Two years ago Wright released her stunning debut album Salt to widespread critical acclaim but largely consumer apathy. She’s back now with less of the jazz tinge and more of a soulful country flavour with Dreaming Wide Awake (Verve Forecast), an album that more than reaffirms her talent and fully deserves to see here elevated to the same plateaux of Nora Jones, Diana Krall and Cassandra Wilson.

Opening with a spare acoustic and tapped percussive reading of the evergreen A Taste of Honey to which she brings a wearied gospel mood that transforms the song. It’s a mere taster for what follows as she works her honey-smoked vocals through a Jobim-like Latin sway version of Joe Henry’s Stop reclaiming it from Madonna’s Don’t Tell Me), the breathily whispered Chasing Strange, a relaxed, confident interpretation of the evergreen I’m Confessin’ and the wonderful title track that sounds like it should be accompanied by wisps of smoke curling above dawn rooftops.

On When I Close My Eyes there a smoky hint of Joan Armatrading but, beautifully complemented by the simple arrangements, Wright is always her own voice. No more obviously so than when she takes Neil Young’s Old Man and transforms it into a spooked desert mood piece or the old flower child anthem Get Together which in her hands becomes an airy, light breeze. Likewise, her acoustic country tinged cover of the Costello/Krall Narrow Daylight is utterly sublime.

Disappointingly she’s not written as much material her as she did for her debut (though as the country-soul Hit The Ground shows she’s not lost her touch), but that’s neither here nor there given the brilliance on display and, with a set that will certainly balance the new album with the likes of Blue Rose, Eternity and her stunning version of Chick Corea’s Open Your Eyes, you Can Fly, this really is not one for anyone with quality musical taste to miss.

Support’s provided by Kevin Mark Trail, the soulful voice for Mike Skinner on The Streets’ Let’s Push Things Forward. He’s giving another shove to solo album Just Living (EMI), but while he’s undeniably got the voice he also sometimes slumps into the yawnsome meandering jazz-funk of Backbone and Da Ragga.

When it cooks though, that’s a different proposition altogether. D Thames evokes the better moments of The Lighthouse Family but without the annoying warble and with more soulful lyrics while Vibe, Perspective, Lion By Trade and Full Moon variously embrace jazzy r&b, hip hop, ragga and acoustic rootsy pop. Bread shows a way with catchy radio friendly melody even if the song itself borders on the cringeworthy and he rounds the album out with the urban social comment soul ballad and hip hop hybrid City Boy that at times suggests that George Benson territory might not be beyond his grasp.

7.30pm. £14. Glee Club

New Jersey punk of the Green Day persuasion, the boys are back for another go round with Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge (Reprise). A clutch of three minute pop explosions that also trawl in emo and goth influences, The Ghost of You offering their skills in the arena of slow fast quiet loud balladry, re-issued single I’m Not Okay (I Promise) ramping through the roof with effervescent abandon while the You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison, an urgent Helena, metal riffing Thank You For The Venom and the Queen-likeThe Jet Set Life’s Gonna Kill You spread out their range of 'violent, unsafe pop music.'

7.30pm. £13.50. W’hampton Civic Hall

Having started out as something of a Springsteen clone, it took him a while to find his voice but now that he has he’s settled down into a fine singer-songwriter along the lines of Boo Hewardine, Guy Clarke, Paul Simon and James Taylor. He’s in town with Field of Crows (Dualtone), the follow up to last year’s Circo, and while that album’s understated love affair with Brazilian rhythms isn’t in evidence this time round (though Spinning Wheel shows he’s still got a funky groove going) it’s a no less absorbing and melodic affair.

Veined with contrasting themes of hope and despair, coloured by events in Iraq and Southeast Asia, and seeking to find connections, there’s some fine stuff here, ranging as it does from the breathy calm rootsy pop of Golden Age, the skipping beat of Take Me Down and Anyway’s sea breeze tang to the Jackson Brown flavours in Fight For Love, a bluesy It Takes Two, the jazzy swaying rhythms of Boy and the early hours heartache and regrets that inform All I Wanted and Wide Open.

Emotionally, arguably the most striking track is Mary, an understated sad song in which a single father gets their young daughter ready to go off to her mother’s remarriage, but everything touches some sort of nerve or chord, promising a night of affecting intimacy.

 8pm. £6. Ceol Castle, Balsall Heath.

Formerly of Eurovision winners Katrina and the Waves until she and the band parted company in less than amicable circumstances when they fired her and she was left unable to perform under her own name, the big voiced Kansas born Leskanich returns to the limelight for the first time in eight years with a self-titled solo debut.

Tracing her love of Fleetwood Mac and Motown alike, it’s a pretty much straightahead soulful rock-pop set that shows off both her muscular belting delivery and more vulnerable softer sides to equally good effect. All That Matters is firmly in the Tina Turner rock soul vein, the heart raw Scar brings Latin vibes to a bluesy acoustic groove, picking up the blues in P J Harveyish tones with Garden Of Eden while Broken Arrow is a soaring piano ballad and the opening Easier hits the sort of strident pop notes that provided those earl hits.

Although most of the material's written by Phil Thornally, there’s a couple of notable covers here too, a spare brushed percussion arrangement of I Can’t Make You Love Me and a stripped down, fragile acoustic interpretation of Kirsty MacColl’s They Don’t Know. Undoubtedly the album will make up the bulk of the live set though chances are she’ll be throwing in a couple of crowdpleaser favourites from the band days. Do her a favour though, and don’t call out for Love Shine A Light, ok!

 7.30pm. £8. Little Civic, W’hampton

Two years on from touring in support of their debut album, the Manchester crew are doing it all over again for a reissued version that now adds in hit single In A Dream, a new track, One More Try, and a remix version of Further. Just to jog your memory, it’s a glorious collection of blurry jangling guitar pop in the same arena as REM, Coldplay, Goldrush and Travis, at its best with the achingly melancholic ballads where singer Rob McVey's whispering vocals strain the emotion through a cracked heart. Case in point the deep rumbling I Would, a strings laden Falling Without You and stand out Still, a track that perfectly encapsulates the band’s ability to craft heaven climbing anthemic glories.

They patently have the potential for greatness, but you can’t help think they’d have been better off working on new material rather than getting back out to recycle this, however fabulous it may be.

7.30pm. £9. Bar Academy.

Back out on the road with third album Jack in A Box but, despite Forever’s rather lovely rustic ballad with hymnal harmonies and Buildings Wrap Around’s convincing stab at acoustic back porch sleepy Americana, it still marks them out as a whiny voiced poor man’s Starsailor, the over-produced, over cluttered arrangements barely disguising the paucity of songs which reach something of a low with the clunky country soul of Asleep With The Fireflies and the clumsy jugband Over And Over.

7.30pm. £15. Wulfrun Hall

Friday November 4

Following on from adopted Brummies The Editors, this flamboyantly attired four piece is the latest Birmingham outfit set to scorch their way into national consciousness. Fronted by one Ali Forbes, according to the press release, they draw on such influences as Roxy and Dylan, though listening to fine debut single Prodigal Son (Loog) you might also be inclined to suggest a helping of Dexys and Duran in there too. Watch them fly.

7.30pm. £5. Little Civic

For reasons best know to his creative muse, Mick Hucknall has decided to revisit his past with Simplified (Verve Forecast), an album of unplugged acoustic versions of old material, reinterpreted through a Latin filter. Quite whether the world actually needs a Cuban rework of Something Got Me Started, a samba swaying Holding Back The Years, the slowed down groove of Fairground or Brazilian flavoured retreads of Sad Old Red (now with a Fever-like percussive rhythm), My Perfect Love, or Every Time We Say Goodbye, is another matter entirely, However, despite some scathing reviews and the general pointlessness of it all, you have to acknowledge that Hucknall does still deliver the soulful vocal goods while three new recordings, among them a late night torchy cover of Leon Russell’s A Song For You and the Havana-swaying single Perfect Love, are evidence enough that he’s far from treading water awaiting the return of inspiration.

It’s unlikely though that fans who’ve forked out for tickets are going to be prepared to sit through a night of reinterpretations probably better suited to a smoky club when they want to hear the originals nestling in their collections.

7.30pm. £37.50. NEC

Despite some fine anthemic guitar rock records, Welsh outfit The Crocketts never caught the record buying public’s imagination but now former frontman Davey McManus is back for another try with his new outfit. Though still bursting with catchy melodies and hooks, Tragedy Rocks (Warner) shows him in more mature musical shape, past single Lottery Winners on Acid a fine loping example of the bruised romanticism and spiky undercurrents to be found rippling through the album. Whereas his former band’s songs tended to grab you by the scruff of the neck, these tend to whisper persuasively in your ear, enticing you with sweetly seductive pop waltzes and shades of the Waterboys in McManus’s quivering warble on the likes of The Miserablist Tango, Baby Boom and the downcast Someone’s Crying.

A bubbling Bad Vibrations is all delicious sunny wooziness, Gazillions of Miniature Violins is as spooky fairground quirky as the title might suggests while Girl Just Died takes off into flights of pop fancy to the sort of winning effect that’s earned the band comparisons with The Flaming Lips and Low. There’s probably no huge hit single lurking here, but hopefully their off kilter charms will find the wider audience they surely deserve.

 8pm. £5. Barfly, Sanctuary, Digbeth.

Back in the late 80s, Scardanelli used to be half of acoustic pop duo Big Bam Boo, a sort of Anglo-Canadian answer to The Proclaimers who threatened to carve out sizeable success with debut album Fun, Faith & Fairplay but, disappointingly, failed to find any chart favour despite enjoying considerable air play with debut single Shooting From My Heart.

A second album went unreleased and the pair split up, Scardanelli, now based in New York, moving into composing for experimental films and art installations. He kept his musical hand in playing acoustic venues before returning to the UK in the mid 90s to pursue a music degree.

Currently writing a PhD on electro-acoustic composition at Birmingham University, he’s recently resurfaced on the live circuit as well as releasing Hobohemia (Resonator), his first album in a decade.

Petty much stripped back to acoustic strummed basics and Scardanelli’s slightly nasal tones there’s plenty here to engage and enfold with songs that pitch into downbeat takes on politics, love and social issues, be it be the depressing urban vision of A Town Called Iron Strike where he sounds like an anti-Martyn Joseph, the angry homeless-lined streets of the largely spoken Why?, or the despairing folk blues My Punishment which evokes the early work of Roy Harper.

On the dramatic speak-sing fable The Ballad of Genevieve Chris DeBurgh collides with Nick Cave, while the soaring cry for reconciliation and redemption of the dramatic If You Could See Me Now provides a hopeful contrast to the pessimistic view of humanity encompassed in Uncommon Times. It’s good to have him back, even if he’s unlikely to send you out into the night feeling overwhelmed by the joys of life.

 8pm. £4.50. mac.

Sunday November 6

You’re not going to expect much subtlety from a band who sang about doing it like mammals on their last album Hooray For Boobies (no, really). So, gird up your thrusting loins for more scatologically inclined politically incorrect Green Daysed and Blinked out rock as Jimmy Pop and the crew hit the road on the back of Hefty Fine (Republic) with more songs about sex (they even have one called Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo) and titles like Farting With A Walkman On, Balls Out (their rapcore number) and Jackass.

Those still obsessed with their own poo and other bodily functions and the mere thought of having sex reduces them to giggles will no doubt find much to revel in as they bop along to catchy conveyor belt melodies like Uhn Tis Uhn Tiss Uhn Tiss and (the admittedly catchy) Pennsylvania, rattled out with a mix of fuzzy punk guitars and cheesy 80s synths. Those who breathed a sigh of relief when Blink 182 finally shut the toilet door behind them are advised to stay well away.

Fronted by Hundred Reasons singer Colin Doran and featuring A bassist Dan Carter and Cable drummer Richie Mills, Lucky 9 are a sideline excuse to indulge in a little blistering, aggressively angular hardcore riffage.

 To which end they’ve assembled True Crown Foundation Songs (Hassle) feature eleven paint-stripping sonic blasts and one moody ballad Washington Geometry) that lets Doran yowl like he’s gargled sulphuric acid and the rest of the band to try and ram their heads through steel walls, smashing in skulls with tracks like A Lucky Hit, The Program, a decidedly mistitled Lake Placid and, displaying a hit of melody within the general barrage, Lone Pine Mall. You’ve been warned, take ear bandages.

7.30pm. £13.50. Carling Academy.

Sunday November 6

Having released Livewire earlier this year, the West Country trio now make their official Independiente debut with the Heartbeat EP. Again throwing up those early Radiohead/Jeff Buckley comparisons with Joe Taylor’s yearning vocals and the textured guitars, it’s a swoonsomely anthemic sky reaching number, finely accompanied by the similarly inclined Steal Away and the late night desert clouds and tumbleweed layers of Corner of the World. They’re currently gearing up to start on the debut album, tracks for which will be roadtested on the tour, so get in early to hear what you’ll be queuing up for next year.

With the release of Leaders of the Free World (V2), Elbow now find themselves in the upper stratosphere of guitar bands, an impressive feat given the lukewarm commercial reaction to its predecessor, Cast Of Thousands. At times it’s hard, especially on the spooked soulful Picky Bugger and My Very Best, not to think of mid-period U2 while elsewhere things recall pre ‘difficult’ Radiohead in its melancholic yearnings and Guy Garvey’s wearied vocals. But that’s not intended as criticism. The opening Station Approach, a worn down response to months on the road, sets the general melancholic tone and the hints of folk influences that vein several tracks (notably the waltzing Great Expectations) here, though, as the title track’s Plastic Ono Band rhythms, the swelling anthemic tones of Forget Myself and the fiery guitar break on a flamenco handclap coloured Mexican Standoff demonstrate, it’s far from all curled in a corner stuff.

Heavy with songs about returning home and facing the changes in it and yourself, laden with sadness on The Stops and The Everthere but finding solace, support and the strength to carry on in the closing Gabriel-like Puncture Repair, it places a great responsibility on the band to match its mournful majestic power live. Should be no problem there, then.

7.30pm. £12. Carling Academy

Tuesday November 15

Let's face it, what were the odds that a former guitarist with Pulp and the Longpigs would turn out to be closet devotee of classic torch songs and lush Brill Building pop. But here's Hawley with Coles Corner (Mute), his follow up to Lowedges, once again titled after a Sheffield landmark and once more overflowing with the sort of broken hearted romantic grandeur that, one something like the drop dead gorgeous The Ocean, makes even Scott Walker seem like death metal.

His careworn baritone often reminiscent of Roy Orbison and drenched with the sort of sonorous dark twangy guitars that tend to haunt David Lynch soundtracks , the reference points remain swooningly familiar with the likes of Harry Nilsson (Just Like The Rain), Bacharach and David, Walker (new single Coles Corner), and Chris Isaak (I Sleep Alone) all touchstone influences. He even enlists Hank Marvin to play guitar on single B-side I’m Absolutely Hank Marvin.

But you'll hear other notes too, Darlin' Wait For Me calls to mind the warmth of Jim Reeves singing Distant Drums, Hotel Room is a Henry Mancini ballad sung by a crooning Elvis with Hawaiian guitars, and Born Under A Bad Sign is cut from the same musical cloth as Brian Hyland's Sealed With A Kiss.

Adding a new country flavour, the wonderful Wading Through The Waters Of My Time sounds like a cross between vintage Willie Nelson and Hank Williams and both the train rhythm chugging I Sleep Alone and the spare strummed lullaby Who's Going To Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet would have added lustre to any Johnny Cash album. If someone like overrated male Dido and Chris De Burgh replacement James Blunt can ship truckloads of albums, by rights Hawley ought to stride this world like a colossus.

8pm. £9. Glee Club

Tuesday November 15

It’s been over a decade since former Gen X frontman and bristle bush barnetted cartoon punk Idol troubled the musical world with a new album. Since that was the rocktronica concept set Cyberpunk, you’ll understand why anticipation didn't run high for Devil’s Playground (Sanctuary). Surprise then, that’s it’s actually rather good, part a return to the days of Rebel Yell (Super Overdrive), part akin to the poodle rock of Bon Jovi (Sherri), part hard rock (Body Snatcher, Evil Eye) and part (World Comin’ Down) in tune with the current generation of pop punks like The Offspring. He’s even flirting with throaty rumbling Johnny Cash country on Lady Do Or Die while it’s surely no accident that the acoustic pop Cherie calls to mind Neil Diamond’s own Cherry Cherry.

Never one to take himself too seriously (hence that mock curled lip sneer trademark), Idol’s playful but sharp humour’s also well evident on the satirical Plastic Jesus and Yellin’ At The Xmas’s Trees tale of dad getting aled up. Reunited with long time guitarist partner Steve Stevens, the album rocks, swagger and riffs with the energy of a man half Idol’s age. An unexpected pleasure then and, with a grab-bag of old hits like White Wedding waiting for the faithful, likely to prove a bit of a dynamite gig too.

7.30pm. £25. W’hampton Civic Hall.

Forged from the ashes of Jesus rockers Creed with Myles Kennedy taking over vocal duties, debut album One Day Remains (Epic) pretty much keeps to the old blueprint with songs of questioning faith, self-doubts, redemptions and attacks on blinkered religious perspectives set to big emo vocals, raging or reflective guitars and a balance between driving rock and yearning ballads. Disciples of the previous incarnation will be well satisfied with the likes of the riff heavy Find The Real and Metalingus and the surging epics that are Open Your Eyes and In Loving Memory, those whose rock theologies remain elsewhere are unlikely to be converted.

They’ll be supported by rising Irish stars The Answer and their bluesy rock influences drawn from the likes of Led Zep, Free, The Black Crowes and Thin Lizzy.

7.30pm. £13.50. Carling Academy

It’s never easy to follow up a rapturously acclaimed Mercury Prize winning debut album that’s set the benchmark for a whole style of music and seen you touted as little short of music’s answer to the Scond Coming. Sighs of relief all round then that the Ferdies haven’t just matched their eponymous debut they’ve surpassed it and broadened their horizons beyond its art-funk rock soundscape. Announcing intentions with the Zep-like opening buzz of The Fallen before it proceeds on its krunch rock swagger echoes of Jarvis hanging around with Bowie, they snap into the catchy simplicity of Kylie referencing dancefloor sashaying Do You Want To, a tumbling along piston punching This Boy with its TV pulp noir guitars and the urgent garage snakehipped stroboscopics of Evil and A Heathen where The Doors, The Killers and The Cramps mosh together.

Their scratchy funk’s still itching though, check out Outsiders or the groove of I’m Your Villain for proof of that, but this is their rock album (complete with classic 60s psychedelic baroque pop ballad Eleanor Put Your Boots On), the playing steelier, the lyrics sharper and deeper, the self-confidence more assured. Alex Kapranos once described their sound as music to make girls dance. Looks like he’s just invited the boys in to play too.

Support’s provided by the seemingly forever gigging The Editors and The Rakes who’ll be giving another spin round their excellent Capture/Release debut album with its aspirations to new Madness/Squeeze/Clash status.

7.30pm. £21.50. NEC

Having enjoyed a wholly unexpected renaissance with the chart topping reissue of (Is This The Way To) Amarillo for Children in Need, the old cheesy crooner’s making the most of things. The sore thumb at this year’s V festival, his performance, dressed in full lounge tux and backed by a clearly bemused band, is captured in all its glorious embarrassment on a Prism Leisure DVD so you can squirm over his relentlessly soul-free cover of Drift Away and a jaw-dropping Beatles medley that beats Hey Jude and Sergeant Pepper into submission, at your own leisure.

And, as if this wasn’t fromage enough, he’s releasing his Vegas cabaret jazz interpretation of Slade chestnut Merry Xmas Everybody (Amarillo) backed by a similarly big band swing take on Amarillo. It’s apparently a bid for the Christmas No 1 but seems more likely to be at home at the end of a drunken retirement home party.

To be fair, the recent Collection album does serve reminder that Christie’s been responsible for some great middle of the road pop classics, among them Avenues and Alleyways, I Did What I Did For Maria, while a 90s flirtation with cool is to be found on his Walk Like A Panther collaboration with Jarvis Cocker. But, while he’s great at doing things like Don’t Go Down To Reno, he really shouldn’t be let anywhere near such standards as Didn’t We, The Way We Were or (horrors) You’ve Lost That Loving Feelin’ (which he virtually shouts) that do nothing but reveal him as a third division karaoke Andy Williams. Bound to be packed then.

 7.30pm. £23/£21. Symphony Hall

Thursday November 17

Along with Exene Cervenka, Doe used to front 80s LA punk outfit X. In fact he still does, although since they tend to limit their activities these days to just the occasional gig, he's taken to doing the solo thing. His current album, Forever Hasn’t Happened Yet, sees him mixing up country, rockabilly, rock n roll and the Memphis blues over 11 tracks only two of which break the three minute mark.

Inspired by listening to his old Howlin’ Wolf and Robert Johnson albums (you can hear the influences seeping through though opening The Losing Kind), it again sees him inviting round a bunch of special guests. Dave Alvin and Grant Lee Phillips turn up collectively (Losing Kind and hard country rocking Heartless) and individually (Alvin on the country barroom rocking Mama Don’t, Phillips with the spare Springteen-like acoustic Twin Brothers) while elsewhere you’ll find Neko Case ( avant-garde meets rockabilly Hwy 5), Kristin Hersh (nervy organ driving train rolling blues rhythms Ready) and Cindy Lee Berryhill (bluesy country Your Parade and Repeat Performance). But, as the whisky stained acoustic blues leaving song Worried Brow and She’s Not, another simple acoustic guitar and minimal Springsteen-like ballad, ably show he doesn’t actually need any help to deliver what’s arguably the best solo work of a career that should get a full retrospective tonight.

He’s joined by nasal-voiced fellow American Peter Case who, currently celebrating 20 years in the business, will be drawing on his current Who’s Gonna Go Your Crooked Mile? album, a compilation of his decade long recordings for Vanguard that includes the border country flavoured Blind Luck, self-styled Celti-billy On The Way Downtown, the rock n rolling Coulda Woulda Shoulda, the finger picking Greenwich Village folk of Gone and the closing acoustic desert-roots First Light. No doubt he’ll also be featuring its two new tracks, the Costello-like post-Iraq fuelled Wake Up Call and the equally politically focused My Generation’s Golden Handcuff Blues.

Rounding out the evening will be Birmingham’s own leading Americana light Michael Weston King who also has an anthology to promote, The Tender Place (Phantasmagoria), a collection of solo career tracks from the past six years. You’d be hard pressed to ask for a better introduction to one of the country’s finest singer-songwriters, not just in the realms of Americana-flavoured rootsy pop but contemporary music per se. Embracing the haunting balladry of Beautiful Lies, The Wooden Hill, Mother Tongue and 35 Regrets alongside more uptempo nuggets like High Days and Holy Days and Celestial City, every track here is a celestial gem. And, if you already have all of the source albums, there’s two previously unreleased tracks to tempt you to with the waltzingly sad From Out Of The Blue, a compassionate song about the mother of a child murderer, and a cover of Dylan’s Simple Twist of Fate with keening pedal steel. A new album’s due next year, so if you’ve only just woken up to the man this is a good place to play catch up.

7.30pm. £13. Glee Club

Much in evidence of late with the epic Martin Scorsese documentary No Direction Home and its accompanying soundtrack of rare and unreleased ’bootleg’ tracks that ranges from an early high school recording of When I Got Troubles through an alternate version of She Belongs To Me, Sally Gal’s Freewheelin' outtake and assorted recordings of Mr Tambourine Man, Desolation Row and Like a Rolling Stone, this should further encourage the Bobbites to line up for what must, given his advancing years, surely be one of the last remaining chances to catch the legend in action.

 7.30pm. £35/£30. NEC

Friday November 18

Two years on since emotional wrist-slitting debut solo album Fleshwounds (EMI), abandoned the old band blueprint of shouty rap-metal angst in favour of smouldering beats and torch jazz-blues hewn from the influences of Fitzgerald and Holiday, Skunk Anansie’s former singer returns for a road-testing preview of next year’s follow up.

There’s no advance details of the album, but download only track Alone In My Room suggests that she’s decided to put the jazz blues club circuit on hold in favour of a return to the more lacerating aggressive rock strutting demanded by her fans.

7.30pm. £11. Carling Academy 2

Friday November 18

More Scandinavian chilled pop, this cello sporting female quartet breeze in from Sweden with their eponymous debut EP (STK), a spare, delicate, five track shimmering musical icicle that conjures thoughts of pre-barking Bjork, Low and Red House Painters as they weave their way through the Triumphal Arch, the semi-spoken Box, And Fights, and the brushed melancholy of We Thought We Were Ghosts, But We Are Feathers.

The seven minute fragile epic of Hymn sees them adding zither to the textures while the closing Helpless is perhaps the sort of frost hoared classical infused pop and scuffing beats a glacier might make were it a musician. Rather splendid really.

 8pm. £5. Glee Club

An Honest Mistake sounding like a kissing cousin to New Order’s Blue Monday while No Brakes calls to mind Duran, Fearless the Cure (quiff happy acrobatic voiced singer Sam Endicott consistently sounds like Robert Smith when he’s not sounding like Simon le Bon) and, Rites of Spring channelling early U2 and Tyrant, er, Gary Numan, the New Yorkers’s self-titled debut album (Loog) suggests they’ve got a thing for the 80s New Wave.

Though not deliberately riding the coattails of The Killers, it’s hard not to draw comparisons. The good news is that it doesn’t much matter, since both outfits serve up shining retro pop that you find hard to shake out of the brain once the tunes hook in.

That said, you can’t but feel that some reviewers have got a little too excited about the eye-liner, moody expressions and synths and not noted that there could be a little more substance behind the dance floor friendly bubbles of The Ring Song (that’ll be Psychedelic Furs by the way) to keep them aloft once the current revivalist fashion’s passed by. For the moment though you’ll walk a long way to enjoy yourself as much as you do stomping around the room to Out Of Line, Unconditional and their musical brethren.

Support comes courtesy of Hull punk pop three chord thrashters The Paddingtons riding high on the release of debut album First Comes First (Poptones). Though talked about in terms of the Pistols (Loser, 21) and the Clash (the skanky Alright In The Morning), quite a lot here (the title track, 50 to a £, and Panic Attack especially) more readily calls to mind The Alarm. No problem there given the high energy barricades storming full throttle teenage rushes of numbers like the guitar ringing Some Old Girl, Tommy’s Disease, Worse For Wear, and new single Sorry. Light and shade doesn’t enter the equation, but if all you want is big shouty, bounce around the stage, sweat showering no frills fizzing rock n roll, then this is the station the train leaves from.

 7.30pm. £15. Carling Academy

Saturday November 19

Their PR blurb talks of them in terms of B52 and Belle & Sebastian, but you could also think Human League with real guitars. A three boy, two girl quintet from Dublin who make their own clothes, they’re fast making a name for themselves as purveyors of bright , fun-loving pop. Things can only get better with the arrival of debut album Check In (Setanta) which, despite sounding like it should have been released in the summer (No Style, Beach Blanket and Gogo Don’t Go are all built for sunny days and seasides), bounces along on themes of young lust ("you're making us wanna unbuckle our trousers" they sing on Theme From Chalets) dotted out with basic stabbing synths and sherberty guitars. It’s not complex stuff (they cheekily include a track called Two Chord Song) but the likes of Sexy Mistake, Nightrocker, Feel the Machine, Red High Heels and the domestic violence scenario of Love Punch should ensure the dancefloor’s full down the Love Shack tonight.

 7.30pm. £5. Barfly, The Sanctuary, Digbeth

Saturday November 19

Always a welcome visitor round these parts, Clive’s back for a second showing of current, poignantly intimate album Long Story Short (Fellside) where simple voice and acoustic guitar affair address reflective, wistful and nostalgic songs about first loves, found loves, lost loves and loves that never were.

It’s just plain, folksily autumnal melodies, but Gregson’s never sounded as relaxed and comfortable as he does on the opening Cornerstone, a touching affirmation of a life changing love that is coloured with the smells of rural English countrysides. It’s lyrically downcast stuff of course. Reminiscences of unrequited childhood crushes tumble through the lazily rolling Over The Garden Wall,, the stalled relationship regrets vein the hymnal I Never Learned A Thing About You, self-recrimination stains My Bitter Half and the lost opportunities of Joan of Arkansas.

But rather than bitterness, it embraces a quiet acceptance that life isn’t always going to have someone to warm your bed while Wintertime, I Remember You, and All My Stories all celebrate the bittersweet joys experienced, the soothing Cool Rain finally acknowledging that "if I had my chance I’d do it all again".

He’ll be playing a two part set so there should be amble room for material from the album alongside his admirable back catalogue and dry anecdotal banter.

 8pm. £8. Red Lion, Kings Heath

Saturday November 19

Back to see out the year with a Christmas shopping list reminder of debut album Ideas and Oh Dears, a pithy collection of ‘toytronica’ cocktail of dance beats, hip hop, rock, mutant pop and general engineered naivete where Shiny Shiny New suggests he might well be taking some cues from John Otway and Breakdancin Bodypoppin mingles Krautrock and Eminem. There’s certainly an air of whimsy veining material like Bristol Carpet Factory, Carrier Bag and carnival merry go round freak out Nelson St Space Invaders but you’ll also hear an underlying social conscience widdling through Green and Pleasant Land, Sick of the Future and the punk mentality jigger Hip Hip Hooray. Given that it wears out its charms fairly quickly, it’ll be interesting to see if he can outlive the novelty tag, but he still promises an evening of entertaining shag pile with a sandpapery underlay.

7.30pm. £6.50. Bar Academy

Sounding increasingly like his dad, legendary singer-songwriter, eccentric raconteur and political conscience Roy Harper, the chip off the old block hits the solo tour circuit with new album Treasure Island (Sangraal), the follow up to last year’s introspective Blood Songs where he bizarrely channelled Robbie Williams and fused Lennon and Jeff Buckley. He’s in biting political mood here, the title track simultaneously tearing apart the country’s class system and extolling its salt of the earth inhabitants and their achievements while Sleeper Cell digs into current paranoia, the white hot rocking Knuckledraggers savages Bush and Blair and, the ill-advised blunt satire Intelligent Design edits clips from the former’s addresses to the free world into what his agenda’s really saying.

Much rocks with a furious venom (By My Rocket Comes Fire is a lyrically odd celebration of ambition, imagination and the desire to rise above the ordinary) , but he’s in musically and lyrically bittersweeter form on the acoustic Bloom, Real Life and Around The Sun while A Wiltshire Tale is a spoken poem paen (with a slight nod to Stanley Unwin) to the country in which he lives. Undeniably idiosyncratic.

Support comes from Leeroy Stagger (Stagger Lee, geddit), a punk turned introspective singer-songwriter who’s been dubbed a duskier Canadian answer to Ryan Adams with his alt-country heartbreaks, new album Beautiful House earning references to a more laid back Wilco with the sensibilities of Elliot Smith with tracks that veer from the amped up garage pop rock of Sweet Amphetamine to the title track’s back porch country.

7.30pm. £8. Bar Academy.

Lining up as Warren Ellis (from The Bad Seeds), Mick Turner and Jim White with their combination of violin, guitar and drums, despite what their name may conjure the legendary trio deal in achingly reflective instrumentals, sometimes infused (as the likes of Doris and The Zither Player testify) with the rumbling power of the devil’s rock n roll.

They’re over here to coincide with the release of their seventh album, Cinders (Bella Union), a 19 strong collection of rather more focused and shorter tracks that puts the emphasis on their quieter, more moodily atmospheric and melancholic side on such folk-blues and Americana rooted numbers as She Passed Through. Amy, Ember (where thoughts of David Mansfield come to mind) and the violin waltzing Too Soon, Too Late. Sadly, there won’t be space in life show for their first excursion into vocals with Great Waves on which they’re joined by the aching voice of Cat Power’s Chan Marshall, but for devotees it’ll be a small sacrifice to make.

7.30pm. £10. Carling Academy 2

Monday November 21

While still holding true to their reputation for being Scottish miserablist romantics on some dour, downbeat gravel grey ballads, new album The Last Romance (Chemikal underground) continues the flirtation with dance music and throbbing industrial crushers that punctuated its predecessor’s familiar sad drunken morose slurs. Of course, being flag-wavers for the emotionally desolate, this they do while wedding train chugging bulldozing rhythms to a title like (If There’s) No Hope For Us.

Actually there does seem to have been a bit of mood lightening around their lives, with Stink looking beyond a grubby life and Fine Tuning even celebrating commitment and talking of breeding while the dark swirling melodies of Speed-Date peel back to reveal a rejection of cheap sex in favour of a monogamous relationship. It’s not exactly moon and June stuff, but with the Confessions Of A Big Brother’s wake up call to a wasted life, the military beat pop chimer Don’t Ask Me To Dance’s farewell to the casual bloke on the pull routine and the affectionate Come Round And Love Me but there’s definitely a new tenderness abroad. Go on, let them give you a big kiss and make you breakfast in the morning.

Given the challenges in the vocal department, Brown’s not done too badly for himself since launching the solo career thing. Just to prove the point he’s out touring his recent best of compilation The Greatest (Fiction), an album that features no less than 10 top 30 singles notched up between 1998 and now, among them recent Eastern flavoured hit All Ablaze. New versions of Forever And A Day (with very Gary Moore-like bluesy guitar) and a brassy New Orleans skanking Lovebug come added to the party, one at which laced sugarcubes and dips are clearly high on the menu as it works its way through the variously acid baggy and psychedelic groove trips of My Star, Corpses In Their Mouths, Dolphins Were Monkeys and the Spanish flamenco flavoured Time Is My Everything. It’s a pity that the soulful late night grooves on Northern Lights didn’t find its way into the collection, but much marked by a willingness to experiment and stretch his musical horizons, non-believers may find themselves surprised at just how good so much of this is. Let’s hope he does it justice live.

7.30pm. £20. Carling Academy

Tuesday November 22

A vehicle for Liverpool born, Tobago raised, Cornwall nurtured singer-songwriter Harry Collier if debut album Mother (Mercury) receives the sort of response it deserves you can be sure this is the last time you’ll find them in such a small venue. Basically sounding like Jeff Buckley fronting Coldplay with a love of old school soul apparent from former single Somebody Else an Wicked reminding Mick Hucknall how to truly marry dark-eyed soul and pop, it’s an impressive declaration of intent. Having already laid the foundations with the likes of Remain, Sun and Glow, fuelled by the afterburn of a relationship implosion and the eventual emotional recovery, the album now builds on solid ground with the hushed bruises of Alcatraz, a splintered heart Bun Again, the staccato pulse and wah wah that drives If I Can’t Have You and the decidedly U2 Without You (it only lacks a ‘with or’ at the start). Hard to see how they can possibly cock things up.

7.30pm. £8. Bar Academy

Tuesday November 22

Winner of this year’s Mercury Music Prize, the androgynous camp UK born New Yorker shares Eddie Izzard’s transvestite penchant for clothes and make-up and Nina Simone’s voice, steeped in a love of torch song cabaret blues and the sort of ambient late night smoky ramblings you might expect from Lambchop or Tindersticks.

The album, I Am A Bird Now (Rough Trade), is crammed with operatic laments about love, death, and identity crises, opening with the remarkable, crushingly desperate cracked beauty of Hope There’s Someone before proceedings its intoxicating way through the affecting piano blues gender confusions of My Lady Story (Cat Stevens meets Billie Holiday) and Today I’m A Boy, the gospel soul liberation of Bird Guhl and, on perhaps the album’s stand out cut and new single, the stark confessional You Are My Sister, a duet with Boy George. The single comes with three new tracks, Poorest Ear, Forest of Love and Paddy’s Gone all suggesting he may have been raised in some shack on the massa’s cotton plantation, exposed to nights of hearing the worker’s sung laments. Expect to be mesmerised, for once the hype doesn’t even come close to the real thing.

7.30pm. £16.50. W’hampton Civic Hall

Having made his debut for V2 with a collection of covers, Weller finally offers up the new material fans have been clamouring for with the recent As Is Now album. The three year wait to see if he’d surmounted the artistic fatigue of Illumination was certainly worth it. He’s not sounded this sharp or fierily focused in ages, slashing out with Blink and You’ll Miss It, From The Floorboards Up, the belligerently Jam-evoking stormer Come On/Let’s Go and, again raising those Steve Winwood comparisons, Paper Smile.

He’s not much tinkering with his now established blueprint of the folk-soul that earned the Dadrock tag, but who’s to complain when it produces such dazzling moments as the breezy jazz tinged The Start Of Forever and Roll Along Summer, the bass scorching gonad squeezing rustic soulboy groove of Brink Back The Funk, strings and piano big crescendo ballad The Pebble and the Boy or the good time rollicking of Here’s The Good News and I Wanna Make It All right.

Those earthy folk blues furrows are well ploughed here too on the acoustic guitar strummed All On A Misty Morning with its hints of Tim Hardin and the slightly Waterboys styled pagan big music of Pan. At an age when many of his contemporaries have mellowed out, Weller shows no sign of ever becoming a coffee table favourite. A gamekeeper’s trencher seems much more his style.

7.30pm. £28.50. NIA

Wednesday November 23

Jaunty kick off single In The Morning painted something of false picture of the Liverpool outfit’s third album, The Invisible Invasion (Deltasonic), an altogether darker affair than its predecessors both musically and lyrically. Rather more representative would be She Sings The Mourning, a skittering cross between the Doors and the Dancing Did infused with the soul of rotting undergrowth and cobwebbed forests at dusk. That leafy mildew mood infects much of the album’s folksy visitations on 60s pop, a creepy, earthy undertow bubbling through such numbers as The Operator, Cripples Crown, Far From The Crowd and, returning to hints of Jim Morrison, the closing Late Afternoon.

Riddled with themes of loss, loneliness and alienation, it’s art rock folkedelia (on the experimental Arabian Sand they crossbreed Iron Butterfly and Pink Floyd for what sounds like a swipe at George W) with a spooked vibe, A Warning To The Chorus throwing in some surf guitar and shakin’ all over jabs to go with its Strange Days meets The Zombies swirl.

A hugely assured, forward looking album that refuses to pretty itself up with snappy chorus hooks for short attention listeners as the songs seek to nag at the ribs of the complacency they feel has fogged the world around them. Should make for some interesting live repartee. Fronted by Eva Petersen, Liverpool quintet The Little Flames take time out from recording the debut album to provide support. Along with the year’s singles, the witchywood folk Goodbye Little Rose and a more Strokes inclined Put Your Dukes Up, John they’ll no doubt be road testing the new material before applying the finishing touches.

7.30pm. £15. Carling Academy

Wednesday November 23

Yes, that Rick Astley of Never Gonna Give You Up, er, fame. The erstwhile Stock, Aitken and Waterman pop protégé has been off the radar for some years since splitting with his mentors to become a serious singer-songwriter and his Body and Soul album sank without trace. However, he resurfaced a couple of years back, surprising many with a sell out tour on the back of a Greatest Hits collection.

He’s now gone middle of the road, choosing to record an album of easy listening standards and evergreens with Portrait (RCA), working his way through the likes of Vincent, Matt Munro classic Portrait Of My Love, Cry Me A River, Where Do I Begin?, Nature Boy and Somewhere. The voice has seasoned with time, sounding suitably smooth and mellow but he really doesn’t have the fire in his belly or his throat to render something like Make It easy On Yourself or I Can’t Help Falling In Love with You more than lounge bar musak while the unadventurous arrangements do nothing to make the songs even part way his own. Pleasant enough if you happened to walk into a hotel bar and find him crooning away with some combo, but there’s nothing here to give you the incentive to travel on purpose.

 8pm. £22.50. Warwick Arts Centre

Wednesday November 23

The misanthropic behind the Auteurs and the controversially named Baader Meinhof, this is a rare solo outing for Haines, currently promoting his personally compiled triple disc Luke Haines is Dead (Hut). A collection of singles, B sides, session tracks and unreleased material there’s almost an excess of riches here, even if there’s nothing from his Black Box Recorder period among its 63 tracks.

An exhaustive and at times exhausting portrait of a misfit genius whose sardonic humour and undisguised vitriol often tripped up any chances of commercial success, The Auteurs provide the bulk of the retrospective, classic moments including Showgirls, Unsolved Child Murders, the marvellously bitter Rubettes and After Murder Park with just five BM tracks (of which the funny eponymous 1997 single is a lost gem) and a bunch of solo oddballs that found him flirting with indie disco (Discomania), chanson (Skin Tight) and big ballad noir cabaret (Satan Wants Me). Quite where he’ll be dipping in and out of for the live set is anyone’s guess, but you can guarantee there’ll be enough marvellous stuff on hand from the only man who could record a song titled Bugger Bognor and get away with it.

 8pm. £6. Tin Angel, Coventry

It’s ayear since he was here promoting debut album Homesongs and there’s been nothing new since or even pending. Still, it’s worth reacquainting yourself with its autumn leaves acoustic rural sound as his dusty vocals wrap around barely there leafy sad but cosily warm songs like Ringing In My Ear about home and the people and places close to him. If you’re lucky he may even treat you to a tapping pencil solo!

7.30pm. £7. Glee Club

The Wolverhampton four piece seem to be making a bit of a noise for themselves at present, having earned favourable reviews for their debut single Freeworld, earlier this year. Originally released via Birmingham based Brazen Records, it’s also currently to be found on From The Region, a sampler of upcoming local acts (others include Jayne Powell, Kings of Spain, Telex and mac) put together by Birmingham Music Network and Gotham records.

It’s a solidly impressive calling card too, a persuasive throwback to the electrogoth days of the 80s and bands like Bauhaus and Love and Rockets, though word has it other numbers also call references as diverse ad Underworld and the Blue Nile. With a debut album, Human Makeup, due next year, this offers a useful opportunity to get in on the ground floor since it seems likely that their industrial electronic dance is going to be among names to drop come 2006.

7.30pm. £4. Barfly, Sanctuary, Digbeth

Having been fairly roundly slapped about the wrists for the hugely disappointing Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned (XL) with its lack of Keith Flint, Maxim Reality and anything resembling a decent tune or dance floor crunchers, there seemed an air of desperation to shore things up with the release of Their Law (XL), a collection of singles (though the title track neverw as) from the past 15 years. Having crashed in at the top of the album charts, it seems to have worked. Now, with the gang all back together, they’re taking it round the nation with a storming set that rips the flesh out of such pounding blood pressuring beat driving nuggets as Firestarter (revamped and updated), Spitfire, Hot Ride, the controversial Smack My Bitch up and the mad for it Voodoo Girl and Charly. It’s debatable whether their beats blocking sound is entirely suited to the venue’s antiseptic setting, but chances are the audience will be banging too hard to notice the seats.

Warming things up will be Audio Bullys who will be trying hard to persuade the audience that they’re not a second division version of The Streets. It’s not going to be easy given the fact several of tracks off Generation (Source) sound like Mike Skinner clones in need of a crash course of anti-depressants.

Certainly there’s little here with the inventiveness or cheek of their Nancy Sinatra sampling house version of Bang Bang. Things tend to plod along for the rest of the time to an extent that even recruiting Roots Manuva can do little to enliven Made Like That. Rave nostalgists will probably appreciate Eq-ing but like most they’ll likely find listening to the humourless winges of Generation or Get Myself On Track an even more depressing experience than the pictures painted by the lyrics. This Road, on which they’re joined by Madness mainman Suggs, suggests they’re really closet popsters; perhaps they should get out of their wardrobe more often.

7.30pm. £25. NIA

Friday November 25

The North Carolina singer-songwriter made an impressive debut bow three years back with Bramble Rose, but she arrives her now with follow-up Tambourine (Lost Highway), a considerably different creature. While Still Pretending may evoke the whiskier fumes of Patsy Cline's barroom and Write My Ticket carries on down the Lucinda Williams gravel road, the country roots flavours of its predecessor have been pretty much kicked into touch in favour of a raunchier rock-soul flavour.

The emphasis here is far more on the Bonnie Raitt r&b end of the comparisons with a dose of Van Morrison, Aretha and, on the horn laden Good Hearted Man, Dusty in Memphis influences thrown in. The songs remain honest and strong, their heart wounds open and stained with regret on the likes of the slow dance ache of a standout Plainest Thing (featuring pump organ) while Laid A Highway's snapshot of a dying mill town sees her storytelling undiminished.

It may disappoint those hoping she'd travel further down the Emmylou road, but from the opening strum of Stray Paper (with a guitar intro reminiscent of My Sweet Lord) with its hints of Jayhawks and the swaggering early Pettyisms of Wait It Out to the Memphis Hornsy tail feather shaking of I Am Your Tambourine and piano rolling boogie gospel mood of Shadow In The Way those southern cooking Staxy flavours make this a decidedly tasty musical barbecue. Come along and feast.

8pm. £12. Glee Club

Friday November 25

Having enjoyed massive US success with debut album Finally Woken (Ato) and its singles Just A Ride and the jazzy slurred Portishead feeling title track, you’d be forgiven for assuming Jemma Griffiths to be the latest new Dido on the US block. Especially given one of her songs, Nothing Fall, was taken up by Madonna for her American Life album. The fact is she hails from Penarth in Wales and it took a year before the UK caught up with her brand of moody electronica pop. Given the general size of the venues on this tour, there’s still a bit more catching up to get done before she enjoys quite the same sort of breakthrough. Given the loping reggae flavours of Save Me and Wish I that balance out the rockier Evanescence nature of 24 and Flying High’s breathily sweet pop, that shouldn’t take too long.

7.30pm. £14. Wulfrun Hall

Formed in Switzerland two decades ago, over the pats twenty years and various line-up permutations, they’ve doggedly pursued their own technorock path, variously immersing themselves in washes of synths, delving into dark house beats and crunching through Zep style riffery. Lining up these days with Al Comet and Use Hiestand, they continue to transfigure rock basics into machine generated sonics swathed by massive slurries of bulldozing rhythms and industrial metal.

By way of celebrating their 20th anniversary, they’re out on the road digging into the archives displayed across XXY (Pias), a career spanning compilation that embraces both French and English vocals, Kurt Weill covers September Song and Alabama Song, the snakey whispering electro threat that is Astronomic (surely noting their influence on Alabama 3), their explorations in ambient waters marked by Donnez Les Esprits, the cod vaudeville Gary Glitter referencing glam Did You Miss Me and the folksy filigrees of Child In The Tree.

Mostly though it emphasises their ability to rip flesh on tracks like the Motorhead meets Yello Pa Mal, the stroboscopic goth Skinflowers (one for the PiL brigade) and a piston galloping Gasoline Man. They’ve also thrown in new track, Secret, which shows their dynamic of rock, dance, and techno to be very much alive. You can pretty much assume the live experience to be batteringly exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure.

7.30pm. £10. Barfly, Sanctuary, Digbeth

They missed out their usual pre-Christmas Brum bash last year, so it’s good to welcome them back now, especially since it’ll be the first time they’ve played material from the current album, A Short Walk To The Red Lion, hereabouts. Unquestionably songwriter-frontman Gerry Colvin’s finest hour yet, the sleeve drawing of Tony Hancock evokes the tragi-comedy that lies within.

A wistfully reflective I Look The Same But I Have Changed opens in jangly folk rock fashion, melding the spirit of Roy Orbison with its CS&N rolling train rhythms Girls World’s lovely song of incompatibility and its Here Comes The Sun sounding acoustic guitar refrain.

A Parisian cafe accordion underpins the swaying chanson of Go And Ask Somebody Else, a bitter song of domestic abuse, soured dreams and suburban social decay while horizons expand to take in the whole planet with piano ballad Wings and Prayers a stirring allegory of environmental madness. A related theme informs I Am The Bell which tolls the loss as progress turns town to conurbation and close knit communities are left to crumble.

The Poacher, The Highwayman and the Rustling Wheelwright is, as you might imagine, steeped in folk balladry territory, but comes set in inner city Birmingham, telling of supermarket shoplifters, car jammers and victims too scared to leave their homes.

A longtime live favourite, Mermaid's Eyes is a lovely, tropical tale of the girl who teaches you to see the world differently while The Ocean and One More Week respectively offer emotional epiphany and an emotional resignation, the former a moving tale of love at first sight, the rockier latter a wistful reflection of what might be the same relationship some years down the line where "country walks and constant smiles have been replaced by bathroom tiles."

With the prospect of some new work in progress, a dip back into a fabulous back catalogue, Always, and Colvin’s inimitably irrepressible personality, you’ll want to take a wander down their pub and get a round in.

7.30pm. £9.25. mac

Two years after touring the bouncing melodic punk pop of Good Mourning, the Chicago three-piece are back to pick up the threads with Crimson (Vagrant). Though single Mercy Me, Your Neck and Dethbed are all sherbet fizz guitar and tumbling teen punk melody, the general state of play flexes tougher muscles across their favourite themes of drink, death, depression and general life downers. It may wallow in the same teen angst and self-pity (and these guys are a long way from teendom) as past efforts, but it’s their best collection yet, a tight, driving set of punk that bounds from songs about the Manson family (Sadie) and miscarriages of justice (Prevent This Tragedy) to the live fast burn brightly sentiments of Burn and the general numbed nihilism of The Poison and I Was A Prayer with its surging two and a half minute pop sensibilities. After five albums it’s unlikely they’re suddenly going to be elevated to the same plateau as either Green Day or Blink 182, the two bands with whom they have the most in common musically, but the air where they are right now seems pretty well oxygenated.

6pm. £14. Carling Academy

Comprising former Birmingham Schools' Guitar Ensemble members Jamie Fekete, Sophie Johnson (daughter of pedal steel maestro Stewart) and Sam Slater, the Trio are the Swans Way of gypsy jazz guitar music, bringing a sparkling freshness, passion and youthful vibrancy to a genre that can often find itself more concerned with technique than feeling. Maybe the fact they were never music students has something to do with that.

Drawing on shared loves of jazz, flamenco, classical and Latin alongside the gypsy flavours, they’ve been wowing audiences here and in London for a while now with their magical acoustic guitar finger work.

They recently released their debut album, Who Ate all The Tapas? via new Birmingham label the Birds and have been deservedly accruing glowing critical acclaim for its cocktail of four numbers by musical director Bryan Lester (among them the feet scorching Latin Swing, the sultry trumpet flavoured witty Spanish Cinema and Heroes, a four part suite that clocks in under six minutes) alongside their invigorating interpretations of Concierto de Aranjuez and Take 5, two chestnuts on which it would be all easy to lapse into routine. However, perhaps the best illustration of their dexterity and fresh blood is to be found on a gorgeously seductive and warmly fluid version of Django Reinhardt's Minor Blues that would have brought a tear to the master’s eye.

Cool but never clinical, it’s something of a treat, which makes the prospect of this special concert, where they’ll be augmented by guest musicians on brass, strings and percussion, all the more mouthwatering. Little dishes perhaps, but something of a musical feast.

 8pm. £7. CBSO centre

The Dream Syndicate founder is in riff raging form at the moment. Fuelled by the desert heat, current album ...tick...tick...tick (Blue Rose) is one of those take no prisoners affairs that spits you out to die among the cactus plants, hitting the ground running with the swaggering fuzzed fury of Wired that welds the rawness of the Stooges and early Velvets into a hammering rock n roll assault. It barely lets up, even ostensible drugged country ballads Freak Star and The Deep End erupting into the occasional guitar squall. The old Syndicate days echo through Cindy, It Was Always You with its hip-snaking strut and Lou Reed rolls while the likes of Killing Me, Wild Mercury, Turing Of The Tide and the eight minute psychedelic acid country No Tomorrow coat lines about drugs, death, and romantic desolation with full force sonic ampage. Likely to be even more skin-peeling live, if you don’t go home bleeding you probably went to the wrong gig.

7.30pm. £7. Bar Academy

A young bluesy crew from the North East, they’re fronted by Pete Shoulder whose throaty voice and delivery evokes thoughts of early Paul Rogers and whose guitar work owes a clear debut to Hendrix and Page. They’re stepping out now armed with debut album Everything in Moderation now released on their own Toxxic Records after a parting of the ways with Island following the Shotgun Smile single and a brief stint on Absolute with its Under My Skin follow-up. It’s hard rock in the classic British manner, nodding the hat to the likes of Sabbath, Purple and Zep but also filtering in a nip of Seattle with the rifferama of Nobody and Penny For The Fool, a bloozy Breathe and Last Legs, and the Cream echoing blues rock of Idle Hands.

Displaying an ability to do soulful nuance as easily as they can do crunch, Mr 3 Percent is acoustic blues, Nothing a percussive acoustic track reminiscent of Weller’s current modus operandi, and Someday Soon offers the obligatory sensitive display of Spanish guitar balladry. My Angels also lets you know they can probably do radio friendly rock pop in their sleep too. In a couple of years, you’ll be looking back and boasting that you saw them on their way up, of course by then you’ll probably also be having to fork out forty quid to get into a sell-out arena.

7.30pm. £5. Little Civic, W’hampton

Here supporting former Squeeze man Glenn Tilbrook, the Sheffield born singer-songwriter is well worth arriving early to catch. And if you’re no Tilbrook fan you could leave before the main event and still reckon you’ve had your ticket money’s worth. At 15 she persuaded Annie Lennox’s singing teacher to take her on,