influences are evident on the bluesy slouch of Stillborn, Neil informs Hot Tears and the freak out erupting Holy Smoke, country pop flavours percolate through new single Nobody Cares and the likes of Ambulance, the lullaby-like Come Back, Balloon and a chiming Broken Kisses will go down well with admirers of early Beth Orton. You want warm brass and strings soaked fragile balladry? Check out Home. How about a cross of Coldplay’s Yellow, the Velvets and hushed psychfolk? Try the scintillating Something For You.. Suitably pensive and sarcastic in equal measure, Tucek’s whispery intimate voice luring you closer to hear her confessionals about busted relationships, you’ll be hooked in her narcotic web.
She’s paired tonight with labelmate Jacob Golden, returning for another serving from Revenge Songs (Echo) with the likes of the Paul Simon-esque Shine A Light, a melodically tumbling Out Come The Wolves, the full blooded Church Of New Song, and the spidery echoing Hold Your Hair Back. He’ll also be directing attention to new non-album single On A Saturday, a lovely Hawaiian tinged, crooning musical box number inspired by girlwatching London’s Soho Square that comes with a stripped down folksy cover of ‘Merican, a politically barbed protest song from US punk outfit the Descendants. 7.30pm. £7. Little Civic Friday May 23 Girls Aloud
Like Sugababes, the Girls have defied cynics by not being a passing fashion fad and vanishing into oblivion. On top of that they’ve continued to release solid albums and maintain a consistent chart presence with an unbroken run of 18 Top 10 singles. Not to mention cameoing in St Trinians and recording two songs for the soundtrack. After last year’s Greatest Hits tour, they’re back and all over the place like a rash over the next month or so, following up this gig with a second at the NEC (June 4) and a third at Warwick Castle (July 4), so you can take your pick or overdose depending on your fan and bank balance level. Although they ran through their chart catalogue last year, it’s a safe bet they’ll not be leaving out the likes of Sound of the Underground, Love Machine, See The Day or I’ll Stand By You but chances are the emphasis is more likely to be on tracks from current album Tangled Up. They’ll naturally be heating things up with the pop-dance friendly singles, Call The Shots, Sexy! No, No, No and Can’t Speak French, but likely also finding room for the infectious beats-friendly Girl Overboard, the lollopping Control Of The Knife,a Rhianna-like What You Crying For and the cinematic ballad Crocodile Tears, though hopefully not the ill-advised rapping of Fling. 7.30pm. £26. NIA Friday May 23 Does It Offend You, Yeah
The indie-electronica trio’s first
major tour in support of the You Have No Idea What You’re
Getting Yourself Into (Virgin) album, so expect the Daft Punk
party vibe to be pumped to the max with their lager-friendly
lowbrow steamrollering bleeps and beats as they loon around the
stage to things like the mosh happy Let’s Make Out, With A Heavy
Heart’s industrial electro meets Talking Heads strobe-disco, the
hissing nu-raveology of Battle Royale and a brief sci fi B52s
homage on Attack of the 60ft Lesbian Octopus. Friday May 23 The Holloways
The first of the 02 Weekender shows, brings the fiddle friendly, guitar jogging Cockerney ska pop crew to town where, between reviving cheers for rabble rousing good time tunes like Dancefloor, Malcontented One, Happiness and Penniless, and Generator off So This Is Great Britain, they’ll be roadtesting material for the upcoming sophomore albums.7.30pm. £12. The Place I Love, Custard Factory Friday May23 Vetiver
Having won more hearts with the summery nu folk of To Find Me Gone, soft, sinuously voice Andy Cabic and his band are back to town to plug the follow-up, Thing Of The Past (Fat Cat). This time though he’s packing a collection of covers rather than self-penned tunes. And a lovely affair it is too, a selection of gently wheezing country folk rock songs that range from the familiar to the totally obscure. Of the former, the most immediately recognisable will be a faithful banjo accompanied version of Loudon Wainwright’s The Swimming Song and while space rock aficionados might recognise Hurry on Sundown as an old Hawkind number, they’ll likely not have imagined it as a swampy moonshiners mountain music stomp. All praise for reminding audiences of the late lamented Ronnie Lane with his arrangement of Derroll Adams’ Roll On Babe, and equally so for making less obvious choices from other relatively well known names that include Townes Van Zandt (Standin’), Michael Hurley (Blue Driver), Garland Jeffreys (Lon Chaney), Iain Matthews (Road To Ronderlin) and even Norman Greebaum’s whistling folk gospel Hook And Ladder to remind that he wrote more than Spirit In The Sky. But, arguably, it’s the complete obscurities that afford the best moments. You may have never heard of banjo playing 60s comedian and singer-songwriter Biff Rose, but their cover of To Baby may well have you searching the vinyl treasure troves. Does the name Bobby Charles ring a bell. Probably not. But the Louisiana songwriter pioneered swamp pop and penned Bill Haley hit See You Later alligator and his hushed gospel I Must Be In A Good Place Now provides a beautiful closing grace note to the album. Even more obscure will be nigh forgotten Toronto folkie and friend of Neil Young Elyse Weinberg whose Houses (taken from her only album) provides the first track and Dia Joyce, who apparently lives in San Jose but about whom no info is available, whose fragile folk lullabying Sleep A Million Years is, duetted with Vashti Bunyan, easily the best track here. Doubtless he’ll find space for several of his own songs, the Grateful Dead-like I Know No Pardon and the early Simon & Garfunkel colours of Maureen included, but it’ll be great to sit through this record collector’s night out too, even more so if he can be prevailed on to offer some potted discography notes too. 7.30pm. £8. Tin Angel, Taylor John's House, Canal Basin, Coventry Saturday May 24 Shayne Ward
As virtually every pop talent show winner knows, their debut single and album are pretty much guaranteed the No 1 slot. It’s what comes ne |
