Gig Guide Archives November 2010

Previews by Mike Davies

Tuesday November 2

Waterson-Carthy

Photo Tom Howard

As a rule, that would mean Norma Waterson and husband Martin Carthy, but on this occasion he’s just part of the five piece band and the Carthy in the spotlight is daughter Eliza, this being a tour in support of her and her mother’s first album together, The Gift (Topic). Having flirted with the contemporary folk scene and made excursions into rock, Carthy’s firmly back in traditional pastures these days, this a marvellous addition to the family canon with mother and daughter’s voices both complementing and challenging each other.

Pretty much everything on the album is traditional, opening with a sturdy, Americana flavoured Poor Wayfaring Stranger backed by just guitar, double bass and mandolin, and working through familiar chestnuts like the wistful Bunch Of Thyme with its melodeon and viola and fiddle spotlight Bonaparte’s Lament and songs such as The Rose And The Lily and work song lament Shallow Ground (on which the whole family piles in) little known outside trad club circles.

As trad tends to be, much of this is downcast and sober, but by way of a playful ray of sunshine, there’s also Gus Kahn’s 1925 vaudeville swing flavoured Ukulele Lady (without any ukulele) which segues into Eliza singing old Amen Corner hit (If Paradise Is) Half As Nice complete with trombone solo.

That’ll be the one to get the audience clapping along in a set which will hopefully also feature their wonderful hymnal setting of Longfellow’s poem Psalm Of Life among the other album choices and prime selections from their individual and family repertoires. 8pm. £18.50. B’ham Town Hall

Tuesday November 2

I Blame Coco

The deep-voiced Eliot Pauline Styler-Sumner has been busy of late and this is her third gig here this year, this time though she steps up a venue level and comes with debut album, The Constant (Island) in tow. She’s trailing a little behind the keyboard led female electro-pop bandwagon, but there’s plenty of radio friendly melodies, hooks and choruses packed into its 13 tracks to see her making round on the outside track.

Former single Self Machine gets it off to a strong start with the cascading title track, clubby Quicker and both Turn Your Back On Love and Please Rewind maintaining the pop propulsion and suggesting an array of influences that range from Journey to Human League to Psychedelic Furs and The Killers while closing electro-pulsed ballad It’s About To Get Worse imagines Annie Lennox fronting Ultravox.

Things fall apart at times, Playwrite Fate an ill-advised attempt to lay a gypsy pop coat over Lily Allen, the title track a dreary Motorik drone and the cod-reggae electro cover of St Etienne’s cover of Neil Young’s Only Love Can Break Your Heart likely to be classed as a crime against humanity. But with a full pelt duet with Robyn on the surging dramadisco of Caesar, there’s still plenty here to ensure plenty of snap and crackle to the Coco pop. 7.30pm. £7. O2 Academy 2

Tuesday November 2

Raul Malo

Former lead singer of The Mavericks, Malo’s been solo now for seven years, releasing six albums under his own name. Disappointingly none have made much of an impact either here or back in America, which may explain rumours of a possible band reunion. For the moment, though, he’s out doing his own thing with a new EP, This Is Raul Malo (Fantasy) trailing the, as yet unreleased here, current album Saints And Sinners.

As you’d expect, it’s Tex Mex flavoured country, lead track Staying Here serving reminder of his Roy Orbison-esque tones (though with a streak of Glen Campbell too) while Cuando Me Enamora is (as trivia buffs will know) not a cover of the Enrique Ilegsias number but rather the 1968 song first performed by Italian singer Anna Identici and covered by Englebert Humperdinck as A Man Without Love.

Live versions of Lucky One and Moonlight Kiss from last year’s album complete the release, and seem both likely to surface in tonight’s show, a solo set of acoustic numbers from both his own and the band’s back catalogue. 8pm. £21 Glee Club

Wednesday November 3

Foals

Having slagged off their Antidotes debut and its production, the Oxford five piece have returned with Total Life Forever (Transgressive), an album that sounds, well, a lot like the first one, except more assured and with more obvious Talking Heads influences.

Singer Yannis Philippakis is cockily confident with his vocal swagger, delivered so you can almost see him on preening about stage, while the rhythms (especially on the title track) have an itchy chicken funk Doobie Bros strut while Blue Blood imagines David Byrne guesting with New Order.

Math rock and angular post punk remain the staple styles but they can also get spacy on 2 Trees and crunch it up in a Duran manner for Alabaster. They have yet to convince there’s real heart and passion behind the precisely engineered grooves, Black Gold sounding like a jam that went through a week’s rehearsal, but if they can pump some proper sweat into the veins of The Orient live then the dancefloor should be pretty crammed. 7.30pm. £14.O2 Academy

Wednesday November 3

Mary Chapin Carpenter

Written while recovering from a pulmonary embolism, it's not too surprising to find current album and tour focus The Age of Miracles (Rounder) full of reflective songs about past, present and future. It certainly addresses a wide canvas that embraces such dark moments as global warming, Hurricane Katrina, and Southern race hate but finding optimism in the human endeavour and resilience emblemised by Burma's Buddhist monks.

Even more specifically, 4 June 1989 is sung in the voice of Chen Guang, a 17 year old artist turned soldier who was part of the Tianenmen Square crackdown while piano ballad

Mrs Hemingway finds his first wife, Hadley Richardson, reflecting on their few brief years of happiness before Ernest fell in love with Pauline Pfeiffer.

There’s an inevitable sense of things changing on the country rock ringing The Way I Feel, Zephyr and I Was A Bird while Iceland finds her standing on a precipice, uncertain of where the edge might take her.

One of country’s finest writers and voices, she may dip into older material, but it’s her rebirth that will dominate and, hopefully, include the Tom Pettyish country twang rocker I Put My Ring Back On.

Support brings country rock n soul from North Carolina’s Tift Meritt who’ll be serving up choice selections from her Bramble Rose debut and Tambourine, likely to include Virginia, No One Can Warn You,Still Pretending and rock strutting Neighbourhood, but also the current See You On The Moon (Fantasy) with the chiming Six More Days Of Rain, country rocking Engine To Turn and After Today, a song about inner city kids becoming hardened in prison. 7.30pm. £23.50. B’ham Town Hall

Wednesday November 3

3 Daft Monkeys

With a name like that they have to be a folk band, but Cornish trio Tim Ashton, Athene Roberts, and Jamie are more than that. Now four albums in, The Antiquated And the Arcane (3DM) the latest, they draw on Celtic, Balkan, Romani, Latino,, reggae, dub, electronica and punk as well as folk to create a heady world music cocktail served up with a simple instrumentation of bass, 12 string guitar, foot drum and fiddle.

Named in honour of a local society of folk obsessed with the odder aspects of Cornish history, the album’s suitably quirky as it romps between the gypsy carnival punk of Civilised Debauchery, the haunting medieval flavoured Doors Of Perception, a swirly psych-folk Under One Sun, Kletzmer waltz Days Of The Dance, banjo dub skank Love (Sic) Fool and the flute piping Eastern bazzar mood of the jerky Casualties Of Tour.

Ashton’s nasal vocals can be a bit of an acquired taste, especially in those finger-in-the-ear moments the sometimes adopts, but you can certainly guarantee that, as live act, there’s precious little else like it you’ll have seen out there. 7.30pm. £10. Slade Rooms

Thursday November 4

Andy White

Since his 1986 debut, Rave On Andy White, the Belfast born, Melbourne based singer-songwriter has released a further eleven critically acclaimed albums (including one as part of ALT with Tim Finn and Liam O'Maonlai) without ever making the Top 40. Four years on from Garageland, Songwriter (ALT) did little to change matters. Once sharp and insightful his lyrics are sounding a touch strained these days and his political commentary blunted, but in pursuing a rootsier sound with a keening emotional edge fans won’t be too disappointed with the results.

That said, even they might offer up a prayer that he doesn’t include the lamentable twangy rock Turn Up The Temperature On The Machine Of Love (which is every bit as awful as the title) bur rather the Celtic infused country ballad The Valley Of My Heart and Kathleen, a hoedown meld of political and personal that romps along in a Pogues stylee.

With its malt and barley blues mandolin and piano boogie, Twelve String Man is another lively uptempo bouncer that should work well live while mellow memorable moments come with the Van-like soul of Why Don't You Stay and the lilting Faithful Heart. 8pm. £8. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Thursday November 4

Apocalyptica

The Finnish outfit released their debut album, Plays Metallica By Four Cellos, in 1996 and, while the line-up’s changed since then, they’ve not much deviated from the original concept. They call it cello-metal which, basically means what it says, the group playing a mixture of classical, neo-classical metal, symphonic metal and thrash. On cellos. Although they did a drummer seven years ago.

They’re over here in service of their latest, 7th Symphony (Spinefarm), which follows their established template of mixing instrumentals and numbers with guest vocalists. Past voices have belonged to Nina Hagen, Soulfly’s Max Cavalera, Till Lindemann from Rammstein and Corey Taylor of Slipknot, while this includes Shinedown’s Brent Smith on stadium power ballad Not Strong Enough, Lacey Mosley of Flyleaf on the goth-emo Broken Pieces and the distinctive gravelly warble of Gavin Rossdale on End Of Me, a number that sounds like, well Bush actually.

Not singing, but sitting on the kit, the appropriately heavy and distorted 2010 features Slayer’s Don Lombardo, pounding away. As if to underline the band’s diverse musical textures, the following track, Beautiful, is a brief chamber piece and one of the six instrumentals, the best of which are the opening Rammstein-ish At The Gates of Manala and the Eastern-flavoured On The Rooftop With Quasimodo. Proof that cellos can riff with the best of them, they really should get Escala along for a strings-off showdown next time. 7.30pm. £15. Wulfrun Hall

Friday November 5

Mystery Jets

Despite two fine pop rock albums, the Eel Pie outfit tended to attract more attention for their image and the fact that spina-bifida afflicted singer Blaine Harrison’s middle-aged father played guitar. However, having parted company with Island Records and dad relinquishing live duties, they’re well overdue being judged just on their music.

Good news then that, now homed with Rough Trade, third album Serotonin is their best yet, dripping with big guitar chords and pop hooks, Too Late To Talk sounding a lot like something Ray Davies might have come up with in his golden days while Alice Springs unfolds into a storming Arcade Fire stadium anthem, and the chugging hoarse-sung title track filters classic summer surf pop while, seemingly sung through a megaphone, the shimmering, The Girl Is Gone tumbles and rolls along on pure pop wheels.

There’s a definite touch of 60s and 70s pop about them, the synth bubbling Show Me The Light conjuring the best of XTC with a dash of Jeff Lynne, Dreaming Of Another World and Lady Grey further Kinks flurries with Blaine crooning Lorna Doone’s surname into the dream pop stratosphere like The Beach Boys on ecstasy. One of the year’s best indie pop albums, the only mystery about them is why the world remains so blasé to their charm.

Support comes from mask-wearing pop trio Is Tropical with their scratchy casio pop, following up the naggingly catchy When Oh When with the even more naggingly catchy South Pacific (Kitsune). 8pm. £12.50. HMV Institute

Saturday November 6

Mike Peters

Despite - or perhaps because of - a string of 80s Top 40 hits, The Alarm were critically reviled for their fist in the air, storm the barricades, guitar ringing anthems, among them 60 Guns, Where Were You Hiding When The Storm Broke, Blaze Of Glory and Spirit Of 76. Following poor response to the Raw album, Peters left the band to pursue a solo career. Since then, while yet to find the chart success of the early days, he’s maintained a devout following, beaten cancer and leukaemia, released an exhaustive box set of the band’s recordings, reactivated The Alarm name (having a Top 30 hit with 45RPM under the Poppyfield alias), recorded as The Coloursound and will tour as lead singer of Big Country next year.

Since 1993, he’s annually held weekend music fest The Gathering and regularly tours, both in band and solo acoustic format. It’s the latter that brings him to tonight’s gig with a set list pretty much guaranteed to feature Alarm classics as well as more recent solo and band material. Of this there should be a solid helping of numbers from both the punky Guerilla Tactics and this year’s guitar punching Clash/Dylan-tinged Direct Action, both albums that play to his rebel cry strengths, ones to watch for including the banners-waving Love Hope And Strength, Direct Action and Release The Pressure’s response to the financial climate, the Pettyesque anthemic After The Rock And Roll Has Gone and his terrific cover of Willie Nile’s defiant singer-as warrior One Guitar.

One of music’s good guys, Peters may not get the critical respect he deserves, but anyone who’s seen or heard him play will never doubt the fire in his heart or the power in his music.7pm £10. O2 Academy 3

Saturday November 6

Broken Records

Photo by Chris Park

Having released one of last year’s finest big music albums with Until The Earth Begins to Part, the Edinburgh out return slimmed down to a six piece following the departure of their cellist (though not the cello), but still bursting the heavens with Let Me Come Home (4AD). There is, perhaps, a little less of the Celtic influence this time around but the soaring and swelling anthemic likes of The Motorcycle Boy Reigns and the tumultuous A Darkness Rises Up still contain echoes of The Waterboys strained through a filter of U2 and Springsteen.

Led by Jamie Sutherland’s deep dark tones, Dia Dos Namorados, a duet with Jill O'Sullivan from Sparrow And The Workshop, underlines his Nick Cave influences but, like Cracks in The Wall, also hints at Doll By Doll, the late lamented band formed by fellow Scot Jackie Leven.

This is intense, emotionally fraught stuff, whether vaulting to the skies with the massive A Leaving Song or playing a more intimate card with moody piano and violin folksy ballad I Used to Dream or the brittle sway of closing number Home, and, mixed up live with earlier gems such as chest beater Nearly Home, rousing Balkan mazurka If Eilert Lovborg Wrote A Song, It Would Sound Like This and the broody piano ballad Wolves, promises a night of restorative catharsis. 7.30pm. £7.50. HMV Institute

Monday November 8

OMD

Enjoying a string of hits in the 80s with such titles as Enola Gay, Tesla Girls, Souvenir and Maid Of Orleans, things foundered when co-founder Paul Humphreys quit in 1989, to be shortly followed by Malcolm Holmes and Martin Cooper. Carrying on with a new line-up, Andy McCluskey kept the flame burning with the Sugar Tax album yielding hits Pandora’s Box and the Glitter Band like Sailing On The Seven Seas.

Follow up Liberator produced Top 20 single Walking On The Milky Way, but interest in 80s synth bands was waning and when Universal failed to set the world alight in 1996, he finally put the band name to bed.

However, an 80s revival saw a reformation of the classic line-up to tour the Architecture & Morality album in full alongside a set of greatest hits. Such was the response, that, following a support slot to Simple Minds, the quartet are now out on the road again, this time with a brand new album, History Of Modern (Bluenoise).

It’s safe to assume that Humphreys has got over his antagonism towards commercial pop, since it’s packed with hummable, radio friendly melodies designed to have feet tapping and heads nodding.

Anthemic ballad single If You Want It failed to crack the 40, but it’s hard to see how (after a lyrical edit) the swirling New Wave pop magnificence of New Babies: New Toys could fail to get the nation singing along to its chorus while History Of Modern Pt 1 echoes the grace of Maid, The Future, The Past And Forever After is infectious Motorik disco, electro clubbers are well catered for with the bubbling Kraftwerkisms of Pulse and New Holy Ground fully deserves to be their Vienna.

There’s a couple of minor stumbles, but with other stand-outs including The Right Side’s eight minute journey down the Trans-Europe Express and forthcoming lyrically thoughtful single Sister Marie Says, this is a massive return to their glory days and, hopefully, the start of a continued renaissance. 7.30pm. £29.50. Symphony Hall

Monday November 8

There For Tomorrow

Over here to launch their official debut, A Little Faster (Hopeless), the Florida quartet don’t bring anything especially new or original to the pop-punk/alt rock table, their licks and riffs pretty much what you’d find on any album in the genre.

However, working within the confines, they’re handy with the tools of the trade, serving up the requisite hard-hitting guitars and emo-tinted vocals on powerful opener The Remedy, the title track and the choppy Backbone while equally adept at angsty ballads like the waltzy Just In Time, Burn The Night Away and the slow building I Can’t Decide.

Whether this is enough to live up to the promise of their name depends on what sort of presence they can muster live, but for the here and now they’ll do okay. 7.30pm. £7.50.O2 Academy 2

Monday November 8

Cheap Trick

Although they only ever had one minor UK hit single (I Want You To Want Me) and album (Live At Budokan) and never really outgrew their cult status in America, at the height of their popularity in the mid-70s Rick Nielsen, Robin Zander, Bun E Carlos and Tom Petersson were megastars in Japan. The mania may have subsided slightly, but they’re still referred to as the American Beatles over there.

Influenced by the British 60s invasion, and specifically the Fab Four and Roy Wood, the Illinois four-piece’s UK tours were always a big draw, not least with fans trying to catch one of the plectrums the lanky Nielsen flicked into the audience as part of his signature style.

Although they’ve been on the road continuously for the past four decades, this will be their first appearance here in a long time, giving a chance for the loyal following to relive past a highlights from classic albums Heaven Tonight, In Color, Dream Police and Busted.

It also affords an opportunity to hear material from those that have never had a UK release (or an invisible one at best), most currently the aptly named The Latest which finds them in vintage form on the likes of Miss Tomorrow, Sick Man Of Europe, the Jeff Lynne sounding Everybody Knows and Times Of Our Lives and, in a nod to Wood, the rock n rolling California Girl.

The psychedelic Closer, The Ballad of Burt And Linda sounds like it could have come from Sergeant Pepper, and, as coincidence would have it, another recent album unissued here is in fact their faithfully interpreted live performance of the same. If they don’t include it in the set, they’re well known for responding to encore calls, so insist on them doing Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.

A great band who deserved far bigger acclaim both here and back home than they reaped, and always guaranteed to deliver an electrifying live show. 7.30pm. £17.50. Wulfrun Hall

Tuesday November 9

Linkin Park

The latest rock outfit to succumb to concept album syndrome, following on from the mainstream embracing Minutes To Midnight, they’ve stepped ever further away from their nu metal origins with the pompously self-important A Thousand Suns (Warner). The title comes from Hindu epic the Bhagavad Gita, quoted by Robert Oppenheimer following the first atomic explosion. Yes, you guessed it. this is an album about nuclear war and technology, eight songs interlaced with instrumental interludes and voice samples, including Oppenheimer talking about becoming “the destroyer of worlds” (The Radiance), Martin Luther King (Wisdom, Justice and Love) and political activist Mario Savio whose 60s ‘bodies upon the gears’ speech provides the intro to Wretches And Kings, the album’s most obvious hip hop/gangsta rap number, a homage to Chuck D and Public Enemy.

Of a similar thrusting intensity there’s the tribal rhythm drive of When They Come For Me and a juddery, sweary crunchy electro Blackout but for the most part, the album aims for big stadium swellers, epitomised by the skittering beats and keyboards of the space surfing Robot Boy, the out and out boy band electro pop of Burning In the Skies, floaty ballad Waiting For The End, the soaring Iridescent and acoustic power ballad where Chester Bennington seems to have been transfigured into Bryan Adams.

Having pretty much left behind the original fans who bought into Hybrid Theory and Meteora, don’t be too surprised to find the old material getting short shrift or even a few Flaming Lips t-shirts in the audience. 7.30pm. £40.50. LG Arena

Tuesday November 9

Ritchie Kotzen

As guitar magazine readers will know, Kotzen is regarded as something of a god of the fretboards. He’s got a pretty good voice too. With three solo albums to his name before he was 21, he was a member of Poison, replaced Paul Gilbert in Mr Big, played with jazz bassists legend Stanley Clarke in Vertu, and supported the Stones on the Japanese leg of the A Bigger Bang tour.

He’s now amassed some 30 albums, so he’s got plenty to pick and choose from, though for tonight’s set though he’ll certainly be putting a degree of emphasis on his latest release, Peace Sign (Headroom Inc), a suitably whisky soaked blues rock collection that nods to such recurring influences as Free, Bad Company and Cream as well as his love of Philly and Motown soul.

Standouts include the swaggering My Messiah, the pop-soul Best Of Times, Your Entertainer’s Stevie Wonder funk, and the bluesily soulful Long Way From Home and Catch Up With Me, both of which put David Coverdale and Paul Rodgers firmly in the shade. 7.30pm. £12. O2 Academy 3

Tuesday November 9

Yann Tiersen

Variously comparable to Penguin Cafe Orchestra and Philip Glass alike, Tiersen’s a French composer and multi-instrumentalist who specialises in minimalist pieces that draw on the traditions of European classical and French folk music. Coming to prominence with his scores for Amelie and Leaving Lenin, he’s also released several albums under his own name, the current one - and the cause of this tour - being Dust Lane (Mute).

It is, as you might imagine, a cinematic and predominantly instrumental affair, any vocals tending to be woven, fuzzily and distorted into the sonic tapestry, prime exception being the sweet sounding folksy but stubbornly titled F*** Me.

Addressing themes of mortality, compositions veer between the dreamy, piano tinkling sway of Amy, Dark Stuff’s Floydian cold wind atmospherics, the Eastern rhythms of Palestine and the brooding rumbles of operatic swell of Ashes as it conjures Sigur Ros thoughts.

With numbers averaging around the seven minute mark, it’s going to be one of the Explosions In The Sky close your eyes and go with the vibe gigs. 8pm. £15. Glee Club

Wednesday November 10

The Irrepressibles

Fronted by one Jamie McDermott, this is a 10 piece orchestral ensemble of a highly theatrical bent. The Antony and the Johnsons comparisons are fairly unavoidable, though McDermott’s warbling counter tenor falsetto doesn’t have the same otherwordly quality, pitching them more towards a meld of Jeff Buckley, Wild Beasts and Dresden Dolls.

Fond of playing unlikely venues and favouring outlandish costumes, they’re touring debut album Mirror Mirror (V2), a journey into the musical realms of opera, baroque and Weimar cabaret lashed with woodwinds, brass and strings that both caress and agitate, variously stabbingly pizzicato or gliding lushly behind the vocals.

Opening with the melodramatic My Friend Jo, they ebb and flow in terms of mood and music alike, camply playful on the Ferryish Splish! Splash! Sploo!, prowlingly sinister on Knife Song, dripping melancholia across the ballroom dance floor for Nuclear Skies and rolling out a church organ on the swelling climactic In This Shirt where it sounds like Sigur Ross jamming with Erik Satie and Michael Nyman. It should prove an interesting performance. 8pm. £12.50. St Martin’s, Bullring, B’ham

Thursday November 11

The Goo Goo Dolls

Nine albums in, the New York trio’s finally cracked the UK Top 40 with the current Something For The Rest Of Us (Warner), British audiences finally getting up to speed with an outfit that’s notched up a string of American bestsellers that include Dizzy, Let Me In, Here Is Gone and Iris. Ironically, while they sustain the driving pop rock that’s been their forte since 1995’s A Boy Named Goo, the new album is their most lyrically downbeat, fuelled by the current economic climate and the glimmers of hope and the strength in relationships that can pull you through.

There’s driving sharp edged guitar pop with such numbers as the REM-ish Sweetest Lie, Now I Hear and One Night and arena anthem balladeering on As I Am and the big building title track and Home. Two songs in particular strike to the heart of the fallout from the Iraq/Afghanistan wars, both Soldier and the moving Notbroken, a letter from a wife to her injured husband, addressing the physical and emotional scars of those on the frontline

One of the best bands in their field, it’s taken a ridiculously long time for audiences here to really latch on to then. Now that they have, hopefully they’ll be seen round here more often. 7pm. £23.50. O2 Academy

Friday November 12

Ruarri Joseph

Having walked out on his major label deal following the release of debut album Tales Of Grime And Grit, the Newquay based Scot paved the way for his own label follow-up, Both Sides of the Coin, with a string of free Caffe Nero dates. Two years on, he’s back out on the road with album number three, Shoulder To The Wheel (Pip), another collection of acoustic Americana shaded folk-pop that channels Dylan, Cohen, and McTell influences with a voice that malts together elements of Newton Faulkner, Martyn Joseph, Richard Digance and Martin Stephenson.

Opening with the fingerpicking, strings graced love song Nervous Grin sets the album’s mellow and reflective mood, quickly reinforced by the equally romance themed An Orchard For An Apple, the jazzy tinges of Severed Dreams and the liltingly lovely six minute country-folk slow waltzer Fool Of Us All.

The tempo picks up for blues-folk shuffle Keep On Strolling with its throaty fuzzed guitar break and, illustrating his eclectic musical knowledge, the train rhythm chug, talk-sing Rich Folks Hoax, a cover of Michigan blues folk musician Sixto Diaz Rodriguez.

Joseph is good at arrangement, bringing rich and emotional colours with simple marriages of strings, percussion and guitar, as evidenced here on the powerful Glance Across The Street and the banjo featured For The Love Of Grace, but, as demonstrated by As Always and defiant album closer The Faithless Few, he’s at his best just strumming the strings, blowing a harmonica and letting the words flow.

Able to call to mind John Martyn and Joe Jackson equally, he’s got a well stacked songbook to call upon for the set list, hopefully including the gorgeously plaintive A Turn In The Weather and One For The Aether, but whatever the wind blows he’s well worth sharing an evening with. 8pm. £8. Glee Club

Saturday November 13

Drive By Truckers

Spawned from Alabama and based in Athens, Georgia, the Truckers are the answer to the question, what do you get if you cross Lynyrd Skynyrd, Neil Young and REM. Featuring three guitars and co founded by Patterson Hood, son of Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section bassist David, they last toured here four years ago on the back of A Blessing And A Curse, so it’s good to see them back with new album The Big To-Do (Pias).

After the more country flavours of the previous Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, while still songs about life’s losers and put-upon, this is a much rockier affair. Opening with Youngian riffs of Daddy Learned To Fly where a young boys sings about his father’s death, it propels through the self-explanatory and again Neil-like Fourth Night of My Drinking, the REM feel of Birthday Boy’s Southern stomping account of an exotic dancer making a living, and Drag The Lake Charlie’s tale of a missing womaniser and his jealous wife. Keeping the theme of domestic violence going but taking the tempo down before Shonna Tucker takes up the vocals on piano ballad plodder You Got Another.

It’s a bit of a misstep that the album winds down on three meandering slow numbers, Santa Fe, The Flying Wallendas and Eyes Like Glue, but prior to that - and likely to be more than case live- there’s plenty of hard punching rock, especially barroom rocking boogie Get Downtown and After The Scene Dies, a powered up Young whining lament for the disappearing bar music circuit where bands like them cut their teeth.

A bit of an uneven mix then, but, taking the best of this and peppering it with proven favourites like Sink Hole, Shut Up And Get On The Plane, Carl Perkins’ Cadillac, Goddamn Lonely Love and their bourbon slugging cover of Jim Carroll’s People Who Died, the gig will be a roaring inferno. 7pm. £15. O2 Academy 2

Sunday November 14

Kate Walsh

After three soul-baring albums about messed up relationships, it seems Ms Walsh rather frustratingly found herself frustratingly content, the angst well a little dry. So, thinking back to childhood days when she pretended she was working on a radio station and the sewing machine was her deck, she’s decided to put together an album of covers of 80s and 90s songs by British acts she’d have played on the imaginary airwaves.

Named after her broadcasting fantasy, Peppermint Radio (Blueberry Pie) retains the stripped down folky approach, generally just her voice, piano and the occasional strings and guitar, it’s an intriguing and eclectic set of choices, opening with a muted Tori Amos take on Radiohead’s Subterranean Homesick Alien and seeking out the heart of loneliness in such numbers as The Sunday’s Monochrome, Duran’s Save A Prayer, The Cure’s Lullaby and, dipping into Tori again, Erasure’s A Little Respect.

The mood tends to shift little from soft and sad, but within that there’s some inspired touches. EMF’s raucous Unbelievable is transformed into a forlorn piano ballad, Eurythmics’ Who’s That Girl becomes a Dusty Springfield torch song, Beetlebum unlocks its John Lennon core and, amazingly, The Shamen’s Move Any Mountain is transfigured into something from Joni Mitchell.

For the sake of variety, the live set should pick and mix from the earlier self-penned albums too, but these are moments to really look forward too. 8pm. £10. Glee Club

Sunday November 14

Mary Gauthier

As anyone familiar with her will know, Louisiana-born Gauthier has lived the sort of life they make dark biopics about, running away from home in a stolen car at 15, spending her 16th and 18th birthdays in detox and jail respectively, then going on to study philosophy and open an award-winning Boston restaurant before turning to music. All of which has informed her songs about broken losers, bruised lovers, barflies, junkies, down and outs, writers, poets, drunks and, inevitably, herself.

Her past couple of albums seemed to have found her letting go of the past and facing the present and future with the hard won wisdom of experience, but apparently there was still need for at least one more major catharsis.

Adopted after being abandoned as a baby by her unwed mother in 1962, when she was 45 she decided to find her birth mother but she refused to see her because it would open too many old wounds. It’s this that informs current album The Foundling (Proper), an autobiographical song cycle where she sings about being given away, her feelings of rejection and the painfully difficult phone call she made after finally tracking her down.

It’s emotional open heart surgery, but however potent the lyrics may be, especially Mama Here, Mama Gone and Goodbye, they’re all basically about the same thing just as it musically rarely deviates from the stripped back arrangements and spare melodies. For the sake of the gig, hopefully she’ll not feel the need for too much live catharsis.

Support comes Co Antrim singer-songwriter Ben Glover whose sophomore release, Through The Noise, Through The Night (Mr Jones) conjures thoughts of Steve Forbert in his phrasing, vocal kinship and easy rolling melodies while among the co-writers is one Ms Gauthier, their Full Moon Child a bittersweet story of a motel bartender living on cheap cigarettes and unfulfilled dreams.

A classic in the making, it's worth the price alone, but there’s more where that came from, Monument Green showing his keen ear for a catchy melody, Where The Lines Are a fine example of shuffling Celtic Americana and Let It Do What It Does veined with Van Morrison soul while I Am, You Are is an anthemic piano ballad waiting for the right stadium and First Chance For Second Lies wouldn't sound out of place on a best of Fleetwood Mac. At some point, he’s going to become stellar, and you’ll kick yourself if you weren’t there at the start. 8pm. £17.50. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Monday November 15

Ellie Goulding

For all the advance buzz and the fact it debuted at No 1, Goulding’s Lights album has to be ranked as something of a disaster in the Polydor boardroom. It plummeted in its second week on the charts and, while it hung around for a seven months, it never managed to crawl back any higher than #14 while the singles that followed Starry Eyed have all performed badly. The album hasn’t exactly set the rest of the world alight either.

As she embarks on the tour, the album has vanished from the Top 100 entirely. No doubt one reason why they’re ploughing even more money into it by re-releasing it as Bright Lights with seven extra tracks, including Lights, which was never on the album of the title, and a cover of Elton John’s Your Song.

While inoffensive enough, the original album never rose above background music and, having come from folkie roots, Goulding never sounded entirely comfortable channelling Lily Allen on Guns And Horses, playing kittenish for Every Time You Go or doing the electropop quiver for Under The Sheets in an attempt to attract the Florence and La Roux market.

It’s a positive sign then that, of the new material, Human filters more of the folk colours into its melodic pop while her MySpace page features a cover of Bon Iver’s Wolves, an area in which she seems much more at home. However, if the remarketing ploy doesn’t work, that difficult second album may prove even harder.

Support comes from Sunday Girl, not the American metal outfit, but Hertfordshire’s Jade Williams who’s been chosen as Vogue.com’s musician to watch for 2011. Which tends to suggest they know rather less about music than they do fashion, since new single Self Control (Geffen) is an innocuous dose of French flavoured electrotrippop chill with a vague air of the Human League about it. 7.30pm. £15. O2 Academy

Monday November 15

Kele

The Bloc Party frontman continues with his solo thing, back for a second push for debut album The Boxer (Wichita), a heavy emphasis on dancefloor electro and techno pop. Everything You Wanted and Unholy Thoughts aren’t far removed from the band’s output, but Rise’s cocktail of Chemical Brothers style beats, dance pop and tinkling tropical vibes, the 80s synth of Tenderoni and the comedown chill All The Things I Could Never Say all carry a new, personalised stamp.

Support comes from CocknBullKid who, despite the intimations of the name, isn’t some geezer rapper but rather Anita Blay, a Hackney born Ghanaian singer-songwriter who cites such diverse influences as Morrissey, Celine Dion and Human League to her catchy pop. After a couple of indie singles with Moshi Moshi, she’s now signed to Island, making her major label debut with One Eye Closed, an infectious little ditty with a tribal drum clatter and a touch of early Kate Bush. An album, Adulthood, is due next year so she’ll be previewing material tonight, doubtless including the reggae rhythm soul Touch Me and the excellent sad, soulful a capella Happy Birthday. 7.30pm. £12.50, HMV Institute

Monday November 15

O’Hooley & Tidow

Belinda O'Hooley's come a long way since winning Stars In Their Eyes impersonating Annie Lennox. Since then she's taken up piano, started writing, released solo album Music Is My Silence, had a touring duo stint with fellow songwriter Al Start and spent three years and two albums as part of Rachel Unthank & The Winterset. Since departing three years ago she's toured with former Winterset colleague Jackie Oates and has now teamed up with her personal and professional partner, vocally contrastive Yorkshire songwriter Heidi Tidow.

Their debut album, Silent June (No Masters), built around their voices and O'Hooley's upright piano with occasional embellishments from violin, guitar and string quartet, is a sparse, poetic and heavily intense affair that, much concerned with mortality and featuring several avian images, sets their folk roots in neo-classical arrangements.

Flight Of The Petrel provides a downbeat, solemn eco-themed introduction with images of empty nest, withered branches, dead flowers, winged harbingers of doom, dying bees, and references to nursing homes and the cancer industry.

Things aren't much cheerier on O'Hooley's All Stand In Line, a song about how life for women (or at least farmer's wives) is about fetching, feeding and breeding. Relieving the gloom with chiming piano notes and handclaps, the pair duet on the tenderly romantic Shelter Me before hitting reflective mood for a lilting arrangement of Spancil Hill, about the plight and homesickness of Irish immigrants to America.

Such unbridled jollity is short-lived however. Featuring a fragile intro by a care home resident singing When I Grow Too Old To Dream over a tolling piano note, Too Old To Dream offers a bittersweet snapshot of an elderly former dancer shunted off to residential care, the violin, piano and starkly lush harmonies of Hidden From The Sun present a tale of childhood erased and the doomy anti-war Que Sera offers a God deserted world, where the air is "thick and smells of dying."

This being the festive season, they’re very likely to include One More Xmas, a dour response to Chris Rea's Driving Home For Christmas about how we screw up our lives as we get older, lovers lost, and dysfunctional relationships. And if this hasn’t warmed the cockles of your heart, there’s always the cheerily titled acapella Cold & Stiff about society's moral clouds that wear down the spirit. It’ll be a superbly executed evening of chamber folk, just make sure you take the antidepressants with you. 9pm. £12. Robin 2, Bilston

Tuesday November 16

Paramore

Hormonal turmoil bringing you down, a rising tally of broken or bruised relationships to your name, teenage angst fuelling your frustrations, disillusion and inarticulate impotence? Then here’s your self-hatred catharsis as Hayley Williams and her Tennessee emo rock mall rats colleagues rampage through tracks from current album Brand New Eyes, spitting out distorted riffs and powered up ballads alike as they rail against the impossibility of finding love or the feelings of being misunderstood. Expect a sizeable sample of the new material, Brick By Boring Brick, Turn It Off and Playing God among them, mixed between established favourites such as Misery Business, Decode and Crushcrushcrush.

Given Williams’ recent collaboration on No 1 single Airplanes, it’s not a huge surprise to find that the opening act is indeed BoB. Atlanta hip hop star Bobby Ray Simmons has had a good year, notching up two international No 1s with Airplanes and Nothin’ On You, the latter featuring Bruno Mars. However, things appear to have taken a few steps backwards over here. His album, The Adventures of Bobby Ray (Atlantic), struggled to make the Top 10 and third single Magic, featuring Rivers Cuomo from Weezer, has proven lacklustre.

The conclusion would have to be that it was the status of his guests and not the man himself who sold the hits. The problem seems to be deciding whether he wants to be a rapper or sing radio friendly modern rock. Comparing his rap with that of Eminem’s on the reprise of Airplanes suggests he’d be better off following the latter direction. Certainly on both The Kids and next single, Don’t Let Me Fall, his rather sweet sounding singing voice is far superior to the rap interjections. Williams will be there to lend a hand for the stage show, but without the album’s other guest stars he’s going to stand or fall on his ability to be a presence of his own. 7.30pm. £22.50. LG Arena

Tuesday November 16

We Are Scientists

A two year sabbbatical from live work while focusing on their TV comedy series seems to have resulted in an exodus of fans. While debut album Brain Thrust Surgery proved a Top 20 chart breakthrough, this year’s follow-up, Barbara, failed to register despite the appeal of the Duran influenced Rules Don’t Stop and the summer friendly Break It Up and You Should Learn. Staccato new single I Don’t Bite has vanished without trace, surely wondering them what sort of chemistry they’re going to have to work to make their American Barbarians tour worth the effort.

Support comes from bearded London sextet Goldheart Assembly whose debut album, Wolves And Thieves (Fierce Panda), conjures thoughts of the Everlys and Crowded Hose with its harmony pop rock and country folk sunshine. They do rowdy here and there, but it’s the soothing Last Decade, and the cooing, lap steel backed Engraver’s Daughter that promise the highlights. 7.30pm. £13.50. HMV Institute

Tuesday November 16

Abe Vigoda

Named after the actor who played Sal Tessio in The Godfather, the LA outfit emerged into the limelight a couple of years back with their third album, Skeleton. However, anyone turning up expecting to hear the tropical punk they were laying then is in for a bit of a surprise. New release, Crush (Bella Union), is a darker affair that sees them moving into cold wave and 80s goth new wave with icy synths on songs sporting titles like We Have To Mask, Pure Violence and Throwing Shade. Not that the melodies aren’t bubbling and perky, especially on the surf meets synth Dream of My Love (Chasing After You) and the fluttery Sequins while the title track suggests a rocky early Depeche Mode. Elsewhere it’s not hard to detect the influence of Psychedelic Furs and, on Repeating Angel, even Simple Minds, with frontman Michael Vidal adopting a low, brooding croon.

It doesn’t feel as though it can muster the same sort of ambience live, but you’ll have to be there to decide whether it’s an offer you can’t refuse. 8pm. £6. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Wednesday November 17

Gorillaz

Rescheduled from earlier in the year and presumably given an overhaul following the apathetic response disaster of Glastonbury, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett drag Clash alumni Mick Jones and Paul Simenon out for the Plastic Beach tour, a ‘spectacular’ based around the band’s third album (Parlophone). Dub and hip hop oriented by way of Euro disco and Arabic flavours in service of a concept about cyborg bassists, kidnapped singers and islands made of rubbish, opening with an orchestral flourish there’s moment of inspiration here: the Gil Scott Heron feel of Welcome To The World of Plastic Beach, the 80s synth pop of On Melancholy Hill, Rhinestone Eyes’ carnival trip hop and the whirlygig pop and rap of Superfast Jellyfish.

However, given that assembling album guests such as Bobby Womack, Lou Reed and Mark E Smith didn’t prevent the Glasto crowds wandering off in boredom, one wonders just what sort of response the tour set will engender without their presence. Even Shaun Ryder’s pulled out for the better offer of crawling through mud and eating insects on I’m A Celebrity. 7.30pm. £45. NIA

Wednesday November 17

Chase and Status

After last year’s anonymous Plan B featuring single End Credits, drum and bass duo William Kennard and Saul Milton recently returned with far superior follow-up, Let You Go (Vertigo), a burning slice of moody r&b and synths featuring throaty vocals from Mali. An album, No More Idols, follows next year for which the tour serves as a preview. The next single, Blind Faith, will feature Nottingham’s rising high voiced guitar playing soul pop newcomer Liam Bailey who, coincidentally, just happens to also be the opening act.

He’s showcasing new EP, Rough Tracks Vol 2 (Lioness) featuring the likes of Breaking Out and th swaggery Fool Boy which, in tandem with past versions of I’d Rather Go Blind and Please, Please Please Let Me Get What I Want should go a fair way to finding him hailed as the new Sam Cooke/Seal/Terence Trent D’Arby. 8pm. £14. HMV Institute

Thursday November 18

Alasdair Roberts

The man who’s made trad folk sexy, wiry Roberts was born in Germany, the son of folk guitarist Alan Roberts, his first recordings coming via the US based Drag City label, after he slipped a demo to Will Oldham. He remains with the label, although current release, Too Long in This Condition gets its it UK release via Navigator, and will provide the backbone for the current tour.

Save for the instrumental, penned by his father, it’s a collection of trad numbers, arranged by Roberts and featuring a host of guest musicians, concertina player Emily Portman among them.

The bulk of the tunes have been covered to death, among them Long Lankin, The Two Sisters, Daemon Lover, The Golden Vanity and child murder ballad Little Sir Hugh. Yet his unfussy, unmannered delivery refreshes them all. He even manages to inject new blood into that old chestnut Barbara Allen without resorting to contemporary techniques.

Given you’d expect him to be more at home among the Arran jumpers of old school folk clubs, he’s build a considerable youthful following which, while not make him a Seth Lakeman style pin-up, bodes well for a sustained and varied future. 8pm. £8. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Thursday November 18

Boys Like Girls

Touring with fellow punk pop outfit Kids In Glass Houses, this is the first chance for the Boston crew to plug current album Love Drunk (Columbia) with its Killers-like punchy title track, arena rockers Heart Heart Heartbreak, She’s Got A Boyfriend Now, the percussion crunchy Contagious and the Bon Jovi Jr sounding Shot Heard Round The World.

Naturally they also provide the staple big ballad requirements with a swaying Someone Like You, soaring acoustic guitar Taylor Swift duet Two Is Better Than One and, parading their serious muso credentials, the strings swell of a six minute Go. They deserve to be much better known than they are at the moment and this could well prove a springboard to a stadium tour next year. 7pm. £13. O2 Academy

Friday November 19

a-ha

Although they took a four year hiatus between 1994 and 1998, the Norwegian trio never officially broke up. However, 12 years on from the reunion they’re finally calling it a day, their last appearance together scheduled for Dec 4 in Norway. However, aside from the loyal army of devotees, it’s unlikely there’ll be much weeping and wailing. To mark the departure they released 25 (Warner), a double album compilation of hits and better moments. The one new song and the last number they’ll record together, Butterfly, Butterfly, was released as a single. An utterly forgettable electro pop last hurrah, it barely scraped into the Top 100 here and didn’t even make the Top 10 back home.

Getting out now before apathy leaves them no choice, they leave behind a decent set of memories, not least 14 UK Top 20 hits that included Take On Me, The Sun Always Shines On TV, Hunting High And Low and The Living Daylights. Most of which will doubtless be among the set list. 7.30pm. £55-£25.50. LG Arena

Friday November 19

Dunwell Brothers Band

A Leeds five piece fronted by siblings Joseph and David, they’ve been together just over a year but their self-titled EP (Nature’s Little Punchline) sounds like they’ve been seasoned by far longer paying dues. Their influences clearly hail from across the pond, varying between West Coast country rock and acoustic Americana with The Eagles and Jackson Browne springing readily to mind.

Joe provides the aching lead voice, but with all five of them vocalists there’s plenty of close harmony to carry the songs too. And they’re songs worth the hearing. Plangent opening number Goodnight My City has a dusty weariness and perhaps a touch of Bob Seger about it, conjuring Don Henley, Dance With Me introduces pedal steel into the colours while, although a little excessive at six minutes, Oh Lord does a CS&Y with a bluesy guitar break.

Swaggery country rock is present with Feel Like I’m Running, but it’s the quieter numbers, with their weaving harmonies, that show them at their best; the soulful slow waltzing Saving Grace, the Browne-like stripped down reflective I Want To Be and the lovely, guitar peeling and steel ringing closer Elizabeth.

If this were the States, they’d be making their name in Austin bars but for now they’ll settle for spreading the word on the increasingly popular launch platform coffee circuit. Free. 10am Caffe Nero Bullring, 7pm. Cafe Nero Waterloo St, B’ham.

Saturday November 20

The Klaxons

That difficult second album syndrome struck with a vengeance when it came to following up their Mercury Prize winning Myths Of The Near Future. Two rejected producers, scrapped sessions, a first version turned down by the label, songs given the thumbs down during

showcase performances, it would be enough to have lesser outfits throwing in the towel.

However, sticking to self-belief and finally settling on Slipknot producer Ross Robinson, not to mention reportedly ingesting Peruvian hallucinogenics, they finally emerged with Surfing The Void (Polydor). And while it didn’t do the business of the debut, it fared respectably enough.

Of course, those expecting a reprise of the first album were surely taken aback by lines about “the chaos of oblivion” and “celestial catastrophe”, more befitting some doom metal band while even the staunchest fans must have had loyalties tested by the messy distortions of Cypherspeed and Extra Astronomical.

As they and titles like Venusia, Future Memories and Surfing The Void itself suggest, things are all a bit space rock pro, more likely to find a home in Hawkwind households than your average indie listener while The Same Space seems to be eyeing up Muse’s audience. Robinson’s roots in nu metal make their influence felt too on the thrash elements of the title track though, bizarrely bits of it sound more like Madness crossed with Sparks. Only really on Echoes do the band fan the same flames as something like Gravity’s Rainbow, likely to prove something of an oasis of relief in the live set for those checking the tickets to make sure they’ve got the right band.

Support comes from Fiction, a London art rock quartet who, to judge by taster numbers Big Things, Mars 500 and Phyllis fancy themselves as a techno Talking Heads with a healthy dollop of Eno. 6.30pm. £16. HMV Institute

Saturday November 20

Deftones

The planned Eros album having been put on seemingly permanent hold following Chi Cheng’s continuing semi-comatose condition following his 2008 car crash, Chino Moreno, stand in bassist Sergio Vega and the rest of the boys press on with the new from scratch Diamond Eyes (Reprise), its dense brooding riffs and jagged alt-metal a reaffirmation that things remain pretty much as they were.

There does, though, seem a deliberate intention to mess with preconceptions by having songs titled 976-Evil, This Place Is Death and You’ve Seen The Butcher turn out to be the album’s more musically subtle and quieter moments. Indeed, rather than some sort of sleaze rock attack, Sex Tape turns out to be almost ambient!

However, there’s still sufficient of the punishing, often brutal intensity that their fans lap up, yowling through Cmd/Ctrl, hammering through Rocket Skates and matching juddering muscle with melody on the title track. If Eros ever surfaces then perhaps the experimentation it was reputedly shaping might point towards planned future directions, but for now this is a consolidation of established strengths and enough to plaster the hall with wall to wall head nodders. 7pm. £25. O2 Academy

Saturday November 20

James Walsh

Although he says Starsailor are on hiatus while he takes a solo breather, the fact that the promo sticker on his Live At The Top Of The World (JMW) EP refers to him as ex-frontman suggests otherwise.

Whatever the band status, the fact is Walsh is currently working on his debut solo album with the likes of Ricky Ross and Suzanne Vega, taking time out for this one man acoustic tour in service of the 5 track taster.

Although it was recorded in the north of Norway with the Tromos Chamber Orchestra, it’s not exactly any huge departure from what fans are used to, indeed he even revisits the title track of sophomore album, Silence Is Easy; albeit with less chug and added strings.

Elsewhere Loaded Gun, Man on The Hill, and Soul On Trial have that familiar recipe of melody, melancholia and dreamy choruses while the romantic Life has him prompting thoughts of Crowded House.

Given that the addition of the string ensemble are an important part of their song, it’ll be interesting too what they feel like cut back to the basic guitar treatment and how seamlessly they slot between the Starsailor numbers that will also pepper the set. 7.30pm. £5. Kasbah Coventry

Sunday November 21

Jimmy Eat World

Seven albums in, the Arizona emo power pop four piece haven’t really changed much since 1999 ‘s Clarity and its breakout follow-up, Bleed American. But then if it ain’t broke...And so it is that Invented (Interscope) opens with the handclapping folky catchiness of Heart Is Hard To Find with its anthemic swirl and the catch to Jim Adkins’ vocals while My Best Theory, Evidence, Coffee And Cigarettes and Action Needs An Audience all serve the familiar circling guitar riffs, punchy hooks and fist pumping choruses.

If anything, the return of Mark Trombino, who produced their crossover albums, has restored a little lost rocky edge and sparked up quieter moments like Stop and Higher Devotion, though even he can’t prevent the six minute closing Mixtape sounding anything but a plod.

Where they go next, if they don’t want to stand still until they retire, will be a challenge, but for now they still offers the fans plenty to chew on. 6.30pm. £16.50. O2 Academy

Monday November 22

Sarah Blasko

Still working to crack the UK market, the cotton candy voiced Australian returns for another round of promotion of her As Day Follows Night (Dramatico). Although more suited to sunnier weather, perhaps its shimmering sjazzy pop and tropical hints might warm the winter evenings with the likes of the chanson styled Down On Love, Bird On A Wire’s finger-clicking sashay and the Simone-like Lost & Defeated. The intimate setting should suit the music, though it’ll be all the more noticeable if the audience is sparse. 8pm. £8. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Monday November 22

Ben Montague

A rising name from Kent who’s already won favour at Radio 2, his Overcome (BM) album wastes no time letting you know where he’s coming from, opening tracks Can’t Hold Me Down and Rainy Day both punchy driving guitar and keyboards pop, the former belting out a Jam-like 60s soul beat mixed with Michael Buble swing while the latter (which features Mike Rutherford on additional guitar) is more a case of classic American pop.

The title track and Haunted serve up classy Take That balladry (the latter produced by Peter-John Vetesse who did the honours for Gary Barlow and Mark Owen) while Save A Little Time swerves into funky Lenny Kravitz meets Prince territory and Weight Of Love and Broken are persuasive takes on the big stadium ballad. Musically versatile and armed with a tight band (though it’ll likely be just piano and guitar tonight), there’s touches of Robert Palmer, Elton John and Ben Folds here and there and he’s patently a gifted songwriter with a keen ear for a strong melody and chorus hook. The debut album may not be the one that makes him a star, but it can only be a matter of time.

He’s joined by Al Lewis, an equally radio friendly Welsh singer-songwriter whose self-released In The Wake album leans more towards an acoustic folky sound, his easy on the ear voice a little reminiscent of James Taylor, Paul Simon and a softer James Blunt.

Although Part Of The Mix gets a touch bluesy, he generally remains within his mid-tempo comfort zone, but with Sarah Howells of Paper Aeroplanes on harmonies, the songs are both immediate and growers. The soft shuffling Make A Little Room, a wistful Tangents, the breathy chugalong One Way Love Affair and, especially, melancholic love song The Arsonist are standouts but everything here curls its way inside your head and it would be an injustice if they weren’t heard by an increasingly wider audience.

Third member of this inviting singer-songwriter package is Suffolk born Lotte Mullan laying the ground for January’s official release of debut album Plain Jane (Raindog). Having caught her on her recent Caffe Nero tour, with an affably approachable no front, no ego personality she’s every bit as good live as on disc, chatty with the crowd and even getting to youngsters to dance along to the songs. She does a good rework of Beyonce’s Single Women, but it’s her own songs that put the real spark in her set, most notably the excellent Can’t Find The Words,

Alright With Me’s defiant assertion of being happy with who you are (written for her bullied sister), the cappuccino jazz La La Love You and the country flavoured heartbreak of Suzie's Back In Town. She’ll be headlining bigger venues this time next year, so get in on the ground floor now. 8pm. £9. Robin 2, Bilston

Wednesday November 24

Young Guns

The High Wycombe crew don’t mess about when it comes to delivering urgent, driving punk and rock influenced riffs. Debut album All Our Kings Are Dead (Pias) is full to bursting with numbers that make you feel you can drive your fist through a cliff face. Opening cuts Sons Of Apathy and Crystal Clear are enough the knock the breath out of a herd of stampeding elephants while both DOA and the more metallic At The Gates hit like battering rams.

They’re not all full on assault, though. Stitches is a wall of swirling guitars and marching beat, Meter & Verse pitches itself at stadium anthem heights and revamped current single Weight Of The World gathers it all together in one mighty massive dramatic noise. They may not have staying power, but right here, right now they are unstoppable.

Support comes from London five piece Japanese Voyeurs with their screamy, shouty, bluesy mess of the Stooges and Babes In Toyland. Last single, That Love Sound, offered a surprise deviation into quiet-loud bluesy prowl, but the new Milk Teeth sees them back to distorted guitars, metal riffing and Alice’s demented goblin vocals. 7.30pm. £8.50. HMV Institute

Wednesday November 24

Jenny & Johnny

Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis and Jonathan Rice and long-standing musical and personal partners, but although they’ve appeared on each other’s albums, this is the first time they’ve actually recorded together as a duo. Taking their cue, perhaps, from the She And Him collaboration, it’s a sweet and highly 60s flavoured collection of pop songs that makes no attempt to hide the Byrds and Beatles influences in its twangy guitars and hooks.

Lyrically, it’s rather more down on love and relationships than you’d have expected and Lewis’ fans will be disappointed that (while she takes lead on Straight Edge Of The Blade, the spacy While Men Are Dreaming and the economy crisis focused Big Wave), her role is more about harmonising with his raspy, upfront vocals.

Which by no means is to put the album down. Opening with the 60s West Coast folk-rock tumble of Scissor Runner it bounces breezily along on a raft of catchy melodies, surf pop Just Like Zeus, the downbeat jangling acoustic Switchblade and Committed, where the Velvets meet The Byrds and The Archies all stand-outs. There’s a summery innocence feel to it all and, if that translates to the live set too, you’ll be sent home feeling like you’ve had a meal of home pressed lemonade and sherbet ice-cream. 7.30pm. £14. O2 Academy 2

Wednesday November 24

Wolf Gang

Having supported Florence and Metric, multi-instrumentalist Max McElligott now headlines his own end of year tour, roadtesting material from next year’ debut album. Having already released Pieces Of You and The King And All Of His Men, he’s already created a buzz with his Bowie/Eno/David Byrne influenced pop and new single Lion In Cages (Atlantic), with its Beach Boys hints, puts a seal on that. Definitely a name to keep an eye on in 2011. 8pm. £5. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Wednesday November 24

Seeland

It was only last year that the Birmingham electronica outfit formed by Plone’s Neil McAuley and former Broadcast members Tim Felton and Mike Bainbridge released debut album Tomorrow Today, and here they are already back for the launch night of follow-up, How To Live (Loaf). And a rather fine, highly accessible affair it is too, the band clearly having uncorked their pop sensibilities to become a homegrown answer to OMD. Certaibky, lead track Black Dot, White Spider is a shimmering motorik match for anything off Architecture & Morality. The tinkles and wooshes of Local Park is playfully awash with a children’s television programme theme music feel, Circles and Awake In A Dream both have Oriental breezes, Recall is a lovely echo of 60s pop soul, Been So Long takes Brian Wilson on a tropical holiday and Afterthoughts is just gorgeous skipping, dreamy folk pop with an electronic sheen.

They might have been better advised to hang on until they could co-opt the sun for promotion, but this is a truly lovely album that deserves to be heard wafting out of every window.

Sharing the bill are hometown colleagues Betty & The ID who’ll be digging back into last year’s debut, The Wrong Side Of Everything and its blend of 60s garage psychrock and 80s New Wave with echoes of vintage Stranglers (Oregon Trail), The Fall (Burning Away) and prog jazz experimentalists Matching Mole (Standards). Assuming a similar work ethic, there’ll be a generous helping of new delights too. 8pm. £6. Glee Club

Thursday November 25

Cast

Despite notching up seven Top 10 singles between 1995 and 1999, the Liverpool Britpoppers became something of a joke in musical circles, dismissed as plodding and workmanlike. And when fourth album, Beetroot, failed to make the Top 75 after three Top 10 hits in succession, rumours of internal dissent and record label fall outs saw them finally throw in the towel in 2001.

Frontman John Power followed a solo career but never seemed to catch up, three albums failing to make an impact while his only chart success was singing on a Liverpool FC football single. It came as no huge surprise when it was announced earlier this year that the band was getting back together. It’s fair to say banners were not hung in the streets to celebrate.

However, they do, perhaps, deserve a reassessment, so it’s timely that this month sees the release of All Change (Polydor), a double CD reissue of the debut album that now comes with a 27 bonus tracks of B sides, live recordings and demos. Whether you actually want four different recordings of Alright (original, live and two demos!) is another matter, but relistening there’s a reasonable argument that the band deserve a re-evaluation, even if they’re still never going to make the lists of BritPop’s finest.

As you’d imagine, there’ll be plenty from the debut album on the set list but, with an album of new material in the works for next year, a few sneak previews too. 7pm. £20. O2 Academy

Thursday November 25

Straight Lines

A final flurry of dates to try and get debut album Persistence In This Game (Xtra Mile) on to Christmas lists, the Welsh four piece will be chopping out numbers such as the choppy mosh friendly Runaway Now and The Allegiance alongside the poppier Set Me On Fire and at least one obligatory slow track, most likely All My Friends Have Joined The Army. Loud, bouncy and sweaty, but as the name suggests, without any curves to sustain the interest. 8pm. £5. The Flapper

Thursday November 25

Hazel O’Connor

Photo by Michael Purssord

It’s 30 years since the Coventry singer found overnight fame starring in and providing the soundtrack for Breaking Glass. The film earned her two BAFTA nominations and the album sold by the truckload, spawning Top 5 single, Eighth Day. However, an early taste of the ups and downs that have characterised her career, while the D-Days single was a hit her sophomore album, Sons And Lovers, failed to chart. Likewise, although Will You, lifted from the film soundtrack, gave her a third Top 10 single in 1981, that year’s album, Cover Plus, only struggled to the bottom reaches of the Top 40.

A promising acting career foundered too. It would be five years before she appeared in a second film, and then only in a minor role in Car Trouble and although she landed a recurring role in the 1986 mini-series Fighting Back, she’s not acted on the big or small screen since.

This hasn’t meant she’s not been working though. She’s consistently toured and released numerous studio and live albums that have served to underline her consistently developing musical powers. Now to mark the film’s anniversary, she’s put together a tour to finally play everything from the soundtrack in one show for the first time. She’s also re-recorded the entire thing with her new band, The Subterraneans, to bring it up to speed with where she’s at these days.

Inevitably given the time span, not all the songs have aged well, but the strongest moments then remain so today; the punky rousing Writing On The Wall, the Stranglers-like Calls The Tune, a punchy Blackman, the defiant Give Me An Inch and the surging sci-fi themed Eighth Day. And, of course the torchy fragile ballad of romantic desperation Will You, Clare Hirst providing a solid reproduction of Wesley McGoogan’s haunting alto sax solo.

I’m not sure how this will measure up as a stand-alone set, but O’Connor’s a voice and performer that warrants much more attention than she gets, so consider it a public service to be there.

Opening the show will be Tensheds, better known to his mates as Matt Millership. From his appearance, you might understandably expect a set of Bowie-esque goth and glam, but when he sits down at that piano and sings what you get is something between Tom Waits and Ray Lamontagne. A classically trained pianist with a throatily tremulous vocal, on his Crazy Beautiful album he sounds as though he’s lived a dozen lives with a collection of songs informed by soul and Americana. Wrenchingly emotional love song Go Out On The Weekend and Angel Of London both evoke early Waits, Sentimental Feelings is a Johnny Cash rockabilly chug, the melancholic Sell Another Soul conjures Jeff Buckley and piano ballad Stains has him sounding like James Blunt remodelled by God.

If he’s anything like the album in person, then prepare to be transfixed, and when he gets to the moving Flying Cars and the mournful folk blues Paradise, a song that picks at the nerves of grief, death and the numbing alienation of urban society's merry go round, it’ll be transcendental. 7.30pm, £16. The Robin 2, Bilston

Friday November 26

Paul Weller

Indisputably one of the icon figures of contemporary British music, it’s reassuring to see that Weller’s never sat back and taken things easy, content to coast on his reputation. His recent studio album, Wake Up The Nation, was a brutally lean, almost punk ethos affair with rowdy distorted guitar and short, sharp songs that ranged from garage blues stomps to Beatles psychedelia, 70s disco funk, jungle-voodoo flurry and acid jazz.

Now he swiftly follows that with Weller, a live album recorded at the Royal Albert Hall, complete with OCS’s Steve Craddock on guitar and a full string section, that finds him taking the roof off as he blisters and scorches his way through a set that features Nation songs such as Andromeda, Trees, Up The Dosage and 7 & 3 Is The Striker’s Name alongside inspired solo, Style Council and Jam classics From The Wildwood, Shout To The Top, Eton Rifles and That’s Entertainment, the latter two featuring Kelly from Stereophonics. There’s little reason, special guests aside, to think this won’t be any less an inferno.

A second, more intimate live set from the BBC Theatre also features Start!, a moody soul cover of How Sweet It Is with Lauren Pritchard and a soaring Spectorish rock country duet with Richard Hawley on No Tears To Cry. In addition, there’s a bonus DVD of the full concert with a further dozen tracks, including The Butterfly Collector and Julien Temple’s documentary Find The Torch, Burn The Plans.

Support comes from psychedelic hippie jam folk chaps The Bees, a review copy of the new album, Every Step’s A Yes, wasn’t provided but tastes of I Really Need Love and Silver Line suggest they’ve entered a CS&N phase while Winter Rose offers folk dub and Pressure Makes My Crazy is all rather cosmic. 7.30pm. £35.LG Arena

Friday November 26

Interpol

Enjoying a massive breakout with 2007’s Our Love To Admire, it seems the public has rather swiftly tired of the New York men in black’s Joy Division influenced post punk dark and doomy throbbing riffs. This year’s self-titled follow up received mix reviews and just scraped into the Top 10 while the Barricades single was totally ignored. It’s all rather dull and one-note, which may explain why promo copies weren’t forthcoming and tickets are still available. 7pm. £22.50. O2 Academy

Friday November 26

Heaven 17

Formed when Martyn Ware and Ian Marsh left the Human League and recruited Glenn Gregory on vocals, they were a far more political and electric dance focused outfit, managing to both pack club floors and get banned by the BBC with their debut single (We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang. Sales of this, the Penthouse & Pavement album and its subsequent singles were not, however, impressive. Things improved considerably with second album, The Luxury Gap, which made the top 4 and produced a string of chart hits with Temptation, Come Live With Me and Crushed By The Wheels Of Industry. That, however, proved to be the high point and sales and chart placings went downhill with subsequent releases, even Glenn Gregory solo single duet with Claudia Brucken, the terrific Righteous Brothers styled ballad from the Insignificance soundtrack, failing to capture interest.

Marsh quit the band for university four years ago, but Ware and Gregory have kept things going both with releases and live shows. Which brings us to this, the latest of the ‘tour the old classic album’ events. However, rather than their biggest commercial success, they’ve opted to take Penthouse & Pavement out of storage and play the entire release from beginning to end, though not necessarily in that order.

To coincide, the album itself is being reissued in a new bells and whistles digitally remastered edition that will also include alternate versions, instrumentals, various experimental tracks, previously unheard demos and tracks from the vaults plus a third disc featuring the P&P concert in Rotherham earlier this year. Whether you can still dance to them, is another matter.7pm. £20. HMV Institute

Friday November 26

Adam Lambert

Runner up in the eighth series of American Idol and the first openly gay pop star to be launched by a major US label, Lambert seems to have taken the place by storm, selling out venues almost instantly. And yet debut album and its title track single For Your Entertainment (RCA) has so far only managed a brief showing in the lower depths of the Top 40 here, suggesting that, for a large proportion of his audience, he’s much more of a live attraction.

Musically, it’s hard not to seem him as a camped up cocktail of Queen, Scissor Sisters and Mika with glam pomp melodies, falsettos and big dramas. With songs written by Muse’s Matt Bellamy, Pink, Linda Perry, Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo and Lady Gaga (the inevitably dancey sex themed strutter Fever), clearly no expense has been spared on kitting him out with radio friendly melodies. Were he better known, the Bon Jovi-style big ballad Time For Miracles, one of five, otherwise mostly dancefloor oriented, extra tracks on the UK release, might well have even been a Christmas hit contender.

It’s all a bit heavily produced and processed, but while designed down to the last quaver and with the bombast turned to max, there’s no denying that numbers such as If I Had You, Pick U Up, Aftermath and Down The Rabbit Hole deliver the package. Joe McElderry must be looking on and weeping. 7pm. £14. O2 Academy 2

Friday November 26

The Brights

Four blokes from Chelmsford who, to going by official debut single Foosteps (LemonPop), fancy themselves as leading a cappuccino soul revival, despite a rather obvious lack of Weller’s style. With only one track to go on, it’s hard to make judgements so catching them live will help decide whether to put the pennies away for next year’s album or whether they have anything resembling a future, but for now, a playful lyrical reference to The Smiths, gives them a pass into the next round. 8pm. £4. Kasbah, Coventry

Saturday November 27

The Drums

Launched at the start of the year with much hype and music press buzz, including #5 on the BBC’s Sound of 2010 and the NME’s No 1 top tip, things haven’t exactly gone according to plan. None of the singles charted, the self-titled album stalled at #16 and guitarist Adam Kessler quit in September.

Certainly, for a band supposedly riding the crest of a surf pop revival, the album was a pretty tame affair with the twangs, bass runs and harmonies all rather lacklustre and uninvolved. They’re making one last ditch attempt to flog the album with this tour and next month’s double A-side single release of the skittery Me And The Moon and echoey ballad Down By The Water, but since you forget they’re playing before they’re half way through, it’s all rather doomed to failure. They plan to put this all behind them and start work on a new album once the tour’s done. It might do the trick, but for the moment they’ve clearly missed the beat. 7.30pm. £11.50. HMV Institute

Saturday November 27

BRMB Live

Hoosiers

A name-packed line up from the radio station with new celebs being announced daily, it’s an impressive roll call but the reality is that given the running time and the logistics of changeovers involved, most acts will be lucky to play more than three numbers. And those are most likely going to be their current and best known singles. And, just to be cynical, that’s assuming it’s all live rather than lip-synched.

So, rolling them out on the conveyor belt in no particular order, you get the X-Factor quota with Diana Vickers, Olly Murs and Joe McElderry (whose career seems to be over already), the fallen from favour McFly, Example, James Blunt plugging his Some Kind Of Trouble album to an audience too young to be interested, The Saturdays, The Wanted and, touching down from the States, The Hoosiers who might hopefully get into the spirit of things by including their version of Say Hello, Wave Goodbye. Doubtless, by the time the gig rolls around, there’ll be even more of them. 6.30pm. £39.95/£29.95. LG Arena

Saturday November 27

Jedward

Well, the lads are nothing if not ambitious. Although their album disappeared from the charts almost before you registered it was there, they’ve opted for taking on a massive venue rather than one that might better accommodate the likely size of the audience.

However, having survived Cowell’s scathing comments and the mountain of press savaging their singing and dancing ‘abilities’, John and Edward clearly don’t let negativity stand in their way. So what if their biggest exposure since X Factor has been TV commercials and their own reality show, they know there’s hundreds of tweenage girls out there ready to scream their heads off whenever they appear.

They’re no great vocalists and the dance routines can be a little low on perfectly choreographed timing, but they are endearingly cocky and likeable showmen who know how to entertain. Also, to be fair, the Planet Jedward (Absolute) album wasn’t quite the disaster reviews would have it. Their teaming with Vanilla Ice for Under Pressure (Ice Ice Baby) was quite inspired and, while Ghostbusters, Fight For Your Right To Party (bleeped, obviously) and Rock DJ were patently beyond the limits of their vocal talents, sounding like bad karaoke, their versions of straight uncluttered pop numbers like Teenage Kicks, Pop Musik, I Want Candy and, especially, All The Small Things are actually quite fun. Quite what to expect from the live show is anyone’s guess, but the boys do promise it’ll be colourful. 7.30pm. £22.50. Symphony Hall

Sunday November 28

Marc Almond

Although everyone always rolls out Soft Cell when his name comes up, Almond’s been accorded far too little recognition and respect for his subsequent work, either with Marc and the Mambas and The Willing Sinners or his twelve solo albums, only one of which has ever made the Top 40.

In recent years he’s been involved as a collaborator on several experimental works as well as his own interests in Eastern European music, torch songs and Weimar cabaret. His last album, Orpheus In Exile, was a collection of covers of Gypsy Russian Romance singer Vadim Kozin while his latest, Variete (Cherry Red), his first self-penned songs in nearly a decade, heads into vaudeville and chanson sleaze for what is, to a great extent, an autobiographical confessional. There’s references to his tormented childhood on the Brel-like piano and strings backed Sandboy, decadence and experimentation in his 20s on the Motown noir beat Soho So Long, the musicals feel of the self-explanatory My Madness And I and, on Trials Of Eyeliner, a journey through thirty hedonistic years of varnishing nails for self-expression and chewing them in anguish.

On the doo wop croon of It’s All Going On, (a reminder that he was born in the 50s) he sings how his life is like a drag queen’s dressing room his mind like a prostitute’s bed, succinctly illustrating his way with a playful, poetic and poignant lyric. As Cabaret Clown shows, he can get a little self-indulgent in his wallowing, but it’s hard not to be seduced by things like the cabaret clarinet swing of Bread And Circus, strings caressed tango Nijinsky’s Heart and the inappropriately titled Brel-waltzer Unloveable.

As this is the 30 Year Celebration Tour, billed as the Hits and A Sides, sadly there probably won’t be anything from it on the set list, but it would be remiss to not make you aware of its existence while you revel in the nostalgia trip through Tainted Love, Say Hello Wave Goodbye, The Days Of Pearly Spencer and Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart. Given on Swan Song he sings that his time’s passed on and he’s saying goodbye, this may well prove his final live appearances as well as his last album of original material. Both would be a great pity. But, just in case, he openly encourages the audience to record and photograph the show for personal memories. 7.30pm. £24.50. Alexandra Theatre

Sunday November 28

Paul Smith

Insisting the band is on sabbatical rather than defunct, the Maximo Park frontman sets out on a solo tour to promote his solo debut album, Margins (Billingham). Save for the fact, he’s playing his own guitar, it’s not exactly a major departure from the band’s familiar art rock sound with its angular, spiky textures and Smith’s sharply observed lyrics. Indeed, North Atlantic Drift (not an Ocean Colour Scene cover though it bizarrely sounds like a Simon Fowler song), Dare Not Dive and the fuzzy lo fi The Crush And The Shatter could have been outtakes from the disappointingly lacklustre Quicken the Heart.

There are departures from the template, though. Lady Of Lourdes is a moodily atmospheric number, While You’re In The Bath is just him and an acoustic guitar, This Heat has a busker feel, I Wonder If is all spooked echoey folk, Alone, I Would’ve Dropped is spoken over a haunted distant guitar and the melancholic, breathed Pinball comes with a mix of cello and what sounds like ukulele.

It’ll give Maximo fans something to think about, but it’s all a bit too introverted and ordinary to attract curious newcomers. 8pm. £10. Glee Club

Sunday November 28

The Bluetones

Pic Pat Pope

The Britpop survivors see the year out with a last flurry of dates built around the recent A New Athens album. They still do a nice line in jangle, but it’s a mixed affair with catchy highlights such as the title track, Half The Size Of Nothing’s REM shades, the 60s garage rock of Into The Red and the tumbling folksy pop of Carry M Home set alongside forgettable fare like the ploddy Pranchestonelle, a formless riff-based The Day That Never Was and, rather unfortunately, the winsome blandness of new single Golden Soul. The fans will be out, but they’re unlikely to entice any newcomers. 7.30pm. £10. Slade Rooms, W’hampton

Monday November 29

Engineers

Out on tour with a new album and a new line-up, now including German electronica multi-instrumentalist Ulrich Schnauss, the London dream pop crew are slightly less shoegaze and dense than before but In Praise Of More (Kscope) still trades in mostly ethereal sonic washes, vocals buried deep inside the swell.

With its techno bleeps and urgent drive, the title track does stretch out into dancey motorik and Subtoper offers a growl of chugging riffs and darkly rumbling rhythms but generally numbers like What’s It’s Worth, Las Vega, and Twenty Paces trade in the narcotic spacey fuzz of such influences as Eno and Floyd. Great if you just intend to stand there and sway, but unlikely to be the most vibrant of gigs. 7.30pm. £7. O2 Academy 3

Tuesday November 30

Best Coast

Everyone seemed to go gaga over Crazy For You (Wichita), the debut from the LA duo of Bethany Consentino and Bobb Bruno. Hard to know why really. What it offers are 12 two minute (or thereabouts) summery songs about the ups and downs of relationships, all influenced by Spectorised 60s pop with lashings of woozy reverb guitar and Consentino’s vocals swathed in an echo chamber.

Certainly the likes of The End, Goodbye, When The Sun Don’t Shine, the moody surf guitar driven Honey and the title track are attractive enough with chorus hooks and catchy melodies (even if the tunes do become a tad samey), but really they’re not a patch on the similarly inclined Raveonettes, and where are they these days. Maybe it works better live. 8pm. £11. Glee Club

Tuesday November 30

Squeeze

Presumably for reasons of copyright and lack of ownership of the masters, Messrs Difford and Tilbrook recently released Spot The Difference, a greatest hits album but featuring new versions re-recorded to sound exactly like the originals. Well, more or less, given the better production values and the effect of age on the vocals. Still, you’d have to be a bit of an anorak to minutely try and dissect the aural differences between Cool For Cats then and Cool For Cats now. A bit of a pointless artistic exercise really, but it does at least offer a new excuse to do another hits tour while glossing over the fact that the long promised new material has still yet to surface.

Support comes from The Lightning Seeds, or at least Ian Broudie and whatever backing musicians he’s assembled. With ‘comeback’ album Four Winds released last year to largely public indifference, it’ll be the loyalist long-serving fans who’ll be offering encouragement while everyone else hangs round the bar. Still, hopefully at least a few among the Squeeze audience will have the good taste to remind themselves of his Beatlesesque, dreamy, psychedelic tunes, mingling old favourites such as The Life of Riley and Pure with the new folksy flavours of the melancholically gentle 4 Strings, the pastoral Lilac Time pop of The Story Goes and the jangling All I Do. 7.30pm. £33.50. Symphony Hall

Tuesday November 30

We Have Band

Somewhere between early Depeche Mode and The Human League, the jittery synthpop of Divisive was a useful calling card for the Manchester trio’s debut album, WHB. This revealed itself to also be clothed in Kraftwerk and Bauhaus colours too with numbers such as the gypsy tinted Oh! and the goth swirls of new single Love, What You Doing (Naive).

They’re still trying to build an audience for their flattened male/female vocals, trampolining rhythms and robot keyboard patterns, but while they may ultimately aspire to Peter Murphy atmospherics, they may have to seduce dance floors with the likes of the perky Centrefolds & Empty Screens first. 7.30pm. £. O2 Academy 3

Tuesday November 30

To The Bones

Roaring out of Bolton and dubbed a heavy metal Pixies by the NME, the dates serves to support the release of the new riff crunching Astral Magic EP. Headed up by the full throttle gravelly assault of YHA with its meld of Motorhead thrust and rabble rousing anthemic chorus, it’s backed up by the vocally distorted hard blues metal Super Rock, the ugly fuzz of Monster and Nirvana play Black Sabbath of the title track. With a new album due early next year, they’ll be trying out the riffs to see what bleeds. 8pm. £5. The Flapper

Tuesday November 30

Frightened Rabbit

The Selkirk folk-popish quintet wind down the year with a final reminder of current album The Winter of Mixed Drinks (Fat Cat) and growing live favourites such as the rousing Living In Colour, Skip The Youth’s epic swell and the guitar circling, handclappy The Loneliness And The Scream.

Support is Leeds’ combo Sky Larkin who, fronted by Kate Harkin, will be bouncing through choice cuts from sophomore album Kaleide (Wihcita), a second serving of Seattle stroked spiky guitar pop which throws a few Gang Of Four curves into their Pavement/Sleater-Kinney/Breeders axis. Recent single Still Windmills bops merrily along like a grunge Altered Images with Landlocked and Shade By Shade bring up the poppy rear and Guitars And Antarctica, Spooktacular and the bleepy Year Dot seeing them flex more experimental muscles. Still well down the second division ladder, though. 7.30pm. £11. Slade Rooms