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ARCHIVED REVIEWS November 2008 Previews by Mike Davies Saturday November 1 Cage The Elephant
The blue collar Kentucky five piece pack the bourbon in the flight cases and fly in for another round with their eponymous debut album’s meshing of Stooges, Stones, and Guns n Roses influences on volcanically delivered songs about social disaffection, political disillusionment, the daily grind, and having a few drink beers. Ones to listen up for include slurring blues Back Stabbin’ Betty, jerk rhythm assault Tiny Little Robots, the swaggering new single In One Ear and a swampy slide Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked.7.30pm. £8. Kasbah, Coventry Sunday November 2 Bryan Adams
Putting down his camera for a while, the Canadian vegan rocker gets back to the day job for a belated visit on behalf of recent album 11 (Polydor) which, as if you’d not worked it out, is his, er, 11th album. Those horrified at past flirtations with dance will have been relieved to find this text book Adams, radio friendly AOR rock with air guitar solos, raspy vocals and big romantic songs stapled to anthemic choruses. There’s nothing here that match the early hits, but the starry night High School Prom feel of I Thought I’d Seen Everything, stadium swayer Broken Wings, sub Rod acoustic rocker Flower Grown Wild, and the crowd rousing She’s Got Away do the business well enough while the Springsteen-esque acoustic hushed croak and string-laden Walk On By provides the stand-out cut. Any of the above should flesh out the old hits well enough live, though it might be an idea to refrain from including Mysterious Ways on the offchance any of Elton’s lawyers might be in the crowd and wonder why he’s playing Rocket Man with different words. 7.30pm. £37.50. LG Arena (NEC) Monday November 3 Dr Dog
Chances are you’ve never heard of them, but Fate (Park The Van) is actually the fifth album from the Philadelphia five piece and, with ears now opened up to outfits like Fleet Foxes, the one likely to expand their audience. Sounding melodically similar to Don’t Think Twice, opening track The Breeze reveals the Dylan influences early on, but these also come colourfully shaded with elements of Waits, ragtime, Grateful Dead, soul, Beatles, roots folk, Randy Newman and gospel. They may wear their retro influences on their sleeves, but it’s hard not to be intoxicated as they march the parade through Hang On, the drunken swaying Army of Ancients, woozy toy piano nursery rhyme pop The Old Days, lurching, upright bass and piano carnival stroll 100 Years, the Lennon-esque ballad From and the quite marvellous psychedelic jug band folk of The Rabbit, The Bat and The Reindeer which surely borrows bits of its tune from Sally Army staple What A Friend We have In Jesus. And blues devotees just have to love doo wop streaked The Ark. Loose, ragged and rustic, it promises for a suitably ramshackle live experience but it just may leave you singing up to become a member of their kennel club. 7.30pm. £6.50. Glee Club Monday November 3 Cold War Kids
The fuzzed up guitars, lurching rhythms and soulful vocals of their narcotic bluesy Robbers & Cowards proved one of 2006’s best albums. Now the California quartet are back with a curiously low profile tour around the release of follow up Loyalty To Loyalty (Mercury). Promo copies weren’t available, but samples suggest not a lot’s changed with the slow picked blues of Every Man I Fall For’s tale of domestic violence, the strung out, falsetto voiced Radiohead-influenced Relief and the strident, surf guitar, piano pounding Velvets-like swampabilly feel of Something Is Not Right With Me sounding a likely set list stormer. After the first album’s stories of the terminally hill, low lifes and losers, with the suicide themed Golden Gate Jumpers this is no cheerier even if Dreams Old Men Dream does sniff slightly of optimism. Mixed alongside live favourites such as Hang Me Up To Dry, Hospital Beds and Passing The Hat, this should be a sweaty night. 8pm. £11.50. Irish Centre, Digbeth Monday November 3 Elliot Minor
The classically trained quintet give one last push this year for their eponymous debut, serving reminder of Last Call To New York City’s Queen high drama, the orchestral bombast of Time After Time and Lucky Star and Still Figuring Out’s marriage of Green Day and ELO.
Support’s rising Liverpool power pop four piece The Hot Melts, all chug and fizz guitars, la la backing vocals and catchy melodies. Having said that, of course, debut single (I Wish I’d) Never Been In Love (Epitaph) is also a frantic flurry of punchy punk that sounds like a crash between Sparks and The Rezillos. 7.30pm. £12. Wulfrun Hall Tuesday November 4 Feeder
Wales seems to be producing some of the best bands around at the moment, and this lot are definitely at the front of the live, current album Silent Cry (Echo) lifting ambitions heavenwards with the U2 capacity opening We Are The People’s ringing guitars, soaring vocals and thunderous drums. It’s the blueprint for what follows with a flood of big music and stadium anthemics on the scale of the lighters aloft Fires, Itsumo, Guided By A Voice and the aptly titled Sonorous punctuated by the relatively more intimate moments of 8:18 and a swelling Heads Held High. There’s a certain air of grandiosity and emotional gravitas about them, but they also just let their hair down for a rock n roll party with Tracing Lines and Into The Blue, and, with an impressive clutch of 20 top 40 singles already in the repertoire, they look like packing them in for some time yet. 7.30pm. £22.50. Carling Academy Tuesday November 4 Ron Sexsmith
Ten albums in Sexsmith's settled into an easy groove, his latest, Exit Strategy of the Soul (Kensaltown) again pulling out the Beatles colours and mingling them with an r&b soulfulness, the gospel inspired This Is How I Know seeing him on his best McCartney. Sexsmith flew to Cuba to record the album’s horn section, bringing an extra warmth to the likes of Brandy Alexander, a deceptively jaunty eco-themed One Last Round and the Bill Withers-inspired Brighter Still. Sexsmith says a strong influence was his discovery of cult '70s singer-songwriter Judee Sill just as he was starting to write for the album. You can certainly hear what he means, both musically and her themes of people searching for solace in life, when you listen to the gentle acoustic Thoughts And Prayers, piano ballad The Impossible World and Chased By Love though Music To My Ears sounds a lot more like he's been filtering early Jackson Browne through the spirit of Buddy Holly. "I can't give up on all these poor helpless dreams," he sings on the song written prior to his first album and finally finding a proper setting here. Neither should you. Sexsmith's dreams might take a while to seep beneath the consciousness, but they'll prove lasting lullabies. 7.30pm. £20. Glee Club Tuesday November 4 Sigur Ros
Assuming they’ve not had their assets frozen along with everything else back home, the Icelandic wags are in town to shift a few more copies of Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust (EMI), which, for the none native speakers, translates as With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly. Putting aside their heavenly ambience and otherwordly ice melting, there’s actually actual pop songs that you could sing along to if you had any idea of the language. Even if you don't, chances are you'll find yourself trying to get the phonetic gist and warbling nonsensically to such infectious summery melodies as Gobbledigook, Inni Mer Syngur Vitleysingur, and the Coldplay-like Vid Spilum Endalaust. Devotees will be pleased to know they've not entirely forsaken their big drama ice sculpture symphonics. For some six minutes Ara Batur is a delicate simple piano ballad, then in come the London Oratory Boys' Choir and London Sinfonietta for a rousing cathedral of majesty. The choirs are there too for Godan Daginn, Med Sud I Eyrum tinkles with waterfall cascades as the drums carry it to another epic climax and Festival moves from almost Gregorian chant to the full orchestral fireworks, while, for tranquil contrast, Illgressi is a simple acoustic guitar folksy number. The closing number, All Alright, a melancholic spare balled with simple piano notes and warm Hovis brass, is their first to be sung in English and, in its fragile hymnal quality, sounds as though it belongs on the soundtrack of Terence Davies' Distant Voices Still Lives. May their endlessly never cease. 7.30pm. £23.50. W’hampton Civic Hall Wednesday November 5 Stone Gods
Support to Australian rock headliners Airbourne, the band formerly incarnated as The Darkness have successfully managed to put the past where it belongs with debut album Silver Spoons And Broken Bones. Having fun with the metal cliches and poses, they swagger their way through the hard rock Mud of new single Don’t Drink The Water, marry Lizzy and the Faces on barroom air punchers Where You Coming From and Start Of Something, and rival Bryan Adams for terrace anthems with homage to boozy good times Oh Whereo My Beero. Great rock party music.
Sharing the bill are California punk rock crew Sound & Fury whose self-titled debut album opens up with School’s Out and Teenage Rampage. No, not Alice Cooper or Sweet covers, but you can hear the influences of both in the music, not to mention a hefty dose of AC/DC on Can’t Get Enough. Their fondness for using the titles of other songs also extends to yet another Cooper number with 18 (though Alice is actually more in evidence on Bad Touch) but it’s what’s under the hood that counts and with these along with such hard hitting riff sprays as sex-drive stompers High School Hotbox, Runaway Love (which does make a sly reference to the Runaways) and the slow swagger dirty deeds Night Of The Ghouls, they clearly have a well tuned sleaze charged engine. 7.30pm. £12. Carling Academy Wednesday November 5 Micah P Hinson
A winner when he played the venue last year on the back of And The Opera Circuit, the Texas singer-songwriter returns to greet old friends and make new ones with follow-up And the Red Empire Orchestra (Full Time Hobby). Although there’s still a couple of bare boned numbers, it’s generally a fuller sound this time round with many songs clothed in string arrangements while Hinson brings various pianos, harpsichord, organ, and vibraphone to the party along with his acoustic and electric guitars and softly sandpapered Cash-like baritone burr. Indeed, in keeping with its evocative romantic title, Sunrise Over The Olympus Mons builds from simple acoustic glimmers to cast a glorious lush orchestral radiance while I Keep Havin’ These Dreams begins with a picked Spanish guitar, introduces gypsy fiddle and blossoms into chamber string quartet. Just as Don't Leave Me Now provided the sonic squall on the previous album, so You Will Find Me kicks up the duststorm on a brooding desert night, Hinson’s voice burrowing into parched throat blues while the song erupts into a fierce flamenco outburst before fading into a cloud of feedback. However, spinning wearied tales of loss, loneliness and longing (he’s actually been happily wed for the past year), he’s more likely to favour the dusty folk-country campfire waltzes that dominate proceedings with numbers such as Come Home Quickly, Darling’, Tell Me It Ain't So, the Wurlitzer backed We Won’t Have To Be Lonesome and the melancholic beauty of Dyin’ Alone’s meditation on mortality, Traditional Americana roots blossom among the spooked banjo notes of The Wishing Well And The Willow Tree while Hinson strips things back even further to just his twangy vocals and acoustic guitar for You Ain’t Callin’ The Shots and The Fire Came Up To My Knees, just further examples of the man’s immense talent. This is his third album in four years, each one better than the last. It’s thrilling to think just how good he’ll be come the next one. 7.30pm. £10. Glee Club Thursday November 6 Katie Melua
When folk refer to Melua as a Radio 2 favourite, it tends to be with somewhat disparaging intent, implying she makes bland easy listening wallpaper music. However, since her first two albums made No 1 and the recent Pictures only stalled one place behind, there’s obviously a fair few million who would disagree. Either that or there’s a big market for wallpaper. Being honest, Melua isn’t someone you’d turn to for prickly, challenging melodies or in your face lyrics while Dirty Dice’s attempt to be femme fatale seductive sounds all rather sexless. However, being equally honest, debut hit The Closest Thing To Crazy was a classy affair and Pictures has its fair share of quality material in the bittersweet Mary Pickford (Used To Eat Roses), the forlorn What I Miss About You, country twanging slow lollop Scary Films, If I Were A Sailboat and the blues-soul version of Leonard Cohen’s In My Secret Life. Melua recently said that this is the last album she’ll be making in tandem with mentor Mike Batt, so it’ll be interesting where she goes next time around given her own head. Meanwhile, she’s drawing a line in the sand with The Collection (Dramatico), a best of compilation summarising her career to date with choice cuts from the three albums, the Eva Cassidy No 1 duet What A Wonderful World, When You Taught Me How To Dance from the Miss Potter soundtrack and three new numbers, including Toy Collection from forthcoming MySpace generated movie Faintheart, and new jazzily uptempo toe-tapper single Two Bare Feet.
She’s joined by special guest Andrea McEwan. If the name’s not familiar but the face is, you’re probably a soap fan since the Australian born McEwan was a Neighbours regular as Penny Watts and also turned up in three Corrie episodes as Lisa Ditchfield. However, also working with Batt, she’s now focused on her musical career (she co-wrote What I Miss About You and Dirty Dice for Pictures), making her debut with the Candle In A Chatroom (Dramatico) EP. With its lament for the lack of romance in cyber relationships, the chorus friendly title track seems set to make a quick impression on the airwaves while the laundry-inspired Black Socks In The Wash shows her slinky jazz-soul inclinations and Fast Train does the confessional piano ballad bit to good effect. 7.30pm. £28.50. LG Arena Thursday November 6 Paul Heaton
The Beautiful South now just a beautiful memory, their former frontman continues his solo career with a second set of dates extolling the virtues of current album The Cross Eyed Rambler (Universal), the title referring to the lad’s favourite pub. Fans of his past life won’t be disappointed with its trademark sardonic observations on life, filtered through a musical marriage of English pop folk, blues and American country roots, although those who like a sedate pint might be unnerved by the rowdy rocking I Do and an equally strident, noisy guitar A Good Old Fashioned Town. And if he doesn’t come out and specifically identify the rednecks on that one, Good Old Texas makes it clear about his feelings for the folk of George W’s home state while a venomous Everything Is Everything, The Pub and rockabilly stomper The Kids These Days all do a Victor Meldrew about how nothing’s like it was in the good old days. Still, while he may be a miserable bugger whose glass is always half-empty, as the Mariachi flavoured, drink, drive, duck and dive Mermaids and Slaves, Little Red Rooster and Deckchair Collapsed’s ringingly melodic wry reflections on growing old, show, he’s still worth having over the play a few songs for the party.
He’s joined on tour by Cerys Matthews, the erstwhile Catatonia singer dipping into material from both her countrified Cock A Hoop solo debut and the recent Welsh language follow-up Awyren with its smoky reminiscences of Dusty Springfield. Then there’s also Attic Lights, a guitar rock quintet who share the same love of Big Star and The Byrds as fellow Glaswegians Teenage Fanclub whose Francis Macdonald not uncoincidentally produced debut album Friday Night Lights (Universal).
Loads of chiming 12 string guitar, glorious harmonies and songs that make you feel like bouncing down the street, punching the air, glad to be alive. Prime among these would have to be the la la laaing stomping Never Get Sick Of the Sea, a ba ba baaing Walkie Talkie and Brian Wilsonesque ooo oooing new single Wendy, while for the quieter curl up moments you could do worse than piano ballad Dark Eyes and Winter On. Best of all though is the shimmering mid-tempo summer pop radiance Late Night Sunshine with its soaring anthemic hooks. Switch on to them now, they’re going to be illuminatory. 7.30pm. £16.50. Wulfrun Hall Friday November 7 Mercury Rev
They’ve been around for about the same time, making a fairly similar music, but in the four years since the last album, the Rev have rather been overshadowed by the breakout success of Flaming Lips. New album, Snowflake Midnight (CoOp), is unlikely to reverse the situation or even put them on an equal commercial standing, but its psychedelic airy ambience and dreamy electronic soundscapes both maintains and re-imagines the sounds they’ve been producing over a fairly turbulent career. The suitably icy Snowflake In A Hotworld has driving pop beats while the eight minute Dream Of A Young Girl As A Flower is prog rock for rave parties, but otherwise the mood’s generally blissed with the likes of an aurora borealis dipped and cosmic windstormed Senses On Fire, an off-planet cinematic Runaway Raindrop and the handclapping shimmering Faraway From Cars which sounds like a backdrop for some Japanese water garden. The album’s other epic, a nears even minute People Are So Unpredictable could have been downloaded from a Blade Runner replicant’s iPod. It’s unclear whether the live set will have you sitting in a trance like state for the flutterings or whirling around to the electronic dissonance, chances are probably both, but you certainly won’t be left feeling you’ve sat through anything predictable. 7pm. £16. Carling Academy Friday November 7 Gigbeth
Now firmly established in the city’s musical calendar, the two day eclectic music fest returns spreading its wings even wider this time around with performances and DJ sets in all manner of venues and spaces. The local scene’s well represented with a Catapult Club package in the Dragon and Temple bars featuring the likes of Hot Monocles, The Courtesy Group, Subkicks and The Brascoes. In the Rainbow, there’s a blast from the WestMids past with the return after some 25 years, of Wolverhampton reggae outfit Capital Letters. Marrying the angular art rock of XTC and Pulp, Ashby de la Zouch trio Young Knives toplining the Barfly, doubtless turning the dance floor into a seething mass with Dyed In The Wool, the ridiculously catchy flurry-pop single lifted from amid its equally infectious companions on the Superabundance album. Headline name of the night in Space 2 will be the recently much maligned but indisputably genius orchestral pop bombast of Guillemots. 7pm. £15 (£25 weekend). Saturday November 8 Gigbeth
The second day of the fest bring cosmic progrock outfit Anathema to the Barfly while there’s free music at South Birmingham College in the evening from The Destroyers, Birmingham soul sensation Bryn Christopher and Musical Youth.
4Talent commissioning editor Catherine Bray will be on hand to receive demos and portfolios from aspiring artists/bands/film makers, etc. and on the 4Talent stage in the Barfly’s Dragon Bar you’ll find local representation from electronica ensemble The Keyboard Choir (how can you resist anyone with a song called Free Lunch For Depraved Criminals), eminently fine krautrockers Einstellung, the suitably deranged dub grime pop of Iain Woods & The Psychologist, electronic improvisers Icarus and, stretching further into songs rather than instrumentals, pianist virtuoso Richard Batsford. He’s also playing the same day round the corner at the Rainbow Warehouse (9pm-6am £10 or £25 inc Gigbeth) for Drop Beats Drop Bombs with Komonasmuk & Whitye Boi, Incyte, and Vicious Circle with all profits to CND and Campaign Against Arms Trade. Back at the fest in Space 2, there’s an acoustic set from Miles Hunt and Erica Knockalls while the coup of the festival brings in legendary 70s hip hop rappers Sugarhill Gang who will, naturally, be causing waves of nostalgia as they launch into Rapper’s Delight. From 2pm. £18 (£25 weekend) Custard Factory Saturday November 8 Edwina Hayes
The Dublin born, Preston based singer is out on the road for the release of her sophomore album, Pour Me A Drink (Twirly Music). You’ll get a good feel for the live show since it’s a stripped back acoustic affair mostly featuring just Hayes and her finger-picked guitar. And splendid stuff it is too, lovelorn steeped in melancholic folk, sometimes leaning to the trad as with the opening Run, tinged with the blues on Season Of Love and the Clive Gregson co-written barstool heartbreak waltzer title track, or, reflecting her time spent in Nashville, streaked with Americana (and Yorkshire pronunciation) for the gorgeous Irish Waltz. It’s an intimate, achingly introspective affair with Hayes wearing her heart on her tongue, leavening the sweetness with a sprinkle of emotional pepper. Along with a joyous version of the traditional nursery song Froggie A Courting, possibly the best since Burl Ives, she’s included a moving interpretation of Richard Thompson’s Waltzing’s For Dreamers and a yearningly wistful cover of Randy Newman’s Feels Like Home. That self-penned numbers like Leave A Light On For You, Call Me and the Janis Ian-like I Won’t Say Your Name don’t even begin to wilt in their shadow speaks volumes of Hayes’ gifts. Raise a glass of your own and toast her talent.8pm. £9. Red Lion, Kings Heath Saturday November 8 Martyn Joseph
First Loudon Wainwright III did it, now the man who’s been dubbed the Welsh Springsteen has gone back and revisited some of his early songs in the light of the years and experiences since their inception. So, for the just released Evolved (Pipe) he’s taken 15 numbers and stripped them back to acoustic guitar and occasional harmonica to reflect how they live and breathe in today’s performances. Indeed it’s the nearest ‘studio’ album to come close to the power of his live shows and the heartfelt passion as he digs into the core of the songs’ stories and themes. Here then are vulnerable self-examining songs of faith and doubt like Turn Me Tender, Arizona Dreams’ laments for America’s lost innocence, the compassion of This Being Woman and the political clenched fists and charged anger of The Good In Me Is Dead and Dic Penderyn. The latter’s one of several of his Welsh-centric songs revisited here and, like the broken redundant miners of Please Sir and Proud Valley Boy’s memory of Paul Robeson’s inspirational visit, is hewn from the coal face heritage of his native land. If you’ve yet to see him work his rich seam in concert, then this seems a good time to take your own next step on the evolutionary path. 7.30pm. £15. B’ham Library Theatre Saturday November 8 The Christmas Lights Concert To mark the switching on of the city’s energy friendly Christmas lights, the first with an at least partly Christian theme in years, a whole array of stars have been lined up for a day of free concerts, kicking off at 3pm and building up to the headline climax.
Slipping in a quickie before moving on to their Wolverhampton Civic Hall gig in the evening, Acton rock n roll roll trio Scouting For Girls will be breezing through tracks from their eponymous debut, among them It’s Not About You, Elvis Ain’t Dead and timely titled new single I Wish I Was James Bond.
Featuring former S Club Juniors members Frankie and Rochelle, new girl group The Saturdays will be putting catchy pop-r&b hit singles If This Is Love and Up through their paces along with tasters from appropriately named hot of the presses album Chasing Lights (Polydor).
Model and former Mis-Teeq member Alesha Dixon’s solo career hit a brick wall when she lost her record deal two years ago. However, having captured the public eye again when she as crowned Strictly Come Dancing champ last year, she’s on her way back up with upcoming album The Alesha Show (Asylum) from which she’ll doubtless be spotlighting current mambo-esque single The Boy Does Nothing and such tumblingly catchy numbers as Breathe Slow and the Lily-Allenish Don’t Ever Let Me Go.
Alongside emergent soul star Taio Cruz and Danish electro-poppers Alphabeat, John Barrowman will be pre-empting his return to the Birmingham Hippodrome panto to give a quick plug to grow on you AOR ballad new single What About Us and the upcoming new album.
Having failed to score the expected No 1 slots with either new single Don’t Call This Love or debut album Right Now (Syco), last year’s X-Factor winner Leon Jackson pops by ahead of next year’s tour to convince he’s not already a spent force or a second division Will Young.
He’s yet to prove he has any real charisma, but there’s no denying the Sinatra-like big band title track, a hip swaying Bobby Darin mambo rhythmed Creative and a mellowed version of You Don’t Know Me show he has the voice.
Headlining the bash, switching on the lights and triggering the fireworks, is pop-soul star Lemar, another talent show veteran, who’ll be previewing upcoming album The Reason and, sounding remarkably like Take That’s Patience, new single If She Knew (Epic). 3pm-7.30pm. Free. Millenium Point. Saturday November 8 The Vivians
The press release calls it 21st century rock n roll, but really this Edinburgh four piece (not to be confused with the North Carolina trio of the same name) are just playing anger and sexual tension charged new wave punk reminiscent of The Clash, Stranglers (with less bass) or even 999. Debut single A Human Angle was a solid whirlwind of buzzing guitars and barrelling rhythms with the accompanying Divided We Stand an even bigger and tighter anthemic fury. A follow up is much overdue, but their path to a stranglehold on 2009 is already laid down. 8pm. £4. 444 Club, Sunflower Lounge, Holloway Circus Sunday November 9 Laura Marling
Back to remind people about the Alas, I Cannot Swim album when they put together the Christmas list, the teen jazzed folk songstress will doubtless be parading such highlights as the skitteringly catchy Ghosts, My Manic’s gypsy colours, the trembling hurt of Shine and current single, the rumbling violin scraped fever chills of Night Terror. 7.30pm. £12. Glee Club Sunday November 9 Less Than Jake
They’ve only ever had a single minor Top 40 hit here with either album (Anthem) and single (She’s Gonna Break soon), and they were both five years ago, but the Florida ska-punk quintet enjoy a large, dedicated following that always ensures packed, sweat soaked gigs. Things should be no different tonight as they plug album number eight, GNV FLA (Cooking Vinyl), another solid collection of jumping, brass driven power-pop which may not show much musical variation between tracks but which, with the likes of Does The Lion City Still Roar?, The State Of Florida, Golden Age of My Negative Ways, This One’s Gonna Leave A Bruise and Summon Monsters, is never less than ebulliently bouncing good fun. Devotees and newcomers alike will also be pleased to learn that their new label has also repackaged and reissued the 1995 debut Pezcore and the same year’s EPs and singles compilation Losers, Kings, and Things We Don’t Understand complete with bonus DVD live performances. 6.30pm. £14. Carling Academy Monday November 10 The Feeling
A second go-round of dates promoting Join With Us (Island), their debut album’s sophomore identical twin packed once again with the same infectiously catchy 70s retro pop that made Love It When You Call an airwaves standard. So, more chances to bounce along to Without You, Turn It Up and Don’t Make Me Sad alongside early evergreens Feel My Little World and Love It. 7.30pm. £22.50. W’hampton Civic Hall Monday November 10 Neon Neon
A side project from Super Furry’s frontman Gruf Rhys and producer collaborator Boom Bip, this might be the only chance you get to see them since their Mercury Music Prize nominated album, Stainless Style (Lex) was conceived purely as a one off. And a concept one-off at that, being specifically built around the life story of engineer John DeLorean (Back to The Future, remember), his love for fast cars and fast women and eventual business collapse and arrest in an FBI coke sting. It’s an intriguing oddity, an electro pop album with string shimmering 50s meets 80s flavours on Dream Cars, a marriage of Giorgio Moroder and Psychedelic Furs for I Told Her On Alderaan, the hip hop of Trick For Treat and the jerky clattering Sweat Shop, Luxury pool’s rap, psychedelic electro funk with Michael Douglas and the sheen of glittering bleeps, beats and pop struts that are Raquel, Steel Your Girl and Belfast. You’ll hear hints of John Foxx, Numan, Duran, Prince and the Cure purring behind the engine noise for what promises to be something of a musically diverse but utterly fascinating journey. 7.30pm. £10. Glee Club Monday November 10 Okkervil River
Taking their name from a short story by Russian author Tatyana, the roots-rock flavoured Austin indie outfit are celebrating their 10th anniversary but it was only last year that they finally made the breakthrough with their The Stage Names album. They return now to capitalise on the momentum with The Stand Ins (Jagjaguwar), a collection of bitter swipes at the cynical, shallow pop world all wrapped up in catchy, toe-tapping uplifting melodies, beaming guitars and, on Lost Coastlines, even a la la, la la la la chorus. From the country lollopping Singer Songwriter through the Jonathan Richman-like On Tour With Zykos and the Sonny & Cher recalling 60s pop of Calling And Not Calling My Ex to the closing Bruce Wayne Campbell Interviewed On the Roof of the Chelsea Hotel, 1979, a song about doomed 79s gay rocker Jobriath, this is some of the most glorious music that pop that a loathing of pop music has ever produced. 7.30pm. £11.50. Wulfrun Hall Tuesday November 11 Noah & The Whale
After Marling, now here’s her old band. You’ll doubtless be well familiar with their whistling, ukulele plucking 5 Years Time and the equally catchy languid Kinks-like single Shape Of My Heart. They’ll be the centre points of a set built around their Peaceful The World Lays Me Down (Mercury) album with such folk pop shanty type tunes handclappy, piano plinking ballad Give A Little Love, musical box love song Mary, Jocasta’s folksy calypso and the shuffling campfire fiddle bouncing Rocks And Daggers. Marling was still around for the album, offering colour and texture to Charlie Fink’s slightly monotone melancholic vocals, so it’ll be interesting to see how they fill the gap live and avoid things slipping into the humdrum. However, they clearly have the musical personality to make it worth finding out. 7.30pm. £8.50. Glee Club Tuesday November 11 AlterBridge
Rumours that singer Myles Kennedy would be taking Robert Plant’s place on the supposed Led Zep tour can be put on hold for at least a while, since he and the band are over here for their own belated live support of last year’s Blackbird (Universal Republic) album. It’s a solid welter of hard riffing American post-grunge blues metal that bulldozes its way through molten sludge like Come To Life, Buried Alive, and One By One, punctuated by such relatively more sensitive, acoustic limned numbers as the anthemic ballad Before Tomorrow Comes and Rise Today. More likely to be sonic thunderstorm than a mild downpour live, though.
Opening will be Hot Leg, the dodgily named new outfit featuring former Darkness frontman Justin Hawkins. They’re still playing cards close to their chest in terms of leaking out samples of the music, but upcoming debut single Trojan Guitar (Barbecue Rock) is a bit of a surprise, sounding as it does very much like glam rock Queen with a marching military beat, swaggering guitars and Hawkins doing his Mercury falsetto counterpointed by deep voiced Runrig-like passages that you half expect to give way to skirling bagpipes rather than the Brian May style guitar solo. Five minutes of playful, smile-inducing party rock n roll, it clearly doesn’t take itself seriously, all the more reason to expect it and them to become pub favourites pretty snappily. 7.30pm. £16. W’hampton Civic Hall Wednesday November 12 John Martyn
Having just turned 60, the veteran jazz-folk-blues singer-songwriter’s the latest to climb aboard the classic album-in-its-entirety tour bandwagon. For his contribution he’s opted for Grace & Danger written and recorded in 1979 while in the throes of divorce from wife and former musical partner Beverley with whom he’d made Stormbringer a decade earlier. Deemed too depressing to release by label boss Chris Blackwell, it was delayed for a year, but proved to be one of Martyn’s best, most successful and most enduring albums. So, here you have it, with him revisiting old wounds and working his way through the seven numbers from Some People Are Crazy to Our Love by way of Sweet Little Mystery, Johnny Too Bad and the title track. That the original album only clocked in at just over 30 minutes means that either he’s got some lengthy anecdotes prepared or that he’ll be fleshing out the set with choices from other, obviously less favoured, albums. 7.30pm. £24.50. B’ham Town Hall Wednesday November 12/Thursday November 13 Bullet For My Valentine
The Welsh metalcore outfit released Scream, Aim, Fire earlier this year, a Top 5 follow up to the uncompromising assault that was Poison with its guttural vocals and tortured, machine gunning guitars and skull pummelling drums. With the likes of Walking The Demon and the title track, it’s no less bone crushing though Hearts Burst Into Fire does again throw up their 70s prog and American punk influences. That they’ve virtually sold out two nights clearly suggests that world domination can only be one more album away.
Support comes from teen Miami rockers Black Tide whose debut album, Light From Above (Interscope), variously recalls the early days of Skid Row, Motley Crue, WASP and, on current single Shout, vintage Iron Maiden. With some blistering fretwork from Gabriel Garcia, they’re guaranteed to get the heads banging and air guitarists frenzied, but they’ll need to escape from their 80s metal record collection if they ever want to find their own identity. 7.30pm. £18.50. Carling Academy Friday November 14 McFly
Having left Island to strike out on their own with self-label Super and take charge of their own creative decisions, having been accustomed to topping the charts the lads had a slight reality check when new, rockier single Lies stalled at No 4 and accompanying album Radioactive could only manage the No 8 spot. Not that they should have any concerns about the music, since One For The Radio, Everybody Knows, Going Through The Motions and Only The Strong Survive are all comfortably at the sharp end of the pop spectrum, though it must be said that, while catchy, Do Ya sounds uncomfortably too close to a cross between Darkness and the Bay City Rollers. Although not really a million miles away from The Fratellis, they’re never going to have the cool to become a cynical music hack’s favourite, but with The Last Song’s stadium anthemics, the Beatles influences of Going Through The Motions and a big ballad soarer in POV, they’re in little danger of losing their grip on the public ear, even if they may have to start settling for less glittering chart prizes.
Support comes from Manchester’s whippersnapper indie pop wannabes Reemer who made a solid first impression with fizzy debut single Maniac and now look to take on the mainstream with slightly Who-like guitar chugging follow up Rockstar. It’s lifted from debut album Snakes And Ladders (Reaction) which comes well stacked with similarly styled buoyant melodies, big choruses and effervescent guitars on such crowd-pleasers in waiting as Summer Sun, Find My Place and swayalong acoustic ballad Same Old Games. 7.30pm. £26/£16. LG Arena Saturday November 15 Ida Maria
The Norwegian pixie pop fireball returns for another go round with debut album Fortress Round My Heart (RCA) and its short sharp punky 70s garage pop songs that, like Queen Of The World, give you an idea what The Strokes might be like were they fronted by a cross betwixt Bjork, Chrissie Hynde and Janis Joplin. See Me Through and Keep Me Warm are warm early hours slow dance ballads, but it’s the ditties about drinking too much (Oh My God), depression (the feisty folk Drive Away My Heart), sexual politics (the Blondie goes mod I Love You So Much Better When You’re Naked), God (Stella) and love (sherbet dab explosion Louie) that you’ll be wanting upfront on the set list tonight. 7pm. £8. Barfly Saturday November 15 Chris While & Julie Matthews
Back together for their first collection of new material in three years, the country's answer to the McGarrigles will be lining up choice selections from Together Alone (Fat Cat) with its glorious harmonies and songs that cut to the personal and political heart. A mini soap opera pitch about folk that share a four storey building, the title track’s one of the strongest numbers, but Take These Bones, a piano based Carole King sounding ballad inspired by the stories of girls and young women pressed into prostitution for the military by the Japanese government in WWII, runs it close. They’re not the only new gems you’ll want to be rolled out tonight alongside old favourites. So, make a point of barricading the doors until they’ve at least sung A Simple Twist of Fate’s bittersweet tale of a relationship wrecked on the rocks of a casual pick up and a car crash, Single Act of Kindness, a touching tribute to those who stretched out their hands to help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the naked emotion of Blue Old Saturday Night with While taking lead on the story of an abused wife. 8pm. £10. Red Lion, Kings Heath Saturday November 15 Ladytron
Four albums in and, despite their best efforts, the Anglo-Bulgarian electro quartet are not much nearer finding wider acceptance beyond a loyal fanbase. Clearly sweetened industrial electro-noir reminiscent of early Ultravox or Depeche Mode isn’t currently in general public favour otherwise current album, Velocifero (Nettwerk) would surely have fared much better with such pulsing neon-splashed wet street vibes as Runaway and The Lovers not to mention the glam pop romping Ghosts, Tomorrow or Burning Up, any of which would have warranted hit single status in earlier times. Even sung in Bulgarian, Black Cat’s heady meld of Kratfwerk and Roxy reveals the sort of hypnotic qualities that deserve far more commercial respect. The likelihood of them breaking out of the cult ghetto now seems slim, but those who’ve stuck with them have no cause for complaint. 7pm. £12.50. Kasbah, Coventry Sunday November 16 Murcof
This should be an interesting one. Making his first full UK tour, Murcof is Mexican electronic composer Fernando Corona who’s already released three albums via Leaf, the most recent of which is The Versailles Sessions. Composed for the annual festival of light and sound in Versailles, it comprises six pieces derived from recordings of such 17th century baroque instruments as harpsichord and viola de gamba. With a mezzo soprano featured strikingly on A Lesson For The Future, Farewell To The Old Ways and the violin highlight that is Louis XIV’s demons, it’s a mesmerising fusion of electronics and classical. He won’t be featuring it tonight, but does afford a taster of what to expect as, using live strings along with recorded sound, he unveils his new audiovisual suite, Oceano, as the tracks shift and mutate as they unfurl. If the likes of Arvo Pärt or Henryk Górecki press your button, this is one not to miss. Setting the scene for the evening will be tuba player Oren Marshall whose improvisational approach embraces jazz, classical and world music. 8pm. £10. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath Sunday November 16 Army Of Freshmen
Another week, another new name to be added to the list of American pop-punk bands who’d like to be the new Blink-182. Such ambitions seems likely to remain unfulfilled, but at least the California crew’s self-released fifth album, Above The Atmosphere (AOF) has ample perky power pop, nasal vocals and fizzy guitars to keep its head above water. It’s just that they sound like so many other outfits plying the same thing. No One’s Famous comes on like a cross between Wheatus and Barenaked Ladies, Centre of Gravity has the Blink blueprint, Any Other Way has a touch of the Plain White Ts, there’s a splash of Ben Folds around Condition Christine while the likes of Turn It Up, It Never Rains In Los Angeles and the handclappy Lost in A Crowd all make perfect bedfellows with their buddies Bowling For Soup. Oddly, the descending chords intro to Leaves comes straight out of Born To Run! They do it well and there’s plenty of toe-tapping melodies to have you bouncing along, but after ten years, the chances of them now graduating to the big pop college seems slim.
Support comes from Essex trio Koopa who, comprising Cooper brothers Stuart and Oliver and co-founder Joe Murphy, hold the distinction of being the first unsigned band to enter the Top 40 on downloads alone. Since then they’ve had a further two download only hits, but they’re now signed to a proper label, Pied Piper, and gearing up to get physical. First out of the gate will be jogging laddish dual vocal new single, Gimme It Back, a solid taster for next year’s Lies Sell Stories album, which they’ll be showcasing tonight with such numbers as the swaggering B-boy feel of Ain’t No Friend Of Mine, pubpunk two fingers shoutalong Outcasts and the jerking Less Than Jake inclinations of The Crash and Rock And Roll. 7pm. £7.50. Carling Academy 2 Sunday November 16 The Kills
Opening with the crunchy slow marching beat U.R.A. Fever sounding like Sonic Youth chewing on Portishead’s trip hop ribs, Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince’s third album, Midnight Boom (Domino) marks the peak of their lo fi scuzzed blues and art-punk to date. Stripped back more to the exposed bone with beats and bleeps bleeding through, Cheap And Cheerful may owe a little to Britney’s Toxic shockpop but those with extensive record collections might also find themselves spotting Flying Lizards, Danielle Dax and Talking Heads influences along with the usual White Stripes, Velvets, PJ Harvey references as they shift between the tracks. It wouldn’t be a push either to suggest Sour Cherry may have an ancestor in Shirley Ellis’ Clapping Song Feral and sexual in the primal swamp, numbers like Last Day Of Magic, Hook And Line, and Getting Down virtually like you all over with their hot aural tongue but elsewhere they’re more subtly seductive on the electronics-free Goodnight Bad Morning and even sparkily pop with What New York Used To Be. They make a heck of a noise for two people and a drum machine, and their live energy is utterly ferocious. Make sure you’re in at the kills. 7pm. £11. Kasbah, Coventry Monday November 17 Ryan Adams and The Cardinals
After releasing three albums in 2005 and forever posting new material on his website, Adams has been taking it a little easier of late, and Cardinology (Lost Highway) is his first release in over a year. Good to see he’s being using the time profitably to put together a solid, mature and thoughtful set of alt-country veined rock with sturdy input from fellow Cardinals Neal Casal, Chris Feinstein, Jon Graboff and Brad Pemberton. There’s a clutch of driving, riff spraying mid and uptempo rockers, spearheaded by Magick with the Lou Reed-shaped Go Easy, and a Neil Young like funky burn Fix It snapping at its heels. Indeed, there’s a fair element of Young spread around here across the likes of Let Us Down Easy, the brooding Natural Ghost and Stop although the shadow of Gram Parsons also falls across the country rock of Evergreen and Born Into Light while Cobwebs surely harbours U2 ambitions. He’s been a little erratic in the past, but if he and the band are on the same form live as they were when they recorded the album, it would be a cardinal sin not to be there to appreciate it. 7.30pm. £24. Carling Academy Tuesday November 18 Beth Nielsen Chapman
It’s billed as an intimate evening, so expect just her, a guitar and piano with the emphasis on the more introspective material from across her lengthy and impressive career. Doubtless much will still be drawn from the Deeper Still and Look albums which were rooted in songs informed by her husband’s death and her struggle with breast cancer, as well as the even more hymnal numbers from Prism and its songs of devotion and the spiritual. If you were putting together a choice set list, you’d definitely want to find Be Still My Soul, Prayers of an Atheist, Touch My Heart, Every December Sky and, going back earlier, Sand And Water on the running order. But whatever she turns her crystal clear, warm voice and heart to will be all right by the devoted admirers. And, with Christmas nearing, maybe she’ll throw in Veni Veni Emmanuel too. 7.30pm. £21. Glee Club Tuesday November 18 Paul Carrack
Everytime a new Carrack albums rolls around, everyone says he’s one of the great underrated voices and songwriters in blue-eyed British soul. There’s no reason to expect response to I Know That Name (Absolute) to be any different. There’s no surprises here, just quality performance, whether he’s taking ownership of a classic like the album’s sole cover, Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City, or matching it for class with self-penned soul-blues numbers like I Don’t Want To Hear Any More or the duet with Sam (of Sam & Dave) on the brass rolling Love Is Thicker Than Water. The latter number has a hint of the Jimmy Cliff about it and there’s a fair bit of more upfront reggae on the album too with Eyes Of Blue and Just 4 Tonite, but it’s the Bobby Bland and Jerry Butler influences apparent on I Don’t Want Your Love (I Need Your Love) and No Doubt About It that burn the deepest. A masterful live performer into the bargain, it should be a knockout evening. 7.30pm. £24.50. B’ham Town Hall Tuesday November 18 My American Heart
A part Filipino emo outfit from San Diego, this is their first headline UK tour, so they’ll be looking to drum up interest in last year’s Hiding Inside The Horrible Weather (Bodog) album. It might be a bit of an uphill struggle if audiences don’t look beyond the cliches and a formula that Panic At The Disco have already ditched as tired. However, there’s a certain youthful energy and attitude to opening highlight Boys! Grab Your Guns and the guitar swirling riffs of Speak Low If You Speak Love and the scratchy toughened up title track that do grab your attention. Problem is, the rockier numbers ultimately all tends to shade into one and, while they admirably make stabs at crossing beyond their musical borders with the bluesy soul ballad Dangerous and the poppier swell of Moving On, they’re not necessarily up to the job. And you can only live in hope they don’t attempt the dire acoustic dirge All My Friends as part of the set, or at least not until the end when an exodus to the bar won’t be quite as bad. 7.30pm. £10. Barfly Tuesday November 18 Amsterdam
Nothing to do with the Netherlands actually, but from Liverpool, a six piece who can count Elvis Cosetllo among their fans, not to mention Irish folk legend Christy Moore who lends his voice to the folk-blues Nothing’s Going Right on the band’s new Arm In Arm (CIA) album. A heartfelt collection of songs of love, loss and, on the 60’s soul-folk flavoured, muted trumpet accompanied Hatred Is Wasted, being on the end of a Friday night kicking. Fiddle and Uillean pipes help the title track sway along for closing time and The Lament could well pick up younger members of the Sawdoctors fan club, but then a soulfully dreamy You Are My Lover, the lovely spare acoustic Rosie, and a stompy Lifestyle are ample evidence that they’re not just another Celtic rock combo while Feels Like Growing Up is a marvellous excursion into anthemic melancholy. They get a bit lost when they swamp the songs with orchestral arrangements, but working with the raw materials live they promise to have you going dutch. 7.30pm. £6. Little Civic, W’hampton Wednesday November 19 Elton John
The UK leg of the Red Piano Las Vegas show hits town (returning on Dec 16), trailing a reputation for flamboyant excess not seen since Reg’s early, costume frenzy days. With the iconic red joanna as the centrepiece, designed by David LaChapelle it’s basically a troll through his greatest hits, or at least the greatest hits that are about love, all staged on a larger than life set with effects, imagery and, as you might imagine, a great deal of red. The set list’s is guaranteed to include such classics as Rocket man, Your Song, Yellow Brick Road and Canle In The Wind, though I guess it depends on your notion of love as to whether you’ll be anticipating Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting and The Bitch is Back.
Warming up will be Corrie star turned singer Richard Fleeshman trying to salvage his career after three singles and debut album Neon all failed to chart. Actually, he’s better than many actors who try to cut it into the music business, with a Jackson Browne-like voice and the ability to pen decent soft-rock songs like Back Here as well as deliver respectable covers of both Semisonic’s Secret Smile and Hey Jealousy by Gin Blossoms, both of which suggest he’s got a tasteful CD collection too. Worth giving him the chance to impress. 7.30pm. £100-£50. NIA Wednesday November 19 Red Light Company
A London based five piece with members drawn from England, Scotland Wales and Wyoming, their shimmering narcotic guitar pop and elegiac melodies has been likened to Arcade Fire and Editors. They’re not unjustified comparisons either, as ably demonstrated by the piano and guitar rush previous single Meccano with its tumbling choral haze and current euphoric follow-up Scheme Eugene (Lavolta), a little ditty about the car crash relationship between a sex addict and drug addict. 8pm. £5. 444 Club, The Rainbow, Digbeth Wednesday November 19 Hate Gallery
There’s no frills for this kick ass night of riff spraying, booze soaked, sleazed and swaggering rock n roll. Formerly with Radiator, Queen Adreena and Warrior Soul, bassist and frontman Janne Jarvis now heads this Anglo-Swedish-Finnish outfit, here to unleash debut album Compassion Fatigue (Unit), a blistering 11 track set of thundering rhythms and incendiary guitar that welds together Hanoi Rocks and Motorhead and slides some Sabbath and QOTSA between the cracks. There’s no time for wimpy ballads, but if you just need to clear the head with a blast of punked up heavy rock then Good Things Come To Those Who Hate, Shedding Skin, the deceptively melodic Exit Wounds and The Idiots are well recommended.
They’re teamed here with UK based bass throbbing Swedish stoner crew labelmates Stonewall Noise Orchestra whose Constants In An Ever Changing Universe also owes a debt to Josh Homme’s outfit as well as the grinding bluesy metal of Zep and Sabbath with vocalist Singe often recalling Ozzy Osborne. Things get a bit psychedelic on Hollow Parade, The Inventor and Venus Travel Agency as the band reveal a firm grip on hypnotic riffs while the monumental closing Unknown Of Me reveals a keen ear for blues soaked groove rock arrangements. So many hard rock acts never manage to rise above the genre ghetto, but you get the feeling this lot might well prove an exception. 7.30pm. £7. Bar Academy Wednesday November 19 Peter Bruntnell, Jeb Loy Nichols, Michael Weston King
A handy triple set, likely performing solo but with some shared moments, this is ane arly Christmas present for devotees of country-folk singer-songwriters. MWK’s fairly well known around these parts and, fresh from an admirable set with wife Lou Dalgleish recently in Kings Heath, he’s taking time out from recording their country duets album to dip into his estimable songbag of classic heartfelt, dust coated songs of love, loss, and yearning. Hailing from Missouri but now based in Wales, after exploring dub and lovers rock colours to his rootsy Americana, Nichols currently trades in country soul and will be showcasing his new album Now Then as well as songs from such previous outings as Lover’s Knot and Days Are Mighty. Often assumed to be American, but actually from Kingston-On-Thames and now resident in Devon, Bruntnell has a solid reputation among the alt-country brigade. Surprise then to find his new album, Peter And The Murder Of Crows (Loose), leaning much more towards English folk of the Jansch and Barrett variety. Although you’ll hear electric tanpuras, Indian harmonium, sitar and bowed double bass, it’s a simple, uncluttered album and while psychedelic flourishes may put in an appearance here and there, as with the Eastern drone rock on False Start and climax of Hash Dream Craving, the musical mood is generally low key and husked. It may well catch fans offguard, but the likes of the strummed blues-folk Devil’s Good Son, a breezy Domestico and the autumnal crispness of Cold Water Swimmer and Clothes Of Winter should win them over with ease. 7.30pm. £9. Little Civic, W’hampton Thursday November 20 Megson
For their third album, Take Yourself A Wife (EDJ), Debbie Palmer and Stu Hanna have plunged into the deep end of the folk pool. Previous releases have mixed together trad with their own self-penned, 60s folk-pop influenced songs, but this time round everything comes from nine North-East songwriters who lived in the area encompassing the Cleveland Hills to south of the Scottish borders between the years 1700 and 1950. As you'd anticipate, the playing and arrangements are stripped down to the nuts and bolts with the duo relying solely on concertina, mandola, mandolin, fiddles, bass and guitar, perfectly capturing the organic nature of the songs themselves. It’s a rich collection, with notable highlights including Sandgate Lassie's Lament about a young man press-ganged into the Royal Navy, The New Fish Market (an early town planning protest song), the rousing Fourpence A Day, Little Joe’s tale of a musician’s life on the road and, bolstered by electric guitar, Jane Jamieson's Ghost story of a C19th street vendor executed for matricide. Woven between their own material, it provides the basis for what promises to a rich and lustily sung night. 7.30pm. £10. Kitchen Garden Cafe, Kings Heath Thursday November 20 The Notwist
It’s six years since the German outfit went mildly electronic with Neon Golden, and it seems they’ve not thrown out the batteries in the interim, returning now with The Devil, You + Me (Domino), an emotionally detached dalliance through melancholy that marries ticking, skittering beats, synths and the odd industrial clank (On Planet Off) with puttering hushed watery folk. Despite the shimmering guitars that coat the opening marital collapse number Good Lies, with Markus Archer’s studiedly uninvolved delivery, it’s not an easy album to warm. Persist, though, and things like the cosmic winds of Where In The World, the curling melody that enfolds Gravity, Alphabet’s musical jarred nerves and the snake charmer feel of Hands On Us slowly draw you in. Even so, the calm may well prove to be more chilly than might be good for the live encounter. 7.30pm. £10. Barfly Thursday November 20 Threatmantics
A drummer who simultaneously plays keyboards, a guitarist who doubles up on SatNav and a lead singer armed with a viola, it’s fair to say the Cardiff trio aren’t your usual rock n roll combo. Two offkilter tales of skewed romance behind them, they take to the road now for Upbeat Love (Double Six), a debut album that seems to owe much to a cocktail of The Pogues, Gogol Bordello and, on the menacing scuzzy surf guitar blues Big Man, a mutant Dancing Did. As befits the line-up, it’s a suitably idiosyncratic offering that juggles its appealingly ungainly way from Get Outta Town’s gypsy psychobilly jiggery stomp through the lurching zombie folk-drone High Waister and brushed lonesome country waltzer Lonely Heart to the spaghetti western mazurka cacophony Buried Alive and a swaggering Don’t Care which, sung partly in Welsh, sounds designed for swigging ale while leaping around burning bonfires in a Wicker Man stylee. Quite how much scope there is to build on a fairly ramshackle concept remains to be seen, but for now this promises a rumbustious knees up. 8pm. £10. Factory Club, Custard Factory Thursday November 20/Saturday November 22/Sunday November 23 Cliff Richard
The now traditional residency might no longer run for a week or more and there were few tents outside the box office this year, but St Cliff can still be relied on to pack in an army of devotees. Incredibly, this tour marks his 50th anniversary in the business and, just to shift a few more units, there’s yet another best of repackaging to coincide. Titled, rather obviously, Cliff’s 50th Anniversary Album (EMI) it has most of the obligatory big hits (though not, disappointingly Visions and All My Love or, mercifully, Santa’s List ), up to and including the recent dismal story of my life retrospective Thank You For A Lifetime. Undoubtedly, the live set will be one long stream of memories and, if you really do need more, there’s also a £100 8CD box set called And They Said It Wouldn’t Last that includes 35 previously unissued recordings (some 60s Disney covers among them) and, be still my beating heart, a commemorative gold coin. Sadly though, it’s too big to use in the shopping trolley. 7.30pm. £50/£45. NIA Friday November 21 Paul Weller
Weller’s also celebrating his 50th, although that’s in age rather than career terms, and like the Blessed Cliff has had his fallow years (the Style Council, please!) but, unlike Harry Webb, his recent music is among some of the best he’s ever produced. With nothing to prove, to himself or the audience, he’s in a position to kick back and do what he likes. How else do you explain releasing the airplay defying Bo Diddley gone Suicide meets Marc Bolan voodoo folk Echoes Round The Sun as a single! But, hang on, give that a few plays and you realise just how insidiously hypnotic the damn thing is. It comes from 22 Dreams (Island), an album that lets it all hang equally loose yet coheres as a persuasive, intoxicating whole as it explores the changing seasons in terms of a man’s life by way of experiments with jazz (Song For Alice with Robert Wyatt), electronica (111), tango (One Bright Star), African gospel (a brief The Dark Pages Of September Lead To The New Leaves On Spring) and, on God, even spoken word. He even turns out some dreamy orchestral show tune piano balladry with Invisible and the instrumental Lullaby Fur Kinder. Of course, there’s still also the familiar Mayfield funk of Have You Made Up Your Mind, the 60s acid-folk embodied on Light Nights, Cold Moment’s jazz funk and the straightahead retro soul rocking of 22 Dreams, Push It Along and the psychedelic party down title track. It overeaches at times but it’s a remarkable testament that, as he hits his half century, his creative fire is burning even fiercer than when he was an angry young Jam. 7.30pm. £30. LG Arena Friday November 21 Fight Like Apes
A synths-led Dublin quartet who list Siouxie and the Banshees, Devo, Foxy Music and Pavement among their influences, the debut album Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion, is due early next year. Meanwhile, a homage to the California Dreams TV show bad boy, new single Jake Summers (Model Citizen) is be incentive enough to go primate with Maykay’s cute sherbet pop little girl intro suddenly erupting into noisy New Wave yelping and squelchy electro squalls like a demented Bow Wow Wow. 7.30pm. £5. Barfly Friday November 21 Patsy Matheson
Leeds based acoustic quartet Waking The Witch having quit while they were ahead, Matheson has slipped back into solo mode, making a swift return to the frontline with new album A Little Piece of England (Witch). Still rooted in melancholic folk-rock tinged with the blues while there’s an electronic background thrumming to the trad feel of the connection-themed This New Song, there’s been no major sea-change since the group’s farewell album The Boys From The Abattoir. The harmonies may be missed, there’ll be no complaint about the power and passion of Matheson’s vocals or, indeed, her guitar work. The new songs come with plenty of bite too. Precious Little Soldier, the anti-war story of an unwed war widow and her child with his toy gun, and the Amy Winehouse inspired paparazzi blues Lamb To The Slaughter both burn with the political and personal, while a fiery Play the Game keeps its tit for tat imagery nicely ambiguous. There’s darkling romanticism with Addiction To You, heart’s yearning for the title track, and tenderness on Sunday Morning Song while Row Down to Wroxham is dreamy reverie and Ulverston Gypsy a tale of a female musician’s life (and loves) on the road. Perhaps the best moment though is the aching weariness of Treading Water Town, a song of stagnation and frustration played on fingerpicked and finger-tapped guitar destined to become a live highlight. She’ll likely be catching up on her previous solo albums in the set list too, but hopefully she’ll also find room to conjure up a couple of Witch memories too, after all songs like Rock n Roll and Jenny Thornton & The Boys From The Abattoir are too precious to consign to history. 8pm. £5. Tower of Song, Cotteridge Saturday November 22 Leonard Cohen
What can you say! Spurred by the need to replenish the retirement fund after it was misappropriated by his former manager, Cohen’s recently been trekking around the globe for his first tour in 15 years with what has been essentially a greatest hits live show. Sporting trademark black suit and hat, the 74 year old singer-poet was the undisputed highlight of this year’s Glastonbury Festival, even snaking his hips to dance as his gravel, nicotine and honey voice lit up the night to the strains of such classics as First We Take Manhattan, Suzanne, Sisters of Mercy, So Long Marianne, Bird On A Wire, Dance Me To The End Of Love. Tower of Song and, of course, the soul-shiveringly magnificent Hallelujah. Originally, wrongly dubbed the master of misery, his songs are infused with loneliness certainly but also intense romanticism and optimism and, as his concerts in the 70s revealed, the man can get them up dancing in the aisles with the best of them. It’s reasonable to assume that this is possibly the last chance to see the man in action on stage, so on no account should you allow the opportunity to slip past.
Also likely to figure in the set list is Everybody Knows, a song co-written with Sharon Robinson. A Grammy winning singer-songwriter, she was the woman on the cover of Cohen’s Ten New Songs album, which she also produced and sang on. Indeed, she co-wrote all the songs on the album, most memorably In My Secret Life, Land of Plenty and A Thousand Kisses Deep while other collaborations include Summertime, The Letter, and Waiting For the Miracle. Like Jennifer Warnes back when, she’s also part of his touring band. More than that, however, she also gets to open the show and spotlight her own debut album, Everybody Knows (Vibrant), for which Cohen’s provided the cover art. As you’ll have figured, it features her own version of the title track, transformed into a jazz-smoked bluesy soul ballad, alongside both a sultry Summertime and a tender Alexandra Leaving. Other than the weary low flame torch song The High Road, recorded by Bettye LaVette, the other songs would all appear to be new, or at least previously unheard, opening with the mellow soul Invisible Tattoo, Party For The Lonely’s late night groove, a bluesy The Train that evokes favourable comparison to Joni Mitchell’s jazz moods and Forever in A Kiss where those Sade and Roberta Flack references ring clear. Classy sophisticated adult soul for nights in front of the fire with a chilled wine and a warm glow of longing, it makes you wonder what took her so long to step into her own spotlight. Now she’s there, she going to set a hard benchmark to follow. 7.30pm. £75-£50. LG Arena Saturday November 22 Jim Moray
A bit of a coup for the venue, the former Birmingham Conservatoire student’s been feted on all sides as the great white hope of contemporary traditional British folk music, taking the past and resetting it in the 21st century. He’ll be digging deep into his current album, Low Culture (NIAG), for many the folk album of the year. I’m not wholly persuaded on that score, still finding his high pitched voice a little lacking in the earthy gravitas and seasoning some of his song choices need, but there’s no denying his way with arrangements. Trad incest-murder ballad Lucy Wan, for example, is reinvented with clattering beats, electronics and British-Ghanian rapper Bubbz while Leaving Australia is given a heady blues-jazz sheen along with African kora and mbira thumb-piano. Elsewhere The Rufford Park Poachers marries the medieval notes of the hurdy gurdy and melodeon with a rock sensibility that calls to mind the early work of Jethro Tull and Steeleye Span, the naked vocals of gallows curse Fanny Blair swing on background drone, samples and jazz sax and Across The Western Ocean could as easily smooth its way into the hearts of James Blunt’s fan club as the folk circuit. He’s not all about the dim and distant, though. Three Black Feathers is a cover of a song from last year’s debut album by new generation singer-fiddler Bella Hardy while All You Pretty Girls is a stomping singalong brass band sea shanty revamp of the XTC tune. Hidden away at the end of the album, there’s also the self-penned waltzing Adam Ant Alone In His Padded Cell, a sadness infused lament about the former star’s breakdown, arrest and sectioning. If he can be persuaded to include that in the set list tonight, it’ll be the cherry on the top of a night to remember. 8pm. £10. Red Lion, Kings Heath Saturday November 22 Raymond Froggatt
The Birmingham Rain tour finally makes its hometown call, bringing Froggy, Hartley Cain and the band back to their roots for a night of Froggatt evergreens and choice cuts from the country hued Birmingham Rain album with the world weary romanticism of Love Me A Lot, the reflective Autumn Rain, I’ll Be Seein’ You Tonight and A Matter Of Time, the title track paying loving tribute to his hometown and the musicians it spawned in the 60s. If the city ever has a hall of fame, Froggy fully deserves to be there in the roll call. 7.30pm. £18. B’ham Town Hall Sunday November 23 Flipron
Burlesque and Weimar cabaret are clearly big in the heart of Glastonbury band mainman Jesse Budd, most obviously so in the case of Mavis and Dreams of Wealth, the first two tracks on new album Gravity Calling (Tiny Dog). But then you get to the title track and you find yourself holidaying on a Caribbean island with Madness while How It Works takes you out for a beer and bourbon in a smoky jazz dive, Book Of Lies is a deranged carnival show, A Scoundrel’s Apology, Almost sips absinthe with a Parisian cafe piano player in 1900s France and Orpheus Inconsolable has Divine Comedy holding hands with Ray Davies and whistling down the street. Eccentric and playful but also intelligently pointed with lyrics that are far from disposable whimsy, you’ll hear the influence of Sparks but also the largely forgotten Sensational Alex Harvey Band who brought a distinct touch of cabaret theatrical flourishes to their albums and live shows.
Guaranteed to be far more than just a band playing the album, this should perk up the night no end and put you on a glad footing for week ahead. All the more so since they share the bill with local heroes Misty’s Big Adventure once again proving themselves the definite purveyors of cosmic lounge music with Television’s People (Grumpier Fun), a smart, witty album about the day in the live of a couch potato as, exposed to a constant barrage of advertising and banality, he slowly loses his marbles. The subject matter’s not exactly original, but Grandmaster Gareth and co make it all immensely listenable with the likes of the bontempi bopping title track, the brassy swing of Start Of The Century, a marvellous Morricone influenced There’s Something In The Road, the Madness meets Neil Hannon baggy pop Between Me And You and the seminal Misty’sisms of Something’s Wrong, the carousel jazzy Lunch (which apparently features Gruff Rhys chewing vegetables) and the asylum’s cocktail bar instrumental Closedown. Marvellous idiot box music for the YouTubeway army. 6pm. £10. Bar Academy Monday November 24 Stephen Fretwell
He’s been a bit quiet in recent months, but the Scunthorpe singer-songwriter returns for a seasonal shopping reminder of current album Man On The Roof (Polydor) with its dreamy, sometimes Lennon-esque pop (She), jazzy folk (Dead), slow burn Celtic soul (Funny Hats) and skittering shuffles (Scar). His raw nerve songs of troubled relationships, the need for emotional redemption and self-searching aren’t exactly the most uplifting, but misery rarely sounds as attractive as the starkly acoustic The Ground Beneath Your Feet, Coldplay-like anthemic piano ballad Now or William Shatner’s Dog’s bruised reflection on an old flame. 7.30pm. £10. Glee Club Monday November 24 Razorlight
“I’ve got a hot-bodied girlfriend, a wallet full of cash”, sings Johnny Borrell on North London Trash, prompting mass envy among the fans you to envy him. Ah, but he’s still had to suffer for his art. The strummy acoustic pop Hostage Of Love may be sung from the point of view of Jesus, but when he says “words of derision I have swallowed with a smile, for telling my story I have been crucified,” I think we know who’s referring to. It would be easy to just dismiss them as another guitar band with a cocky, self-regarding frontman were it not for the fact that, as Slipway Fires (Mercury) continues to prove, they also write naggingly catchy tunes and deliver them with a confident swagger. Of course, they also borrow liberally from here and there. The single, Wire To Wire is a shameless nick from America’s Horse With No Name (with a Dylan allusion in the lyrics too) while 60 Thompson has definite Simon & Garfunkel influences, You And The Rest nods to Phil Collins and Burberry Blues Eyes to Billy Joel. However, it’s easy to forgive when you find the things rattling round the brain for days on end, whether rocking it up in a Who meets Oasis stylee for Tabloid Lover, going for stadium away with Stinger, or, as on the closing naked piano ballad The House, tearing into the emotions as he sings about his late father and confronting the wounds left behind. At some point, Borrell’s ego will get the better of the band and things will end in tears, but for now the fires are clearly still well stoked. 7.30pm. £25. W’hampton Civic Hall Monday November 24 Greg Weeks
Producer, label boss, and pivotal member of psychfolk outfit Espers, Weeks also runs a solo musical career, one which finds him over here promoting new album The Hive (Wichita), backed by Festival, one of his Language of Stone label acts. Autobiographically based introspective melancholia informed by the state of the world and built around the dominant sound of mellotron and Korg keyboards with acoustic guitar, cello and flute adding colour and texture, it’s a fuzzily heady brew. The opening You Won’t Ever Be The Same Again suggests Balkan and Hebrew folk influences, Lay Low sounds more like the soundtrack to some 60s French movie, the nine minute title track a psychfolk drone that conjures Pink Floyd fronted by Nick Drake, while, were it not for splashes of feedback, Donovan would be a suitable musical snapshot of the pioneering trippy dippy folk minstrel. Not exactly blessed with huge colour, the voice can get a bit wearing after a while, so it’s to be hoped he decides not to bless audiences with his dirge cover of Madonna’s Borderline (or at least remove all sharp objects from the room first), but in small doses he’s rather captivating. 8pm. £8. Tin Angel, Taylor John’s House, Coventry Tuesday November 25 The Rifles
Their sustained Jam echoes prompting wags to bracket Eton to their name, the Walthamstow crew are a perky outfit with a solid bagful of guitar riffs and stomping rhythms that extend beyond the Weller touches to take in an affection for Ray Davies too. Sporting such titles as Science In Violence, Toerag and Romeo And Julie, new album The Great Escape won’t be out now until next year, but there’ll be plenty of previews in the live set. Released as the lead track of The Rifles EP (sixsevenine), the title track harks to those Jam influences, but the beat romping Darling Girl rolls out some 60s surf pop garage sounds while the acoustic shuffling flurries of I Could Never Lie and A Love To Die For both twin The Kinks and Billy Bragg. 7.30pm. £12. Carling Academy 2 Tuesday November 25 Nouvelle Vague
Having done two albums giving the bossa nova treatment to such punk and New Wave hits as I Melt With You, Blue Monday and Love Will Tear Us Apart, the French musical collective will be previewing their latest collection of covers due for release next year. There’s no specifics available yet or details of who the chanteuses will be, but this time they’re including duets with some of the original artists, among those confirmed being Terry Hall, Ian McCulloch, JJ Burnel and Martin Gore! Well worth an early investigation of what might be in store. 7.30pm. £17.50. Wulfrun Hall Tuesday November 25/Wednesday November 26 The Pigeon Detectives
They seem to be making a habit of two night stands. This is their second double date in the West Mids this year, and another go round for such sophomore album numbers as the rowdy rollicking live favourite Say It Like You Mean It, swaggery pub rocker Keep On Your Dress, an ebullient Making Up Numbers and the Monkeys meets the Manics I’m Not Gonna Take This alongside past nuggets I Found Out and Caught In Your Trap. This time round, they’re supported by much tipped New Yorkers The Virgins whose guitar-slung attitude swaggering Clash meets The Strokes new single One Week Of Danger (Young and Lost Club) recently loomed large on Gossip Girl. Catch them now, they’re due to be massive next year. 7.30pm. £17.50. W’hampton Civic Hall Wednesday November 26 Radar Brothers
A return West Mids appearance by the slow rock Americana quartet currently plugging the Auditorium (Chemikal Underground) album which, the vaguely uptempo When Cold Air Goes To Sleep aside, maintains their laid back woozy mindset with such intoxicatingly narcotic numbers as Lake Life, Brother Rabbit and A Dog Named Ohio. 7.30pm. £6. Bar Academy Thursday November 27 Baby Dee
Transgendered New York performance artist, harpist, songwriter and sometime collaborator with Antony And The Johnsons, although having released four albums and toured here with the Dresden Dolls Dee’s pretty much an unknown quantity on these shores. However, even with only the Safe Inside The Day (Drag City) album to go on, chances are this is going to be one of the month’s highlights. With a deep sandpapery voice that variously trembles, growls, tickles, wobbles and croons and songs of her life’s ups and downs that leap from Broadway to Weimar cabaret by way of sea shanty, classical and blues while remaining rooted in American folk music, it’s a ravishingly gutsy and shamelessly kitsch affair. Co-produced by fan Will Oldham and populated by the sort of drunks, misfits and battered dreamers who may have strayed in from a Tom Waits album or Jim Jarmusch film, she twists the tone from gleeful to menacing with assured flair, mesmerising with such numbers as Big Titty Bee Girl (From Dino Town) and its tale of an abused albino, piano ballad Safe Inside The Day’s gospel tinged confessional and The Dance of Diminishing Possibilities’ accordion squeezing true story of two guys taking an axe to an upright piano. Reflecting her days in a carnival sideshow, everything is gloriously outsized, be that an instrumental like the mock classical clavichord notes of Christmas Jig For A Three-Legged Cat or the Jack Skellington meets Kurt Weill touches of The Only Bones That Show and, based on a Goethe poem about a father and dying child, The Earlie King. Quite magnificent. 7.30pm. £12.50. Glee Club Thursday November 27 Dodgy
Purveyors of upbeat melodic bouncy guitar pop in the mid 90s before crumbling apart, messrs Miller, Payne, Priest and Clark finally got back together earlier this year for a live jog through the hits after an album of radio sessions sparked a revival of interest. They’ve now made the move to keep things going with a second round of dates and new material, heralding a comeback album with the release of self-released new single, Down in The Flood (Dodgy), a fine jazz inflected return to the keyboards, guitars and summery harmonies of their vintage triumphs. 7.30pm. £15. Barfly Friday November 28 Kelli Alli
Well, here’s a surprising change of direction for the 34 year old Anglo-Indian Brummie, appearing here as support to Greg Weeks. Originally sex kitten singer with trip hop outfit Sneaker Pimps, after they parted company her solo debut Tigermouth traded in electronica shaded summery r&b pop and dance beats, at times sounding like a cross between Toyah and Primal Scream. Then came Psychic Cat’s spooked chill out electronica, sassy pop and brooding Nine Inch Nails style rock. This time though, she’d discovered her inner twee-folk and come over all Vashti Bunyan and Joanna Newsom for Rocking Horse (One Little Indian) with almost Renaissance classical colours (The Savages), pulsing Eastern notes (the title track), and soft breath, perfumed air whispered vocals. The songs variously inspired and conceived during a journey across the Mexican canyons and California wilderness, sleeping under the stars around campfires, they’ve taken flesh as, to quote Ali, ‘dark modern nursery rhymes ...odes to the magic of nature and dreams’. Arranged using leafy acoustic guitar, flute, cor anglais, violins, banjo, and organ, the mood is languidly dreamy and gossamer like with a childlike sense of wonderment bubbling out of Dancing Bears or tapping cosmic tranquillity on the ambient One Day At A Time or The Kiss. There’s times when, music and sensibilities call to mind the hippie naive-folk of Sally Oldfield as much as Nick Drake’s English pastoral folk or the eccentricity of Kate Bush while What To Do takes her barefoot down byways decked in garlands of chamber music and jazz and The Kiss is surely destined to become mood music for Glastonbury’s myriad crystals and tarot stores. Like a surfeit of incense, it can get a little too heady in one sitting (especially with several tracks nudging six minutes) with Ali’s soothing voice in danger of inducing trance rather than just calm, but it remains a tremendous musical self-reinvention and a major contribution to the avant-folk scene. 8pm. £8. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath Friday November 28 Guns on the Roof
No frills punky guitar rock n roll played fast and loud with plenty of energy, drawing on influences from Green Day to Rancid to The Ramones to The Clash (whose song provides the band’s name), the Leeds fourpiece are armed and in action to fire of salvos from new album New Frustration (Glory Glory ). It’s pretty much what you’d expect with cranked up guitars spraying riffs and lots of air punching shout along choruses all designed to have the crowd jumping along and spilling their beers. There’s no classics songs here to stand alongside those of their influences, but then there’s also nothing likely to cause the gig to sag or lose propulsion as they belt through the three minute and under likes of Punk Sweat And Tears, So Tired, Road Of Our Lives, 4 Brothers and On The Brink. They also have an acoustic pub swayalong slow track, Yours Sincerely, because even today’s punks have to catch their breath sometime. 8pm. £10. Asylum, Hockley Friday November 28 Simple Minds
Although their Life In A Day debut managed to reach the Top 30, with neither of the two subsequent albums charting there must have been a sigh of relief when the Sons and Fascination/Sister Feelings Call double set reached No 11 in 1981. Even so, with still no sign of a hit single it was looking like make or break time when, the following year, they released New Gold Dream (81,82,83,84). It was to prove the turning point of their career, making the Top 3 and paving the way for a further seven albums that were either No 1 or No 2. It also spawned their debut hit single, Promised You A Miracle, and follow up Glittering Prize. Now, marking the band’s 30th anniversary, it’s also the one they’ve chosen to perform in full with one half of the show devoted to the album and the other essentially a best of set with the likes of Waterfront, Belfast Child, Alive And Kicking, Love Song, Ghost Dancing and, perhaps the one for which they’re best known, Don’t You Forget About Me. With their last three albums failing to reach the Top 40, the Neon Lights collection of covers marking something if a career nadir, they could do with a boost, so this seems likely to serve reminder of the glory days in advance of a new album next year which will mark the first time in 27 years that all the original band members have been in the studio together. Support comes from fellow Scottish long-servers, Deacon Blue. 7.30pm. £35. LG Arena Friday November 28 Simple Plan
When I’m Gone on the band’s self-titled fourth album might feature some bubbling beats hip hop and Your Love Is A Lie take cues from Duran and Timberlake, but guitar driven pop-punk with big choruses and hooks is still what they do best, and it’s the likes of Take My Hand, Save You, Generation and the punchily anthemic Time To Say Goodbye that’ll be the ones the fans are calling for down the front row. 7pm. £13.50. Carling Academy Friday November 28 Randy Crawford & Joe Sample
Crawford and the Crusaders pianist were here two years back with their Feeling Good album and its sophisticated mix of soul, pop, blues, jazz and gospel. This time they’ll be digging into their second collaboration, No Regrets (Wrasse), a similarly inclined affair of standards and lesser known numbers, recorded with a staple quartet format. With slightly more emphasis on the jazz lounge moods, it’s ideally suited to a more intimate setting. Nonetheless the vibe should be mellow and laid back for a set list likely to include album highlights like Everyday I Have The Blues (which sees Sample teasingly borrowing the intro to Nina Simone’s My Baby Just Cares For Me), Billie Holiday classic Me, Myself And I, Today I Sing The Blues, Randy Newman’s Just One Smile and a loose limbed gospel swing through Leroy Mitchell's Starting All Over Again. Crawford’s r&b roots are given a solid showcase in a hot and funky reading of Luther Ingram’s Respect Yourself that should prove a live showstopper, as should their torch song arrangement of Sarah McLachlan's Angel. Unfortunately, being the title track, you may well have to sit through a rather leaden version of the Piaf evergreen. Hopefully they’ll be generous enough to bypass a rather dreadful, soulless reggaed up cover of Angel of The Morning in favour of the debut album’s samba jazz interpretation of Everybody’s Talking and their inspired slinky city streets funk take on Peter Gabriel’s Lovetown by way of Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This. And yes, it’s a fair bet Streetlife will be in there somewhere, too. 7.30pm. £28.50/£26.50. Symphony Hall Saturday November 29 The Zutons
For reasons best known to themselves, the Scouse outfit decided to reinvent themselves as the Black Crowes for a couple of tracks (notably a bluesy stomping fat saxy Give Me A Reason) on the recent You Can Do Anything album, seasoning those with some McCartney rock n roll with You Could Make The Four Walls Cry and even channelling 10cc pop for Always Right Behind You. Not a bad album, but it relies rather too much on covering everything with blasts of sax to cover up the thinner end of the melodies, so that, for now at least, they still remain better known for being the band who did the original but not as good as the Amy Winehouse cover of Valerie.
They’re supported by
The Redwalls, a Chicago trio
fronted by brothers Logan and Justin Baren who mine Dylan and
Beatles influences for their chunky, harmony laden rock n soul.
Last time here, when they were still a four piece, they were
plugging five year old album Universal Blues in the wake of its
belated UK release, but, bypassing follow-ups Da Nova and last
year’s self-titled US release, they’ll be previewing their all
new debut UK single, due for release in January, the loping,
reggae rhythmed, scuzzy n sweet Memories (Mad Dragon). Saturday November 29 Ten Kens
There’s not 10 of them, there’s four, and none of them are named Ken. You should also know they come from Canada and their self-titled album (Fat Cat) reveals them to be a tough muscle alt rock outfit influenced by Sonic Youth, Pixies and My Bloody Valentine who like to throw fair bit of reverb distortion at their bass heavy songs to make them sound threatening and snotty. When not churning out crunchy rock riffs like those on Bearfight or the Duane Eddy surf guitar twanged Alternate Biker, they also like to engage in some stoner rock ambience (Y’All Come Back Now), spooked desert blues (Refined), skewed 60s psychedelia (Worthless And Oversimplified Ideas), Floyd/Hawkwind homages (Prodigal Sum) and post rock freak outs (The Whore of Revelation). You can’t always make out what they’re singing through the sonic squalls, but they certainly never let your attention wander. 7pm. £6. Barfly Sunday November 30 The Script
Seemingly emerging from nowhere to become album chart topping darlings who’ve notched up three Top 40 hits since May, the Irish trio blend hip hop styles with pop sensibilities to create a Celtic soul sound rooted in rock dynamics. It’s a bit like a cocktail of U2, Justin Timberlake, Ben Folds and Simply Red while We Cry also had hints of laid back Seal to the semi-spoken lyric. The self-titled debut album is packed with similarly top material, from Before The Worst which easily kicks Maroon 5 into touch to the glorious classic piano pop of Talk Me Down, the tender acoustic ballad The Man Who Can’t Be Moved and current big music and beats single Breakeven. We told you months ago that they’d be huge come the end of the year, so excuse us while we get a little smug. 7pm. £14. Carling Academy Sunday November 30 Attack! Attack!
Cardiff spawned grunge and pop-punk’s the order of the day for the band’s self-titled album (Rock Ridge) loose limbed guitars, snarly bass, heads down percussion and Neil Starr’s semi-shouty vocals conjuring a mix of Lostprophets, Fall Out Boy and Blink 182. The sweat factory This Is The Test and a thundering Time Is Up are already floor fillers, and with numbers like Too Bad Son and Home Again they should be able to build substantially on their initial impetus. 6pm. £6.50. Bar Academy
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