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ARCHIVED REVIEWS October 2009 Previews by Mike Davies Thursday October 1/Saturday October 3/Sunday October 4 Cliff Richard & The Shadows
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the world’s most famous singer and backing band combination’s first single and first No 1 with Travelling Light (Living Doll had topped the charts in July, but at that point the Shads were still known as The Drifters) and, to mark the occasion and officially bring the partnership to a close they’re reunited for the first and last time in 20 years. Not only has Cliff taken his trademark pink jacket out of mothballs and got back together on tour with Hank Marvin, Bruce Welch and Brian Bennett (who didn’t actually join the line up until 1961) but they’ve also revisited their shared past with Reunited (EMI), an album (their first together in 40 years) featuring 19 re-recordings (22 if you get the special edition) of their hits (and 1960 B side Willie & The Hand Jive) alongside covers of C’mon Everybody, Sea Cruise and Singing The Blues, the latter also released a single coupled with A Voice In The Wilderness. Although included on the album and now featuring an extra verse, technically speaking, Cliff’s first hit, Move It, isn’t a re-recording since none of the subsequent Shadows were in the Drifters line-up at the time, nor does it have quite the same snarl of that original session when, for a few seconds, a curling lipped Cliff was almost the bad boy of British rock n roll before Living Doll Came along and turned him into a housewives’ favourite pop star. The rest though, from I Could Easily (Fall In Love With You) and The Young Ones through Bachelor Boy and On The Beach to Summer Holiday and, their penultimate hit together, In The Country, sounds as fresh as when they were first heard, Marvin’s guitar sparkling playfully and Cliff sounding more like a teenager than someone approaching his 69th birthday. Go on, dig out those dancing shoes. 7.30pm. £60/£55. NIA
Thursday October 1 Joan Baez
It’s been three years since she last played here, since which time she’s released The Day After Tomorrow (Proper), her 24th studio album and, while her mezzo soprano may have mellowed and grown lower and warmer, still finding her sounding as good as when she sang We Shall Overcome or The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. At 68, it's not too surprising to find her reflecting on matters of mortality alongside themes of faith, hope and homecoming, the album opening with the Steve Earle penned and vintage Baez sounding God Is God. A reminder of her impeccable good taste as an interpreter, the whole album consists entirely of cover versions, each invested with her own gravitas and passion, of which particular standouts would have to include Costello’s Scarlet Tide, country songwriter Diana Jones’ haunting miner's deathbed farewell of Henry Russell's Last Words, Thea Gilmore’s Reviewing The Lower Road and a wonderful stripped back emotionally tremulous cover of Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan's title track letter from Iraq. Hopefully there’ll be plenty of room to feature several of these tonight, but also those from the recently reissued Gone From Danger (Proper), a career high 1997 showcase collection of young songwriters that includes Sinean Lohan’s No Mermaid, Richard Shindell’s Reunion Hill, If I Wrote You by Dar Williams and Betty Elders’ powerful bluesy story of sexual abuse, Crack In The Mirror. The reissue also now includes a second disc of a concert recorded that same year and featuring most of the album’s songs as well as a haunting version if To Ramona, a reminder that it was Baez who was largely instrumental in launching Dylan’s career. It would be a surprise if at least one of his songs didn’t also make its way into tonight’s set. 7.30pm. £37.50. Symphony Hall Thursday October 1 The Maccabees
A second go round in support of sophomore album Wall Of Arms (Fiction) with its echoes of the anthemic sound of Arcade Fire, peppered with infectious hooks, staccato guitar and Orlando Weeks’ folk-inflected warble. Progressing beyond the debut’s youthful optimism to embrace darker themes, One Hand Holding’s account of a kamikaze relationship, the mortality focused Young Lions, lament for lost childhood William Powers and the driving Seventeen Hands all likely to be among tonight’s wall-shaking highlights. 7.30pm. £13.50. O2 Academy Thursday October 1 Mundy
Briefly hailed as another new Dylan on the release of debut album Jellylegs, Offally born Edmund Enright got dumped half way through his second album when Epic suddenly realised they’d made a colossal mistake. Since when he’s ploughed his own furrow to decidedly mixed results. His third album, 24 Star Hotel promised much but that was then washed away by 2004’s Raining Down Arrows which may have hit the No 1 spot in Ireland but remains firmly unmemorable with his voice lacking both power and colour. A uneven live set surfaced three years back and threatened to send him back to the pub circuit, but then came surprise return to favour when its cover of Steve Earle’s Galway Girl with Sharon Shannon was adopted for the Bulmer’s commercial and the studio version spent five weeks atop the Irish chart. Now comes studio album number four, Strawberry Blood (Camcor), and it’s much the same story. There’s a promising opener with Waiting For The Night To Come, a guitar slinger rock n roll number with Earle influences and catchy Nick Lowe pop chorus, but then turgid sub JJ Cale blues Tenerife (Cruisin’ Paradise) pulls thing up short and It’s All Yours descends into anonymous Eagles-like territory. Matters don’t improve with some naff lyrics (for example Me & My Guitar’s “I wanna play until the rooster shares his oats and I’m gonna stay until the women grab their coats” has to be some kind of nadir) and the excruciating Love Is A Casino’s unintelligible duet with Shane MacGowan. Then there’s dreary beats driven dirge Pepper In My Dreams, the lamentable sub Van Morrison Celtic soul title track and the quite embarrassing sentimental hymn to old Ireland, I Miss The Country. Hardly the stuff to encourage early queues. 7.30pm. £7. Glee Club Thursday October 1 Flood of Red
The review copy of their forthcoming debut album, Leaving Everything Behind (Dark City), stranded in the black hole of the Royal Mail strikes, the only things on which to judge this new Scottish hardcore six piece (guessingly named after the 1997 Red River flood of North Dakota) is current single, Home Run (1997) and their MySpace samples. If they’re representative, then you can duly expect to hear plenty of searing guitars, driving riffs, pummelling drums, big drama choruses and vocals that veer from guttural yowl to bruised tenderness. They’ve toured with Madina Lake and Enter Shikari, and don’t sound a million miles away from either of them. 7.30pm. £6. W’hampton Civic Hall Bar Friday October 2 All Time Low
A Baltimore pop punk four piece who started out as a school Green Day and Blink 182 covers band, they’ve clearly still not outgrown their influences to judge by third album, Nothing Personal (Hopeless). Having made its US chart debut at #4, they’re clearly a force to be reckoned with even if the chewy vocals, chugging guitars, teen attitude swaggery lyrics and spiked bubblegum and sherbet melodies are all overly generic. They let the side down with unnecessary and rather dated electro ripples on Walls and the anaemic boy band sounding Too Much, but get past the irritating tinny drum machine and Weightless is a catchy piece of flurried punky pop with some obligatory swearing while the big chords and riff flurries of Damned If I Do Ya (Damned If I Don’t), Keep The Change, You Filthy Animal, Stella (a love song about the lager rather than a girl) and the standout (and All American Rejects soundalike) Break Your Little Heart ensure plenty of floor bouncing action. The tabloid gossip themed midtempo Sick Little Games and cell phones aloft ballad Therapy shows they can function equally as well outside of their comfort zone and have more than one trick to build upon for a sustained future. And, for tonight, a guarantee of sweat and slamming action. 6.30pm. £10.50. O2 Academy 2 Saturday October 3 Jamie T
Two years on from the Panic Prevention debut, the Wimbledon rapper Treays returns with sophomore album Kings & Queens (Pacemaker), dumping his original idea of a Dylan-inspired set to once again mix together hip hop, pop, folk, punk and world music in a compelling mishmash that variously muses about problematic relationships, the daily reality of London’s streets, social issues and the quality of life in general. The influence of Joe Strummer and the Clash can be readily heard on Spider’s Web (a politics infused track that manages to rhyme intifada, Gaza and Robert Palmer), Hocus Pocus, the rollicking night on town hard man bovver of Sticks n Towns, and British Intelligence but then, in complete contrast, digs into British folk music to craft the rabble rousing The Man’s Machine (decidedly Chumbawambaish), acoustic cautionary ballad Emily’s Heart and the fingerpicking Jilly Armeen. Continuing to name songs after pop stars, Chaka Demus observes the dead eyed losers down the local to a perky cocktail of calypso, pop, rap and the Banana Splits theme music while Earth, Wind & Fire tells drug runner’s story bizarrely prefaced by a Joan Baez sample and featuring a chorus straight of the Johnny Cash country songbook. And then you get the Eastern textures suddenly bubbling up on Castro Dies’ song about getting things done while, just to reinforce the album’s often offkilter subject matter, clanking beat rap 368 borrows from MIA’s Paper Plane, unfolds a list of London place names, references Maggie Thatcher and talks about measuring life in millimetres of beer. Amazingly, such vast diversity manages to come together quite naturally, turning what on paper sounds like a stylistic car crash into a coherent whole, both on disc and on stage. Digging out the best here with nuggets from the debut that should include Calm Down Dearest, Back In The Game, If You Got The Money and Pacemaker, it’ll be an interesting night. 7pm. £15. O2 Academy Saturday October 3 X-Certs
Having released their debut album, In The Cold Wind We Smile, earlier this year, the Aberdeen trio bang out Live At King Tuts for the fans, available exclusively through iTunes. Recorded at the sell out gig to launch the Crisis In The Slow Lane single, it’s a solid eight track set that, in some ways, shows them in an even better light than the studio recordings, Murray Macleod’s tremulous vocals sounding stridently confident and the band firing up on the crowd response. Naked enough on the album, the spare quivering Aberdeen 1987 takes on an extra emotive edge when delivered live while the single builds to a swelling passion where you can almost hear the veins standing out on Macleod’s neck. Seven of the numbers come from the debut album while this marks the first recorded appearance of live favourite set opener Beige. If the studio set wasn’t sufficient to persuade you to get a place down the front, this certainly should. 7pm. £6. O2 Academy 3 Saturday October 3 Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir
They don’t come from the mountains, this isn’t gospel, there’s only four of them and I have no idea about their actual religious persuasions, but I can tell you this Canadian outfit make a backwoods folk and delta blues noise that conjures comparisons to the clattery best of Tom Waits and Captain Beefheart. Running their fingers through Mississippi mud, bashing on sheet metal, growling and gargling gravel, punishing banjo and upright bass, variously lurching along and racing like the devil’s on their tail, they hammer out stories of wild mountain men and mad eyed preachers. Released last year, they’re over to spread the word on Ten Thousand (Balling the Jack), an album that stomps, thumps and picks its way through covers of Son House’s Empire State Express, Sleep John Estes’ Stop That Thing and Dewey Balfa’s psychocajun La Valse De Balfa alongside such raw self-penned folk blues tunes as the percussive swampy lurching The Boig, demented slide guitar punkabilly Life Is Long, the swaggering slide driven pow chant chant rhythm of Never Be Dead and the mountain moonshine and campfire harp chugging jubilee that is Go Back Home. They’ll make converts of you. 8pm. £7. Taylor John’s House, Coventry Saturday October 3 InME
Recently in town promoting his folky solo acoustic album, Dave McPherson gets back to the alt rock/nu metal day job to plug new band album, Herald Moth (Graphite). It’s pretty much business as usual with piston pumping metal riffing, guitar solos, a sweet/abrasive vocal mix and dense, loud sound. They’re not offering anything particularly new or original, but they do at least work their way through the likes of Nova Armada, You Won’t Hear From Me Again, A Mouthful Of Loose Teeth and Single of the Weak like their lives depend on it. Drawing on both the new album and their previous three for the set list (though the breakthrough Overgrown Eden gets short shrift), they may not be quite as full blooded as they are on disc since, having broken his wrist, recently arrived second guitarist Ben Konstantinovic is out of action for the tour, reducing the band back to their original trio format. 8pm. £10. Asylum, Hockley Sunday October 4 Wild Beasts
With a countertenor frontman in the interestingly pallid Hayden Thorpe who has a falsetto voice every much as individual, idiosyncratic and high pitched as Antony Hegarty, the Cumbrian quartet made quite an impression with last year’s audience dividing debut album Limbo, Panto, earning comparisons to the early Edwyn Collins and the complex white soul of The Associates. They consolidate on the critical acclaim now with Two Dancers (Domino), a follow up that, while featuring nothing quite as boisterous as The Devil’s Crayon, still mixes dance, pop, jazz and art rock experimentation to equal eccentric yet compelling effect. Florid lyrics like ‘O! Untetherable bird of the blue! O! Unpluckable flower of the moon!’ on the operatic (Bizet if I’m not mistaken) This Is Our Lot suggest they either take themselves very seriously or are laughing behind their hands. Given a track titled The Funpowder Plot and a song about someone with a dancing cock (not, I assume terpsichorean poultry), there’s certainly a knowing playfulness at work, but either way it’s hard to deny a certain intoxicating air to numbers such as the exotically atmospheric When I’m Sleepy or the woozy cabaret and musical box feel of the mortality themed Underbelly. Since they’re well aware that too much Thorpe might test the patience, baritone guitarist Tom Fleming also does the honours from time to time, most effectively so on the loping All The King’s Men where, sounding not unlike Living In A Box or Go West he sings about girls from Shipley, Hounslow and Whitby. Unfortunately, Thorpe can’t resist interrupting with high pitched yelps, presumably to keep their canine listeners involved. The fluttering croon and guitarist Ben Little’s reverb shimmering groove of We Still Got The Taste Dancin’ On Our Tongues, the bossa nova hints to Hooting & Howling and the watery oriental mood of Two Dancers (II), underscore their attraction for those to whom a dance floor offers sensual and sexual pleasures. Mingled with earlier numbers like Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants or She Purred While I Grrrred that are guaranteed to unlock your inner twitching David Byrne moves, if they get the acoustics and sound balance right it’ll be a glowingly good night and probably one of the last times you’ll catch them in such intimate environs. 8pm. £10. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath Sunday October 4 General Fiasco
Following on from Rebel Get By and Something Sometime, the Belfast pop punk three piece wind up the year’s activities with a headline tour, upcoming support to The Enemy and their best single yet, We Are The Foolish (Infectious), a skirling military beat swaggerer that recalls the barricade storming days of The Skids and Big Country. The debut album’s due sometime early 2010, and on the form so far and their belting live reputation, it’s one to put on the early wants list. 7pm. £6. O2 Academy 3 Monday October 5 Wave Machines
I’ve never really got Hot Chip and electro-pop often leaves me cold, sounding weedy and limp. However, this Liverpool quartet are a more attractive proposition than most, debut album Wave If You’re Really There (Neapolitan) marrying classical pop sensibilities with airy melodies (the tinkling keyboards and strings You Say The Stupidest Things), cheery Human League lite handbag disco (I Go I Go I Go), Saturday Night Fever falsetto grooves (Keep The Lights On, The Greatest Escape We Ever Made) and even a jaunty stadium swayalong (new single Punk Spirit). It could have done without the woozily psychedelic bittiness of I Joined The Union which pitches its falsetto so high it probably causes dogs pain, but otherwise this is one electro pop wave that’s worth the surfing. 7.30pm. £7.50. O2 Academy 2 Tuesday October 6 Daniel Merriweather
Judging by some rather inarticulate interviews, the smoky voiced Australian R&B star might not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but at least his Ronson produced mega-selling Love & War (Columbia) album shows that he’s well clued up when it comes to channelling old school soul, even if it does give its passion a bypass. Impossible reveals a working knowledge of classic Motown (the Four Tops in particular), For Your Money’s tale of inner city New York hints at early Elton John and a Simply Red CD collection while the organ bubbling Chainsaw nods to Stevie Wonder and scuffling beats Adele duet Water & Flame touches on George Michael and Craig David. He’s got other musical tastes too, Red (with Sean Lennon on guitar) edges towards singer-songwriter pop balladry, Giving Everything Away For Free visits Jack Johnson’s mellow grove, and Could You threatens to mutate into California Dreamin’ while Cigarettes not does a nice line in acoustic drawled Memphis pop-soul gospel but also features the great line “my clothes smell like cigarettes and they used to smell like you”. Not quite the overnight sensation he would seem, he’s been releasing discs back home since 2004 and guested on Ronson’s album a year before that. He actually recorded his debut album, The Fifth Season, three years ago, but it didn’t surface in Australia until last month and will now be his UK follow up next year. It’ll be interesting to see if going back pushes him forward. Meanwhile, this should make for a pleasant enough retro soul evening, though he might be advised to avoid any Jeremy Paxton talk shows in the future. 7.30pm. £13.50. O2 Academy Tuesday October 6 Peter, Bjorn and John
Fans won over by the Swedish trio’s 2006 Writer’s Block must have had something of a shock when they eagerly got home clutching their copy of follow up, Living Thing (Wichita) and put it on the player to find, not more retro lysergic pop, 80s new wave, folk rock and skewed indie, but a clattering, cranky, heavily percussive and sonically experimental set with tangled cross rhythms, robotic vocals and minimalist synth rock. However, once they’d sat down, had a valium or two and summoned up the nerve to listen again, they may well have found things like the mutant Bowie meets Lennon phunk Nothing To Worry About, Just the Past’s deceptively hidden John Foxx in Paris pop charms, the Numanesque krautrock n roll It Don’t Move Me and Living Thing’s warped cocktail of Rolf Harris, Wimoweh and Buddy Holly rockabilly all rather wonderful. They’ve proven themselves full of surprises and genuine musical pioneers, even so it’ll be interesting watching folk trying to dance to this. 7.30pm. £11. O2 Academy 2 Tuesday October 6 Papa Roach
Left behind, mired in their slavish determination to pursue a course of nu metal and emo when others of their ilk were pushing forward to develop their sound, the arrival of Metamorphosis (Interscope) might have led you think they had finally decided to evolve. No such luck. The lyrics are, if anything, dumber than usual and while they do manage to throw together a few catchy hooks on things like Change Or Die and the ballad Carry On, but otherwise, like current sub Alice Cooper/Guns n Roses single I Almost Told You That I Loved You, they just lumber along, devoid of inspiration and content to rehash old generic ideas for an ever dwindling audience. 7.30pm. £16. W’hampton Civic Hall Wednesday October 7 Richard Hawley
Continuing his tradition of naming albums after obscure Sheffield locations (this one refers to an 18th century thoroughfare - now Castle Street - named for a Thomas Truelove who apparently let the locals dump their rubbish there), the baritone crooner’s sixth album, Truelove’s Gutter (Mute), continues to find him trading in lush torch songs and classic romantic grandeur pop. He’s also still evoking comparisons to Scott Walker (As The Dawn Breaks) and Jim Reeves (the country slow waltzing Ashes On The Fire), Tony Bennett (For Your Lover Give Some Time) and Roy Orbison (Open up Your Door) while the six minute Soldier On even suggests Morrissey at his most melancholically romantic as reconceived by Sinatra. . Likewise, the melodies and arrangements still display the twin touchstones of John Barry (both Soldier On and the lushly orchestral Open Up Your Door are evocative of his Midnight Cowboy score) and Angelo Badalamenti’s David Lynch soundtracks (the hauntingly spare Don’t Get Hung Up In Your Soul). He has, however, both taken a more experimental approach to the instrumentation for his dreamy melodies with hand percussion, cristal baschet, waterphone, lyre, glass harmonica and Tibetan singing bowls all playing their part while the thematic mood is struck by his musings on and observations of (to quote Springsteen) “the darkness on the edge of town” and in people’s broken lives. There’s songs touching on addiction (Remorse Code refers to his former cocaine habit) and the inevitable change of relationships and the ghosts it leaves behind (the 10 minute Don’t You Cry), but also, on As The Dawn Breaks, the warm light of domestic contentment and “hope hung on every washing line”. It’s an album to peg your heart on and the live performance should be a sensation.
And as if Hawley weren’t riches enough, support comes from Smoke Fairies, the pure voiced Chichester’s female duo whose Frozen Heart EP and songs like We Had Lost our Minds and He’s Moving On prompted me to declare them the most exciting arrival on the folk roots world this century. They return now with the leafily traditional sounding new single Sunshine (Music For Heroes) with its cross woven harmonies and ringing Thompson-esque guitar which, coupled with the spooked dark and deep ellum bluesy When You Grow Old, gives no reason to revise the opinion. 8pm. £19.50. B’ham Town Hall Wednesday October 7 Animal Kingdom
They may hail from London but the quartet’s hearts and souls are clearly rooted in the sound of late 60s cosmic America, filtered through such confessed influences as Arcade Fire, Pink Floyd, Dylan and The Cure. Following on from the spare, slow building piano ballad Chalk Stars and the shimmering mid tempo Tin Man, they’re touring in support of debut album Signs And Wonders (Warner) and its title track single, delivering a clutch of numbers cloaked in swirling keyboards, pulsing guitars and Richard Sauberlich’s keening falsetto. To be honest, he can get a bit wearing after sustained listening and their delicate, ethereal sonic clouds could do with a little more of the urgent bass throbbing rhythm and plangent guitars to be heard on Walls Of Jericho while the likes of Dollar Signs, Into the Sea and Silence Summons You suggest an undeclared love of prog rock and Yes in particular. While, the jangling desert heat jogging Good Morning Mr Magpie makes a valiant effort, they don’t really have that key song necessary to grab mainstream attention but there’s enough going on to warrant live investigation. 7.30pm. £6. O2 Academy 3 Wednesday October 7 Johnny Foreigner
A year on from debut album Waited Up Til It Was Light, the Birmingham trio provide a swift follow up with sophomore set Grace And The Bigger Picture (Best Before) which, recorded in NYC, further serves to confirm their place on the city’s musical roll of honour. Musically, it remains a flurry of scratchy art-pop with angular melodies, chopping riffs, wig out keyboards and boy/girl vocal collisions. But things like Security To The Promenade, Custom Scenes And The Parties That Made Them, the distortion noise choppy Choose Yr Side And Shut Up, current single Criminals and the schizophrenic clashing musical moods of the epic The Coast Was Always Clear all reveal more complex musical shapes and tangents woven into the punky riffs and driving percussion, not to mention an increasing art-pop confidence. Alexei Berrow still tackles songs at a headlong rush, but has also learned that sometimes less haste also gets the job done while female bassist Kelly Southern also figures more prominently, getting her own brief solo showcase on the acoustic to sonic storm I’ll Choose My Side And Shut Up All right. They even get relatively sentimental on the vaguely balladeering jerk tempo More Heart Less Tongue while its reverse title instrumental amply underlines their abilities as musicians. Having namechecked their hometown considerably last time round, travel has broadened the horizons and now they’re mentioning Times Square and featuring titles like Kingston Called They Want Their Lost Youth Back and the spiky pop I Woke Up On A Beach in Aberystwyth while the songs address ligging in festival marquees, bad drugs, good drugs, right places, wrong places, romantic confusions, boredom, getting stitched up and demanding, needy girlfriends. It’s a pity they don’t have more faith in their ability to go acoustic than just the 40 second burst of Grace, but otherwise this is an impressive step forward for what’s shaping up as a very interesting career.
Support comes from Japanese Voyeurs, a London five piece fronted by blonde banshee Romily Alice who seem to be leading a single-handed attempt at reviving the grunge rock n roll scene of 80s Seattle, paying affectionate homage to the likes of Babes in Toyland, L7, Hole and, more recently, Queen Adreena. With the raw and dirty Dumb, the surf guitar distortion of X-Ray Ted, and the blistering Stooges driven You’re So Cool their Sicking & Creaming EP (Slimeball) leaves you in little doubt of their intentions, even if you can rarely understand a word she’s screaming. 8pm. £7. Flapper & Firkin Thursday October 8 Killa Kela
In town as support to Lethal Bizzle, the Sussex beatboxer gets the chance to widen his audience circle and spread the word on Amplified (100%), a new album that finds him teamed with producers and collaborators that include Martin Rushent, Hadouken, Lateef, DJ Craze, Does It Offend you, Yeah! and Bashy. Hip hop may provide a bedrock, but there’s plenty of evidence of a strong pop sensibility at work on the likes of the swaggery rock rap and beats Built Like An Amplifier, Everyday, Situation, She’s Sweet’s industroglam disco and the urgent driving ramped stage highlight All Killa No Filla. If you’ve not encountered him before, expect to leave a new disciple. 7.30pm. £8. O2 Academy 2 Friday October 9 Eight Legs
Originally from Stratford-upon-Avon, now based in London, judging by new single I Understand (Boot Legs), the four piece seem to fancy themselves as revivalists of the acid head baggy sound formerly churned out by such bands as Flowered Up with Stay Cool a nod to Nuggets era garage rock psychedelia. Having had their These Grey Days featured on the anti-binge drinking ad campaign, they already have the advantage of subliminally getting into your musical head and now look to transform that into a demand for upcoming debut album, The Electric Kool-Aid Cuckoo Nest, which will be getting due prominence in the set tonight. 8pm. £3. Sunflower Lounge, Holloway Circus Friday October 9 Sonic Boom Six
Led by Laila K, the punk ska Mancunians saddle up the socio-economic conscience to get audiences skanking and thrashing along to songs of consumerism, binge drinking, homelessness, youth culture and traffic congestion with new album City Of Thieves (Rebel Alliance). Drums pound and guitar riffs spray off the whetstones of Jericho and new single Back 2 School, reggae wraps around prison tale Rum Little Scallywag, beats form hip hop shapes around Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! and the lager louts of Strange Transformation, (Welcome To) The City Of Thieves swings through the (urban) jungle and The Concrete We're Trapped Within (It's Yours) puts its head down for some serious skacore moshing. More indebted to No Doubt, Rage Against The Machine and Offspring than The Specials or Less Than Jake, they don’t believe in frills or subtlety, but they do have something to say when the sweat’s dried and the mind takes over from the feet. 7pm. £8. O2 Academy Saturday October 10 Simian Mobile Disc
Producers and dance floor gurus James Ford and Jas Shaw also maintain a career making their own albums, marrying krautrock, beats and disco pop. To which end, current album, Temporary Pleasure (Wichita) offers an eclectic collection of tracks that variously involve such collaborators as Super Furry Animal Gruff Rhys on the pulsebeat pop Cream Dream, Yeasayer's Chris Keating for the bleepy Audacity Of Huge, Jamie Lidell on Off The Map’s Moroder meets Bowie and Numan bubbles and Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor for a sashaying Latin-tinged Bad Blood with Beth Ditto from Gossip turning down the force for the sweeter coated disco rave Cruel Intentions. However, even with their input, it is all rather tame and dreary, more suitable for middle aged accountants who like to cling to memories of that underground rave they once attended with a cooler mate, and without the guest vocalists along to beef things up, this is going to be just another night of mediocre techno. 10pm. £15. Rainbow Warehouse Saturday October 10 The Baddies
Snarly alt-punk from Southend-On-Sea togged out in a Kraftwerkian uniform of black levis, DMs and blue militia shirts, the four piece’s debut album, Do The Job (Proper) cheerfully dashes off loud echoes of Talking Heads, Devo, Futureheads and Queens Of The Stone Age mashed together on twitching, angular and jerky indie disco tracks such as Tiffany... I’m Sorry, Open One Eye, Battleships and Holler For My Holiday. Fortunately, they have a sufficiently distinctive frontman in Michael Webster and strong enough material to be more than the sum of their influences and, even if they do tend to start out at a cranked up level and stay there, for those looking to have dance floor seizures, as the funk tinged Do The Job puts it, the likes of Pisces, Paint The City, We Beat Our Chests, and do exactly that. 7pm. £6. O2 Academy 2 Saturday October 10 NME Radar Tour
A showcase for emergent talent, this is a diverse little package with a keyboard emphasis. Marina & The Diamonds features Marina Diamandis, a sort of Welsh answer to Florence and the Machine with (to go by I Am Not A Robot) a tweak of Kate Bush for good measure. The vocal acrobatics on Seventeen sound a bit contrived, but Mowgli’s Road shows a knack for perky pop that should give her the benefit of the doubt for the time being. Unsigned Boston based synth-pop outfit Yes Giantess do a decent impression of being Human League and Daft Punk fans on Tuff n Stuff and are apparently being much courted by several name producers keen to hang on to their coat tails. As yet they have to deliver any reasonable explanation for this. Going by the Arrows of Eros single, Golden Silvers sound like a retro pop synth disco Smiths though apparently - if rather unbelievably - the True Romance album harkens more to Sly and the Family Stone pop psych.
Which leaves arguably the best of the bunch in the shape of Local Natives, a LA five piece whose hazy 60s SoCal sound has been likened to Fleet Foxes, Vampire Weekend and Broken Social Scene. Upcoming debut album, Gorilla Manor (Infectious), doesn’t dispute the comparisons, bathing in lush three part harmonies and sun kissed woozy melodies behind keyboard lilts and skittering percussion with notable stand outs including the Robert Palmer jog along feel of new single Camera Talk, a dreamily floating Airplanes which suggests a possible 10cc influence, campfire shuffle Cards & Quarters, the airy warm rhythmic currents of Sun Hands and a psychedelic West Coast makeover of the Talking Heads’ Warning Sign. These are the ones to put your money on. 7pm. £9.50. W’hampton Civic Hall Bar Sunday October 11 Kill It Kid
Fronted by Chris Turpin and Stephanie Ward and with Richard Jones on violin, you’ll find this Bath quintet filed under ‘the new Gomez’, but, as witnessed by the eponymous debut album (One Little Indian), they also embrace White Stripes, Tom Waits, Elvis, Led Zep, and Johnny Cash in their mash of delta blues, rock n roll and roots. The name, by the way, derives from an old Blind Willie McTell song, so they know their history, too. Though it sometimes sounds like he’s straining too hard to seduce Antony Hegarty fans, Turpin’s tonsil swallowing dark tones certainly sound like they’ve been sucking up a cocktail of Mississippi mud and bourbon while, by the sound of Fool For Loving Me, Ward was clearly weaned on Janis Joplin albums. Heaven Never Seemed So Close gets the ball rolling with handclaps, roiling slide guitar and stomping percussion while Burst Its Banks flows from clattering gospel blues through strings drenched folk blues boogie, Ward takes Private Idaho up to the cabin in woods, My Lips Won’t Be Kept Clean visits Elvis and Janis Martin on the rockabilly Lousiana Hayride and the violin scraping, devil blues soaked Bye Bye Bird showcases their rough sawn folk harmonies. Tour de force atmospheric finale, Taste The Rain throws pretty much everything into the mix leaving you utterly drained come its final notes. Whether there’s an audience out there (Gomez certainly seem to have mislaid theirs) remains to be seen, but they should definitely kick up a rowdy, sweat soaking live set. 8pm. £6. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath Sunday October 11 The Destroyers
Part of the venue’s 175th celebrations, this also doubles as the launch for the 15 piece Birmingham band’s debut album, Out Of Babel (Destruction). If you’ve yet to discover them, they’re a powerhouse of traditional Eastern European music, taking in klezmer, polka, mazurka and Romany gypsy folk filtered through the same sensibilities as Hawk & A Hacksaw, Devotchka and Gogol Bordello and laced with very modern concerns about financial collapse, big brother surveillance and genetic experimentation. Clearly nodding to Vincent Price’s turn on Thriller, Utopia Bypass provides a creepy spoken intro (they repeat the trick on Edgar Allen Poe-styled horror story The Glass Coffin Burial Of Professor Zurinak) before the title track launches in with its roaring Cossack carnival knees up, sudden outbreak of Greek dancing and, with Paul Murphy’s gravel and smoke beat poetry narrative curling around the rhythms, lyrics that reinforce it and the city’s multicultural soul with references to banghra, tabla, bodhran, conga and dragon dance. There’s no time to catch your breath before you’re caught up with Sirba, a roaring trad instrumental that begins with a trumpet reveille and includes a snatch of I Want To Be Like You from The Jungle Book before collapsing in the corner. Where Has The Money Gone? is a wah wah chugging funk ‘n’ Balkan number about Bernard Madoff and thieves that “breakfast like Prometheus” in his penthouse suite while the gloriously titled Stork Crossing Dudley Canal is a tuba, trombone and trumpet showcase mariachi free jazz break down instrumental. A flurry of brass, beatnik jazz, and Tom Waits clatter race through the paranoia twitchy surveillance and ‘war on terror’ subterfuge of Cavalcade then it’s time for a couple of instrumentals with The Case of The Dangerous Flamingo (which plays like the score to some imaginary silent noir thriller movie) and the seven minute trad The Flying Kopanitas with its sultry snake charmer melody and a flamenco guitar and oud (?) conjuring images of Sidney Greenstreet lurking around Moroccan minarets and markets before a whistle blows and it erupts into a mutant Celtic hoe down. Addressing the obsession with immortality, Methuselah Mouse returns to the cabaret horror narrative mood of Glass Coffin with Murphy talking through the tale of lab experiments to halt the ageing process (eruditely name dropping Gilgamesh, Utanapishtim and Oisin along the way) and its moral fable punch line. And, just to show their passports aren’t entirely filled with Balkan stamps, they throw a geographical curve for the remaining two numbers, heading off to Italy for the full blooded viva la musica flamenco of Questa Canzone (sung in Italian,) and the Latin crooning hot club and Grappelli tinged, accordion flavoured Torregaveta: il lamento di Cristina. The latter sounds all very romantic, until you find the translation reveals it to actually be a true story about two gypsy sisters, drowned at sea while people played on the beach and who now “lie in silence on the cold marble of the morgue.” A Zucchero cover is not anticipated. Totally irresistible and, with support from the homegrown bluegrass wizardry of The Toy Dolls and the jazz, folk, classical and early music influenced trad of The Old Dance School, likely to prove one of the year’s fieriest nights of music. 7pm. £12/£10. B’ham Town Hall Sunday October 11 The Big Pink
Names after The Band’s seminal album, of all the emergent acts that have been pronounced the new big thing this year, London duo Robbie Furze and Milo Cordell (son of legendary Whiter Shade of Pale producer Denny) are one of the few who can most claim to fit the bill. That said, their debut album, A Brief History of Love (4AD), does wear its Jesus & Mary Chain and Stone Roses influences rather obviously, layering the songs in lashings of fuzzy distorted guitar feedback and Spectorish echo, and droning vocals. They unfurl the flag from the opening with Crystal Visions, a glorious rush of noise filtered with 60s psychedelia and acid flashes that continues to swirl through the sonic clouds of Too Young To Love, Velvet’s opiate storms, the swellingly majestic Stones meets My Bloody Valentine shaded Count Backwards From Ten and, digging into their pop folder, At War With The Sun where hints of The Byrds sprinkle from its cascading waterfall of riffs and hooks. They can modulate too, thankfully, Love In Vain offering wall of sound heartache, Velvet echoing the tidal wash of distortion that often cloaked Suicide’s rockabilly judders, Frisk cranking up industrial strobe rhythms and buzzing guitar wasps while slow swaggering single Dominos with its swaying arms chorus line sounds like a bizarre fusion of Chumbawamba, Public Image Ltd and Robbie Williams. And really, have you heard another break up song this year that shivers the emotions as powerfully as the title track’s reverb soaked woozy dissonance as Furze intones “it’s all over tonight”. The only really dubious note is sounded by Tonight which suggests a closest Duran fascination, but otherwise their ambient massive is set to send shivers around the universal spine and send sales of effects pedals through the roof. 8pm. £8.50. Kasbah. Coventry Monday October 12 Kate Walsh
Back on her own Blueberry Pie label, the Brighton songstress is out and about promoting Light And Dark, a third album’s worth of sweet melodies and folksy, wistful mid and slow tempo numbers, sung in fragile vocals that may display less Joni traces but still conjures thoughts of Eddi Reader, Gemma Hayes and Nerina Pallot. Yet again the songs parade her soul baring diary of messed up relationships, the title track a perfect example as, in a fragile tremble as she sings "I left you for another man and he doesn't deserve me. I know this inside but he keeps my heart between the light and the dark and I wish it was you." To this tale of love triangle guilt you can add the dreamy As He Pleases, I Cling On For Dear Life (where she sounds a bit like a young Tori Amos) and 1000 Bees which variously see her either fearing losing or already having lost her current lover. Mind you, June Last Year and Gather My Strength both suggest she might come on a bit strong and be a bit of an emotional clinger while Trying has her confessing to being compulsively attracted to train wreck romeos. All this might be more suitable for an agony aunt column were it not for the fact Walsh doesn't come across as particularly self-pitying and is as honest about her own faults as she is scathing about the men who've messed her about. And, besides, Old Man isn't actually about some middle aged lothario, it's about being screwed over by the music business. Plus, there's that enfolding warm voice and the fact that, for this album, she's fleshed out the sound with a considerable but sympathetic use of strings and enlisted Olly Knights from Turin Brakes to provide harmonies on Trying and the swelling, gorgeously sad Greatest Love. The lines, "imagine what it's like to have to pour your bleeding heart into a song for all to hear", from On The Stage reassuringly show that all those romantic disasters haven't dulled her wry sense of humour and irony. The woman clearly has a great divorce album in her. 8pm. £10. Glee Club Monday October 12 Go: Audio It’s been something of a nightmare two years for the four piece. Signed to Epic, things looked promising for their bass guitar free synth pop with the Woodchuck EP gathering heavy radio play while the official debut single, Made Up Stories, earned them a place just outside the top 30 in June of 2008 However, things then turned sour. The follow up stalled and, after promos had gone out and reviews run, the debut album was pulled from the schedules and put back to this January, prompting the band to leave the label, re-record several of the songs and release it themselves. It finally surfaced in May, by which time any impetus had long gone, leaving it to hobble into the charts at #95 while the all new single, Drive To The City sank without trace. They struggle on, this their first tour since the departure of guitarist Zack Wilkinson to be replaced by Nick Tsang, but while they are still capable of selling out smaller venues, it’s going to be an almost impossible job to regain those acres of lost ground. 7.30pm. £10.50. O2 Academy 2 Monday October 12 Echo & The Bunnymen
Still together after their 1997 reunion, Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant recently succumbed to the current nostalgia ploy of live shows comprising the entirety of a past classic; in their case Ocean Rain. They are not, however, just living on former glories and this set of dates sees them talking up new album. The Fountain, released, appropriately enough, on their own Ocean Rain label. The fourth since the reunion, it’s true it may not be as strong as 2005’s Siberia, but to dismiss it as an auto-pilot affair stuffed with mediocre songs seems a bit excessive in the light of the glorious opener I Think I Need It Too with its anthemic chorus and ringing guitars and numbers such as Forgotten Fields, Shroud of Turin, Do You Know Who I Am, the chiming Velvetsish Proxy and big ballad closer The Idolness of Gods. It’s true there’s some moments that don’t quite rise to the bar, notably the plodding Life Of A 1000 Crimes and the somewhat meandering title track that sees Chris Martin making a rather unremarkable contribution. However, they don’t sound like a band going through the motions and, while last month’s death of long serving keyboardist Jake Brockman inevitably casts its shadow over the tour, the live performance should serve to bolster the faithful. 7.30pm. £21.50. Wulfrun Hall Monday October 12 Richie 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 solo and collaboration 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 and rather fine blues rock collection that nods to such recurring influences as Free, Bad Company and Cream as well as his formative love of Philly and Motown soul. It’ll be the first chance for most to hear the new material, of which standouts would have to include the swaggering My Messiah, the pop-soul Best Of Times, a Stevie Wonder funky Your Entertainer, Larger Than Life (which recalls vintage Rod Stewart) and the bluesily soulful pairings of Long Way From Home and Catch Up With Me, both of which put David Coverdale and Paul Rodgers firmly in the shade. 8pm. £17.50. Robin 2, Brierley Hill Tuesday October 13 Nerina Pallot
Having spent the time since the release of Fires completing her English Lit degree (she got a First), Pallot’s back behind the keyboards with her third album, appropriately titled The Graduate (Echo). However, aside from a Romeo & Juliet reference and the fact that one song title echoes Jonathan Safran novel Everything Is Illuminated, it’s not littered with literary allusions. Rather, it’s a sassy collection which, while It Starts may be a gorgeous Amos-like piano ballad love song, moves past her old singer-songwriter approach to embrace the slick dance pop of the world’s Pinks and Aguileras with numbers such as the rocking drive of The Right Side and tumbling funky pop I Don’t Want To Go Out. The swaggery self-deprecating Real Late Starter nods to Scissors Sisters piano pop while the dreamy spaced electronica of Cigarette streaks her current love of MGMT and Air with a dash of Pink Floyd and a tango flavoured When Did I Become Such A Bitch suggests she’s also developed a keen eye for show tunes. Building from tapped acoustic guitar to lush orchestration. Human even sounds like it might have been written with a self-discovery montage movie soundtrack in mind. Angst gets the elbow too and the prevailing mood here is an upbeat sense of fun with worries put in their place and optimism on the rise. All of which may make for a rather different Pallot experience, but undoubtedly a hugely enjoyable one. 8pm. £15. Glee Club Tuesday October 13 Zero 7
Once the standard bearers of chilled out electro trip hop, Henry Binns and Sam Hardaker seem to have lost the plot with new album Yeah Ghost (Atlantic), a largely formless, empty collection of soporific synthetic soul devoid of creative inspiration and, on the irritating lollopping Medicine Man and the rush to get to the end of a half-formed Mr McGee, totally wasting the contribution of new vocalist Eska Mtungwazi. Martha Tiltson brings a touch of style otherwise lacking on the numbingly dull Pop Art Blue while those looking to find other saving graces might seize on the krautrock influenced Everything Up (a song inspired by footballer Zizou), Swing’s dreamy jazzy club lounge vibes and steel drums, the Can emulating narcotic Ghost sYMBOL and the gospel and Amazing Grace hints of The Road. Even so, these are small straws to clutch at, and it’ll be a surprise if the venue’s as full at the end of the evening as it was at the start. 7.30pm. £18.50. B’ham Town Hall Tuesday October 13 Enter Shikari
Having scored two minor Top 20 hits with the rowdy, shouty and stuttering rhythm No Sleep Tonight and the slighty poppier massive of Juggernaut, the St Albans boys hit the road with reminders of other numbers from the accompanying Common Dreads (Ambush Reality) album, mixing together prog-metal (Antwerpen), electronics (Havoc A), and screamo (Zzzonked) with the poppier inclinations of Wall and the folk shades of Gap In The Wall. Although the socio-political comment leans a little on the naive side at times, the Stop The War Coalition recently named closing track Fanfare For The Conscious Man as their song of week, quite possibly mistaking it for a harder rockier Chumbawamba. So, down the front and lets have some anthemic sloganeering, the lot of you. 7.30pm. £16. O2 Academy Tuesday October 13 Dan Michaelson & The Coastguards
With Absentee currently on hiatus, growly baritone frontman Michaelson has gathered together a bunch of mates from outfits such as Rumble Strips (supplying horn section), Broken Family Band and Magic Numbers and come up with a solo album, Saltwater (Memphis Industries) that strips the sound back to explore the stillness rather than the dynamics. Cohen’s obviously a touchstone, notably so on the woozy swaying, thick voiced I Was A Gentleman while the Waiting For My Man rhythms of the brass punctuated Now I’m A Coastguard would seem to suggest early Lou Reed testing folk waters, The Letter could be The Tindersticks holed up in some spit and sawdust pub, tracing out a melancholic waltz on a battered joanna and Bust is a strung out Ed Harcourt curled up on the sofa with Will Oldham The uptempo brassy ska inclined Your 2nd Man doesn’t really come off, and it’s the lugubrious tones of things like Crackling On The Floor, Ease On In and Love In Line that work the strongest spells and best serve such sardonic, battered romantic lyrics as Old Friends’ “she wouldn't marry me, she don't come around for tea… she's an old friend of mine that I see from time to time. It’s unclear how many - if any -of the album’s Coastguards will be on patrol for the tour, but unfurling the songs in such intimate environs shouldn’t leave anyone disappointed. 8pm. £6. O2 Academy 3 Wednesday October 14 Teitur
If discovering the enigmatic Faroe Islander’s The Singer and catching him perform live, left you wanting to hear more, you’ll be delighted to learn that this latest visit coincides with the release of All My Mistakes (A&G), a collection of tracks from previous unavailable in the UK releases, Poetry & Aeroplanes and Stay Under The Stars, alongside the whooping Catherine The Waitress and the Morricone flavoured The Girl I Don’t Know from the current album. Less polished and arranged than his current release, even so there’s plenty of delights lurking among the older material here to underline his melancholic lyrical wit, sparkling melody lines and tales of underachieving relationships. Among highlights that will hopefully find their way to the set list, there’s the wistfully waltzing Josephine, piano jazzed blues boogie Boy She Can Sing, Don’t Want You To Wake Up (where he could be a Danish Snow Patrol), the frustration of long distance love that sparks the softy whispering I Was Just Thinking and the Rufus Wainwright-like title track. On Louis Louis, he laments the decline of the songwriter, but on the evidence he provides here, the genre’s demise has been greatly exaggerated. 8pm. £8. Glee Club Wednesday October 14 Slaid Cleaves
Another coup for the little cafe that could, this marks the Austin based Americana songwriter’s first appearance in this neck of the woods in two years and ushers in his first album of original material since 2004’s Wishbones. The release in question is Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away (Music Road) and it finds him on outstanding form with another collection of sharply observed barroom stories about life’s damaged souls mixed in with songs touching on war and capital punishment. The latter topic rears its head on Twistin’, a disturbing dust dry account of an old west hanging told from the perspective of the executioner as he sees the crowd - ladies dressed up in their best, men holding up the babies to see - gathered for the entertainment of the kill. This alone should ensure you can hear a pin drop, but it’s just one of several new diamonds he’s likely to roll out. The trot along Beautiful Thing is a state of the nation address about profiteers, politicians and boys coming home in body bags, the ringing Hard To Believe paints a snapshot of a cold Milwaukee Christmas Eve with prostitutes trying to keep warm and pay the bills while fat cats milk ‘the same old swindle’, and the bluegrassy Green Mountains And Me finds a war widow poignantly lamenting her loss, remembering how the news was delivered and the impact on her in-laws. Elsewhere, the country funk chugging Cry and a dreamy Beyond Love reflect on the changing shapes of the heart, Tumbleweed Stew’s a playful tale of a cowboy wanting to let off steam and get stoned, Black T Shirt paints a picture of a good girl gone teenage bad (“you know what you put your mama through”) and Temporary is a reminder to make the most of life’s moments before midnight’s voices call you home. Previous songs like Tiger Tom Dixon's Blues and Quick As Dreams already saw Cleaves marked down as a prodigious Americana talent, this masterful new collection underlines the fact in bold ink. 8pm. £14. Kitchen Garden Cafe, Kings Heath Wednesday October 14 The Slits
Formed in 1976 amid the molten heat of the punk explosion, the following year Ari Up, Palmolive, Viv Albertine and Tessa Pollitt were invited to join The Clash on their White Riot tour but it wasn’t until 1979 that (Palmolive having left to form The Raincoats and briefly replaced on drums by Budgie before he joined Siouxie and the Banshees) they were signed to Island and released their Dennis Bovell produced debut album, Cut with its heady cocktail of reggae, dub, punk and feminism. By now, however, the times had moved on and, two increasingly experimental albums later, they split up in 1982. Fast forward to 2005 and, now regarded as seminal with Cut having been voted on to a list of the all time Top 100 albums the year previously, Up and Pollitt got back together and, joined by German drummer Anna Schulte and Adele Wilson on guitar, comeback EP The Revenge of the Killer Slits, was followed by their first American tour in 25 years. Now, with the line up augmented by Hollie Cook (daughter of Sex Pistol Paul) on keyboards, they’re not only playing their first UK tour in over a quarter of a century but have a new album to go with it. Trapped Animal (Sweet Nothing) finds them as inventive and as genre bending as ever, the opening itchy rhythms of Ask Ma fusing together elements of African, dub, jazz and punk while Lazy Slam introduces electro beats, a catchy pop la la chorus and reggae toasting to the mix and Pay Rent (a song about trying to make a living with your art) hits a driving (almost Brazilian) percussion groove over which the vocals soar and swoop. To emphasise the diversity, Cry Baby steers towards lovers rock with an r&B tinge, Babylon takes a heavy dub course, Be It bubbles up through Marleyesque reggae, roots dub and Egyptian snake charmer swirls while Be It weaves Iberian and Arabian colours. Intriguingly, the dark lurchingly hypnotic Had A Day with its jazz piano intro sounds like a refuge from The Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack and the title track itself, a song about being caged by the conveniences of modern living, has the markings of some mutant gothic Stephen Sondheim musical. Passed over the first time around, if they are as cohesive and dynamic on stage as they are on disc, three decades later their moment may finally have arrived. And, if they’re still doing I Heard It through The Grapevine, the evening will be complete. 8pm. £12. Rainbow, Digbeth Thursday October 15 Bloc Party
While not exactly tumbling headlong towards oblivion, it’s fair to say that Intimacy (Wichita) did little to stem the disappointment that met sophomore release A Weekend In The City. Often sounding half formed works in progress, the cracks papered over with noise, it’s hard to warm to things like the riffage of Mercury, the sub Ultravox Zephyrus or Halo’s cobbling together of The Smiths and The Cure. It’s not all bad news, the handclappy Better Than Heaven and the shimmering Signs both welcome relief from the stodge and slurry, but album number four is going to have to come up with something pretty mindblowing if they’re not going to find the party’s over.
Support comes from the Music like dance beats prog rock of Grammatics whose eponymous debut features the dream pop allure of Murderer and the epic waves of Polar Swelling and Relentless Fours, but also feels too much like a triumph of intellect over emotion to really stir the blood. Perhaps upcoming non album single Double Negative will find some heart. 7.30pm. £22.50. O2 Academy Thursday October 15 Kings of Convenience
Five years after they went dance with Riot On An Empty Street, Norwegian duo Erlend Oye and Eirik Boe have returned to their forte with Declaration Of Dependence (Source), an album packed with folksy warm limpid melodies, soft harmonies, caressing acoustic guitars and scuffling pop shuffles. Sounding like the Scandinavian answer to Simon and Garfunkel with this their Bookends, it’s a dreamy, often lovely affair, that finds them quickstepping through 30s music hall gypsy jazz on Boat Behind, doing the bossa nova for Mrs Cold, evoking musical thoughts of Old Friends on My Ship Isn’t Pretty and generally conjuring laid back mellow vibes with such hushed, well crafted late night whispers as Freedom And Its Owner, 24-25 and Peacetime Resistance. Their live shows are few and far between, so you’d be foolish to let this one slip past. 8pm. £18.50. Warwick Arts Centre Friday October 16 White Belt Yellow Tag
Described as a marriage of Echo & the Bunnymen, Elbow and Doves, Yorkshire duo Craig Pilbin and former Yourcodenameis:Milo guitarist Justin Lockey (joined by ex-Cooper Temple Clause man Tom Bellamy for live dates) have made quite an impression in a short space of time. Following on from the Tell Your Friends (It All Worked Out) and You’re Not Invincible EPs, they’re just about to release new single Remains (Distiller), an even more epic concoction of pounding drums, soaring guitar and majestic harmonies that comes with the fuzzed guitar distortion instrumental rush of Control, Designs And Innovations and a download only throbbing Mary Chained feedback drenched cover of the Wedding Present’s Dalliance. The Methods album will be out sometimes next year, so this seems a perfect opportunity to get an early taste of what seems likely to be one hell of a debut. 8pm. £5. Rainbow Warehouse, Digbeth Friday October 16 Noah and the Whale
Anyone expecting a reprise of Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down's debut collection of bouncy ukulele and fiddle friendly folk shanty pop are in for a bit of a surprise with follow up The First Days Of Spring (Young & Lost Club) Since then, Charlie Fink has clearly fed misery over breaking up with Laura Marling on a diet of Bon Ivor, Lambchop and Iron & Wine albums. A muted bass drum beat opens the seven minute title track, strings and a forlorn guitar gradually layering in before, some 90 seconds later, the vocals kick in with Fink in hushed come down frame of mind. The mood continues with Our Window as a piano picks out disconsolate notes amid the sparse arrangement, a simple strummed guitar behind Fink as he sings about it being a long time since he stared at the stars like a man who finds even breathing an exhausting effort. Things don't lighten up on either the Leone and Leonard shaded I Have Nothing or My Broken Heart where you can almost picture him curled, foetus like in his bedsit. But then you comes Love Of An Orchestra, a big joyous burst of choral joy and skittering rhythms in which music lifts him from the doldrums and marks a marginal change in mood as the album’s second half finds him trying to move on. The Stranger sees him talking about getting laid for the first time since the break-up but is still stained with reflective regrets even as he acknowledged that "in a year, things are gonna be better." . So it is that while Blue Skies may be overcast by the opening line 'this is a song for anyone with a broken heart", it does signify a move towards closure as he sings "this is the last song that I write while still in love with you ...because it's time to leave those feelings behind" Come the ruminative Slow Glass, he's almost giddy dancing around the drum pattern sibling of Joy Division's Atmosphere and quietly plangent acoustic guitars while the wounds are clearly starting to heal, before closing up with the pedal steel keening of My Door Is Always Open that finally sheds the chains as, gathering to a brisk strum, he declares "my heart's not yours." Lyrically it rarely spares the break up cliches, but it's so streaked in honest hurt and gorgeous melodies that you can't help but want to put an arm round its shoulder, take it out for a drink and introduce it to your sister's best friend. 7pm. £12. O2 Academy 2 Friday October 16 Esther Alexander
Caffe Nero’s artist of the month, after taking a sabbatical to become a mother, the now London based Alexander returns to her hometown of seven years for two free sets in support of new own label album The Long Way Home. It still conjures thoughts of Norah Jones, Katie Melua and Edie Brickell, but that’s not exactly a downside, especially given Alexander’s silky warm tones and the occasional catch to the voice elevate her above copyist accusations. I can live without the lyrically tweeness of the maternally themed Little Bird, but that’s a minor flaw firmly offset by the heady soft rock of Momento Mori, dreamily lovely, sax burnished romantic ballad Safe House, sassy pop gospel soul swagger Summer Rain with a chorus melody line that could have been shipped from Memphis, and the rockier southern blues boogie notes of Waiting. Three tracks in particular stand out. The closing End Of The Land with its tinkling piano, yearning and pizzicato strings sounds like some Broadway musical show stopper. The choppy, funky rhythm opening title track which, with its catchy Melua-like melody and self-admonishing lyrics should surely find enduring Radio 2 favour. And a terrific dappled percussion, spooked mandolin and Spanish/Arabian hued cover of Sting’s Fragile that the man himself has accorded respect and which underlines Alexander’s deserved right to enjoy the same sort of exposure and success as those to whom she’s been compared. Get the taste now because it’ll be costing you a lot more than the price of a cappuccino to see her play in the months to come. Free. 11.30am Caffe Nero Bullring, 1pm Caffe Nero Waterloo St. Friday October 16 Karine Polwart
Having had 2007 off to become a mother, although she’s been busy with assorted projects the award winning folk singer’s taken a while to ease herself back into the touring harness. This is her first appearance hereabouts in three years and the first chance audiences will have had to hear live performances of material from 2007’s Fairest Floo’er, a stark collection of traditional Scottish ballads, and last year’s self-penned motherhood and politics veined This Earthly Spell, both released on her own Hegri micro label. Doubtless the set will afford opportunity to catch up, with the former hopefully contributing either Thou Hast Left Me Ever Jamie or the banjo flecked The Wife Of Usher’s Well to the set list. Again marrying Celtic folk roots with Americana hues, This Earthly Spell offers a wealth of likely contenders, though the night will be all the richer if she finds room to feature the Jean Richie-like Rivers Run, Joan Baez like anti-nukes Better Things, the chiming strummed guitar of The Good Years or Painted It White’s response to the Iraq invasion lies. Doors should also be firmly bolted until she’s played Tongue That Cannot Lie, an eight minute, drone backed trad flavoured moral ambivalence parable inspired by 13th century poet Thomas The Rhymer. 8pm. £10. Tin Angel, Coventry Previews By Mike Davies Saturday October 17 Mary Black
An iconic veteran of the Irish folk music scene who once had an album spend over a year in the Irish Top 30, Black made her eponymous album debut back in 1983, juggling work as part of De Dannan between 1984-1986 before concentrating on a solo career that has since spawned 13 studio albums as well as one live and several best of compilations. So pure of voice, she was used as a benchmark for testing the quality if hi fi, Black's output has never slipped below the excellent, whether she's been singing straightforward folk or the more country and jazz inflected material of her later years. Celebrating her 25th anniversary in the business, Twenty Five Years (3u Records) features 25 songs representing the span of her career, from the debut's Rose Of Allendale and Anachie Gordon to Your Love, Emmylou Harris duet Sonny and the seminal Only A Woman's Heart with Eleanor McEvoy. Doubtless, a goodly proportion will be represented tonight along with the two brand new numbers, torchy piano ballad Sweet Love and a haunting emotionally resigned simple voice and piano reading of Tom Waits' If I Have To Go. A night big on memories, but it’s still high time she released a proper new album. 7.30pm. £25. B’ham Town Hall Saturday October 17 Girls
Not girls at all but actually a couple of blokes, Christopher Owens and Chet JR White, the former an escapee from Californian religious cult Children Of God, who make slightly weedy 60s influenced pop and, judging by Ghost Mouth from their debut album, er, Album (Fantasytrahscan) have a bit of a thing for Spector and the Jesus and Mary Chain. Similar fuzzy psychedelic shoegaze inclinations surface on the six minute Hellhole Ratrace (nowhere as angsty as it sounds) and Lauren Marie while the Lust For Life single is chewy West Coast surfpop, Headache all dreamy and Curls is a frazzled ambient instrumental. Likely to find favour with those for whom MGMT are all a bit hardcore, but really there’s nothing here to get overly excited about. 7pm. £6. O2 Academy 3 Saturday October 17 Stephen Fearing
Born in Vancouver, raised in Dublin and now based back in Canada, Fearing released his debut album, Out To Sea, way back in 1988 and in 1996 became a founding member of Blackie and the Rodeo Kings. They recently released a Best Of and now Fearing follows solo suit with The Man Who Married Music (True North), a career spanning collection of acoustic singer-songwriter numbers in the James Taylor/Gordon Lightfoot tradition. Since none of his music was distributed in the UK prior to 2002's That's How I Walk, his sixth, there's at least 8 tracks here that may well be unfamiliar to newcomers. His debut's represented by two little gems, the seven minute romantic Beguiling Eyes with its hints of Clive Gregson and Welfare Wednesday's six minutes of social observation and eroding dignity. 1991’s Blue Light and third album The Assassin’s apprentice get a track each, Turn Out The Light's tale of parental sexual abuse and the upright bass jazz hues of Expectations, one of the best cuts in the set. Industrial Lullaby's easy grooving bluesy Home opens the album with hints of Richard Thompson and is paired with the JJ Cale rolling Anything You Want, while So Many Miles contributes story song The Longest Road and the ten minute Dog On A Chain/James Medley (the latter a frisky ragtime instrumental), ample evidence that he's a captivating live performer too. From That's How I Walk there’s the rainy night swampy folk blues title track and the choppy rhythms of folk rock n rolling The Finest Kind (another Gregson soundalike) while his most recent studio release, Yellowjacket, serves double duty both with its eponymous strings soaked slow burner and (adding Harry Chapin to the comparisons) the torn affections of The Man Who Married Music itself. By way of a bonus, there's also two new numbers, the reflectively lovely sea salt tanged The Big East West (sounding a little like Don McLean's And I Love You So) and, bringing in organ and brushed percussion, the good time 40s jazz lounge sunny shuffle No Dress Rehearsal. There's not a huge stylistic gulf between these and his first recordings, underlining the fact that Fearing has found what he's good at and has no intention of trying to fix what's not broken or indulge in self-indulgent artistic experimentation. Something for which admirers old and new among tonight’s should be duly thankful. 8pm. £11. Red Lion, Kings Heath Saturday October 17 Chase & Status
Having spent the past few years as a DJ duo, William Kennard and Saul Milton are now trying the live band thing. Part of an all nighter that includes a DJ set by Utah Saints and live performances from Miss Dynamite and Groove Armada, they’ll be showcasing major label debut single End Credits feat Plan B (Vertigo), a rather anonymous mix of strummed acoustic guitar and drum & bass that plays over the, ahem, end credits of forthcoming Michael Caine’s British pensioner vigilante movie Harry Brown. 9pm. £27.50. Custard Factory Saturday October 17 The Legendary Gypsy Queens & Kings
Read that carefully and don’t turn up expecting flamenco starts the Gypsy Kings. This is actually a production spectacular of some twenty musicians and dancer from across Europe that plays rather like a Romany Gypsy answer to Riverdance. So, plenty of clicking heels, swirling colourful dresses, pouty expressions and rumba flamenco, then. Among the performers there’ll be singer Esma Redzepova, Macedonia’s legendary ‘Queen of the Gypsies’ and Kaloome, a Gitan trio from Perpignan with their traditional flamenco songs and dances, while providing the musical backing of Eastern funk is Romanian brass band Mahala Rai Banda. 8pm. £21.50-£11.50. Warwick Arts Centre Saturday October 17 Tom Hingley
Nine years on from Keep Britain Untidy, the former Inspiral Carpets frontman gets round to releasing Thames Valley Delta Blues (New Memorabilia Ltd), an album he describes as 'gospel music for people with no religion' and which spans the musical gamut from blues and folk to soul and funk. Recorded with just vocal and either guitar or banjo and with no overdubs, it's a musically raw affair which, where its predecessor focused on his marital breakup, addresses recession, knife crime, and materialism as well as, on the clearly self-addressing Northern Star (“don’t sell loyalties for royalties”) and Tiny Babies in particular, matters of family and affairs of the heart. A spooked banjo accompanies the stark opening affairs of the heart and, Waiting For The Walls To Come Down that sees him flexing his cracked falsetto on a plea for tolerance. It's that voice that's going to be the make or break factor on how you respond; starkly exposed, it's raw and, when he hits the higher notes, can feel slightly like fingernails on a blackboard, something that both emphasises but also distracts from the naked pain and emotion of Thirst Born, a song to a wayward but loved child. However, there’s much hear to savour; the heartfelt All The Good Things, The Gloves Are Off’s finely picked arpeggios, a gravelly, coal dusted and spooked banjo accompanied The Lake Of Fire that could have been hewn on some Appalachian mountainside, the despairing Don’t Want To Be A Fighter Anymore and, easily the most accessible, a perky Love You In The Morning which borrows its banjo plucked tune from traditional folk song Shortnin’ Bread. It takes work, but perseverance pays off. 8pm. £5. Kasbah, Coventry Sunday October 18 Tom Jones
The man they call the voice may be 70 next year, but he can still belt them out in that concrete demolishing voice. Unfortunately, over the years he seems to have forgotten he’s capable of singing in a lower register too, so consequently everything is a bit like being slapped round the head by a side of beef. Arguably one of the worst moments in the history of modern pop was his discovery of contemporary r&b, a genre he’s insisted on pummelling into a pulp over recent years, a habit unforgivable endorsed by younger stars who really should no better. Subtlety not a word with which he’s familiar, everything’s tackled with the delicacy of a blunderbuss while he will insist on doing that annoying Vegas cabaret extemporising, an approach writ large on current album 24 Hours (Parlophone) with things like his bellowing version of I’m Alive, the stiff leather trousered funk of Feels Like Music (where he still thinks he’s Wilson Pickett), Sugar Daddy and Give A Little Love. When he does modulate the approach, you’re reminded that he can be a great singer. Listen to the reflective slow gospel Seasons, the snare drum roll slow march Scott Walker-ish title track (a sort of Death Row update on Green Green Grass Of Home) and his organ backed, Memphis soul cover of Springsteen’s boxer’s lament The Hitter, and it’s like being back in the early days of With These Hands, I’ll Never Fall In Love Again and Funny Familiar Forgotten Feelings. Sadly, you can pretty much guarantee that the show is going to be much more in the key of Sex Bomb and Kiss.
Support’s provided by Florence Rawlings, a 20 year old Londoner with the soul of a Motown veteran. She’ll be socking out choice cuts from her debut album, A Fool In Love (Dramatico) which, despite being produced and largely written by Mike Batt who lacks a certain Detroit authenticity, serves up some credibly hot and sassy r&b and bluesy workouts on brass belting covers of Allen Toussaint obscurity Riverboat, Chuck Berry’s Can’t Catch Me, Chris Spedding’s little known A Dollar Of My Pain, and dirty blues staple Wouldn’t Treat A Dog. She’s not got the experience or chops yet to really do Gladys Knight classic Take Me In Your Arms And Love Me, but Ike Turner’s title track swaggers nicely. She certainly has the voice, maybe next time she’ll have found someone who can write the materials it deserves too. 7.30pm. £50/£45.LG Arena Sunday October 18 Newton Faulkner
Last year, the ginger dreadlocked singer broke his wrist, an accident that could have had dramatic consequences for his guitar playing career. Fortunately, doctors managed to put it back together, hence prompting the title for his new album, Rebuilt By Humans (Ugly Truth), a wry echo of his debut, Hand Built By Robots. They didn’t perform any operations on his music, however, so if you didn’t succumb to his mellow folksy pop and dreamy sunkissed jazz soul the first time, then chances are you’ll be equally resistant second time around. Or maybe not. It’s a musically more accomplished and glowingly inviting affair, hooking you in from the opening with the lightly chugging funky blues of Badman seeping into the bloodstream before I Took It Out On You picks up the gently tumbling huskiness and dreamy pop that’s seduced the James Blunt audience. Given big orchestral dynamics to swell the pulsing acoustic guitar, This Is It is dreamy pop of the first water, Resin On My Heart Strings conjures thoughts of Paul Simon with an electronic sheen while Lipstick Jungle opens with a nod to Heart Of Gold before easing into a lazing light jazzy folk vibe reminiscent of, all people, Labi Siffre. Elsewhere that soft sunny shuffle and percussive guitar beat keeps things toe tappingly breezy on the likes of Won’t Let Go and a pizzicato fingerpicked Let’s Get Together while top class swayingly romantic balladry’s served up with the ocean lapping pop First Time, slow burn soaring single Over And Out, a lilting So Much and the plaintive, if a little hippie, faith in humanity hymn of the naked acoustic guitar accompanied I’m Not Giving Up Yet. And, as if to prove that the wrist’s perfectly healed, there’s a clutch of brief guitar picked instrumentals to demonstrate his dexterity. With new material interwoven with nuggets from his debut, and served up in his easy going live manner, this is pretty much assured of sending you home with a warm glow and grateful thanks to the medical profession.
Opening the evening, Canterbury born, Melbourne based teen singer-songwriter Lisa Mitchell will be previewing her upcoming Wonder album and quirkily catchy musical box new single Coin Laundry (Sony) which suggests a DNA part Regina Spektor and part Cat Stevens. 7.30pm. £16. Warwick Arts Centre Sunday October 18/Monday October 19 Devon Sproule
Having enjoyed her highest profile and success to date with Keep Your Silver Shined, the Virginian singer-songwriter looks to consolidate and expand awareness further with Don't Hurry For Heaven (Tin Angel). Again produced by and featuring husband Paul Curreri, it leans more on her early jazz and old time country influences and less on the folk flavours. The Victoria Williams comparisons are somewhat diminished (though still evident on live favourite Healthy Parents, Happy Couple), but there's strong shades of Patsy Cline on The Easier Way and the title track where BJ Cole's pedal steel gets a special spotlight while You Need A Maria again hints at Maria Muldaur and both the lazy grooved Ain't That The Way with its searing guitar solo and an organ, brass and percussion driven Bowling Green lean to gospel tinged Southern bayou blues. Lyrically it's again much informed by domesticity, the rueful Ain't That The Way about being away from home and balancing work and marriage, the title track an amusing memo to hubbie that compares a guitar's curves to a woman's and suggests he should practice on her as much as he does on his 'old Martin'. The playful lazy 60s summery pop Good To Get Out even talks about 'Paul on tour, the Dev at home' and, on A Picture of Us In A Garden, accompanied by just her guitar, she muses on home in Charlottesville with her and sister-in-law Maria in the vegetable plot. It's not, perhaps, as immediate as its predecessor but the longer you listen the more it seeps it, relaxed, easy going and full of little musical and lyrical delights, not least Julie, a slow waltzing country folk tune about chancing upon a licence plate from the same state of a long lost old flame, sung from a male perspective. A literally home spun affair, you should pay her a visit. 8pm. £13. Tin Angel, Coventry Monday October 19 Brrrap Tour
Promoted by The Sun’s Bizarre column, this package puts the spotlight on breakthough young British urban talent. While the likes of Tinie Tempah, Mz Bratt and Agrro Santos will probably only be readily familiar to clubbers, more mainstream audiences should be drawn in by the presence of Manchester’s ska and hip hop Kid British and grime star Ironik performing the likes of Tiny Dancer and Stay With Me from debut album, No Point In Wasting Tears. Most likely to steal the show though is Jahmaal Fyffe, better known as 18 year old rapper Chipmunk. Winner of Best Hip-Hop Act at this year’s MOBO Awards, he’s already scored major chart success, both appearing on Tiny Dancer and with his own #2 single Diamond Rings, and the tour coincides with equally infectious follow up Oopsy Daisy topping the charts and the release of debut album I Am. 6pm. £11. O2 Academy Monday October 19 Nine Black Alps
If things were going to happen for them on a sizeable scale, you’d have expected the Manchester quartet to be playing rather bigger venues than this by the time they released their third album. Of course, part of the problem may be in that they don’t really seem to decide what they want to be. The debut album had them dismissed as a wannabe Nirvana while the follow up swerved into indie rock pop with big harmonies and strong melodies to go with the circling guitar riffs. Neither of them cracked the Top 50. Now, having parted company with Island comes their own label Locked Out From The Inside (Lost House) which suggests they still haven’t found what they’re looking for. They’re all a bit Fields of the Nephilim on Vampire In The Sun, Salt Water and Cold Stars are snarling 90s indie with loads of noisy distorted guitars, Every Photograph Steals Your Soul heads into goth territory, Porcupine and Buy Nothing are grinding buzzsaw blues metal, and Silence Kills goes Pink Floyd cosmic leaving Bay Of Angels and Ghost In The City to wave the moody, atmospheric, acoustic guitar ballad flag. If their downward spiral continues, this may be fondly remembered as one of their bigger crowds. 8pm. £10. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath Monday October 19 Frank Turner
Following a reissue of the now defunct Million Dead’s debut album earlier this year, their former frontman hits town to plug his third solo album since their demise. Poetry Of The Deed (XtraMile) is no great departure from its predecessors, still bashing out strummy folk pop protest laced with shards of country, TS Eliot references (he actually titles a song Journey of the Magi, even if the lyrics refer to Moses and Odysseus) and a clear affection for the likes of The Clash, The Pogues and Billy Bragg. A statement of intent, the opening Live Fast Die Old pretty much lays down the ground for what follows with slightly strained raspy vocals, thumping drum beat, swirly organ and a slashing hip-slung guitar before Try This At Home blasts into a Pogues/Men They Couldn’t Hang shanty bashalong call to songwriting arms attack on apathy. Elsewhere, to keep things diverse, Sons Of Liberty goes through the political commentary motions with fiddle, trad folk roots and a nod to The Levellers, Dan’s Song celebrates having a drink in the park with your mates, the Clash-like Richard Divine tells of a self-harmer, Faithful Son does its best to emulate Springsteen and, not one to trade in false modesty, the title track declares he and his friends are “exactly what this country needs”. That’s debatable and the album’s failure to substantially build on the previous two might suggest Turner’s hit his create plateau, but as troubadour to the like minded and faithful converted, he’ll be leading the songbook from the front.
Support is Fake Problems, a Florida outfit who temper their basic punk sound with elements of folk, country and bluesy funk, a sort of cross breed between Blink 182, Ryan Adams and, to judge by the acoustic strum of Heartless, even Steve Forbert. They’ll be playing as unknowns, but it’s a good bet most will be leaving with the stomping Jason and the Scorchers meets The Hold Steady crowd rouser Dream Team still rattling round their brains.7.30pm. £10. Wulfrun Hall Tuesday October 20 The Delays
After the surprising news that they’d been given their cards by Fiction when the excellent Everything’s The Rush failed to do sufficient business, the Southampton outfit are consolidating their position, licking their wounds and gearing up to do things by themselves. To which end, next year will see the release of the own label Tiger Star, Tiger Ariel (a title reference to the disappearance of the two planes that began the Bermuda Triangle legend), preview of which should surface tonight. 7.30pm. £10. O2 Academy 3 Wednesday October 21 The Holloways
After a crap year that saw their record label go belly up and a fire destroy their equipment and rehearsal space, the North London foursome still manage to come up bubbling for sophomore album No Smoke, No Mirrors (Madfish). AAA finds their love of classic British pop alive and well with tinkling piano line, chirpy guitars, a big singalong chorus and an upbeat melody line as they keep a smile on their faces in the face of life’s slapdowns. The banality of TV gets some stick on the shantyish hoedown Public Service Broadcast, their Madness affections are wheeled out for a bullying themed On the Bus, Jukebox Sunshine gives being skint into a sunny skip to its step that refuses to give up its dreams, and Sinners n Winners adopts an almost vaudeville bounce as it wags a finger at those who sell junk food diets. You’ll hear the influence of Ray Davies at work (clearly so on Knock me Down) while comparisons to the likes of Blur and the Fratellis will be readily bandied about, but so what. They’re on a strong songwriting streak and they make infectiously joyous music, and, really, what’s to knock about that! 7.30pm. £9. O2 Academy Wednesday October 21 Dan Clews
When not working on the family strawberry farm in Kent, the young Clews could be found buffing up his guitar playing and songwriting skills. Eventually taking off to busk round Europe, he wound up in the Swedish indie folk scene as part of Americana outfit The Stars Above. This earned him the attention of Sir George Martin who promptly signed him to a publishing deal, the first fruits of which now surface on his self-titled debut album, More of a folktronica bent than Americana, Clews’ solo work readily calls to mind such influences as Nick Drake, Paul Simon, The Band, early Al Stewart, Donovan and the folkier aspects of formative Floyd. Possessed of an attractive reedy vocal and a nifty fingerpicker, English trad folk flavours filter through Islands In The Blue, Day & Night is indebted to 60s acoustic folk blues and while I Am Invincible may recall the era of Bed-Sitter Images, Lucid And Sincere fits nicely into the contemporary nu folk sound of The Fence Collective et al. He’ll be showcasing all these tonight along with the album’s best cut and the first single, the airy, Celtic hued rippling Saltry Man produced by Martin’s double Grammy winning son Giles and one that seems certain to win favour among the Devendra Banhart and co circle of admirers. 8pm. £5. The Roadhouse, Stirchley Wednesday October 21 Los Campesinos!
With Gareth’s sister Kim replacing Alex (who’s returned to her studies) on keyboards, the Cardiff Septet are in the throes of completing a new album as the official sophomore follow up to Hold On Now, Youngster. There’s few details other than song titles may well include This Is a Flag. There Is No Wind, Straight In At 101 and There Are Listed Buildings, the new single available at the live dates. Doubtless, previews will sprinkle the set along with material from last year’s debut and its quickie unofficial follow up We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed (Wichita), of which You’ll Need Those Fingers For Crossing and Documented Emotional Breakdown #1 certainly warrant inclusion. Shambolic, messy art pop with stop start rhythms, bleak lyrics and a tendency to pretentiously studenty song titles like And We Exhale And Roll Our Eyes In Unison It’s Never That Easy though, Is It? (Song for the Other Kurt), even so the world would be poorer without them. 8pm. £8. Kasbah, Coventry Thursday October 22 Jack Penate
Forget ska, busker pop and cappuccino soul revival, Penate’s now selling Afrobeat, dub, tropical dance grooves and Latin American carnival with sophomore album Everything Is New (XL). If you can forget the irritating falsetto and focus on the beats, then brassy 70s techno pop funk Be The One, the Caribbean joie de vivre of So Near and Body Down’s psychedelic soul should keep the limbs busy until the early hours. 8pm. £12. Rainbow Warehouse, Digbeth Thursday October 22 Red Shoes
Ring Around The Land Once a local folk rock group, now married duo Mark and Carolyn, the Shoes first emerged some 25 years ago but it’s taken until now - and a lengthy sabbatical - for fortune to finally smile in their direction when Fairport Convention veteran Dave Pegg heard their demos and offered to produce an album. Now, Ring Around The Land (Cedarwood) is amassing glowing reviews in the folk and roots circles and is easily one of the strongest contenders for folk album of the year. Drawing on influences that embrace Sandy Denny, Fairport and The Byrds and taking turns on lead vocals, it drips with stunning songs, from the opening Celtic Moon’s tale of lost romance played out with fiddle and mandolin, through the jangling folk rock Something Wicked This Way Comes, waltz time Only A Fool and Diamonds She Once Wore's poignant tale of a girl growing to become a woman to jangly Americana folk Keep A Hold On Me and the slow swaying shanty of Seeds. Everything is steeped in brilliance and delivered with every quality hallmark you could also, but two numbers in particular stand out, Carolyn’s heartbreaking stark and highly personal piano-accompanied lament My Father's Green Beret and the closing title track, a celebratory joyous May Day themed song about renewal and hope for tomorrow that has been declared the new folk anthem for the 21st century. All this and a spine-shivering cover of the Denny immortalised White Dress that will have your heart on its knees. Part of the World Unlimited Music Room programme, this is their first proper Birmingham gig in year and while it may be only a half hour set, it’s going to be thirty of the best minutes you’ll have heard all year. Sharing the evening will be fellow local James Summerfield proffering numbers from his deceptively breezy 60s West Coast flavoured divorce and self-doubt album Count To 10 And Start Again - the Will Oldham sounding Once a notable highlight -and its more Americana coloured predecessors.
From further afield, Sebastian Waldejer and Thomas Dybdahl (above) both hail from Norway, the latter’s spare melodies and breathy voice being compared to Jeff Buckley and Nick Drake. If you’ve a copy of Morcheeba’s Dive Deep you’ll have already heard him on some of the tracks, but this affords a chance to discover his own material with numbers such as hushed shuffle B A Part, the lush That Great October Sound, an airy Rise In Shame and the glacial pop of From Grace, all of which, compiled from his Scandinavia only releases, form part of his eponymous UK debut album (Last Suppa). 8pm. £3. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath Thursday October 22 Bowling For Soup
By now you know exactly what to expect from this lot, and new album Sorry for Partyin’ (A&G) doesn’t let you down with its chewy, chugging guitar college campus punk pop, tongue in cheek smutty schoolboy innuendo (the new single’s the phallic sniggering My Wena) and songs in celebration of girls, beer, rock n roll and having a good time. Indeed, one of the tracks here is called Hooray For Beer! Witty and knowing, the opening A Really Cool Dance Song is about them “getting older and much more sober” and trying to sell and have a hit by writing, well, a really cool dance song. A sense of humour and self-parody pervades everything along with those sherbet and bubblegum melodies that instantly demand you bounce and singalong. There’s plenty to get you jogging here too, particular standouts include BFFF, a hymn to man hugging man bromance that would bring a tear to Judd Apatow’s eye, Beach Boysy break up boogie I Don’t Wish You Were Dead Anymore, power ballad Me Without You, and, showing a sly political comment streak, Wake America (Wake Up Amy). After the slight disappointment of The Great Burrito Extortion case where they tried to expand their range, this is a welcome return to the comfort zone and, while hardly original, one of the most fun albums of their career. 7.30pm. £16.50. O2 Academy Thursday October 22 Stereo Decade
The teenage Dagenham electro-acoustic four-piece have apparently been likened to The Who and Kings Of Leon. One can only assume the hearing aid business isn’t flourishing. They’ve equally been described as having songs that sum up life for teenagers in modern Britain. Until I heard debut single Slow Down (Medical) I didn’t realise how dull that must be. They sound nothing like The Who or Kings of Leon but it does call to mind a poor pub rock attempt at Oasis while They Still Call You Darling is rubbish Essex geezer ska pop where the most incisive lyric goes ‘woh oh woh oh’. 8.30pm. £5. Flapper & Firkin Friday October 23 Iliketrains
Other than last year’s little known The Christmas Tree Ship, an instrumental album based on the 1912 sinking of the Rouse Simmons, a schooner carrying a cargo of Christmas Trees, things have been quite from the Leeds outfit with the tendency to write nine minute epics about historical figures and events. They break their silence, however, with the release of new single Sea of Regrets which, clocking at just under six minutes, maintains their track record for melancholic, pessimistic dirges cloaked in Sigur Ros-like melodic majesty. Presumably a new album of equally uplifting rock n roll ditties will be along sometime next year, so perhaps the set will include further samples of what you’ll be spending your downers budget on.
It’s also worth the ticket price to see what, other than side project dabblings, Birmingham alt-folk outfit Shady Bard have been doing with their time since the release of their sublime debut album, From The Ground Up, two years ago, since which time the silence has been positively deafening. 8pm. £7. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath Friday October 23 Morrissey
Rescheduled from May when illness forced him to cancel the whole tour, this is a belated opportunity to catch up on live readings of numbers like Throwing My Arms Around Paris and Something Is Squeezing My Skull from the untypical exuberant and upbeat pop of Years of Refusal. He even makes credit crunch suicide number Mama Lay Softly On The Riverbed sound anthemic. Coincidentally, the dates now also coincide with the release of Swords (Polydor), a double disc set that features a set of live recordings from Warsaw, among them rousing full on rocking versions of Paris, I’m Ok By Myself and You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby, that bode well for tonight’s gathering. The other disc is the much anticipated compilation of B sides culled from the singles lifted off his past three albums. For many artists, B sides tend to be lesser cuts that weren’t considered strong enough for an album, however, it’s fair to say that, with the likes of Teenage Dad On His Estate, Manchester United tragedy requiem Munich Air Disaster 1958, Children In Pieces’ condemnation of the Christian Brothers and the Bond theme sounding My Life Is A Succession of People Saying Goodbye, this is as strong a collection of any of the albums they represent. Interestingly, while only 18 tracks are listed on the sleeve, there’s actually 20, with The Slum Mums and a glam pop pumping Human Being tucked away unannounced.
Seen at the Hare & Hounds earlier this month, opening proceedings will be Doll & The Kicks. A Brighton four piece fronted by, erm, Doll, their eponymous self-released debut album’s earned comparisons to Toyah, Kate Bush, Gwen Stefani, Lene Lovich, Blondie and Kate Bush. They strike confident poses and play passable enough retro 70s indie disco pop and, it has to be admitted that the punky swagger He Was A Dancer, the jaunty jerky Roll Up The Red Carpet and the very Debbie Harryesque Pictures do the job they set out for. However, there’s little variation in the shrill delivery and retro style guitar work and while they may be a full blooded live proposition, there’s little incentive to want to keep this on CD replay. 7.30pm. £32.50. Symphony Hall Friday October 23 Noisettes
There’s no single to coincide but this another welcome opportunity to bounce along to sophomore album Wild Young Hearts, deservedly numbering among the year’s best and biggest sellers as Shingai Shoniwa marries Lulu, Eartha Kitt and Motown pop on nuggets such as the summery jazz pop Sometimes, Beat Of My Heart’s 60s guitar pop soul, the Don’t Upset The Rhythm’s Tom Tom Club funky grooves and the fabulous Spector girl group exuberance that is Never Forget You.
Support will be Newcastle quartet Little Comets though the angular jittery sub Talking Heads of new single Adultery (Columbia) isn’t exactly a stellar incentive to arrive early. 7.30pm. £11.50. O2 Academy Friday October 23 Charlie Winston
Big in France isn’t a phrase you often hear bandied about, but it’s true of the slightly John Otway lisping Winston who, though he comes from Suffolk, recently found himself topping the French charts with his single, Like A Hobo. Despite it being impossible to avoid thinking of Like A Virgin when he launches into the ‘like a hobo..’ chorus) You can understand it to some extent, there’s a certain Johnny Hallyday feel, it has the sort of Euro gypsy guitar foot stamping rhythm and la la laing that goes down well with at Paris bistros, and, yes, he even whistles. I believe the French are fond of Roger Whittaker, too. However, on top of that, the album, Hobo (Real World) also spent several weeks in the French top ten and, while yet to be released here, is selling by the truckloads in Germany too. Good luck to him. If Radio 2 pick up on him, he could well repeat the success here (without realising, you may already know him for his Volkswagon commercial cover of I’m A Man that the RSPCA got banned) but his story’s rather stronger than the music which ranges from the harmonica lashed folk gospel stomp In Your Hands (where he sounds a bit like a watered down Seal) to the bash it out strummed protest Generation Spent where he reveals himself not to be another Chris TT. Brother of pop folkie Tom Baxter (whose Better was covered by Boyzone) and the son of 70s hippy folkies Jeff and Julie Gleave, decked out in stubble, waistcoat, and battered fedora, naturally set at a jaunty angle, he clearly has a visual persona, a sort of boxcars Leo Sayer perhaps. However, while the album does sport strong touches - notably the Randy Newman-like I Love Your Smile and the simple guitar and harmonica yearning ballad Calling Me - it also creaks with the faux reggae cabaret beatbox of Kick The Bucket, the annoying quirky music hall tinged jazz silliness My Life As A Duck and the keyboard backed and equally theatrical clunky bluesy Tongue Tied where he, gosh, sings bits in French. He’s apparently quite the entertainer and you can quite imagine him doing a slot on the Royal Variety Performance and be sighed over by thirtysomething women, but he’s probably be advised not to rush into consulting UK estate agents about the property market. 7pm. £10. O2 Academy 3 Saturday October 24 Bring Me The Horizon
The best thing you can say about, Suicide Season (Visible Noise), the second album from the Brit metalcore quintet, is that, if he keeps up that yowling screech then Oliver Sykes’ voice will be shot long before they get to album number three. You have to admire their commitment to sustaining such a full on assault of pummelling guitars, battering drums and brutal noise across 10 tracks (the title track, is a relatively restrained moody number) but it’s rather harder to forgive the banal repetitive and ugly lyrics of things like The Comedown, Chelsea Smile, Death Breath and the loathsome No Need For Introductions, I’ve Read About Girls Like You On the Backs Of Toilet Doors with their mix of death, violence, getting wasted and rampant misogyny. Definitely a non event Horizon. 7pm. £14. O2 Academy Saturday October 24 My Passion
Scuzzy hard rock and punk mixed with electronics is the chosen noise for this London quartet and their debut album Corporate Flesh Party (Cool Green). Sounding much like what the title would lead you to expect, synths spill over the riff stabbing Day Of The Bees, Never Everland stomps through industrial electro-rock with a hardcore sensibility, Play Dirty exercises the vocal yowl, Hot In The Dollhouse punches out the drums and synths, and Thanks For Nothing does the mosh and metal while, for contrast, you get the spacey trip hop mood of After Calais. If, ultimately, nothing really gives you the sense that they might amount to much, the prospect of a loud, exhausting gig seems pretty strong. 6.30pm. £6.50. O2 Academy 3 Saturday October 24 The Proclaimers
The Love Can Move Mountains single failed to chart and, stalling at #30, Notes & Rhymes (W14) proved their least successful album. Both of which must have come as a bit of a shock to the Reid brothers since there’s no real dip in the sort of quality their Celtic pop has provided over the years. OK, so there’s no instant pub crowd singalong on the lines of Letter From America or I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles), but road weary thoughts of home anthemic balladry don’t get much better than Three More Days, the title track’s a rousing slice of brothel creepers friendly rockabilly, and the brass swaggery r&b Wages Of Sin quivers like Elvis on heat. There’s storm clouds on Leith too in songs that gnaw at topical issues. I Know is a prickly attempt to address the rise of the suicide bomber and both the causes and effect, Free Market tackles the credit crunch with ukulele, the poignant piano tinkled Shadows Fall looks at depression, and, while penned by Damien Dempsey, Sing All Our Cares Away paint pictures of the debilitating impact of unemployment and recession of family and on masculine self-esteem. Naturally, there’s songs of heart and home too; like A Flame a tender hymn of devotion and On Causewayside quite literally a hymn to the bricks and mortar upon which Fife was built, while for those whose tastes keen to the maudlin, they even throw in a waltzing dose of sobbing in your beer honky tonk with a cover of Moe Bandy’s It Was Always So Easy (To Find An Unhappy Woman). Still, its relative failure is a small blip on the scale of things and unlikely to have any noticeable knock on effect on the audience numbers. Still, it wouldn’t be advisable not to include at least one of those big hits on the encore list.
Sympatico support comes from Miles Hunt & Erica Nockalls who’ll be serving up tasty morsels from new album Catching More Than We Miss (IRL), a collection of sharp witted invective, spiky cynicism, and sour observations on the shoddier sides of life plied with fiery fiddle, scowling guitar and sinewy folk rock melodies. Built on a steady rolling riff, The Rogue’s Biography is an imagined post celebrity reality show scenario that addresses the way faded stars barter their dignity and loyalty to others for media exposure while the jaunty indie jigging Stay Scared, Stay Tuned, sees a television challenged Hunt (he dumped it five years ago, apparently) stick it to the networks for using the news and the fear factor for ratings grabbers. Laced with an orchestral arrangement, Were You There sees him in unusually reflective mood, contemplating lost friendships with a certain sadness at how rifts grew and there’s several other top numbers here, notably the bodhran accompanied Plans In The Sky which feels like the pair’s answer to Fairytale Of New York. Given Hunt’s sharp tongued and cynical self past, there’s an unusual hint of optimism at play here, seeping into Fill Her Up & Foot Down’s celebration of sharing music and conversation down the pub and the bouncy, fiddle scraping title track that pretty much sums up its positivism in the title. Blimey, next thing you know, they’ll be writing for Eurovision. 8pm. £22/50. Warwick Arts Centre (+ Mon 26 7.30pm. Symphony Hall) Saturday October 24/Sunday October 25 Spandau Ballet
Given the acrimonious split and subsequent bitter court case over royalties, you would have taken bets on them being the least likely of feuding 70s acts to bury the hatchets and get back together. But then, with Martin Kemp’s acting career having declined to ads for sofas, brother Gary writing for musicals no one’s ever heard of, and Tony Hadley finding himself sinking into nostalgia and reality shows, maybe it’s not such a surprise after all. One of the bigger bands of the 70s, they may have come up through the New Romantic movement but they soon expanded beyond that into funk, soul and synthpop, racking up an impressive array of best sellers that included Chant No 1, Musclebound, Only When You Leave, To Cut A Long Story Short, and, cream of the crop, True and Gold. With both a reissued Best Of compilation of hits and DVDs on EMI and a new album for Mercury, Once More, featuring re-recordings of several of those same songs alongside two new numbers (the title track sounding like some Gary Barlow ballad), you just know what the set list’s going to be. Listening back, much of the stuff now sounds incredibly dated, and while nostalgia is inevitably going to be a major part of the draw, perhaps the biggest interest will be to see if they favour the black turtleneck sweaters or the white suits. 7.30pm. £60-£37.50. LG Arena Sunday October 25 Tommy Reilly
Inexplicable winner of the Orange Unsigned talent show, given the mentality of TV viewers it was inevitable that the Scottish singer-songwriter’s winning song, Gimme A Call, was going to be at least a minor hit. It also seemed inevitable that, given his weedy voice and apparent inability to find the right notes on his guitar, that the follow up, Jackets, would paint a rather more realistic picture of his commercial appeal and abilities. Sounding like a karaoke Proclaimers, it stalled at #165. Now he’s out on the road trying to flog, Words On The Floor, a debut album you can sure A&M accountants are already writing down as a tax loss. From the opening Grab Me By the Collar it is staggeringly forgettable, Reilly sounding like he’s squealing on helium while the band go through the generic motions. Inconsequential, insubstantial and irritating in equal measure, this is the sort of anaemic strummed confessional pop that gives mediocrity a bad name. Let’s hope they kept his job open at Tesco’s. 6.30pm. £7. O2 Academy 3 Sunday October 25 Maps
Shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize with his debut, We Can Create, James Chapman returns with Turning The Mind (Mute), an album that apparently explores a theme about journeys between mental and emotional extremes and the way chemicals can affect the mind. And no, it’s not a hymn to drugs. Apparently it’s all inspired by Mindfulness, a cognitive therapy that teaches you to turn negative thoughts into positive by accepting things as they are. Well, let’s hope it works because, while there’s some pretty electro melodies dotted around and Chapman occasionally coats catchy hooks with splashes of lushness (as on the title track), it doesn’t really even nudge the envelope for dance floor space pop and his voice is just to anaemic to keep you interested when the songs degenerate into mere doodles. Which happens rather a lot. It’s not going to have you rushing for the off switch, but even the best tracks, the slightly majestic Ultravox meets Pet Shop Boys of The Note (These Voices), Let Go Of The Fear’s dark disco, and tumbling, squiggly anthemic handclapper Without You aren’t what you’d call substantially memorable and, with a running time of an hour patience will be exhausted long before it ends. 8pm. £8. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath Sunday October 25 Editors
Having christened the new O2 Academy in triumphant form where they unveiled most of the songs live, the erstwhile Birmingham based four piece (drummer Ed Lay’s the only one still living here) hit the road in support of third album, In This Light And On This Evening (Kitchenware). Since it seemed almost impossible to top Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors with its breathtaking amalgam of Joy Division and Echo and the Bunnymen, they’ve not even tried to repeat the trick. Instead, this sees them evolving and pushing their musical horizons to embrace a more intense electronic sound with strong elements of krautrock. The guitars haven’t been wholly forsaken, but now dark swirling synths and brooding electronic washes hold sway, like soundtracks to some Alex Proyas urban sci fi dystopia scored by Tubeway Army and Ultravox. Thankfully, gangly singer Tom Smith’s baritone still sounds like an alchemical fusion of Ian Curtis, Scott Walker and Nick Cave rather than Numan or Ure. As Smith points out, it’s not exactly full of sunshine and hope. But theirs is an intoxicating darkness that conjures a Godless world of decaying love, death, paranoia, violence and the grime of a city - much of the album’s inspired by and about London - feeding on itself. Opening with the slow building title track’s eerie sense of foreboding building to a climax of fuzzed distortion, pounding drums and distress signal bleeps, it gathers the gloom around it in majestic style with the bubbling intro to Bricks And Mortar giving way to a trans-Europe express rhythm before the arrival of the synth pulsing single Papillon with its black glacier soundscape and desolate romanticism. Elsewhere you’ll find images of cemeteries, ghosts and the CIA on You Don’t Know Love, Big Exit casting love in terms of loss and doom, and the Walkerish melancholy of The Boxer. A somewhat plodding Like Treasure proves perhaps the only disappointment, but they see things out in dynamic form with Eat Raw Meat = Blood Drool, surely a second cousin to Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer, and (returning to the hospital rooms imagery) the closing tranquil almost hymnal beauty of Walk The Fleet Road with its glimpsed fragment of hope. While it’s unlikely they’ll include quite as many of the new numbers in the set list as they did in Birmingham, they weave between the older guitar-dominated numbers more seamlessly than you might expect to produce a heart-stoppingly visceral live experience. 7.30pm. £18.50. W’hampton Civic Hall Monday October 26 The Twilight Sad
Mining dynamic musical tension, the Scottish four piece do like their darkness. If debut album Fourteen Autumns And Fifteen Winters was an unsettling collection of brooding indie rock, then follow up, Forget The Night Ahead (FatCat), lashes the mood to a higher pitch with swirls of guitar noise, thunderous drums and electronic storms that oddly often echo the feel of the new Editors album (especially so on I Became A Prostitute) while also conjuring thoughts of Interpol in a particularly black frame of mind. Reflection Of The Television announces the storm overcast path while remembering to keep an eye on melody, and, as James Graham's vocal burr etches a hesitant warm croon over the rumbling, the album pulls up its collar against the wind and heads into the sheets of rain that drench the likes of Seven Years of Letters, Made To Disappear and That Birthday Present. There’s occasional breaks in the clouds as brief rays of light stream through midsong, but generally speaking the dominant mood is one of expansive, oppressive and layered tension and even when they do pull back, as with the majestic slow building The Room and the stark Floorboards Under The Bed where Graham’s unaccompanied spoken lyrics are gradually enfolded in white noise, the sense of a weight bearing down is inescapable. Probably best not to be experienced on downers. 8pm. £6. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath Monday October 26 The Dead Weather
How does Jack White keep track of what he’s doing and with whom? In his spare time between the White Stripes and Raconteurs, he’s joined forces with Alison Mosshart of The Kills, Dean Fertita from Queens Of The Stone Age and Raconteurs man Jack Lawrence to forge this exercise in distortion and feedback drenched scuzzed blues. White provides the drums here, loud, staccato and forceful, and, given he also produced and co-wrote seven of the songs, debut album Horehound (Sony) is very much in his image. The manifesto’s clearly laid out from the outset with the Hendrixy jamming blues of 60 Feet Tall and hi hat dominant, snarling dirty grind single Hang You From The Heavens, rarely letting up as it proceeds through the dub reggae loping I Cut Like A Buffalo, narcotic strung out slow blues So Far From Your Weapon, the Zepalike Treat Me Like Your Mother and a clattering blues metal rebuilding of Dylan’s New Pony. At the end of the day, it’s basically just indulgent generic blues rock and unlikely to be still figuring large on your iPods in a couple of months time, but for now, with the likes of the nu metal cosmic blues instrumental Three Birds infiltrating the blood stream, its sleazy, snake-hipped throb should make for a sexually grime-caked live experience. 7.30pm. £18.50. O2 Academy Monday October 26 Jon Allen
The product of a Devon hippie schooling, Allen got a taste of success when the gentle acoustic melancholy of Going Home became the theme music for the Land Rover TV commercial and shifted some 20,000 copies of the single. That's now given birth to a debut album, Dead Man’s Suit (Monologue), that seeks to seduce an audience of folk friendly AOR tastes by dint of the sheer familiarity of its influences. I'm not sure what Allen studied in Liverpool, but if there was a course on 60s and 70s American folk rock then he was probably its keenest student. Judging by Dead Man's Suit, Friends and New Years Eve, Dylan was clearly high on the set texts, the first nodding to All Along The Watchtower and the others brazen revisitings of Forever Young and Girl From The North Country respectively. Then there's young Rod Stewart for In Your Light (the song itself channelling The Band) and the bluesily soulful Happy Now (with added hammond organ and Dave Gilmour guitar), a touch of the Byrds for Down By The River while Bad Penny manages to evoke both Stealer's Wheel and Creedence. Showing his musical education embraced other eras too, Take Me To Heart does credible Billy Joel piano balladry and Young Man Blues surely nods to mid period solo Macca himself. All of which, you'll have surmised, means this is decidedly derivative. However, that doesn't necessarily mean you should dismiss it out of hand. Allen has a kind of James Morrison quality to his voice which, along with a similarly unshaven tousled image, should sew up the impressionable young women market, and, while they may have obvious musical forbears, his songs and melodies are undeniably memorable, the country flecked Lay Your Burden Down firm evidence of genuine writing talent. This album probably won't do a Blunt, but, if he can leave his record collection at home next time he's in the studio, it could prove the first step of a solid career. 8pm. £8. Glee Club Tuesday October 27 Billy Talent
Singularly misnamed, the Canadian rock four piece began life trying to ride the short lived ska rock bandwagon before changing name and musical direction in favour of a punk pop sound (singer Benjamin Kowalewicz clearly practised Johnny Rotten in front of his mirror) informed by their uncritical assimilation of grunge. Inexplicably successful for such a stodgy, unvaried outfit, they’re here on the back of imaginatively titled third album, III (Atlantic), grinding through the formless blues metal dirge of Devil On My Shoulder, an embarrassing cod-operatic Saint Veronika (complete with the world’s dullest synth solo), the uninspired derivative riffs of Paint It Black rip-off Tears Into Wine and the horrendous Police-aping Diamond On A Landmine. If these are bad, then the attempts at political comment on the clumping folk shanty stomp that is Turn Your Back and Rusted From The Rain’s stab at stadium ballad anthemic are even worse while their aspirations to Queen-like epic on The Dead Can’t Testify sound like a bad Tenacious D sketch. A future providing backing tracks for Guitar Hero knock offs surely looms. 7.30pm. £15. O2 Academy Tuesday October 27 Indigo Girls
Can't decide whether you prefer Amy Ray and Emily Saliers in band mode or as an acoustic duo? Then, produced by Mitchell Froom, here's the perfect solution. The first release on their own label ,Poseidon and the Bitter Bug (IG) features all the songs in both versions so you can take your pick. Written by Saliers, Digging For Your Dreams opens the band disc, a bittersweet reflection of a life lived and days passing that sets the mood for many of the songs that follow. The theme’s picked up on Love of Our Lives, a mandolin strummed song about the duo’s gay marriage, while the acknowledgement of failures in I'll Change and the fisherman and harbour imagery of the vocally soaring Fleet Of Hope both turn to wistful self-examination. Ray too is in reflective mood, revisiting the perky Driver Education from her solo album with its memories of coming of age and rebellion while, riding a REM-like electric guitar riff Ghost of the Gang is stained with death just as Jimmy recalls a friend's nephew who committed suicide. She also contributes a brace of relationship numbers, both borrowing from other songs. Second Time Around’s warning against compromise lifts from Dylan’s Tangled Up In Blue while, True Romantic is a virtual dead ringer for Radiohead's Creep. All these are then served up again in their stripped down and more countrified forms and it seems likely that that’s the format they’ll take for this, their first UK tour in some years, a chance to catch up on their current musical state of play and revisit classic past memories such as Hammer & A Nail, Fugitive and Closer To Fine. 7.30pm. £20. O2 Academy 2 Tuesday October 27 ZZ Top
Still featuring the original line up of Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill and Frank Beard after 40 years, the Texan trio hit their commercial peak in the mid 80s with electro driven boogie hit singles Gimme All Your Lovin’, Sharp Dressed Man, and Legs and the Eliminator and Afterburner albums. However, towards the end of the decade, things began to wane and, although they were in the top 10 with Viva Las Vegas in 1992, they haven’t had a hit single here in 15 years. It’s been six years since the last album, Mescalero, and although a follow up was announced for 2006 the loss of their RCA label deal meant nothing surfaced. Apparently now signed up with producer Rick Rubin, they’re reported to be working on new material that will hark back to their pre 1980 more down and dirty Texas boogie style, though it’s reasonable to assume that this refresher tour isn’t about to see them ditching the hits that the faithful will be turning out to hear. 7.30pm. £37.50. W’hampton Civic Hall Tuesday October 27/Wednesday October 28 Green Day
Five years on from upending expectations with American Idiot, America’s most successful contemporary punk band hit these shores with yet another thematically weighty, politically aware conceptual album. 21st Century Breakdown (Reprise) is a three part, 18 song questioning of a broken post Bush America unfolded through the story of Christian and Gloria, a couple of young punks on the run, thrown together by the betrayals of religion (East Jesus Nowhere a choppy rhythm attack on born again hypocrisy with Adam and the Ants drums), government and authority, and told with big power chords, crowd grabbing hooks and stadium rocking choruses. “Rally up the demons of your soul,” they urge on Know Your Enemy, a calling to the barricades that comes right on the heels of the quiet-loud epic title track and precedes Viva La Gloria, a track that opens aping Springsteen’s Jungleland before erupting into soaring, bounce along three chord power pop. It sets a high opening bar, but rarely do the subsequent tracks fall short. There’s stabbing angry punk with Christian’s Inferno, sweeping. lush, Beatles inspired, AOR balladry on Last Night On Earth and Restless Heart Syndrome, the 60s surf pop of Last Of The American Girls (if you can imagine the Beach Boys singing a left wing ditty about the end of civilisation), Peacemaker barrelling along like punk mariachis, Horseshoes And Handgrenades marrying British New Wave with Ramones garage punk, and the slow building arms-waving stadium ballad 21 Guns where Billy Joe’s voice has an apotheosis to a higher plane. With its cocktail of The Who and Philadelphia Freedom, See The Light closes out on a three chord desperate - and radio friendly - need to know that everything America’s been through has been worth the pain if it can finally emerge at the other end of the tunnel into a brighter ever after. Indisputably a major contender for album of the year, it’ll be strongly reflected in the live show although, if they maintain the format of the entertainment focused and highly charged American dates, you can also expect an set list that spans their career as well as playful snippets of such rock classics as Satisfaction, Stairway to Heaven and Sweet Child o' Mine. 7.30pm. £35. LG Arena Wednesday October 28 Colin MacIntyre
The voice and soul of Mull Historical Society, Macintyre's second release under his own name, Island (Future Gods), is a rather lovely collection of Caledonian folk-soul, so firmly rooted in his island home that it not only features the Mendelssohn On Mull festival string players, various family members and, on the jubilant finale of Ned's Song, assorted islanders, but was also recorded at his old primary school, now the Tobermory Arts Centre. The family tree spreads its branches through the songs too, the simple acoustic guitar-accompanied Samuel Demster RIP recounting the story of his great-grandfather who went off to serve in WWI and never came home. Featuring several first takes, it's a fairly rough and ready affair, Macintyre's voice often more concerned with catching the emotional mood than the right notes. But considerably more introverted and hushed than his previous work, there's a warm quality to its casual shambling, whether on the flamenco shanty Cape Wrath, the soft brown tones of the fiddle accompanied Breathe or relatively lush King Creosote collaboration Out Stealing Horses. the island life suits him. 8pm. £10. Glee Club Wednesday October 28 Oysterband
Having already released The Oxford Girl and Other Stories, an album of acoustic versions of often lesser known songs from across their career, to mark their 30th anniversary, the veteran folk quintet now take it out on the road for a journey through their songbook of the traditional, self penned and covers. Thus the likes of Blood-Red Roses, The Early Days Of A Better Nation, The False Knight On The Road and, obviously, The Oxford Girl itself, with reimagined and reworked arrangements and played using different instruments such as kantele and harmonium. It’s a one off project, so don’t miss it. 8pm. £14. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath Thursday October 29 Marc Almond
Soft Cell and solo hit memories such as Days of Pearly Spencer, Something’s Gotten Hold Of my Heart and Stories of Johnny will obviously find a place, but chances are that there’ll be considerable focus on his new album project, Orpheus In Exile. It’s a collection of songs by Vadim Kozin, an acclaimed Soviet era singer of Gypsy Folk and Russian torch songs who sank into obscurity following his exile. Discovering Kozin’s work during his first visit to Russia in 1992, Almond’s been working to restore his name to the public ear, the album, recorded with folk ensemble Orchestra Rossiya, giving new, suitably large orchestral treatments to such melancholic romance drenched songs such as Forgotten Tango, A Skein Of White Cranes, When youth Becomes A Memory and Boulevards of Magadan, all of which suggest Kozin as a Soviet answer to Jacques Brel. The album’s had virtually no promotion, so the material will be unfamiliar to all but the most dedicated of Almond’s admirers, but on the evidence of the samples available it warrants wide discovery. 7.30pm. £21.50. Alexandra Theatre Thursday October 29 Calvin Harris
Born Adam Richard Wiles, the Dumfries-born producer and singer’s enjoying a substantially high profile and popping up as celebrity chat show guest thanks to his cheesy revival of handbag house, first on debut album I Created Disco and now with follow up Ready For The Weekend (Sony). Glossily sheened club friendly 90s dance pop with tinny synths, electronics, slap bass and treated vocals, it gets in and does the job it was built for with the r&b underpinned title track, Dizzee Rascal collaboration Dance Wiv Me, I’m Not Alone, cheesy disco Stars Come Out and the slightly glam dance stomp of The Rain.
As insubstantial as it is catchy, it’ll fade from the memory almost as soon as you step off the dance floor, but while that glitter ball sparkles you’ll think this is your best night out ever. Support comes from Mr Hudson who ditched The Library, with whom he made a rather dull cod cabaret vibe debut album laced with pallid hip hop and lame white reggae, and hooked up with Kanye West to record the infectious soaring electropop Supernova. That now provides the opening track to new album, Straight No Chaser (Mercury), but despite West’s continued involvement and insistence on dropping in raps, this is still run of the mill white boy and a computer dance pop. It’s not without some sparkling moments, the clumping Knew We Were Trouble might have been a Human League sequel to Don’t You Want Me, Stiff Upper Lips’s a Mike Skinnerish break up song with a lounge pop gloss, Lift Your Head does a nice line in Gilbert O’Sullivan and Time’s wistful reverie about growing older shows he can write a decent lyric if he puts his mind to it. Even so, it’s hard to foresee a sustained career for something essentially so anodyne. 7.30pm. £14. O2 Academy Thursday October 29 Idlewild
A year on
from his folk collaboration with Kris Drever and John McCusker,
Roddy Woomble gets back to the day job making ringing electric
guitar rock with one of Scotland’s finest but largely underrated
bands. Reunited for the follow up to Make Another World and
freed from trying to satisfying everyone else’s expectations,
the foursome have made one of their best albums yet with Post
Electric Blues (Cooking Vinyl). Woomble’s solo folk excursions have been magnificent, but it’s still good to hear him back where he belongs. 7.30pm. £13. O2 Academy 3 Thursday October 29 The Unthanks
They may have rebranded following the departure of pianist Stef Conner, the full time membership of Rachel’s sister Becky and their expansion from all girl female quartet to male/female quintet (and ten piece for live shows), other than the addition of bass and drums the Northumbrian folkies haven’t dramatically altered the musical sound displayed on the Mercury Music Prize nominated The Bairns. Thus Here’s The Tender Coming (EMI) brings another heady helping of undisguised Geordie voices, traditional and self-penned songs and arrangements that range from the acapella to spare Erik Satie-like piano minimalism and string quartets. It is, though, a little less heavy on the doom and gloom, balancing darker tales such as the drowned sailors of Sad February, Victorian child labour memoir The Testimony of Patience Kershaw, Annachie Gordon’s eight minutes of lovers’ tragedy, and the Ewan MacColl written auto-harp coloured suicide tale Nobody Knew She Was There with the playful music hall sprightliness of Betsy Belle, Not Much Luck In Our House and the unaccompanied Where’ve Yer Bin Dick. Even Lucky Gilchrist, written about the death of one of Rachel’s friends, is framed as a celebration with pulsing jittery piano. Elsewhere they cover Lal Waterson’s At First She Starts, bring fresh life to Scots ballad Flowers of the Town, conjure thoughts of Robert Wyatt with Living By The Water and false foot with a title track that, rather than some tale of romantic yearning, is actually about Nelson’s press gangs. All adding up to an intoxicating, stirring collection that explores the light and dark in both its music and its narratives to produce an album and a live show that should leave the hair son your neck tingling. 7.30pm. £16.50. Warwick Arts Centre Thursday October 29 Nancy Elizabeth
It feels like Danish five piece Efterklang have taken up residence hereabouts of late, but another visit’s always welcome, especially when this time round they bring with them their Wigan born Leaf label compatriot. As well as dipping into debut album Battle And Victory she’ll be showcasing just released follow-up Wrought Iron. Coughs will need to be stifled and much care taken about not dropping pins, because this is a quiet, fragile stuff indeed with her cracked husky voice set against instrumentation so sparse it’s often barely there. Listen to the wintry ghostly Steve Reich minimalism of Canopy, the blues folk Bring On The Hurricane with its hints of TalkTalk or Divining with its mournful trumpet over the piano’s icy fingers and you’ll feel the sense of solitude and stillness she seeks to evoke. But hers is a positive quietude, these and numbers like Feet Of courage and Lay Low about (as the title implies) finding strength in adversity. Not that it’s all so skeletally contemplative. Feet Of Courage employs puttering hand percussion on a jazzy folk rhythm while, relatively speaking, The Act positively wigs out with bluesy electric guitar and harmonica as she comes over all bluesy wail. Even so, outbreaks of crowd diving are unlikely. 8pm. £10. Asylum, Hockley Friday October 30 Fightstar
Out and about serving the cause of third album, Be Human (Search and Destroy), Charlie Simpson’s outfit delivers a rather schizophrenic set that has the throaty Slipknot growls and metal core thrash of War Machine, Colours Bleed To Red and Damocles on the one hand and radio friendly rock numbers with strings and choirs like Calling In All Stations, the poppy Tonight We Burn, and a Bryan Adamsy Mercury Summer on the other. Drop in the an obligatory moody piano ballad in the shape of Follow Me Into The Darkness and you clearly have a band being tugged in two directions and likely to fully satisfy fans of either as a result.
Support’s provided by promising St Albans pop rockers Saving Aimee who might have more credibility if they hadn’t let album producer Justin Hawkins live out his unfulfilled Darkness daydreams. That said, new single Fresh Since ’88 (Autonomy), also sounds worryingly like 70s poodle rockers Journey. 7pm. £12.50. O2 Academy Friday October 30 Kitsune Maison Tour
An indie electro dance pop double bill, first up you get Manchester four piece Delphic offering tasters for next year’s album and waving a belated flag for recent single, shoegazey scurry This Momentary (Polydor), and its accompanying award-nominated video filmed in and around Chernobyl.
Co-headliners are Irish trio Two Door Cinema Club, a slightly poppier proposition whose current single, Something Good Can Happen (XL), is all tinkling cascading synths, beats and catchy staccato melody with Cigarettes In The Theatre and Do You Want It All? showing there’s plenty more where that came from. 8pm. £6. The Rainbow, Digbeth Friday October 30 Little Boots
Hyped to the heavens and proclaimed the new big noise in synth pop circles before she’d actually released anything, when it came to laying out the goods Victoria Hesketh’s debut album, Hands (679), proved not to be the second coming but an enjoyable enough slice of early 80s electro with several passing nods to progenitors like Blancmange, Human League (Phil Oakey even turns up on Symmetry) and Yazoo, filtered through strong modern pop sensibility. La Roux and Florence and the Machine have stolen much of her thunder, but Remedy was a deserved Top 10 hit with its meld of Goldfrapp and Kylie and, following the same template, Stuck On Repeat should easily repeat the trick while Meddle does a nice line in clanking robopop disco like some bizarre cross between Shirley Ellis and a kittenishly vamping Duffy, Ghosts proffers a sly synth tango and Earthquake opens on a John Foxx metallic swirl before unfurling into a slow hooks laden pop bounce about love and domestic squabbles. Shortly after the bubbling dancepop No Brakes has faded away, a hidden bonus tracks surfaces in which, announcing, Hesketh returns behind an electric piano in singer-songriter mode where, conjuring Tori, Kate and Carole King, she reveals where her real future might lie after the women with keyboards fad as run its course. 7.30pm. £10. Wulfrun Hall Friday October 30/Saturday October 31 Pink
After blowing everyone away on her Funhouse tour’s first visit here in April, Alecia Beth Moore returns for two more sell out nights of flamboyant glam n gloss pop. Other than including heartstring tugger new single I Don’t Believe You (Laface), it’s unclear whether this will be the same set list as last time round but having decided to reissue the Funhouse album as a special edition with two new tracks, music videos and live footage from the tour’s Australian leg it’s pretty certain to feature album stand outs So What, and the power pop Please Don’t Leave Me alongside back catalogue gems like Stupid Girl and Cuz I Can. If she does keep to the same production, then you can look forward to a dazzling night of music and circus acrobatics as she sings while twirling around a trapeze, runs through 10 costume changes (including a very risque leotard), an acoustic segment breather and then yet more circus spectacular as she takes to the skies to deliver crowd rouser Sober from a trapeze. On the previous dates she wowed with covers of Bohemian Rhapsody and Touch Myself, who knows what surprises she has up her bodice this time.7.30pm. £35. NIA Saturday October 31 Reg Meuross
If you’ve yet to discover the Somerset troubadour and his emotion flecked voice you really don’t know what you’ve been missing. Over the course of four albums he’s mined both deep personal experiences and stories from English history, delivering them with a beguiling simplicity and warmth evocative of such names as Ralph McTell, Gordon Lightfoot, Don McLean, Martyn Joseph and Art Garfunkel. He has a treasure trove of material upon which to draw and, while whatever he pulls from the hat is going to be worth the price of admission, there’s some very special treats that will hopefully find their way into the set list. From the Short Stories album, comes the hymnal Wherever You Go and Good With His Hands’ poignant tale of his father’s broken marriage, from Still’s song of love and family there’s the Harry Chapin-like The Man In Edward Hopper's Bar, the lovely Days Like These and, returning to his parents divorce, the compassionate forgiveness of Don't Give Up. Last year’s Dragonfly (Hatsongs) also addresses a woman’s adultery on the bittersweet Fool's Gold while The Sound of Hallelujahs is a beautiful hymn to endurance inspired by a conversation debating the relative merits of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah and Jeff Buckley's cover, The Priest spins the dramatic tale of an alcoholic priest, a traveller in need of solace and the bitter betrayal of faith lost and the 9/11 referencing title track explores both the causes and the blindness of terrorism. Recent history also surfaces in the heartbreaking Until I Hold You Once Again, inspired by the mother of one of the murdered Suffolk prostitutes, and the equally moving Valentine, a romantic quasi ghost story that recalls Lance Corporal Matty Hull, killed by friendly fire in Iraq on Valentine's Day 2003. However, the song most likely to bring the room to a hushed silence will be And Jesus Wept on which, sounding uncannily like a young Harvey Andrews, he tells the story of Harry Farr who, in 1916, suffering from shellshock, was shot for desertion and who, thanks to the efforts of his daughter and granddaughter, became the first of the 306 British soldiers so executed in to be granted a posthumous pardon. Accompanied tonight by Phil Beer and promising a ‘surprise guest’, you’ll never forgive yourself if you’re not there. 8pm. £12. Red Lion, Kings Heath
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