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ARCHIVED REVIEWS May 2009 Previews by Mike Davies Friday May 1 The Fray
Taking everyone - not least themselves - by surprise with their 2005 hit How To Save A Life, the Denver based Christian soft rockers went on to ship truckloads of the album of the same name. Now they’re back with the eponymous follow up (Epic) and clearly haven’t messed with the formula. Hence there’s more of Isaac Slade’s nasal falsetto whine, more piano driven mid-tempo minor-key tunes aspiring to stadium status and more angsty songs about family, God and keeping the faith burning when times are hard. However, save for infrequent highlights like the questioning You Found Me, the chiming, harmony laden Absolute and the vaguely boundaries pushing We Build Then We Break with its percussion break-out, it’s all inoffensive and inconsequential at best and tiringly dull at worst. Worst culprits are Syndicate which starts out as swirly pop and swiftly descends into tuneless dirge, the blandly hackneyed Happiness and the turgidly sub Dave Matthews plod that is Never Say Never. One of the songs is titled Enough For Now. You can only agree. 7.30pm. £17.50. O2 Academy Saturday May 2 Alesha Dixon
The former Mis-Teeq member’s solo
career hit a brick wall when she lost both her record deal and
her husband. However, having recaptured the public eye when she
became a Strictly Come Dancing champ, she’s on her way back up
with comeback album The Alesha Show (Asylum). The mambo-esque
single The Boy Does Nothing and a similarly Latin swing Play Me
have an infectious dance itch and there’s plenty more here to
keep the dancing juice, as she puts it, flowing. Let’s Get
Excited deliberately references Madonna and doesn’t pale by
comparison, Breathe Slow is All Saints style shimmering r&b
pop, Chasing Ghosts hints at Marvin with its jazzy soul groove
while the joggy pop Don’t Ever Let Me Go seems to have a thing
for Lily Allen. Saturday May 2
The Airborne Toxic Event
2006 wasn’t a great year for Mikel Jollett. While busy writing a novel in LA, his mother was diagnosed with cancer, his relationship broke up, he got pneumonia and found he was suffering from genetic autoimmune disease that led to the development of Vitiligo and Alopecia areata. So, as you do, he started writing songs. Finding himself with an album’s worth, the next step was to form a band. Two years on, he’s still facing a shorter life expectancy than most but things are looking a lot rosier since, the name taken from Don DeLillo’s 1985 award-winning novel White Noise, his band’s currently the new next big thing out of America with the stonkingly brilliant Sometime Around Midnight, easily the best song ever about seeing your ex in a bar with her new bloke and finding all the memories flooding bitterly back They’re certainly a major proposition, though they’re nothing if not defined by their influences. Midnight calls to mind Psychedelic Furs while elsewhere on the eponymous debut album (Major Domo) you’ll likely find yourself variously thinking of U2, the Smiths, Joy Division, Franz Ferdinand, Springsteen, the Strokes and Arcade Fire. But, so what. The comparisons are favourable and with heartfelt anthemic songs about regret, nostalgia, loss, longing and hope that make you want to go out and punch the sky and dance like a loon, they have to be doing something right. Jollett’s got the poet’s touch, his heart in the sky, his soul in the streets and, from the opening bursts of Wishing Well, they take hold of every fibre in your body. They surge through the circling ringing guitar riffs, driving melodies, urgent delivery and spraying hooks of Papillon, the spiked jerky pop Gasoline, a Weezerish Does This Mean You’re Moving On?, tumbling ska pop flavoured Something New, and the whooping, darkly rollicking This Is Nowhere with its surf noir guitar before climaxing with the slowly building jubilant six minutes of Innocence, a stadium crowd rouser that sounds like Pulp mating with The Clash. Next month sees the release of the Happiness EP, featuring live favourite Happiness Is Overrated alongside an acoustic version of Midnight and new number I Don’t Want To Be On TV. Get infected. 7.30pm. £9.50. Kasbah, Coventry Saturday May 2/Sunday May 3 Chris De Burgh
He’s been out of chart favour for a while now, his last hit single 12 years ago while his last album of original material, 2006’s The Storyman, only just struggled to the bottom end of the Top 40. The drought’s been broken with his current album, Footsteps (Universal) which made its debut at No 4, though save for brief opener First Steps and the closing acoustic title track (which sounds bizarrely like a cross between Harvey Andrews and Abba), it’s all cover versions of songs that inspired him to become a performer and writer and which have a personal resonance. Most are, of course, given the trademark lush big drama De Burgh treatment, turning the weary Long And Winding Road into an overblown epic, though even he can’t quite outdo the Nilsson original of Without You for soaring heartache. The notion of De Burgh tackling the Byrds Turn Turn Turn may well prompt McGuinn fans to take up arms, but it’s actually not bad and stays true to the arrangement while his versions of Where Have All The Flowers Gone, Last Thing On My Mind, Corrina Corrina and, obscure Peter, Paul and Mary death ballad Polly Von, wouldn’t get him booed out of any folk club. Dylan fans, on the other hand, may be less forgiving about All Along The Watchtower Harking back to the early 60s when he was a callow twentysomething, he turns in a fine cover of Bryan Hyland’s Sealed With A Kiss along with a crowd pleaser medley of Rhythm Of The Rain and Crying In The Rain, while a little further down the decade, We Can Work It Out is a guaranteed singalong. Apparently, he used to do American Pie when he was singing in restaurants, getting diners to stop eating and clap along. Assuming he focuses on these largely fresh sounding covers and can avoid lapsing too heavily into his now somewhat dated oldies (yes, Lady In Red too), punters can rest assured, there won’t be any need for indigestion relief. 7.30pm. £45-£35. Symphony Hall Sunday May 3 Richard Swift
There’s a bitter irony to the fact that, after making his major label debut with Dressed Up For The Let Down, a reflection on his failed early attempts to cut it in the music biz, the California singer-songwriter now finds himself back in indie land with Secretly Canadian after critical acclaim failed to translate into commercial success. He returns to the fray with Atlantic Ocean, another collection of guitar and piano based pop that again prompts the regular Nilsson. McCartney and Randy Newman comparisons. The title cut’s intro initially recalls Fun Boy Three and Bananarama’s It Ain’t What You Do before heading down a familiar Swiftian vaudeville jazz path, Ballad Old What’s His Name (produced by Mark Ronson with guests Sean Lennon and Ryan Adams) spurs those Nilsson echoes while Lady Luck heads into falsetto Motown soul ballad territory and A Song For Milton Feher has a bus pass for Magical Mystery Tour era Beatles. There’s carnival colours on the squelchy moog jaunt that is the Newman-like Hallelujah Goodnight (with its Grange Hill theme nod) while The First Time bounces along on what sounds like a tinny drum machine and toy piano and Bat Coma Motown is all Sgt Pepper marching band with parping New Orleans horns and what sounds like kazoo. Unfortunately, crafted and polished as they are, there’s no tunes here that actually stick in the memory or having you humming along after the CD’s finished, suggesting that, filed alongside past nuggets such as Kisses For The Misses and The Songs Of National Freedom, Swift is going to remain a critical and cult darling rather than a chart resident. 7.30pm. £7. Glee Club Sunday May 3 Sky Larkin
Fronted by wannabe cockernee Katie Harkin with rhythm section Doug Adams and Nestor Matthews, the Leeds trio have re-recorded several of their earlier releases for The Golden Spike (Wichita), an indiepop debut that owes much to early Bjork and perhaps the Breeders as well as more current reference points such as the Ting Tings while Pica curiously sounds like a sugar-rush fuzzy guitar bluegrass stomp. They allow no breathing space between the rough edged guitar riffs, clattering drums and Harkin’s swoop and soar vocals. so that after a while it all that driving energy gets a bit taxing but, as a perky Beeline, the loping Matador and a tumbling moody Somersault with its fairground organ solo show, they do have an ear for a good tune. Opening track, Fossil, I, is already on its way to being enshrined as a bit of an indie classic, and there’s no denying the inventiveness lurking inside the likes of new single Antibodies, Geography and Octopus 08, but, for all the gushing reviews, they’re not yet poised for the commercial breakthrough those buried pop sensibilities clearly yearn after. 7.30pm. £7. The Victoria, John Bright St Monday May 4 Navvy
Formed from assorted Sheffield
components of Texas Pete, In Theory and Wisconsin Death Trip,
the four piece weld together such diverse influences as Wire,
the Cramps, Devo, The Fall and Pixies to forge an angular,
fractured, rhythm dominated, bass throbbing noise. They push the
experimental art rock approach further on debut album Idyll
Intangible (Angular) Monday May 4 Cancer Bats
Too busy to get round to making a new album, the sonic thrashing Canadian quartet are re-issuing the hardcore metal piledriving Hail Destroyer with the addition of four new tracks, (among them Engine Skull and Tegan & Sara cover So Jealous) none of which seem likely to deviate from the hammering mush pit frenzies of things like Deathsmarch and Pray For Darkness. They’re also joining forces with Sheffield’s extreme noise experimentatalists Rolo Tomassi (who are themselves reissuing their debut EP with extra material) for a limited edition single featuring respectively Agenda Suicide and Jealous Bones. Expect much noise. 7.30pm. £8. O2 Academy 2 Monday May 4 Lisa Hannigan
After seven years collaborating with Damien Rice as both vocalist and co-writer ended in a less than amicable split, the Irish songstress now flies solo, getting off to an auspicious start with her self-released debut album, Sea Sew earning a nomination for 2008’s Irish Album Of The Year. Already a hit back home, it finally surfaces here to coincide with a series of live dates. Opening with the lilting violin laced Ocean And A Rock with its shanty undercurrent, it’s a collection of folk flavoured, emotionally melancholic, breathily ethereal yet warm blooded vocals and melodies unfolded with arrangements that include strings, glockenspiel and trumpets. Although the moods and tempos vary, from the skittering pop of I Don’t Know and puttering beats of the kittenish slinky jazzed Keep It All to the slow swaying Splishy Splashy, a pizzicato Sea Song and Pistachio’s harp shimmered early hours lightness, Hannigan retains a distinctive musical identity as well as her lyrical whimsy and mystical metaphors. Closing with the delicate acoustic lullaby feel of the sad but optimistic plucked violin and harmonium Lille, it’s a highly accomplished and long lingering debut that resolutely cuts the apron strings of her former partnership and welcomes her to build a nest among those record collections already feathered with the likes of Marling, Newsom and Cathy Davey. 8pm. £15. Glee Club Wednesday May 6 The Balky Mule
From Melbourne by way of Bristol, ex pat and former Minotaur Shock member Sam Jones takes his current name from the offspring of a donkey and a horse and his template from the nu/anti folk movement, though at a considerably more skewed and experimental corner of the room than, say, King Creosote or Sufjan Stevens. Recently signed to Fat Cat, he’s over here plugging The Length of the Rail, an album which, from the opening acoustic wheezing clumper Dust Bath Birds and the syncopated Before Too Long where, as with Wireless, he sounds a little like Ray Davies in his tropical mode seems to promise much. Unfortunately, the rot sets in come the tuneless third track Jisaboke which drags along with two broken feet and, in tandem with subsequent offerings such as Blinking, Illuminated Numbers, lounge samba We Sometimes Write and the title track attempts to disguise the shortcomings by posing as experimental. The fact is, though, that Jones can’t really sing and does so in a fairly monotonous manner, distracting from more positive factors such as his ability to write a decent lyric and a sweet melody. An album to pick at and draw out some minor charms, but quite possibly a rather tedious live experience. 8pm. £4. 444 Club, The Rainbow, Digbeth Wednesday May 7 Easy Star All-Stars A somewhat fluid session musicians outfit masterminded by producer, arranger, guitarist Michael Goldwasser, the set-up’s brilliantly simple. Take a classic album and rework in reggae style. Their first, Dub Side Of The Moon, spent five years on the Billboard Reggae Chart and was acclaimed by Mojo as the second greatest cover album of all time while the second, Radiodread took on OK Computer and got the thumbs up from Thom Yorke himself. The latest, and the one that forms the basis of the current tour, is Easy Star’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band (Easy Star) which, as you’ll have figured, does the reggae thing with Sgt Pepper. Despite the Dub reference, the approach is actually far more radio friendly skanking than bass heavy ganja stoned interpretations, more in tune with UB40 or those old Blue Beat covers of the 60s. They do the album from start to finish, welcoming guest reggae star singers such as Luciano (With A Little Help From My Friends), Frankie Paul (Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds), The Mighty Diamonds (Getting Better), Max Romeo (Fixing A Hole, the most dub number here), Sugar Minott (When I’m Sixty Four) and U Roy (a suberb echoey Lovely Rita). Michael Rose also gets to be playful on A Day In A Life as he reworks the lyrics to sing “got up, got out of bed, dragged my fingers through my dreads". There’s a couple of local connections too with Steel Pulse taking on Good Morning Good Morning and, the best bet for a live appearance, Ranking Roger on Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! It would have been interesting to hear them actually deconstruct Lennon and McCartney in a real dub stylee, but what you get promises an interesting fun evening. 7.30pm. £15. O2 Academy 2 Thursday May 7 Marissa Nadler
Here at the club last year promoting Songs III: Bird On The Water, the Bostonian fine artist and American Gothic singer-songwriter has since switched labels from Peacefrog to Kamado, returning now with her first for them, Little Hells. The sound stays in much the same vicinity with leafy, folkish Americana delivered in her pure, ghostly tones, but the songs themselves are less hazy and more emotionally direct while Mary Comes Alive rises from the general beguiling narcolepsy for what, by her standards, is virtually thrash rock n roll and, sung from the bottom of a well, Loner carouses with fairground organs played by goblins. Many songs are enfolded in atmospheric sonics, but she also peels back the wallpaper on several occasions, notably the strummed title track, the arpeggio accompaniment of Ghosts And Lovers and the spare piano notes of The Hole Is Wide to spread them naked in their lonely ache. Whether it’s the English pastoral wooziness of Heartpaper Lover, lilting mountain music waltzer Rosary, the skitterish River Of Dirt or the acoustic blues-folk guitar complexities of Brittle Crushed And Torn, there’s much here to weave you into her web. The latter sparks thoughts of Cohen and a hope that her entrancing version of his Famous Blue Raincoat finds a way into tonight’s set list. 8pm. £7. Glee Club Thursday May 7 Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard
Having got his Crass covers album out of the system, Lewis gets back to his own material with ’Em Are I (Rough Trade) which injects a little more rollicking punk gusto into the anti-folk movement with the likes of the full tilt rocking Slogans or Good Old Pig, Gone To Avalon, stomping hoedown Whistle Past The Graveyard, guitar freak out The Upside-down Cross and the handclappy Holly meets Richman Broken Broken Broken Heart. He can’t really sing, but like Richman he has an endearing vocal style that makes you forgive the flat notes and departures from tune so that plonky singalong campfire numbers Roll Bus Roll and Bugs & Flowers and lyrically witty live favourite blues strummer If Life Exists? tend to leave you with a grin rather than a grimace. 7.30pm. £8. O2 Academy 2 Thursday May 7 Alessi’s Ark
Another contribution to the quirky world of winsome and whimsical breathy voiced folk pop female singer-songwriters, Alessi Laurent-Marke is hoping audiences will be filing in two by two to appreciate her debut album, Notes From The Treehouse (Virgin). Harp and violin welcome you into opening track Magic Weather and song which, like Ribbon Lakes, The Asteroids Collide and Constellations, pretty much sounds like a combination of the title and her sensibilities would suggest. Apparently, the latter is a ditty about freckles and that rather encapsulates the album’s cutesy childlike vibe with even the sparse Bjork-like Woman talking about rings around the moon. Over The Hill and Memory Box parade her poppier instincts, Hummingbird finds her in the sort of vibrato vocal chord mode that would be irritating were it not musically couched in an eerie wintry setting while closing track Glendorn appears to be imagining a curious marriage of Radiohead and Laura Marling with a dose of David Gilmour guitar. Lines like “from the crystals of silver crunching ice, I thought I’d call to say I think you’re nice’ might push the tolerance envelope but if you can gloss over that and a tendency to be vocally away with the fairies, then you might fancy climbing the rope ladder and sharing the view. 8pm. £4. 444 Club, The Rainbow, Digbeth Friday May 8 Betty & The Id
Having released an eponymous EP last year, the Birmingham quartet now go the whole hog with The Wrong Side Of Everything (Wrong Syde), a debut album of a further nine numbers that consolidates their blend of 60s garage psychrock and 80s New Wave. The Zappa and Floyd flavours from the EP don’t resurface here, but Oregon Trail is vintage early Stranglers, the likes of Bad Girl, Bad Trip and Fiery Grave suggest a familiarity with the Electric Prunes and their kindred spirits while the drum driven Standards marries hints of prog jazz experimentalists Matching Mole with shards of Pigbag and, detecting a pagan folk twinge in their makeup, even the Dancing Did. The bass and keyboards heavy Burning Away recasts The Fall in the Nuggets era of underground psychedelia, Rotary Mind and Vale Onslow are space rock as imagined by early Sonic Youth and the dark swirly twisted instrumental freak out End Is Nigh even owes a debt to Neal Hefti’s Batman theme. All of which adds up to a driven, aggressive but accessible aural experience which, by report, is even more intense live where they’ve been known to veer off into lengthy improvisation and wrap the crowd in mind-expanding light shows. This is the album launch gig and should comfortably see it off into the world in fine style. 8pm. £4. Victoria, John Bright St, B’ham Saturday May 9 Miranda Lee Richards
Psychedelic Chamber Folk Rock is what the LA based San Francisco native and former member of Brian Jonestown Massacre terms her music. It's as good a label as any and that shimmery vibe doubtless helped secure her a place on the Jesus And Mary Chain's 2007 tour, duetting on Just Like Honey. You might want to tag it Baroque Folk-Country Pop, and certainly it's not hard to trace the tracks of such influences as Mazzy Star, Emmylou Harris and Joni Mitchell on her Light of X (Nettwerk) album as she softly sways through such numbers as the pastoral piano tinkling Breathless, the reflective echoplexed Hideaway, and the lazy sun-kissed Hidden Treasure where her coyly innocent vocals sound a little like Zooey Deschanel. Cello colours Here By The Window (thereby justifying the Chamber bit, and suggesting she's probably played some early Janis Ian albums in her time) and pedal steel brings of vein of melancholy to the slow chiming cosmic country Life Boat. The album ends with strings adorned piano ballad Last Days Of Summer, only to catch you offguard with an untitled hidden track that sees Richards letting loose her inner Velvets freak-out with spidery sonics, off kilter drums, doomy organ and spooked spoken delivery. Perhaps a whole album letting that side of the psyche take the reins might prove an interesting proposition. The gig most certainly promises to be.
Get there early though because Richards actually fills the support slot since the gig itself is the delayed launch night for Birmingham outfit The Lights’ handclappy Teenage Fanclubby new single Low Hundreds (Crash). 8pm. £6. 444 Club, The Rainbow, Digbeth Saturday May 9 Black Poets
Shades of Interpol, Editors, the Bunnymen, John Foxx era Ultravox and 80s New York New Wave hover around this newly emergent Hackney quartet, heading out to pave the way for their Innocents and Thieves (Tone City) debut album. Throbbing basslines, resonant guitar riffs and soaring tremulous monochrome vocals (Morrissey meets Ian Curtis with an Al Stewart warble) are the order of the day for a set of articulate, emotionally based lyrics and nagging melodies and if there’s a tendency for some numbers to sound very similar the likes of Point Of Reason, Modern Movement, Amnesty and Mistakes are more than reason to get in and discover them early. And for free. 8pm. Free. Sound Bar, Corporation St Saturday May 9 White Light Parade
Having recently had their Riot In The City track featured on the soundtrack of the best selling Grand Theft Auto 4, the Bradford punkers now look to capitalise on awareness (at leats among game boys) with debut album House of Commons (Split). However, while kick off single Wake Up has definite anthemic power pop aspirations and there’s heady shades of The Clash and Jam to similarly rowdy but melodic exuberant youth three minute guitar rock numbers such as Surrender, Burn It Down, Wait For The Weekend, Young Believers and We Start Fires, there’s nothing there that really sets them apart from scores of other outfits playing the same stuff down the local pub. They may well find that their success curve’s already peaked. 7.30pm. £5. Little Civic Sunday May 10 The Maccabees
Having made a confident debut with Colour It In, the Macc lads should no prepare themselves to be elevated to the next level and subsequent star status with follow up Wall Of Arms (Fiction). There’s darker undertones to the material this time round, but you won’t find any gloom in the melodies which, at times evoking the anthemic sound of Arcade Fire and peppered by brass, slowly swell with infectious hooks, trademark staccato guitar riffs and harmonies while Orlando Weeks delivers that tremulously quivering folk-inflected warble. Having hinted at the lay of the land with Love You Better and the recent Joy Divisionish paranoia driven single No Kind Words, the album terrain proves equally fertile as Weeks puts aside the youthful optimism of Toothpaste Kisses to unfold tales of kamikaze relationships (One Hand Holding), mortality (Young Lions), dependence and emotional security (Wall Of Arms) and the passing of childhood (William Powers). With a rocker drive and Seventeen Hands just one of several highlights likely to prove live favourites in the months ahead, they’re definitely worth going out on a limb for. 6.30pm. £10. O2 Academy Monday May 11 The Acorn
The Canadian five piece won many fans with last year’s experimental world music album, Glory Hope Mountain (Bella Union) which, taking its title from the translation of frontman Rolf Klausener’s mother’s name, is actually based on her life, from an abusive Honduras childhood to surmounting new hardships after journeying to Canada to start a new life. Played out with heart-drums, gut-strings, ukuleles, and marimbas and making use of indigenous Honduran rhythms, it’s a low key affair with numbers such as a shuffling Low Gravity, the emotionally stirring African flavoured tribal chanting Flood Pt 1 and the modestly rousing Crooked Legs sure to afford them a warm reception. 8pm. £9. Glee Club Tuesday May 12 Al Stewart
One of the most distinctive voices in folk-rock, Stewart’s currently celebrating his fourth decade in the business, so this acoustic evening has plenty of ground to cover. Measured in chart terms, he’s not had a particularly high profile career, notching up only one hit single with 1976’s Year Of The Cat and three chart albums, Zero She Flies, Year of the Cat and, his last in 1978, Time Passages, none of which made it higher than the bottom rungs of the Top 40. However, while he might not have captured the mass audience, he’s very much a revered name and almost a national treasure in folk circles with things such as the 18 minute autobiographical Love Chronicles and the historically-themed Roads To Moscow, On The Border, Running Man and 1973 US college radio hit Nostradamus all regarded in high esteem. Now based in America, he’s a little more into the AOR market and a little less prolific with his recordings, but this tour comes on the back of his third album of the century, Sparks of Ancient Light (EMI), which again takes him pack to the history books pages for subject matter with the jaunty chamber folk pop Lord Salisbury’s recalling the Victorian PM, Hanno The Navigator celebrating the Carthaginian navigator from 500BC, the violin and piano ballad Shah Of Shas recalling the Sha Of Iran’s last days before exile while the skiaplong (A Child’s View Of ) The Eisenhower Years and being dumped letter song Like William McKinley both reference US Presidents. Elsewhere Football Hero recounts a hapless player’s last minute screw up in the big game while Elvis At The Wheel tells the true story of how Presley claimed to have seen Stalin’s face in the clouds while driving through Arizona. The album’s lyrically more adventurous than it is musically, but it’s his personality, wit and intelligence that shine through even when the melodies dissolve as they unfold which, whatever he pulls from the songbook tonight, should ensure you’re never less than fascinated and entertained. 7.30pm. £27.50. B’ham Town Hall Wednesday May 13 Counting Crows
Rescheduled from last year, this is now an even more belated visit in support of current release Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings (Geffen). Their first in six years, it’s an album of two halves with the party hard rock oriented Saturday and the countrified Sunday hangover comedown. They hit the town with a bottle in both hands from the opening 1492, Adam Duritz struggling with his identity as a Russian Jew American, the false friends and skinny champagne drinking girls attracted to celebrity, a theme he pursues through Hanging Tree and Los Angeles while continuing to deliver that throaty wail like vintage REM. Seeing out the hedonism with another dose of existential angst on Cowboys, the mood abruptly shifts for the achingly gentle Washington Square as he ditches his piano, friends, family and fame and sets out to find himself. Trailing behind him are a clutch of soul baring, self-examining ballads that, on the Stonesy sway of I Dream Of Michelangelo, the moodily spare piano tinkling introspective On A Tuesday In Amsterdam Long Ago, You Can’t Count On Me’s catchy alt country guitar rocking k self-condemnation and the weary resignation of the final jazz-souled Baby I’m A Big Star Now are among the best things they’ve ever done. If the live shows are firing on the same cylinders, this should be one hell of a mid week-end bender.
Lighting the fire early will be support outfit The Hold Steady who follow the commercial and critical success of their Springsteenesque Stay Positive with live album and DVD documentary A Positive Rage (Rough Trade). Taken from their 2007 tour, it predates the recent studio album so the only song they have in common is the slow swaying country gospel Lord I'm Discouraged while everything else comes from the three previous releases, Almost Killed Me, Separation Sunday and Boys And Girls In America. That said, while Girls Like Status, Massive Nights and You Gotta Dance (With Who You Came With) show their staple Southern barroom boogie side, the likes of opening salvo Stuck Between Stations, The Swish and Chips Ahoy are firmly in their current Boss meets Husker Du mode. Given the extra fire in their belly since this was recorded, expect them to be little short of explosive. 7.30pm. £33.50. NIA Wednesday May 13 Morrissey
While the greatest hits collection didn’t actually draw a line in the sand, it’s fair to say that current album Years of Refusal (Polydor) does appear to have been made by a reinvigorated and, while still given to flashes of miserablism, a more upbeat, cheerful and optimistic Morrissey. Certainly new single Something Is Squeezing My Skull and predecessor I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris are full of the joys of pop even if he is singing about a lack of love in the world. Likewise, while Mama Lay Softly On The Riverbed may be a tale of a credit crunch suicide driven by ‘uncivil servants’, it’s delivered in crunchy, marching beat style with glowering guitars and a slow building anthemic melody just as the equally death informed The Last Time I Spoke To Carol unfolds its tragedy to the sound of rimshot drums, mariachi horns and Eastern swirls. His voice too sounds better than ever while the music drives along with a youthful energy and passion that belies the approach of his 50th year, whether rocking out on the catchy All You Need Is Me or taking it tender with the moody slow dance You Were Good In Your Time which sounds like a 60s Bond movie ballad. Given their musical exuberance, titles like It’s Not Your Birthday Anymore, One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell and Sorry Doesn’t Help suggest he may be mocking his popular grumpy pessimist image, certainly he sees the album out in terrific self-confident, air-fisting, whooping fashion with I’m OK By Myself. And with himself too, by the sound of it. 7.30pm. £32.50. Symphony Hall Wednesday May 13 Your Demise
Originally a Suicidal Tendencies cover band, the St Alban’s metalcore crew take their template from the likes of Agnostic Front and Sick of it All, their current album, Ignorance Never Dies Out (Visible Noise), a punishing welter of piston slashing guitar noise, punishing fast drums and harsh, guttural spat vocals. The untrained ear probably won’t discern any obvious differences between, say, Burnt Tongues, Black Veins Feels Like There's Something Dark Inside but moshheads doubtless can dissect the subtleties at length. 8pm. £8. Eddie’s Rock Club, Gough St Wednesday May 13 Metric
Following 2006’s solo album Knives Don’t Have Your Back, Emily Haines gets back to the day job for Fantasies (Metric Music), the Canadian outfit’s fourth album and the follow up to Live It Out. After that and the accompanying hit Monster Hospital, expectations are high but, amping up the use of guitars and toning down the synths, they don’t disappoint, coating the likes of Help I’m Alive, the pulsating pop of Gimme Sympathy and Sick Muse’s twangy surf jangle with a sugar and spice rush. There’s a touch of the Strokes to the throbbing bassline of Front Row, Gold Guns And Girls romps along on an express train rhythm as Haines’ seductive breathy vocals stoke the fires while the downbeat Twilight Galaxy and fuzzily distorted anthem swayer Stadium Love swirl up the heady sonic storms to addictive effect. Take their measure now. 8pm. £9. Kasbah, Coventry Thursday May 14 Nick Lowe
From Brinsley Schwarz through the Rockpile era and countless solo albums, producing the early Elvis Costello albums, working with then (now ex) wife Carlene Carter and father-in-law Johnny Cash to being part of the Little Village project with John Hiatt and Ry Cooder, Lowe has been a far more pivotal figure than his chart CV might suggest, melding pub rock, country, r&b and soul into his own distinctive sound, even if his songs are probably often better known through cover versions than his own recordings. This rare solo tour is usefully accompanied by Quiet Please - The New Best Of Nick Lowe (Proper), a 2CD and ltd edition DVD set that, over 40 tracks, spans his entire career, affording a chance to play instant catch up. Among the classics and three hits you’ll find the original Brinsleys version of (What’s So Funny ‘bout) Peace, Love And Understanding, I Love The Sound of Breaking Glass, Cruel to Be Kind Heart Of The City, his own version of Dave Edmunds hit I Knew The Bride and Half A Boy And Half A Man. These alongside lesser known but no less excellent numbers such as The Rose Of England, twangy country soul gem Lonesome Reverie, the Cash inspired Has She Got A Friend and, his voice now thickened into nicotined, whisky burnished mellowness, the Spanish Harlem sounding Hope For Us All from the recent At My Age. He’s had his musical ups and downs and there’s a few things in the songbook you’d probably not be bothered about hearing again, but the man they once dubbed the Jesus of Cool can still be relied on to not only keep the faithful disciples happy but continue making new converts. Opening the evening will be fellow veteran singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith. Ten albums in, Sexsmith's settled into an easy groove for his latest, Exit Strategy of the Soul (Kensaltown) mingling the Beatles colours with an r&b soulfulness. The gospel inspired, This Is How I Know sees him on his best McCartney, the hints of brass blossoming into fullness for the deceptively jaunty eco-themed One Last Round while the horn section brings extra warmth to the likes of Brandy Alexander and the uplifting Bill Withers-inspired Brighter Still. 7.30pm. £28.50. Symphony Hall Thursday May 14 Paolo Nutini
Three years on since the Italian-Glaswegian’s debut album, These Streets, saw him acclaimed as the new next best thing among old soul sounding singer-songwriters, it’s time to see if he’s going to stay the course as he prepares for sophomore release Sunny Side Up next month. Although there’s advance word of a ragtime Pencil Full Of Lead, a folky Simple Things and a soulful Coming Up Easy, advance copies weren’t available, so the only thing to go on is the first single, Candy (Atlantic). Although it’s hard to see any hint of the Stax balladeering one review’s mentioned and it bodes well with Nutini’s nasal warble sounding melancholically attractive and an uncomplicated but hummable folk-pop melody that edges towards DeBurgh drama without the pompous bombast. The jury can come in now. 7.30pm. £17.50. Wulfrun Hall Friday May 15 Detroit Social Club
A new six piece outfit from Newcastle, this lot seem guaranteed to make waves with what, to judge from crunching drum beat debut single Sunshine People (Fiction), sounds like an amalgam of Oasis, Queen and the Arctic Monkeys, swaggering along on a dirty juggernaut blues riff. Bluesy accompanying restyled remix Cause And Consequence keeps the drums cranked up and the bass at full fist while adding a dose of soul-psychedelia. If the live set reflects their studio balls, this will be a furnace of a gig. 8pm. £9. The Rainbow Garden, Digbeth Friday May 15 School of Seven Bells
Formed by Secret Machines guitarist Benjamin Curtis and identical twin sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza and apparently named for a mythical South American pickpocket training academy, the trio are one of that rare breed whose debut album, Alpinisms (Full Time Hobby) actually lives up to the effusive critical praise of those desperate to create a next big thing bandwagon. Opening mantra-like track Iamundernodisguise sets out the stall with an inspired fusion of electronica, Eastern swirl, tribal rhythm and darkling folk where the Cocteaus trade cobwebs with My Bloody Valantine and Sally Oldfield. Quickly proving this to be no inspired fluke, Face To Face On High Places delivers a tropical island shores wash of euphoric pop, clattering drum beats and hula sway harmonies before the dreamy lullabying dance beats and Oriental colours of Half Asleep take up the baton and hands it on to the distorted electro-itch and trance pop of Wired For Light. Juggling influences, Connjur is pristine cyberpop with lush 60s harmonies and Indian melodic textures while Sempiternal/Amaranth sets the controls for an 11 minute journey into blissed krautrock in the company of Pink Floyd and Neu before Cabal winds things up in shimmering sonic ice caves. It’ll take some work to recreate the mood live without sounding like New Age poster children, but hearing them try is certainly worth the risk. 8pm. £6.50. 444Club, The Rainbow, Digbeth Friday May 15 Rachel Unthank & The Winterset
BBC Folk Award winners last year and Mercury Music Prize nominees for The Bairns, the Northumbrian quartet aren’t exactly ones you’d look to for a hoedown party. Unthank, sister Becky, fiddle player Niopha Keegan and, replacing Belinda O’Hooley, pianist Stef Conner favour the more sombre side of folk, the album a downbeat collection of the traditional, self-penned and covers largely performed on piano, cello and violin with Rachel’s heavy Tyneside dialect prominent and the trad Felton Lonnin while Blue Bleezing Blind Drunk, I Wish and whaling song My Donald have the air of folk torch song cabaret. A salty cover of Robert Wyatt’s Sea Song and the hop harvest flavour of Farewell Regality are likely set list stand outs and, with work on a new album in progress, there’s a chance of an early preview too. 7.30pm. £15. B’ham Town Hall Friday May 15 Graham Coxon
With the Blur reunion gathering steam, this seems likely to be one of the last chances for their former guitarist do his solo thing for a while so make the most of it. Appropriately enough given his participation in the Way To Blue event below, new album The Spinning Top (Transgressive) is steeped in the English pastoral folk tradition of Nick Drake, Bert Jansch and Syd Barrett, a largely acoustic concept album about the journey from cradle to grave, opening with the minor key Look Into The Light with its intricate fingerpicking, woodwinds and what sounds like a spongy Jews harp and closing on the concertina drone of a skeletal November. Coxon’s voice nay be thin and reedy, but it makes the most of the material, investing This House with weary melancholy, teasing out the joys within Brave The Storm and In The Morning’s ISB-inspired eight minute celebration of rustic pleasures, and digging into the folk blues of Sorrow’s Army. He doesn’t forget he’s got a rock background, Dead Bees hints back to Blur’s Beetlebum in its rhythmic patterns, both Humble Man and If You Want Me feature squally guitars and Caspian Sea conjures the psychedelic folk of early Floyd. But the emphasis is firmly on the acoustic stillness evident on such numbers as the country meadows mood drone blues Far From Everything, the McCartney flavours of Home and, another example of his mastery of the frets, Perfect Love. Although likely to pepper the set with past solo offerings, hopefully it’s this album that proves the mainstay. 7.30pm. £18.50. W’hampton Civic Hall Bar Saturday May 16 Gallows
Another concept album rears its head with Grey Britain (Warner), a state of the nation meditation on what it means to be British in the current climate, delivered in the band’s trademark hardcore punk and metal with growls and industrial strength riffs but also, on half of The Vulture (Acts I & II), acoustic passages and, on the bonus hidden track even a full piano and strings instrumental. Don’t get the idea they’ve mellowed out, however. “We hate you, we hate this city” spits Frank Carter on London Is The Reason as the album proceeds to deliver a maelstrom of anger and aggression as the rip through raw flesh with the likes of Black Eyes, I Dread The Night, Death Voices and Queensberry Rules. There’ll be flayed skin, tonight. 6pm. £13. O2 Academy Saturday May 16 Way To Blue: The Songs of Nick Drake
Coxon’s hung around to join the line-up for this English Originals weekend’s tribute evening to Nick Drake, the Tamworth folk singer who died of an antidepressant overdose in 1974, age 26. In his short five year career, he released three albums on Island, Five Leaves Left, Bryter Layter and Pink Moon to iffy reviews and almost universal apathy, none of them selling more than 5000 copies. However, his fragile, melancholic music and poetic lyrics reassessed in the years following his death, come the 80s he was being regarded as a major talent and is now seen as a significant influence on the likes of Kate Bush, Robert Smith, Paul Weller, and Coldplay, his spirit increasingly evident in many a new singer-songwriter today.
Singing songs from the three albums curated by Drake’s former manager and producer Joe Boyd is an impressive line up of devotees which, in addition to Coxon, includes Beth Orton, Martha Wainwright, Vashti Bunyan and Robyn Hitchcock backed by a house band that features guitarist Neil MacColl and jazz pianist Zoe Rahman. It should be magical. In addition to the tribute show, the day also includes a screening of Drake documentary A Skin Too Few (Symphony Hall 4.30) and a post concert talk by Boyd. 7.30pm. £22.50. B’ham Town Hall Sunday May 17 Ben’s Brother
One minute they’re the new blue eyed boys about to take the world by storm because they’ve been nominated for a Novello and have a track, Stuttering, picking up American air play. The next, they’ve been dumped by an imploding EMI after it failed to chart here. However, Island have stepped in to rescue them from an own label release for album number two, Battling Giants (Flat Cap). The watery Rod Stewart’s been toned down but the bland Blunt of Beta Male Fairytales remains firmly in evidence on the single Apologise while elsewhere its thin synth pop summons thoughts of Howard Jones or, on piano ballad Letters, a horrendous cross between Robin Gibb and Gilbert O’Sullivan. On the plus side What If I comes with hefty stadium power ballad intentions and If I Let The Ladder Down is catchy enough, albeit saddled with particularly naff lyrics. However, the quiveringly nasal voiced Jamie Hartman’s attempt to sound uppity on the ‘rocky’ Questions And Answers just feels embarrassing and inviting Jason Mraz and Joss Stone to guest on the title track and Stalemate respectively just serves to damn by comparison. Bargain bins await. 7.30pm. £12. Glee Club Sunday May 17 Bell X1
Although pretty much an unknown quantity over here, back home in Ireland current album Blue Lights On The Runway (Belly Up) sailed into the No 1 spot, building on the gathering swell of popularity engendered by Music In Mouth, 2007’s Flock and last year’s live album Tour De Flock. Originally known as Juniper in the days when Damien Rice was in the line-up, the present quartet take their name from the aircraft in which Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier and their prime musical influence from Talking Heads with frontman Paul Noonan catching David Byrne’s inflections. You’ll certainly hear that on The Great Defector, the tremendous The Ribs Of A Broken Umbrella (though that one features a strong folk undercurrent) and One Stringed Harp, but then aspects of A Better Band also suggest the poppier bricks of Crowded House, Breastfed is INXS funk on a lower flame and both Light Catches Your Face and the brass warmed The Curtains Are Twitching weigh in with Celtic hewn balladry. They do tend to let themselves down rather with lyrics that include such lines as “you're the chocolate at the end of my cornetto” and “you're just picking your knickers from your arse” and a little more economy wouldn’t go amiss when songs extend to six minutes plus for no good purpose, but although this may not be the international break out album their time is surely coming. 7pm. £8.50. O2 Academy 2 Sunday May 17 Seth Lakeman
Another star studded English Originals concert, this sees the West Country rising (and ruggedly good looking) folk crossover star performing material from his current album, the nautically inclined, Cornish themed Poor Man's Heaven which mixes the trad with a rock sensibility that often conjures thoughts of Led Zep. A sterling live performer, he alone’s worth the ticket but you also get a selection of special guests, many fo whom are still to be confirmed.
Among the definites there’s reedy voiced Lancashire post-folk experimentalist Nancy Elizabeth with songs from her Battle And Victory album that’ll doubtless provide plenty of examples of her prowess on Indian harmonium, Appalachian dulcimer, bouzouki, and 22-string Celtic harp.
There’ll also be a set from Debbie Palmer and Stu Hanna aka Megson whose current album Take Yourself A Wife, is firmly in the deep end of the trad folk pool with a collection of songs written by nine North-East songwriters between 1700 and 1950, among them Preston's William Mitford's The New Fish Market, an early example of town planning protest in his call to to defy Newcastle Corporation's plans to replace 'the wee shop that once held Jack the Barber' and other merchants with a new fish market, bashed out by the duo on strummed mandolin. The day also includes a free foyer performance from local rising folk star Vijay Kishore and Joe Boyd reading from his book about 60s music with Robyn Hitchcock singing the songs. 7.30pm. £18.50. Symphony Hall Sunday May 17 The Hours
Funded by Damien Hirst who also designs their record sleeves and with a background that includes Elastica, Pulp, Joe Strummer's Mescaleros, Black Grape and a lengthy smack habit, indie duo Antony Genn and Martin Slattery are the epitome of music press cool. Their debut album, Narcissus Road, earned comparisons to early Radiohead, Blue Nile and Talktalk but failed to persuade punters to fork out en masse, so here they come again, expanded to a seven piece, with See The Light (Is Good Ltd), building on past reference points with touches of The Smiths (Love Is An Action), Doves ( and, on piano pop builder tale of lost innocence, Big Black Hole, a hybrid of Coldplay and Echo and the Bunnymen. Their musical heft is illustrated by Car Crash with its ebb and flow from tinkling piano notes to full on guitar storm and the textured big build of The Girl Who Had The World At Her Feet while grandiose pop is well served by Wall of Sound and ballad dramatics finds expression in Think Again. They stumble badly on dreary boy band ballad pop Come On and the seven minute title track is just droningly dull, but at least their clock’s still ticking. 6pm. £7. O2 Academy 3 Monday May 18 John Barrowman
Having scored a second resounding panto triumph here with Robin Hood, Barrowman returns in singer mode for a slightly belated tour in support of last year’s album Music Music Music (Epic) after it struggled into the bottom end of the Top 40. Covering evergreen chestnuts like Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, I Made It Through The Rain, You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me, Uptown Girl and Both Sides Now, it’s a safe, lushly orchestrated easy listening option that plays to his showtune strengths (listen to I Am What I Am to hear those Broadway affections) with safe but perfectly respectable versions. He does a particularly fine cover of From A Distance too. But, the real gem is his terrific performance on the Gary Barlow penned anthemic pop ballad What About Us? Released as a single it failed to chart. Were Take That to have released it, it would have been a guaranteed huge hit. Barrowman’s versions deserved no less and seems likely to be one of the show’s biggest highlights. 7.30pm. £35/£27.50. Symphony Hall Tuesday May 19 Rhydian
Two years ago, after being tipped as firm favourite, the Welsh born Birmingham Conservatoire graduate was inexplicably and controversially pipped at the post as X-Factor winner by the charisma free and bland Leon Jackson. Since which time, while Jackson’s star as rapidly wanted, Roberts goes from strength to strength. His self-titled debut album (Syco Music) outsold and outcharted his rival’s, he’s sung for the Royal Family and is headlining one of the Liverpool Pops concerts this summer. And deservedly so. The new Russell Watson, Roberts has charisma in spades, a striking image, popular appeal and a stunning operatic voice. Mixing evergreens and pop standards, the album is stunningly good, opening with a massive performance of The Impossible Dream and featuring towering versions of such standards as Bridge Over Troubled Water, Somewhere and I Believe as well as squeezing very note of high drama to out of Queen’s Who Wants To Live Forever and Meatloaf’s Not A Dry House in The House. Add to this a spine-tingling cover of Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli hit The Prayer, the Celtic hued big rousing ballad I’m Coming Home Again, especially written for him, and a fabulous heart surging duet with Idina Menzel on What If, a song originally recorded by Kate Winslet for the animated Christmas Carol, and it’s clear Roberts has the makings of an international diva. With a new album in the works and the chance of a sneak preview of possible numbers tonight, this has to be one of the month’s most essential concerts. 7.30pm. £30-£22.50. Symphony Hall Tuesday May 19 Maximo Park
Returning with album number three, Quicken The Heart (Warp), Paul Smith and co stick to their jerky guitar guns and angular driving rhythms but, while they’ve beefed up the musical muscle things seem to have taken a turn for the worse in terms of the gloom and pessimism that dominates the lyrics. There’s plenty of choruses to get your teeth into and the jabbing Wraithlike (shades of early Roxy with a nervous itch, Bryan Ferry seemingly a recurring influence), The Kids Are Sick Again, In Another World, Roller Disco Dreams and Tanning are full of edgy energy while a throbbing bassline, echoey guitar and Smith’s dark vocal make The Penultimate Clinch sound like a Joy Division homage. But much seems to be uninspired minor variations on the same melodic template, the similarity between numbers tending to make your attention wander the further you get into the album. The hints of a folk influence to the walking rhythm Questing, Not Coasting make it one of the more individual tracks here, not to mention the album’s finest moment, even if it does bear a very striking resemblance to The Cure’s Inbetween Days. However, it’s not enough to alleviate the sense of disappointment and while it’s not exactly sounding any death knells and they remain a potent live force, they’re going to have to put some serious thought into where they go from here.
While they’re treading water, support act Noisettes are cresting the wave with sophomore album Wild Young Hearts (Mercury) which swaps the debut’s punk blues rock abrasiveness for the summery jazz pop of finger clicking Sometimes and the title track, 24 Hours and Beat Of My Heart’s lazing 60s guitar pop soul, the Blondie electro disco shaped Saturday Night, Don’t Upset The Rhythm’s Tom Tom Club funky grooves and the hefty dollop of Spectorised girl group exuberance that is Never Forget You If Duffy channels Dusty, then Shingai Shoniwa's adenoidal gum chewing kittenish vocals conjure a fusion of the young Lulu and Eartha Kitt while Cheap Kicks with its merry-go-round midsection underlines a strong affection for Motown stars like Martha Reeves. There may be some dark lyrical splashes but this is a hugely enjoyable burst of bright pop colour that deservedly earns them their time in the sun. 7.30pm. £16.50. O2 Academy Tuesday May 19 Scott Matthews
A rather less tormented soul than you might assume from the pain and desolation that imbue his songs, the Wolverhampton singer-songwriter follows up his Novello earning 2007 debut with Elsewhere (San Remo), backed by his regular touring band (seen to impressive effect supporting Plant and Krauss) with the addition of a string section for the bluesy opener Underlying Lies and horns on the heart aching Suddenly You Figure Out. Again evocative of Nick Drake and often sounding far more seasoned than his 23 years, the musical remit continues to be blues tinged folk soul, rumbling in the slow building minor key of Fractured, quivering with tremulous hurt on the seven minute acoustic blues Fades In Vain and lying back to soak up the pastoral beauty of late summer fields with the plaintive self-searching Nothing’s Quite Right Here. With only one number under 3 1/2 minutes, there’s not only value for money but you actually want to spend the time with these songs, drawing out the reflective emotions of the Celtic tinged Up On The Hill or feeling the blood quicken on the uptempo rocking Into The Firing Line. Plant himself puts in a guest appearance on the madrigal leafiness of 12 Harps, their voices entwining like vines on a trellice while Matthews’ guitar and shimmering harp accentuate the delicacy of the mood. There may not be another Novello winner here, but it’s a prize winning entry to any discerning record collection and a guaranteed night to remember. 8pm. £12.50. Glee Club Tuesday May 19 In Case Of Fire
An Irish rock trio with an eye on American stadiums, they’ve been likened to a meeting between Muse’s prog pomp and the driving hard rock of countrymen Therapy? while comparisons to enter Shikari wouldn’t be misguided. Certainly, their Align The Planets (Search And Destroy) album is packed with driving rhythms, pounding drums, urgent hooks and impassioned vocals, thundering out with This Time We Stand and never pausing for breath until the final notes of Second Revelation. Numbers like Violence And Pictures, the anthemic Parallels, The Cleansing and A Pale New Costume may be fast and loud, but they’re layered with melody and Steven Robinson’s vocals have a distinct catch that, at times, suggests they could reach out to the emo audience of My Chemical Romance too. 7.30pm. £6. Little Civic Wednesday May 20 Ladyhawke
Flying the flag for 80s synth pop the New Zealander known to her taxman as Pip Brown returns for a second UK go round with her eponymous debut album (Island) and just released multi-mix new single Back Of The Van which parades those Fleetwood Mac influences in no uncertain terms. It’s easy to mark out the tent pegs that secure her pop canvas. There’s Cyndi Lauper (Manipulating Woman), Kylie (Better Than Sunday), Bangles (Crazy World), The Go-Gos (My Delirium), Stevie Nicks (Love Don’t Live Here), Madonna (Professional Suicide, Dusk Till Dawn), and even the Pet Shop Boys (Magic). The good news is that her cool sass, sharp sense of melody and a sharp wit ensure there’s nothing flapping in the wind, delivering an effervescence that soars with much the same magic as the Michelle Pfeiffer character after whom she’s named. 7.30pm. £10. O2 Academy 2 Wednesday May 20 Teitur
“I always had the voice and now I am a singer’, intones Faroe Islander Teitur Lassen on The Singer (Arlo & Betty), the title track of his marvellous new album which, peppered with warm Hovis brass, washed in shades of Rufus Wainwright, Sufjan Stevens and Neil Hannon, is guaranteed to earn him a secure position in the current coterie of singer-songwriters. Drawn from his own experiences but filtered through a sense of the theatrical there’s a lot about failed and fantasy relationships, most notably the cracked Loudon Wainwright like lurching We Still Drink The Same Water, the spaghetti-western flavoured The Girl I Don’t Know, the drunken mazurka of Start Wasting My Time (co-written with Nik Kershaw) and a jaunty, marimba romping musically playful whoopalong Catherine The Waitress. Death too lurks among the lyrics on Guilty By Association, a spoken tale of manslaughter accompanied by mournful cello, the starkly poignant, funeral portrait You Should Have Seen Us and the inspired sad but celebratory Legendary Afterparty, a euphonium wheezing memory of hanging out with bluesman Chris Whitley after a gig, unaware he was dying of lung cancer. Listening to these, you’d not guess Teitur is old Norse for happy, but there are far worse ways of wallowing in gloom, melancholy and disappointment. “ I never meant to be a singer but I’m slowly getting used to the idea,” he adds. You should too. 8pm. £8. Glee Club Wednesday May 20 Son of Dave
Former member of Canada’s Crash Test Dummies and acclaimed blues harmonica player, since leaving the band Benjamin Darvill’s been busy with his solo career project marrying blues, techno beats, funk and r&b. He’s currently over here on the back of last year’s 03 album (the follow up to 01 and 02) from which comes new single Ain't Going To Niketown, a jab at Western commercialisation that stands a good chance of repeating the ‘gimmick’ hit success of his old band’s Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm, even if it does sound like a refugee from an Alabama 3 album. 8pm. £7. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath Wednesday May 20 Nine Black Alps
Named from a line in a Sylvia Plath poem and influenced by the likes of Mudhoney and Nirvana, the Mancunian plough a heavy rock n roll and grunge furrow that’s seeded with blistering loud guitar riffs and hammering drums. This fairly low key gig comes in advance of their new album, Cold War, their first since being dumped by Island, and its kick off single, the driving Cobainesque Buy Nothing. No advance samples were available, but the set list’s likely to feature a decent helping of such new titles as Vampire In The Sun Every Photograph Steals Your Soul and Full Moon Summer. 7.30pm. £8. W’hampton Civic Hall Bar Wednesday May 20/Thursday May 21 Girls Aloud
Still very much a viable proposition despite Cheryl Cole’s elevation to media and chatmag celebrity with X-Factor and rumours of solo album plans, the fivesome have consistently confounded critics who’ve annually predicted their demise. Many assumed that the release of their Best Of would see them call it a day, but they followed that with Tangled Up from which came the hits Sexy No No, Call The Shots and Can’t Speak French and now here they are touring with album number five, Out Of Control (Polydor), another solid collection of dance driven electro pop, prime among them The Promise, another No 1 and a quintessential example of the perfect pop song. The two subsequent singles, the Pet Shops Boys penned The Loving Kind and the seven minute bliss out Untouchable, have been their least successful, the latter failing to crack the Top 10. But that’s not too much cause for concern given that, while playing it relatively safe after the eclectic variety of its predecessor, the electro soul Rolling Back The Rivers in Time, Eurobeat disco Love Is Pain purringly prowling Love Is The Key and the barking party popper Miss You Bow Wow are still leagues ahead of any of their rivals and their live shows remain nothing short of eye-poppingly spectacular.
Trying to keep up will be Emma Deigman who, after performing (as part of the cast of Annie) with Jay-Z on TOTP when she was 10 and making her film debut in Last Orders with Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins at 13, now bids for music career glory with an upcoming album that showcases her love of gutsy soul and a gutsy voice somewhere between Joss Stone and Rod Stewart. Things haven’t got off to a great start with the 70s funky swinging single It Was You (Storm) failing to chart, but album tasters such as the vintage Motown influenced When You Love Someone and Faker Man and a funky wah wah blues Tell Your Mama suggest such oversights on the part of the record buying public won’t last long. 7.30pm. £30. NIA (+Mon Jun 1) Thursday May 21 The Twang
Off the road busy recording the follow up to Love It When It Feels Like This for most of last year, the Bearwood boys resurface for a handful of sold out intimate gigs to herald its release before a major tour later in the year. Titled Jewellery Quarter, after the area where they have their rehearsal studio, no advance tasters are available but the gig will definitely be a useful chance to preview the new material, upcoming single Barney Rubble, among them to see if they’re still into the pop anthems, funky beats and baggy dance grooves of their debut. 7.30pm. £12.50 Big Peg, Jewellery Quarter (+ Fri May 22 8pm The Rainbow, Digbeth) Thursday May 21 Judith Owen
Recently seen touring with Richard Thompson, the Welsh born Owen returns for her own tour in support of new album Mopping Up Karma (Courgette), a revisiting of songs originally recorded over a decade ago for an album that never found commercial release. It's an interesting collection that spans a gamut of styles, from the folksy Creatures Of Habit, the Tori Amos-like Ruby Red Lips and the funky Get Into It to the prowly pop of the cosmetic surgery themed She's Alright, Let's Hear It For Love's jazzy soul and dramatic piano ballads like Mother Mercy. A leading light of the folk-jazz circuit, Jamie Cullum’s called her a 'female Randy Newman'. Should be recommendation enough. 8pm. £10. Kitchen Garden Cafe, Kings Heath Friday May 22 Antony & The Johnsons
Antony Hegarty’s tremulous falsetto, a high pitched quiver where Nina Simone feeds into Boy George and blends cabaret, classical (Satie would seem an influence), jazz and folk and constantly sounds on the verge of weeping, is an acquired taste but even those for whom it’s a turn off would have to admit it’s a unique beast. Having earned the Mercury Music Prize with 2005’s torch song melodrama of I Am A Bird Now, he and the band are out on the road in support of The Crying Light (Rough Trade), a melancholic, early hours, smoke wisped collection of spare but effectively orchestrated and piano accompanied serene songs which fuse themes of love and relationships with concerns for matters environmental. The lyrically surreal, mournful Her Eyes Are Underneath The Ground concerns Mother Nature and Another World is a lament for a dying planet while there’s the natural world provides potent images and metaphors in such numbers as Dust And Water, Daylight And The Sun, One Dove and Everglade. While Kiss My Name is, comparatively speaking, almost rock n roll with its shuffling beat and swaying pop melody, Aeon verges on the art rock postures of early Roxy and Epilepsy Is Dancing a gentle pastoral folk sway, as you’d imagine the general atmospheric tenor is funereal and passionate, occasionally prone to self-indulgence and ponderous earnestness, but ultimately mesmerising. It’ll be a night held in suspension waiting for release, so just be sure not to drop any pins. 7.30pm. £25. Symphony Hall Friday May 22 Florence And The Machine
Last here preaching the word on her Dog Days Are Over single, Camberwell’s drum banging folk-blues art pop Kate Nash returns with the follow-up, a gospel soul-folk influenced Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) that sees her more in Kate Bush mood with a Peter Gabriel mined world music backing that makes the prospect of the eventual album even more enticing. 7pm. £10. O2 Academy 2 Friday May 22 Great Lake Swimmers
Two years on from their Ongaria album, the Canadians return in more muscular musical shape with Lost Channels (Nettwerk). Named for Canada’s answer to the Bermuda Triangle where the album was recorded, it’s still mining the band’s folk-country sensibilities and Neil Young comparisons, but with the guitars adopting a more Byrdsian ring and the melodies more outgoing. The kettle drum splendid She Comes To Me In A Dream, the mandolin jangling Palmistry, country-folk shuffling Pulling On A Line and the rousing acoustic strum of Still add strong REM touches to the mix, all sounding like major live crowd rousers but there’s also plenty here for admirers of the band’s slower and darker shades. On the acoustic rumbling percussion shimmer of Everything Is Moving So Fast singer Tony Dekker conjures that Neil Young ache while New Light gently drift into everglades folk backwaters on a raft of banjo and cello, employing Toronto’s CN tower - no longer the world’s tallest freestanding building - as a metaphor for feeling lost, on Concrete Heart’s hushed whispering slow dance he once again demonstrates the hymnal quality of his voice, and the contemplative eddy of River’s Edge that makes Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver sound like thrash bands While those are (deservedly) basking in the glow of both critical and commercial acclaim, the Swimmers remain largely undiscovered treasures, revered by a loyal but small fan base. It’s about time they did a Michael Phelps. Dive in and discover. 8pm. £8.50. Glee Club Saturday May 23 Beyoncé
Destiny’s Child now firmly defunct, Ms Knowles’ solo career has taken off with a vengeance n. After unremarkable big screen outings in Goldmember and the Pink Panther remake, she’s gone on to deliver powerhouse turns in Dreamgirls (as the Diana Ross character), Cadillac Records (as Etta James) and, proving she can act without having to sing, upcoming Fatal Attraction style thriller, Obsessed. Musically too she’s on a roll. 2006 album B’day went triple platinum in the US - the single Irreplaceable topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 10 weeks - and earned her a Grammy, then last year came double album I Am... Sasha Fierce ( Columbia ). Very much a game of two halves, the first disc, I Am, is a sterling collection of self-baring, commercial and catchy Euro pop balladry which, with soaring big drama numbers If I Were A Boy, Halo, Broken-Hearted Girl and Ave Maria sounds like a self-contained Greatest Hits of its own. The second, from which came her fifth US No 1, Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It), adopts her sexually aggressive, outgoing stage persona of the title and, with tracks like Video Phone, Diva, Scared Of Lonely and the electro Sweet Dreams, is far more beats strutting, dance crunking r&b. Neither really give any insight into the real and determinedly private Beyonce Knowles when she gets home from a long day’s slog of being a superstar, but she gives good image and with a stage show and career hopping set list to match, this should be something of a soul cracker.
Support comes from new name Zarif, a twentyish Londoner of Scottish and Iranian Jewish parentage whose career’s taken off since being discovered at an Open Mic session. Musically, she’s a cocktail of 80s pop soul, Motown, hip hop, funk, rock, jazz and her mother’s Middle Eastern roots. Having debuted with sassy chatty summer groove single Let Me Back where Lily Allen met Teena Marie, she’s gearing up for her album later this year, the set list likely to include the Lauryn Hill inclined Latin flavoured Words, California’s West Coast rock soul, forthcoming London soul girl single Over, the Cab Calloway scat jazz n jive Box Of Secrets and Summer In Your Eyes, an easy swaying show tune that hints at Dionne Warwick and could have easily been lifted from the Dreamgirls soundtrack itself. 7.30pm. £49.50. NIA Saturday May 23 Neds Atomic Dustbin
Part of the short-lived Stourbridge Grebo scene that produced Pop Will Eat Itself and The Wonder Stuff, their name taken from a Goon Show episode, the Neds, Dan, Alex, Mat, Rat and Jonn, featured two bassists, distorted guitars and baggy drum beats; a fairly distinct sound and combination to be sure. They notched up five Top 40 singles and two Top 20 albums before calling it a day in 1995, emerging with a new line up five years later for a reformation gig that in turn led to annual Christmas shows and, in 2005, Hibernation, their first - and rather fine - single in 11 years. Now, to mark the 21st anniversary, the original line up have got back together for this special (spiritual) hometown gig featuring 21 songs, naturally including all the hits and, almost certainly, Kill Your Television and the rest of their Top 4 debut album, God Fodder. Guaranteed not to be rubbish. 7.30pm. £16. Wulfrun Hall Sunday May 24 Hot Club of Cowtown
Following on from last year's best of, the Western Swing trio get down to the business of dusting off their lengthy sabbatical with Wishful Thinking (Proper), their first new studio album in seven years. Any doubts that the lay off may have dulled their edge are immediately dismissed with the opening Can't Go On This Way, a Bob Wills cover that welcomes them back into action with a zing while instrumental The Magic Violin sees Elana James at the peak of her gypsy jazz violin swing and Heart Of Romain features a fiery duet between her and Whit Smith's guitar. As usual there's a balance between the self-penned and the covers, the former in fine fettle with the 40s flavours of Cabiria, bluesy tango One Step Closer, the border town hues of James' lyrically barbed Reunion and the soft shoe shuffling Carry Me Close that sees Smith taking vocal duties in world weary style. They've gone for evergreens for the non-originals, a risky proposition but clearly one designed to show they've not lost their inspiration when it comes to arrangements and interpretations. Hoagy Carmichael's Georgia is nicely done but doesn't spring any surprises, however old chestnut Columbus Stockade Blues gets a fresh lease of life, James' jazz lounge reading of the Gershwin's Someone To Watch Over Me almost smears the stereo with scarlet lipstick and serves a cocktail as you listen while Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan's much covered The Long Way Home emerges with a sprightly Americana spring in its step. Time to renew your membership, I think. 8pm. £13. Glee Club Monday May 25 Leon Jackson
What a difference a year makes. As the surprise X-Factor winner, Jackson entered 2008 with When You Believe the inevitable Christmas No 1, then the follow up, Don’t Call This Love, and the album Right Now, reached No 3 and No 4 respectively in October. Things looked fine. However, the two subsequent singles, released as downloads only, failed to make any impression and in March this year he was ignominiously dumped by his record label. Then this, his first major tour, ran into problems with poor ticket sales forcing the cancellation of half the dates with this one of only two shows outside of Scotland. He must be wondering where it all went so wrong. Certainly he lacks any real charisma but, unlike his X-Factor performances, the Sinatra styled big band title track, the Bobby Darin feel of a mambo mood Creative, and smoothly mellow version of You Don’t Know Me and the lushly orchestrated Ordinary Days, showed he had a voice. Unfortunately, these were outweighed by a truly terrible cover of Misty Blue and things like A Song For You, Fingerprints and the aptly titled Could Do Better where he strains badly and sounds incredibly uncomfortable with the material. Which is probably why he’s said he’s ditching the jazz and focusing on guitar led pop. All of which begs the question of what to expect from tonight’s set and whether it’s already too late to halt the downward spiral into Steve Brookstein cruise ship territory or the Pontins circuit on which Ben Mills now finds himself.
Still, at least he’s fared better than third place X-Factor finalists Same Difference. Wholesomely exuberant siblings Sean and Sarah Smith were either incredibly irritating or incredibly sweet depending on your tolerance for their gee gosh holiday camp entertainer personalities and sugary sweet smiles, but they were undeniably good fun. Alarm bells should have sounded when debut single We R One failed to crack the Top 10 but when their Pop album stalled outside the Top 20 it was clearly already all over. Like Jackson they were swiftly dropped by Simon Cowell’s label, SyCo, and were forced to cancel their poorly selling headline tour and join forces with Jackson in an attempt to salvage what they could. It’s a pity they weren’t given more of a chance because, with covers of Jefferson Starship’s Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now and early Kylie hit Turn It Into Love, the Europop dance bubbles of If You Can’t Dance and All The Roads Lead To Heaven and the High School Musical balladry feel of Breaking Free and Still Amazed, the album more than lived up to its title and, with a little effort, could surely have yielded bigger hits. Had they been packaged and promoted by their natural home on the Disney Channel, they could well be up there with the Montanas and Jonases. For the moment, it’s probably back to Butlins, panto and kiddie event appearances, but I suspect there’s still a brighter future ahead for them than what’s likely to feel like a ghost town gig may suggest 7.30pm. £23.50. Symphony Hall Monday May 25 The Handsome Family
Drifting away to Brett Spark's dark baritone on the opening cello waltzing Linger, Let Me Linger you’ll be transported back to the days of the old school doo wop crooners like the Ink Spots, melting in the warmth of the unbridled romanticism captured in lines like "I am the puddles in the street waiting for your falling leaves". Recorded for the duo’s 20th wedding anniversary, Honey Moon (Loose) is an album of love songs, steeped in spirituality with nature imagery of spiders, birds, trees and foliage. Indeed, the pedal steel keening Little Sparrows talks of schools of shining fish, swarms of buzzing bees, geese and ants with love painted as Jonah on the raging seas embracing the whale that comes to swallow him while the twangy, Johnny Cash evoking Wild Wood has them conjuring a stone age love nest of stick and bones as he declares he will "bark like a dog in your arms." Well, it makes a change from moons and Junes. Invested with their longtime Louvins, Stanleys and Everlys influences, songs like When You Whispered carried in the traditional arms of banjo and pedal steel with bluegrass waltzes and mountain music slow dances, it's a marvellous testament to the couple's devotion to both each other and their musical roots. Nothing here falls short of wonder, but particularly deserving of mention has to be A Thousand Diamond Rings with its surf guitar noir mood, the Spanish classical guitar and gothic melancholy of The Winding Corn Maze (more swarming bees, here) and the 40s ragtime lounge whistling shuffle of The Loneliness of Magnets, an inspired image of separated lovers. Join the celebrations and swoon along.
Following time holed up in New Orleans, touring the Southern states and living in Vancouver, Jessica Davies and Katherine Blamire, aka marvellously monikered Chichester folk blues and bluegrass duo Smoke Fairies, are back home promoting new EP Frozen Heart. Having made a considerable impression with their limited edition debut single, the haunted swampy blues Living With Ghosts, they can look forward to more fulsome praise with this tremendous five song set. With the rumbling mountain music vibe of clanking steel mill percussion and bluesy guitar backdropping their English trad folk vocals, the title track weaves a hypnotic trance that, in another tale of travelling lost souls, conjures images of dank, fecund vegetation, a goblin folk evocative of the legendary Pooka at their best. Fences lightens the musical mood slightly, but keeps that metronomic rhythm and otherworldly ambience spinning behind the intoxicatingly spidery voices while Morning Light pads through acoustic deep south blues undergrowth on a headily still summer breeze and medieval plainsong influence can be heard in the girls’ soaringly spectral pure voices on the intricately textured We Had Lost Our Minds; the sound of a devil’s brew up of Clannad and Gillian Welch. Topping things off with He’s Moving On, another stark marriage of English folk and deep ellum blues scratched from the fields with bare hands, they’re one of the most exciting arrivals on the folk roots world this century. 8pm. £13. Glee Club Monday May 25 Po’ Girl
Departed founder member Trish Klein’s place taken by Awna Teixeira and with (Po’Boy?) multi-instrumentalist Benny Sidelinger completing the line-up alongside Allison Russell, the trio are over here announcing their new phase with self-released fourth album Deer In The Night. Not that roster rearrangements have changed things a great deal, the sound still very much the self-styled urban roots fusion of gospel, jazz and old time Appalachian folk while (on Things We Believe In, especially) Teixeira and Russell’s voices entwine like spanish moss and cypress trees. With a music box like glockenspiel backing, gospel influence and lullaby feel, Russell’s title track sets the mood before new girl Awna makes her bow on the clarinet coloured bluegrass n jazz Dig Me A Hole, then slide guitar puts in an appearance for the swampy ennui of Bloom with squeezebox and fine de siecle carnival/cabaret moods swaying along for a Randy Newmanesque Gandy Dancer. With personal lyrics that, on songs like the husky honeyed Isobel and the folk-pop Grace, rummage through such dark thematic undergrowth as childhood trauma, emotional despair and battered hearts, it’s not built for wide grins but that doesn’t mean the melodies necessarily have any less spring in their step. Gasoline is a twangy front porch slopealong, No Shame shuffles with a slow gospel blues boogie, How The Poet Goes has the musical vibe of some Western cathouse entertainer giving the cowhands the tease while the barman tinkles the ivories, One Little City slips into a sly offbeat rhythmic lurch with a cajun accordion while clarinet, bass and brushed percussion croon another jazz lounge lullaby. Topping off the self-penned tunes with a metronomic darkling trad folk cover of Julie Miller’s All My Tears, this isn’t just a rekindling but, arguably, their finest album yet.
Making it a well worthy double bill, support’s provided by Birmingham based Katy Bennett - aka KTB - back at the Cafe for a second serving of new album Indelible Ink (TTNG) and its songs of self-expression, self-identity, self-doubt and Stratford-upon-Avon. Musically, I Like You Like Me takes folk blues to a frisky tale of forbidden love, betrayed love song Willow Tree blends wheezing trad English folk and music hall to beguiling effect while Something We’re Without conjures thoughts of Dory Previn and Kate Rusby alike. Prime recommendations also include the hymnal Perfect World with its inspired line ‘you take too much butter, energy and time’, the metaphorical tale of Middle England’s floods on River Run Through Us, Back From The Deep’s didgerido accompanied account of a Tasmanian gold mine disaster and the bittersweet folksy The Girl With The Sad Shoes which deals with the ambiguous emotions of wanting to fit it and also be yourself as she sings “if you don’t try to walk you’ll never learn how to run”. She’s a major talent deserving of much wider recognition. 7.30pm. £12. Kitchen Garden Cafe, Kings Heath Monday May 25 Patrick Wolf
Last here promoting 2007’s The Magic Position, since then the South London songster has parted company with his record company and put together his own, Bloody Chamber Music, by way of fan-funding set up Bandstocks. He’s actually recorded enough for a double album but, rather than overload the ears (and get two sales rather than one), the second, The Conqueror, won’t appear until next year while the first, The Bachelor, is out next week. Apparently a response to his trials and tribulations in the pop dream turned nightmare, struggles with depression, singledom and self, it again stews together electro, folk and 80s rock with collaborators that include avant garde electronic pioneer Matthew Herbert and Tilda Swinton (who gives good monologue intro to Theseus) with folk royalty Eliza Carthy duetting and violin scraping on the discordant title track. Her presence underlines the album’s strong folk elements but while the Bowie and Stockhausen influences are also still apparent you should be warned that the likes of big drama Damaris, Battle and upcoming single Hard Times are also worryingly reminiscent of the more bombastic moments of Ultravox. Indeed, the album’s nothing if not self-indulgent and, at times, wilfully difficult art rock, the hauntingly hymnal drone of Who Will? overshadowed by the camp operatic storms of Count Of Casualty. He may look like the offspring of some ungodly union of Visage and Flock of Seagulls, but he’s clearly got plenty of talent and ideas. A little musical self-discipline might make them rather more evident and accessible. 7.30pm. £12.50. O2 Academy Monday May 25 The Enid
Formed in 1975 and led by splendidly bewhiskered keyboard player Robert John Godfrey, the Enid fused symphonic classical and, though he hates the term, progressive rock into primarily instrumental albums such as In The Region Of The Summer Stars, Aerie Faerie Nonsense and Something Wicked This Way Comes, all of which established them as a huge cult act, big on the festival circuit and, oddly, with quite a substantial metal following. However, despite rousing live renditions of Land Of Hope And Glory, poor sales and lack of label support eventually saw them off in 1988 and, while different permutations have continued to sporadically record, they’ve been dormant ever since. Godfrey and the current band line up rectify that now with Arise And Shine (Inner Sanctum), a pretty typical classical Fantasia rock affair comprising lengthy atmospheric numbers sporting such titles as Riguardon - The Dancing lizard, Dark Hydraulic Forces Of The Id, Malacandra - The Silent Planet and Avalon - Under The Summer Stars that are likely to prompt the usual Floyd, Jeff Wayne, and Yes references. Splendid stuff but, while this a return to one of their regular old haunts should draw the faithful out of the woodwork to celebrate, in an ideal world Godfrey and co should be surveying the audience from the Symphony Hall stage, a venue befitting the scope and grandeur of their music. 8pm. £10. JB’s, Dudley Wednesday May 27 Fanfarlo
Led by Swedish singer Simon Balthazar and counting David Bowie among their fans, the London based five piece feature violin, ukulele and trumpet and make lush, widescreen romantic melancholy. Dripping melody, debut album Reservoir conjures a plethora of influences, ranging from the Northern Soul of Ghosts through ELO pop in Harold T Wilkins, Or How To Wait For A Very Long Time to a mash up of Arcade Fire, Talking Heads, Sufjan Stevens, Beirut and The Editors. There’s highlights galore, but especially notable are the crunchy waltzing I’m A Pilot, the tempo shifting Luna, brass lined musical box swayer The Walls Are Coming Down and new Moshi Moshi single Drowning Men. Stadiums beckon, so catch them while you can still see the whites of their eyes. 8pm. £5. Flapper & Firkin, Kingston Row Wednesday May 27 Sonic Boom Six
Led by Laila K, the punk ska Mancunians saddle up the socio-economic conscience to get audiences skanking and thrashing along to songs of consumerism, binge drinking, homelessness, youth culture and traffic congestion with new album City Of Thieves (Rebel Alliance). Drums pound and guitar riffs spray off the whetstones of Jericho and Back 2 School, reggae wraps around prison tale Rum Little Scallywag, beats form hip hop shapes around Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! and the lager louts of Strange Transformation, (Welcome To) The City Of Thieves swings through the (urban) jungle and The Concrete We're Trapped Within (It's Yours) puts its head down for some serious skacore moshing. More indebted to No Doubt, Rage Against The Machine and Offspring than The Specials or Less Than Jake, they don’t believe in frills or subtlety, but they do have something to say when the sweat’s dried and the mind takes over from the feet. Support’s Random Hand, a Yorkshire four piece who serve an unlikely cocktail of ska and hardcore metal. They’ll be yowling and skanking through tracks from new album Inhale/Exhale (Rebel Alliance), the guttural I Human and head banging thrash Mass Producing Monsters and Eyeballs of War mixing it up with the brass lollopping ska drinking stomp new single Anger Management, a baggy trousers and politics British and the shouty ska/metal/jazz hybrid Devil’s Little Guinea Pig. You won’t know whether to do the moonstomp or the mosh. 8pm. £7.50. The Asylum, Hockley. Thursday May 28 Metronomy
For all the fuss about the new electro pop wave, out of those who, unlike Lily Allen, Little Boots and Lady GaGa, do more than just flirt with the genre, only Hot Chip have translated hype into anything resembling commercial success. Originally a side project for Devonshire producer and remixer Joseph Mount, Metronomy has grown into a full time operation both as recording entity and live band, however, despite critical praise and the addition of vocals, last year’s Nights Out (Because) album failed to make any sizeable impression. Still, for those who’ve never heard Popcorn by Hot Butter, then the burbling synth of The End Of You Too probably sounds cheekily fresh and infectious while Radio Ladio is nu rave for beginners, On The Motorway does romper room Kraftwerk, and A Thing For Me mixes Jilted John and Soft Cell. Heartbreaker proves the album’s strong suit, if only for the fact it’s not sung in that annoying falsetto, but talking of this in the same breath as New Order, Vangelis or even early Depeche Mode smacks of the emperor’s new clothes. 7.30pm. £10. O2 Academy 2 Thursday May 28 Ruarri Joseph
Having played a set of free coffee shop acoustic gigs to build awareness for new album Both Sides Of The Coin (Pip), the Edinburgh born, Cornwall based singer-songwriter now returns in full band mode to give extra flesh to its jazzy tinged acoustic folk pop and songs that, as the title suggests, straddle an emotional and musical bridge between melancholy and jaunty optimism. The bluesy new single Hope For Grey Trousers stands firmly on the latter side of the room with lyrics about a bloke who manages to keep looking on the bright side despite life regularly throwing him buckets of manure while Suzie Don’t Be Sad and the funky Red Mist on which he sounds like a Joe Jackson/Randy Newman hybrid both keep the blood jiving in the veins. With its John Martyn flavours, the accordion waltzing More Than Most is a highlight of the fuller sounds, but it’s on the more stripped back, romantically aching numbers that things really shine, the gorgeously plaintive folksy acoustic love song A Turn In The Weather glows with the spirit of Cat Stevens while Tomorrow Today and One For The Aether recall the very best of Martin Stephenson. What better recommendations can you ask. 7.30pm. £8.50. Glee Club Thursday May 28 Mouthwash
Another dose of punk and ska, this time infused with a dose of Ragga rhythms, the London five piece have been around for over a decade, releasing their debut album courtesy of Hellcat Records, the label set up Rancid’s lead singer Tim Armstrong. That, however, seems to have been pretty much the highpoint and they’ve not broken out beyond the loyal but small punk-ska scene. Re-issuing last year’s sophomore album, True Stories (Rebel Alliance), is unlikely to change their fortunes and, while That Girl bounces along and the likes of No Fear, The Sound and the slow loping Atlantic Rd are solid enough, they simply don’t have the muscle or imagination of their obvious influences, The Specials and UB40. Apparently the reissue comes with a set of bonus tracks that include a cover of the yoobees One In Ten. Nothing like drawing attention to your deficiencies. 7pm. £5.Wagon and Horses, Digbeth Friday May 29 Kid British
And still more ska, except this time mashing it with a cocktail of Blur, Beatles and Mike Skinner, the Mancunians pave the way for July’s debut album, now retitled It Was This Or Football (Mercury) but still serving up the harmonies, rude boy style and catchy numbers like Lost in London (complete with directions intro), Rum Boys, Elizabeth, She Will Leave, the Streets-aping Sunny Days and the grime groove Madness sampling of Our House Is Dadless. 8.30pm. £7. Rainbow Garden, Digbeth Saturday May 30 The Temper Trap
Apparently a name to drop back where they come from in Melbourne, the Australians are looking to gain a foothold over here after hooking up with Infectious records and being named among the Top 15 for 2009 by the BBC. However, while debut album Condition’s in the pipeline the only thing to go on is first single The Science Of Fear, a moody slice of synth pop which turns out not to really illustrate the Curtis Mayfield, Sigur Ros or Coldplay references at all. Maybe the album will astound, but at present they don’t come across as all the rage. 8pm. £6. 444 Club, The Rainbow, Digbeth Sunday May 31 Flamboyant Bella
The Hitchin sweary teen cool boy-girl indie electro-pop quartet sing songs about getting drunk and having sex and their debut single, Touch, sounded like a get together between Lily Allen and Jilted John. However, on My Skies singer Flo Kirton let slip her folkie petticoats and, while Allen remains the vocal template, they’re being flaunted again on upcoming follow up, Abbi, a naggingly disarming bittersweet pop song with a splash of 60s in the handclaps and de de de de doo doo chorus that could well see them make a Top 10 debut for the summer. 6pm. £7. 02 Academy 3
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