|
|
QUICK LINKS TO THE SITE NEWS
ENTERTAINMENT
MOTORS
ARCHIVE ARTICLES AND REFERENCE
WHERE TO STAY
PROPERTY TO RENT
INFORMATION
BUSINESS
FEATURES
DETAILS OF OUR ADVERTISING & DESIGN PACKAGES
PHONE
![[Hard To Find Records]](banner2.gif)
Hard To Find Records is a worldwide mail order dance music vinyl & DJ equipment superstore specializing in new & rare / deleted vinyl. They offer the facility to backorder any track listed on their website which will then automatically notify you via email the next time a copy arrives into stock.
|
For a very quick and effective search through all the articles for the information you are after
ARCHIVED REVIEWS September 2005 All Previews by Mike Davies Sunday September 4
While Lynyrd Skynyrd may continue to run the Southern Cross up the rock
flagpole, these days they’re flying at half mast while the Truckers are
the full salute. Lining up as guitarist-singers Patterson Hood, Mike
Cooley, and Jason Isbell with rhythm section Brad Morgan and Shonna
Tucker, they’re based in Athens Georgia but their roots are in Alabama
with a musical bedrock built upon the southern fried white trash country
of Skynyrd, Neil Young. Johnny Cash and the Allmans. 7.30pm. £10. Carling Academy 2. Tuesday September 6
The New Yorkers return for a headlining tour to consolidate the groundswell of support for their eponymous debut of big guitar, soaring chorus, anguished vocal pop rock. Set in the same mould as the likes of Dashboard Confessional and Jimmy Eat World, they spark of sprays of naggingly catchy emotion driven rock, though given the album’s potential lighters aloft stadium anthem If Ever it seems willingly perverse that the new single should relegate it to an acoustic B side version in favour of the more formula, though undeniably potent, This Is The Part. 7.30pm. £6. Bar Academy. Wednesday September 7
After four years spent living up the image of music’s most notorious
playboy and car owner, getting into fights with photographers, being
banned from driving and generally providing tabloid stories, Jay Kay’s
managed to find time get back in the studio and record long overdue sixth
album Dynamite (Sony). 7.30pm. £28.50. NEC Wednesday September 7 The Rodriguez family are certainly
multi-talented. Robert writes, directs, edits his own movies as well as
operating the camera and writing the music, young son Racer has a story
credit on dad’s Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl as well as appearing
in it along with brothers Rocket and Rebel and now their aunt turns out to
be a hot Texican rock n roots singer songwriter as well as the actress who
played Dallas in Sin City. 7pm. £5. Bar Academy. Wednesday September 7
Last time
round they were touring then new single Rush Song, now they’re back with
the full Teen Dance Ordinance (London) album works. However, expectations
that this would mark a back to basics approach with churny buzzsaw guitars
and hard riffs prove largely unfounded. Clearly aware they need to do
their bit for mainstream audiences if they hope to make up lost ground
here and, more importantly in the US, they’ve upped their radio friendly
quotient. Thus you might be surprised to find Die Tonight sounding not
unlike Sting and Hey calling in Beach Boys influences while Black Hole and
Better Off With Him are positively American poppy in a Bowling For Soup
sort of summer teeny way. 7.30pm. £11.50. Wulfrun Hall Thursday September 8
Despite having been around for 11 years and recording nine albums, this is
the first time the Southern outfit have ever toured the UK. They’re
fronted by the nigh legendary Warren Hayes who’s CV includes ongoing
stints as guitarist with the Allman Brothers and Grateful Dead and
co-writing credits on Garth Brooks’number one single Two Of A Kind,
Working On A Full House. 7.30pm. £17.50. Carling Academy.Mike Davies Friday September 9/Saturday
September 10
Fans concerned that the lads were perhaps getting a bit soft and AOR, what
with covers of First Time Ever I Saw Your Face and the jaunty grins of
Just Enough Education To Perform, should take heart from current album
Language. Sex. Violence. Other? (V2) which turns up the guitars to frenzy
and gets down and dirty in bed with rock n roll. 7.30pm. £27.50. NIA Sunday September 11 Redjetson
If Radiohead ever decide to call it a day, this Essex six piece could seamlessly take their place, and probably win back fans who’ve lamented Thom Yorke’s decision to abandon recognisable tunes. Debut album New General Catalogue (Drowned in Sound) is packed solid with intense sonic epics, massive cinematic soundscapes that also bring to mind the work of Explosions In The Sky on the opening Divorce and the distorted blasts of A Reptile, Cold Blood. Deep, dark and distant, they trade in majestic caverns and mountains of sound with the likes of the slow chiming This City Moans yet can also handle ice-melting fragility on The Sky Is Breaking and This Every Day, For The Rest of Your Life with equal passion. Jazz textures inform their progressive bent on several occasions, notably New Europe, while Wednesday’s Rivals also reveals folk influences in the weave of their influences. If the live sound is even a fraction as panoramic as the closing nine minutes of Pieces Go Missing, this is going to be awesome. Support comes from homegrown outfit The INKlings who’ve partly abandoned their former gentle acoustic English folksy pop for a far darker, edgier indie guitar noise emblemised by Somewhere In Between on the new EP where guitars growl and prowl between the song’s softer moments. They’ve not lost their sense of melodics though and while Dark Angels may lurk around insalubrious musical street corners with feedback up its sleeve, you can still discern their roots poking through. More so - at least until it takes off at a gallop for the end - on the shimmery Eventually, though while the closing Ribbons and Bows does have the sort of wistful folksy sweetness you’d expect from the title it also breaks out into passages of martial beat drums and guitar wailing blues. Something of a quantum leap really and one really deserving of their oft anticipated breakthrough. 7pm. £6.50. Bar Academy. Monday September 12 Alison Krauss & Union Station
Unequivocally the foremost exponent of contemporary bluegrass, fiddle playing singer Krauss has managed to also make the crossover from country to the more mainstream audience that will pack out venues like this where other country acts might struggle to fill a village hall. With band members Dan Tyminski (who ghosted George Clooney’s singing on O Brother) sharing vocal duties and Ron Block thumbing the banjo, she’s over here on the back of current album Lonely Runs Both Ways (Rounder) and its sadness tinged songs of isolation and refuge. As far as bluegrass goes, it throws up the usual sheen of quality on things like Restless, My Poor Old Heart and Union House Branch but also intoxicates with more wistful middle of the road roots country fayre like Gravity and Wouldn’t Be So Bad (written by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings) and the folksy hued Borderline or hymnal A Living Prayer. Personally I prefer her in this mode rather than kicking up the hillbilly heels, but whatever they run through the set list tonight from this and their extensive back catalogue, you’ll have the taste of authentic straw, whisky and dustroads in the mouth for a while. 7.30pm. £27.50/£23.50. Symphony Hall Monday September 12 Story One
Forged in Nottingham five years back, fronted by the life-seasoned, wearied voice and violin of Anglo-French Tom Evans, the quartet favour a rootsy based sound on Disposable, the acoustic opening track of their debut EP that bears witness to influences that span Van Morrison, Elbow and Coldplay. However, by the time you get to the jittery metronomic rhythm and drivings urges of Coming Up it’s obvious they’re not just some sensitive young man in a bedsit outfit. The third number, Delhi Funeral (inspired by seeing bodies being cremated on the Ganges) is a moody, rumbling affair that showcases Evans’s scraping fiddle work and fag stained end of tether vocals in a way that, at times, calls to mind the days of Curved Air. They’ve just wrapped recording on the debut album, so you can expect to find them also showcasing such material as fragile love song Beggar’s Belief, the urban alienation of This Town and meditation on life in wartime, Air Raid. 7.30m. £5. Bar Academy Tuesday September 13 JJ72
Three years on from the underrated I To The Sky, the JJs are looking to make up for lost ground. Armed with new bassist Sarah Fox, they played a flurry of dates in May and released download only single She’s Gone but now it’s time for the main assault as they limber up for the release of the much awaited third album. It’s preceded by Coming Home (Lakota), another trademark example of Mark Greaney’s swooping semi-operatic vocals and the band’s fondness for big music in a Waterboys style. Whether the world has moved on in their period of regrouping and left them behind remains to be seen, but if the two tracks to date are anything to go by then the world had better start thinking about catching up. 7.30pm. £10. Carling Academy 2. Tuesday September 13 Millionaire
Throaty loose limbed rumbling bass sets the ground for We Don’t Live There Anymore (Pias), the first single taken from the London outfit’s upcoming sophomore album Paradisaic and, like the accompanying For A Maid, a growly riff battering slab of stoner metal that suggests Josh Homme has worked his Queens Of The Stone Age magic on production and inspired the band to new heights. A second single, I’m On A High, will be hammering at the doors to your ears to tie in with the tour. 7.30pm. £5. Bar Academy Tuesday September 13 Alfie
After a frankly uninspiring start with dreary folk pop offerings and their dull ponderous Do You Imagine Things? album, the Mancunian underachievers are perking up somewhat with Crying At Teatime (Regal) which retains the folk-rock basics but, strengthened with touring, now shades into psychedelia of a Flaming Lips hue . Vocally, the nasal whine still proves distracting, but the opening Your Own Religion actually encourages you to play the rest of the album rather than flick it into the reject pile. Look At You Now adopts a trad folk feel but give sit muscle with reverberating guitar and a striding beat evocative of the early Levellers while All Too Heavy Now opens its heart to a quasi power pop dynamic and both Colours and the title track bask in the glow of California sunshine. The fuzzy and noisy production does them no major favours, but at least now they have enough decent songs to make you want to know what’s it all about. 7.30pm. £8. Little Civic Wednesday September 14 Clem Snide
A Brooklyn outfit none of whom are called Clem Snide (the name taken from William Burroughs) but are fronted by the wonderfully monickered Eef Barzelay and his woozily delicate cracked Loudon Wainwright-like voice. This is their first visit to Birmingham and comes in the wake of recently released fifth album End of Love (Fargo), a collection of such alt country ballads as the beautiful What We Become and more uptempo guitar-driven indie-rock like the title track. The last album, Soft Spot, drew on his feelings on becoming a father, this is inspired by the deaths of his mother and mother-in-law. But rather than wallowing in misery, its musically upbeat songs tend to be more a celebration and affirmation of life and love and the knowledge that others have been there before. There’s some of their typically skewed lyrical quirkiness with songs like Tiny European Cars, German Hip Hop and the sublimely affecting Made For TV Movie (where he details the sad life of Lucille Ball), but at the core of everything are considerations of big issues, addressing ambiguous feelings towards salvation with Jews For Jesus Blues where he sings ‘now that I'm found I miss being lost’ and asking why bad things happen to good people on the country-lounge easy shuffler God Answers Back. Catching them live should offer equally meaningful revelations. 8pm. £6. Glee Club Thursday September 15 Reuben Following on from debut album Racecar Is Racecar Backwards with its urgent yet melodic pounding Foo Fighters styled rock and shouty thrashing hardcore, the Guilford band now hit the road in service of the follow up Very Fast Very Dangerous (Xtra Mile), a more confident and melodic excursion into riffery that doesn’t eschew their past brutal noise (Alpha Signal Three, Good Night, Return of the Jedi) but does expand the pattern into new areas, embracing strung out balladry on Nobody Loves You and Boy, techno with the amusingly titled Every Time A Teenager Listens to Drum & Bass A Rockstar Dies, the stuttery swaggering straightforward rock of A Kick In The Mouth, Lights Out and It’s All About Control and even flirting with emo for Best Enemies. Unlikely to lift them out of their middle of the second division standing maybe, but strong enough to ensure they keep a firm hold of where they’re at. 7.30pm. £6. Barfly Club, Digbeth. Thursday September 15/Saturday September 17/Sunday September 18 McFly
Although they may never be forgiven for their versions of She Loves You and You’ve Got A Friend not to forget the dreadful All About You, honesty compels me to say that their second album, Wonderland (Universal) is a marked improvement on the tweenie pop debut that had them marked down as a flyweight Busted doing 60s pop knockoffs. Sure I’ll Be Ok is retro pop that won’t ruffle the feathers of their young fans, but the juddery Ultraviolet’s hints of Green Day shows signs of growing up and aiming higher while The Ballad of Paul K is a Squeeze style social narrative pop is most definitely going to fly over the heads of 9 year old heads. The only survivors of the manufactured boy band explosion, the decision to crank up their appeal for buyers with ages larger than their shoe size has produced some sparkling, spangly guitar pop that spray out the sort of hooks and choruses that you wouldn't feel ashamed to find your feet tapping along to down the pub. Sure they overreach themselves going for early McCartneyesque orchestral lushness with She Falls Asleep, a job that should have been left to Westlife, but Memory Lane is a classy slice of summer romance power pop and if that’s really them playing the rock n roll guitar on I Wanna Hold You then hats off indeed. 7.30pm. £20. NEC Thursday September 15 Daniel Rachel Taking another swerve after last year’s Dear Friend that prompted thoughts of vintage Paul McCartney, local boy Rachel takes another step towards wider awareness with Pearl (Dust), a sterling slice of fist in the air anthemics embellished with blaring horns to go with its Northern Soul meets folk pop beat and a chorus that deserves to ring out round football terraces the nation across. The more sedate slow swaying Face The Sun again turns the comparison to OCS’s Simon Fowler (who produced the track) and Robin Gibb though it’s lullaby chiming melody is somewhat spoiled by overlaying a bluesy picked guitar line but remains a bit of a gem while a live version of The Last Time I Danced from debut album A Simple Twist of Folk should be sufficient encouragement to see him do his acoustic stuff on stage too. 8.30pm. £2. Bull’s Head. Moseley. Saturday September 17 Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
Having earned his place in rock history as the founder of indie darlings Pavement, Malkmus has been following a solo path in recent years. Working with the Jinks as his backing band, he’s now three albums in, arriving here for a somewhat rare full (well, four dates) UK tour following relatively glowing reviews for Face The Truth (Domino) after the less enthusiastically received solo debut and its Pig Lib follow up. Whatever cogs have slipped into place between times, Malkmus now seems to have matured and relaxed enough to start having fun again rather trying to fit the mould of the iconic indie corner fans and critics had made for him. Some of it won’t be too foreign a territory for old Pavement devotees and the opening Pencil Rot roils along with spazz rock credentials aloft but there’s also a mid section splurge of electronica to catch you offguard. He’s also singing better, doing away with those old screaming into storms of guitar cop outs in favour of vocals that at times (It Kills, Freeze The Saints, Post-Pain Baby) almost border on the mellow. On the delightful crooning pop of Loud Cloud Crowds there’s even moments when he sounds like the Incredible String Band Not that he doesn’t still like to throw difficult, unstructured and unexpected loose limbed shapes; listen to the psychedelic groove of Baby C’mon, the quasi Egyptian snakecharming rhythms of I’ve Hardly Been, or the muscular eight minute alt blues rock n rumble work out No More Shoes with its spacey lyrics. Psychedelia rears its head too on the wah wah funk of Kindling For The Master where he hits a jazzy soul groove that wouldn’t have been out of place on some 60s West Coast jam session. And there had to have been a big grin on his face when he sang Mama, whimsical country tinged summery lo fi pop that gets nostalgic about domestic joys with mama in the kitchen with onions, daddy in the back with old Hank and young Steve on his hobby horse! In an alternate universe it would have knocked James Blunt from the charts without effort. There will, no doubt, be the unreconstructed down the front calling out for old Pavement favourites, but Malkmus is on a whole different street of his own now and you really should cross the road and join him. 7.30pm. £13.50. Carling Academy 2. Saturday September 17 The Revivals
Two Scots, an Aussie and an Englishman who share a common love for Southern rock embodied by the likes of Skynyrd, the Black Crowes and Creedence, and traded in by the Stones and Free, the Perthshire based boys don’t have time for frills. Their self-titled own label debut album is solid cut 70s blues rock, eleven tracks of whisky swigging, riff rolling raspy rock n roll designed to be played loud in sweaty barrooms. There’s nothing new here but nor is it slavish imitation of their heroes, just four guys playing their version of the music that inspires them. Rockers come swaggering fast in the shape of the swampy thundering Real Love, rebel rousing Shut Up, It’s Over and up around the bend twin guitar strutters like Chooglin’ and Absent Alibi, deftly balanced by such dust in the throat southern fried country ballads as the Skynyrd styled Comin’ Round, Golden Highway and the anthemic Holdin’ On. And it’s not too hard to guess who’s getting the nod on the blues rock burner Jimi Biscuits. There’s not been too much word spread on them yet, but the arrival of the album and a continued slog around any stage big enough to stack the amps should ensure that next time you see the name on a poster they’ll be in bigger venues that the upstairs room of your local pub. 9pm. £3. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath Sunday September 18 Motion City Soundtrack Charging out of Minneapolis, MCS fit comfortably into the sort of mould produced the likes of Green Day, Blink 182 (whose bassist produces) and a whole plethora of adenoidal high voiced pop punk outfits with slashing guitars, bouncing melodies and big crowd rousing choruses. They’re over here to promote Commit This To Memory (Epitaph), a sophomore album that positively tumbles over itself to deliver short, sharp and lyrically biting nuggets of guitar pop laced with a dash of emo. And keyboards. A liberal helping of expletives rather restricts its radio friendly ambitions (one rather fine track’s called Let’s Get F***ed Up and Die), but launching into the likes of clattering summery anthem chug Everything Is All Right or the fierce hard pop assaults Make Out Kids and Time Turned Fragile should safely see them riding the teenage misfits wave. They do ballad too, and while the acoustic strummed Together We’ll Ring In The New Year may be a little forced in its poor poor pitiful me sort of way, Resolution and Hold Me Down are solid clenched stadium power fists. 7.30pm. £7. Carling Academy 2. Monday September 19 David Gray
It’s been three years since A New Day At Midnight, since which time any number of new David Grays have come along. But now the original’s back with his seventh album to clear the board of the pretenders with a full sound production not heard on previous outings. This is big music, the opening Alibi setting the musical mood with soaring orchestrations before launching into the irresistible tumbling melodies and tremulous vocals of the heart surging The One I Love ( a song about dying as it happens) with its strong musical echoes of Springsteen’s Brilliant Disguise Two tracks in and already stunning, it follows on with Lately which sounds like Van Morrison might where he 40 years younger and smiled, continuing to take your breath away with memorable song after memorable song while undercutting the upbeat musical tone with lyrics that treat on the often messy compromises of juggling relationships and career and finding scant satisfaction in either (Nos Da Cariad’s line about ‘a bucketful of Babylon’ resonates) with the slow Northern soul beat of Hospital Food addressing stagnation while the narrator of the awesome Ain’t No Love is "eating up the boredom on an island of cement". There’s glimmers of hope among the darkness of Now and Always (another Springsteen-like track that also bears the influence of Sigur Ros) and the Imagine referencing Disappearing World (where gathering night and snow summons a chill serene beauty), but generally despair looms larger than you might expect from a man who finally made it after struggling for some ten years. Still, if his unquiet soul produces songs of such cinematic majesty as this, then long may he be gnawed with misery. This is the only new David Gray you need. 7.30pm. £25. Carling Academy. Tuesday September 20 Super Furry Animals
The idiosyncratic mob have always steered their own course, indeed their last studio album was an own label release in Welsh. However with Love Kraft (Sony) they have obviously decided it’s time to put together some essential summer listening and have raided their Brian Wilson inspiration bank for a collection of lazy, dreamy pop soul psychedelia that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in Haight-Ashbury in the summer of love. With swoonsome strings and a 100 strong choir in the repertoire, it ripples gorgeously through songs of melancholic reverie like the opening stream of consciousness that is Zoom, the lollopping Horse With No Name like Ohio Heat and its 19th century Mid-West tale of a Welsh émigré with a "bun in the oven" or Atomik Lust’s meditation on loss with its eruption into guitar pyrotechnics. The Horn sways like a California sea-shanty, Frequency is pure Polyphonic Spree territory, Walk You Home is cinematic and languid as the tide washes on the shore while Oi Frango, Psyclone and the delightfully titled Cloudberries all glow with Latin influences. Throw in the countryish (and maybe McCartneyish too) Back On A Roll and the closing Pet Sounds moods of Cabin Fever and it’s clear this is their best work yet. Go and say thank you. 7.30pm. £16. Carling Academy. Tuesday September 20 Vanlustbäder
Arriving from Brisbane, the four piece seem set to follow in the footsteps of fellow Aussies Jet with their old school rock and its shades of Stones swagger, Cars pop and garage attitude. They kick off their assault on UK ears with debut single Here We Go Again (Nomadic),a catchy slice of late 70s/early 80s rock pop with a nagging melody line and a flavour that suggests both White Stripes and Sparks. Live Fast switches tactics to more 60s guitar rock chiming with its louche Jagger sway while Come Alive cranks up the Primal Scream funky strut noise. They’ll be showcasing tracks from next year’s The People Vs Vanlustbäder album, with the hammering Communique and a 60s psychedelic VLB Disco. Catch them early, they’ll be commanding bigger venues next year. 10pm. £4. Club NME, Custard Factory Tuesday September 20 Million Dead
If you'd been meaning to catch this Welsh-Australian outfit live at some point, then you'd best do it now. After four years and two albums, irreconcilable differences mean they’ve decided to call it a day and pursue separate directions. By way of a farewell wave, they’re releasing To Whom It May Concern from the current and now final album, Harmony No Harmony, which with its with its emo poppy melody and gospel choir may ironically prove their biggest hit. No doubt they’ll be providing devoted followers with a hefty supply of fan favourites and, whatever personal reasons have driven them apart, going out with the passion that’s always been at the core of their churning heart. 7.30pm. £6.50. Bar Academy. Tuesday September 20 Stephen Fretwell
Since the Scunthorpe born, Manchester based, corkscrew haired singer-songwriter released Magpie last year, people have been falling over themselves to throw Dylan, Drake and Damien Rice comparisons at him. They're all apt enough but Fretwell's dustily melancholic vocals are firmly his own. Largely just him and an acoustic guitar, sensitively fleshed out with spare backing arrangements, this is quality singer-songwriter stuff. Listen to the late night jazzy moods of Play, the fractured Randy Newman romance of New York, the ruminative folk of Do You Want To Come With or the dreamy, water lapping pop that is Rose and you'll hear just what a craftsman he is. There's not a weak track here, but perhaps the real stand outs are the timeless beauty of Bad Bad Me Bad Bad You and Run, a classic uplifting folk soul ballad that suggests that in years to come Fretwell may well be looked back on as Salford's very own Van Morrison. With the recent singles chart success of Emily, a rave response at Glastonbury and having penned songs from Cameron Crowe’s upcoming Elizabethtown, the buzz is growing fast so I’d make the most of catching him in this intimate setting while you can. Support comes from Danish duo Michael Hartmann and Dorthe Gerlach better known as Hush, purveyors of gentle country-tinged soft rock liberally decorated with jangling acoustic guitars, mandolins, banjos and strings. It’s certainly a long way from Hartmann’s speed rock past, but hardcore’s loss is pop’s gain, especially given (as with That Don’t Make It Right and Drown) the young Stevie Nicks flavours to Gerlach’s voice.
With lyrics that talk of incest (If I Was) and murder (the Appalachian bluesy lullaby Sometimes), they’re not all the sunniest of ditties but they’re couched in such radio friendly tunes that tapping feet tend to ignore the downcast emotions in If You Go Breaking My Heart and How Long while, just to show they can look on the bright side too, To A Better Place heads down the mandolin highway to freedom and away from broken hopes and both the, er, hushed, piano ballad title track and the gently skipping swayalong Lovestruck bask in the warm glow of romance dreams. 8pm. £7. Glee Club. Wednesday September 21 Oceansize
Following on from Effloresce, the Manchester based three guitar five piece continue to explore the space rock, prog rock and post rock possibilities of combining Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Muse and Soundgarden with Everyone Into Position (Beggars Banquet). Heavy without being slablike but also capable of fragility, they conjure a vast sound that is as adept at screaming, bloodied guitars (A Homage to a Shame) as it is ethereal brooding expanses of sound (Music For A Nurse, Mine Host) while the band lament the sickness of the nation and the world around it on the likes of The Charm Offensive. Rarely clocking in at under five minutes and likely to stretch out considerably in the live context, this is crushingly beautiful noise from beyond the edges of the firmament, reaching an apogee in the last three tracks, what the band term a ‘church suite’, Mine Host, the very Floyd like You Can’t Keep A Bad Man Down and the conjoined whammy of the tumultuous Ornamental and the choral climactic The Last Wrongs. Be prepared to be swept away. 7.30pm. £7. Carling Academy 2. Saturday September 24 Decameron Formed in Cheltenham in 1968 and finally settling into their five piece line up in 1973 with Dik Cadbury joining Johnny Coppin, Al Fenn, Geoff March, and Dave Bell following the recording of their Say Hello To The Band debut, Decameron were essentially Gloucestershire's folk rock answer to Lindisfarne and The Strawbs. However, despite a sizeable following and being well respected in critical circles, they never translated their popularity into chart bothering sales. However, they’ve sustained a loyal following over the years, even after going their separate ways, and since getting back together for a one-off reunion some years ago have, though with March now having dropped out, continued to gather for the occasional concert and tour. They’ll be dipping into the repertoire tonight, demonstrating that commercial neglect was decidedly unjustified given the strengths of such material as Rock and Roll Away, and the tremulously emotive ballads Just Enough Like Home, Glimpse of Me, and The Strawbs-like The Strawman. While unlikely to find its way into the band set, it’s worth pointing out that Johnny Coppin has his own new solo album out, The Winding Stair (Red Sky) a perfect example of his high quivering choirboy vocals, rustic folk-rock and sense of song dramatics. A mix of traditional numbers, covers and self-penned material, it opens with Richard Shindell’s wonderful Reunion Hill, its evocation of the American Civil War finding WWI counterparts in a setting of Ivor Gurney’s poem The Fire Kindled and Gloucestershire based songwriter Martin Graebe’s haunting From Severn By The Somme. Leafing through the trad songbooks, there’s gorgeous tranquil readings of Lakes of Coolfin and the parting lovers ballad Donegal Rain while Coppin’s good taste for contemporary tunesmiths is also well represented by Karin Polwart’s The Sun’s Coming Over The Hill, Paul Metser’s hymnal Peace Descends, and, from Mike Silver, Survival’s tale of a Holocaust survivor trying to come to terms with his daughter marring a non Jew and the ecologically themed We Had It All. Elsewhere the Salem Witch trials provide the foundation for the trad-sounding folk of Susanna Martin while Coppin’s own title track is a love song to a Dublin bookshop and The Lost Orchard (a setting of Mary Webb’s poem) a wistful lament for all of England’s vanished orchards and, by extension, a poignant observation on the loss of the more innocent times Coppin’s music so richly evokes. 8pm. £10. Red Lion, Kings Heath. Saturday September 24 InMe
Having broken big time with debut album Overgrown Eden, the Essex emo trio run into a brick wall with follow-up White Butterfly (V2), a riff heavy, often overblown collection of self-pitying/accusatory break-up songs that’s more intense and darker than its predecessor but lacking the song muscle to go with the noise. It’s unfortunate really because the band have been exploring different musical territories, finding pop sensibilities with Faster the Chase, sounding a bit Genesis proggy with Almost Lost, popping in the big stadium ballad with This Town and going out on an acoustic note with the cello flavoured Parting Gift. In the end though there’s just not quite enough among the 13 tracks to suggest they’ll be making up for long time in a hurry. 7.30pm. £9. Carling Saturday September 24/Sunday September 25 Misty’s Big Adventure
Fronted by Grandmaster Gareth and featuring dancing loon Erotic Volvo in his red and blue outfit, the eight piece Birmingham based eclectic eccentrics (the name comes from a 1968 Magic Roundabout annual) have spent the past few years gathering a fanatical following around the fringes and look set to take a major step towards wider consciousness raising with new album Black Hole. Having supported the Zutons last year following the release of Misty’s Big Adventure and their Place in the Solar Hi-Fi System, they’re back with their trademark mix of jazz, psychedelia, punk, pop electronica and wackiness (imagine The Fall crossed with the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band and Pet Shop Boys down the 20s Berlin cabaret) and proud recipients of a BBC ban for the mazurka rhythmed Evil which was deemed to be too political to be heard before the nation went to the polls. It’s a wonderful, silly yet serious, fun feast that runs the gamut from the opening title track’s moody cabaret torch song cum fairground wirlygig through the burlesque Never Stops Never Rests Never Sleeps where Dresden Dolls, The Real Tueday Weld and The Cardiacs all collide and chirpy single The Story of Love (which oddly recalls Creedence’s Who’ll Stop The Rain) to the driving beat of politician rant Smart Guys Wear Ties and , tinkly love song She Fills The Spaces and the brass bouncing 60s Carnaby Street soul pop of Elevator Escalator Stairs and There’s A Lot Going On In My Mind. It would be easy to dismiss them as a novelty (didn’t they do initially that with the Super Furrys), but mark my words behind the frivolity there lurks a damn fine pop band with a killer ear for naggingy catchy tunes. 8.30pm. £6. Jug of Ale, Moseley. Sunday September 25 Joan Armatrading
Taking time out from her consciousness raising and charity work, Joan MBE returns home for her first concert in two years. With a recent preview show reportedly finding her in good chatty form, the tour coincides with the UK release of her All The Way From America live album and DVD, recorded, as you might surmise, during her tour of the States. It’s pretty much a best of collection that runs through such essential past classics as Down To Zero, Me Myself I, Drop The Pilot, Willow, Love and Affection and, of course, All The Way From America while also finding room for material from 2003’s ‘comeback’ album Lovers Speak, among them the stomping Physical Pain, a passionate version of the jazzy Let's Talk About Us and the smooth soul Tender Trap. As a bit of a treat she also revisits rather less well known nuggets like Kissin' And A Huggin' from Love and Affection. The DVD bumps the set list up with the addition of six more live numbers, including Love Bug, You Made Your Bed, Crazy For You and Blessed from the last album and Show Some Emotion’s Mama Mercy along with a studio recording of In These Times. Assuming she’s not tweaked the show too much, this should be pretty much what’s served up tonight and while fans might lament the absence of I Love It When You Call Me Names, no one’s going to go home disappointed. 7.30pm. £22.50. Symphony Hall. Sunday September 25 Glitterati
The Leeds outfit give their self-titled debut album another push on the offchance they may yet persuade punters they’re not just a routine barroom rock n roll mix of Stooges, Guns n Roses and New York Dolls. It doesn’t and they aren’t. But both do the job they’re charged with well enough. 7pm. £7. Bar Academy. Monday September 26 Mew
Four albums in and the Danish outfit are getting more muscular, beefing up their already dense guitars and glacial My Bloody Valentine-like soundscapes with And The Glass Handed Kites (Sony) which opens with throbbing industrial piano instrumental The Circuitry of the Wolf and proceeds through an hour’s worth of sonic experimentation and mood hopping. With singer Jonas Bjerre still sounding like a strung out choirboy, they manage to indulge Rush-style prog one minute with Apocalypso and Saviours of Jazz Ballet then turn the world upside down for the ethereal passions of White Lips Kissed and a symphonic torrent of blissed out guitars on Louise Louisa the next. Noisy and spaced out within the context of the same track, they weave a similar sort of massive cosmic psychedelia to the Flaming Lips but always seem on the edge of something more fragile, the likes of An Envoy To The Open Fields and the mutant Wilsonisms of The Zookeeper’s Son feeling as if they could splinter into shards at any time. The magic touch that would provide the radio friendly pathway to a Lips-like breakout probably isn’t here, but both album and their impressive live sets can only but serve to further bolster the swelling reputation. 7.30pm. £8. Carling Academy 2. Monday September 26 The Infadels
Out of Hackney with what’s been described as the sound of Mick Jagger having a punch up with Primal Scream in a dingy electro corridor, they wowed Glastonbury and now hit the road on the back of debut single Jagger 67 (Wall of Sound), a clanging cocktail of swaggering rock n roll and club electronica pinned around a sneering vocal and pulsing swirl of a chorus. With Propellerheads and Eraserhead providing remixes you can see where they’re coming from, more to the point you can also see where they’re heading. A debut album is in the works and up for showcasing in a live set which, in another launch into comparison hyperbole, is apparently like Nile Rodgers jamming with The Clash. 7.30pm. £6. Bar Academy. Monday September 26 David Ford
Formerly lead singer with the late lamented and underrated Easyworld, Ford’s now taking the solo route, the gig serving as a launch preview for forthcoming album I Sincerely Apologise For All The Troubles I’ve Caused (Independiente). No advance copies were available of the album (which features I Don’t Care What You Call Me and Cheer Up You Miserable F***, a song that features his local football team on backing vocals) but debut single State of The Union seems likely to set the tone with its mix of acoustic and gathering electric scuff and a vitriolic protest at being screwed over by record labels, the media, government and big business. It’s fair to say Ford has a few chips on his shoulder, and he’ll be throwing the salt into the wounds tonight. 8pm. £6. Glee Club. Tuesday September 27 Gretchen Peters
You might not know the name, but, covered as they have been by such names as Bryan Adams (loads) Martina McBride (the award winning Independence Day) and Shania Twain (Dance With The One That Brought You), you've probably heard her songs. She also collaborated with Adams for the soundtrack of the animated film Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmarron, earning a Golden Globe nomination for Here I Am. But nobody sings her songs like she does, so it's a pity that, thanks to record label disasters, she's not been as prolific as she might on the album front. However, she’s over here now to promote Trio (Curb), a stunning live set that sees her joined by pianist Barry Walsh and bassist Dave Francis for an uncluttered, pure and achingly lovely stripped down collection of 13 songs about love, loss and leaving, the melancholy veined with a spiritual conviction that inner strength will prevail. All of her three albums are represented here. Her overlooked Secret Of Life debut leads the count with four songs, the affirmations of constancy that are Over Africa and When You Are Old, the heartbreaking Circus Girl with its lonely narrator, and On A Bus To St. Cloud, the classic lament for lost love that provided a hit for Trisha Yearwood but which has never sounded as exquisite as it does here. From the self-titled album comes Souvenirs, her ‘little travelogue across America’ where she finds the promised land littered with "little tin toys that fall apart", gospel hued forgiveness plea Revival, and Patty Loveless hit the female coming of age Like Water Into Wine. And from Halcyon, arguably her best studio album and most potent collection of songs to date, comes the set opening Museum’s wistful tale of turning a broken heart into a work of art and, perhaps her finest, most emotionally affecting work, the devastating This Used To Be My Town narrative about a murdered girl’s ghost returning to where she once lived. For fans who’ve longed to have Peters’ own versions of songs she’s written for others but never released herself, the show also features her own previously unrecorded versions of You Don't Even Know Who I Am, the tale of a broken marriage seen from both perspectives and covered by Patty Loveless, and, a 1998 Top 5 hit for Faith Hill, a playful The Secret Of Life where a couple of guys in a bar agree that a decent cup of coffee and Rolling Stones records make life worth living. Which leaves Main Street, a resonant and reflective account of a town dying since the advent of an out of town shopping mall and freeway, has only previously appeared on the bootleg Buried Treasures, and the only cover in the set, her superb interpretation of Paul Simon’s American Tune, a song she says she rediscovered in the aftershock emptiness and search for comfort of 9/11. As an artist in her own right, her name may not be as widely known as those who have benefited from her songs, but if proof were ever needed that this other GP is one of the most gifted songwriters and performers in America and Americana then this has it in spades. Well worth travelling to discover. 8pm. £13. Robin 2, Bilston. Tuesday September 27 Dan Sartain
Drawing on such disparate formative influences as Sonic Youth and Johnny Cash (and one suspects Jonathan Richman and Link Wray too), scrawny figured Sartain hails from Birmingham, Alabama and trades in a brand of Americana that melds together the like of garage, surf rock, rockabilly, country and 50s r&b. It’s a package that got him signed to Swami, the label run by Rocket to the Crypt’s John Reis and which, a year later, finally surfaces over here backed by a NME sponsored set of dates. Recorded rough and ramshackle it does the border rock n roll of I Could Have Had You on one hand and the back porch strums of Place To Call My Home (one of the most obviously Cash inclined numbers) while rocking up the graveyard bones with Tryin To Say and rolling the surf rumble with hair slicked back and Wray-like guitars low slung on Walk Among The Cobras Pt I (parts II and III snake their way through different musical swamps). Hopefully a little more than a new Robert Gordon, Sartain has the whiff of authenticity to what he does and word is that he’s pretty electrifying live. 10pm. £4. Club NME, Custard Factory Wednesday September 28 The Suffrajets
Formed by drummer Gemma Clarke, things seemed to be shaping up nicely for the girl quartet with a major label deal and a gathering fanbase before a tour bus crash knocked them for six and Clarke’s departure to join Babyshambles put the boot in while they were down. The remnants of the band soldiered on, Clarke returned to the fold and now they’re looking to regain the impetus. Following Sold earlier this year, the assault continues with new single Everything You Do (Tough Cookie), its sassy swaggering riff as feisty as the femmes themselves and pretty much summing up a way with scuzzy rock n roll that’s earned fans like Lemmy and Bruce Dickinson. Just don’t offer to buy them a round. 8pm. £3. Actress & Bishop, St Paul’s Sq, B’ham. Wednesday September 28 Babyshambles
And as coincidence would have it, Pete Doherty’s outfit is playing across
town the same night. Or they will be if he doesn’t have another of his no show
relapses or turns up oblivious to the country he’s in let alone the town. This
is, after all, a gig rescheduled from its original date at the Irish Club.
Former Libertine and presently rock’s best known junkie, Doherty’s rock n roll
brilliance and capacity for self-destruction seem to exist in equal measure,
while his attitude to the whole circus was recently summed up in dirge riffing,
sludge rhythmed vitriol spewing and decidedly non radio friendly single F***
Forever. 8pm. £17.50, Carling Academy. Thursday September 29 The Stands
Having made their debut last year’s All Years Leaving sounding like The La’s singing Bob Dylan, the Scouse four piece return with a new drummer and a new album in the shape of Horse Fabulous (Echo). While a far musher, fuller sound, the classic 60s reference points remain pretty much constant with The Beatles, Byrds and Neil Young providing frontman Howie Payne’s main influences, fleshed out here and there with touches of Staxy brass, Al Green warmth and Yardbirds soul. However, the salient point isn’t the album’s retro clothing but the fact that Payne writes some pretty good, toe-tapping, hook laden songs. The evidence is out in force here with the rollicking boogie chug Soon Come, a sunny swayalong Just Enough Love, the crooning CS&N harmonies of I Will Journey Home and the early Fab Four meet 60s soul pop of the lovelorn When The Night Falls In and a Lovin’ Spoonful of Bluer Than Blue. The revivalist wave may have receded, fashions may have passed them by and they may have even been dumped by their record label, but the music remains as timelessly relevant and infectious as ever. 7.30pm. £8. Carling Academy 2. Thursday September 29 Kate Rusby
Maybe it’s the way she sings with an undisguised Yorkshire accent with its distinctive vowels, maybe it’s her sparkling sense of humour and down to earth nature, but whatever the reason Rusby’s easily the most engaging, everyday figure in the current folk revival crop of young performers. She’s also by far the best of the bunch with an earthy pure voice, heartfelt delivery and a faultless choice of material that spins the traditional with a modern sensibility without overbalancing either. Two years on from the disarmingly wonderful Underneath The Stars (with the interim taking in her Live From Leeds DVD), she’s back with a long awaited new studio album, The Girl Who Couldn’t Fly (Pure), another marvellous collection of self-penned and traditional numbers. Aided and abetted as always by hubbie and musical partner John McCusker, as with the appearance of Simon Fowler on the last album it offers further evidence that Rusby also moves in non folk circles with a cover drawn by Graham Coxon and Idlewild’s Roddy Woomble providing harmony vocals on three numbers. The album itself is, of course, uncut English folk music, spinning from her own break up waltzing lullaby No Names and the heart yearning The Lark through confident arrangements of such trad tunes as the gambling as metaphor for sex The Game of All Four,a rousing Mary Blaize and the gently beguiling Bonnie House of Airlie. Where there ever any doubt in regard to how well tuned she is into the folk tradition, then her own faux epic Elfin Knight should settle matters, sounding as it does as if plucked from some ancient rustic songbook and delivered in clatteringly joyful fine fettle. Disappointingly Moon Shadow isn’t a version of the Cat Stevens gem (though no let down in its own right), but the album does come with a cover, a wistful interpretation of Pee Wee King’s 1952 love song You Belong To Me (itself previously revived by Bob Dylan) that cuts into the heart as effectively as Rusby’s own Wandering Soul, a number surely hewn from a Baptist hymnal tradition. Though it may still be a bit early to include Little Jack Frost in the set, the night should afford a goodly representation of the album alongside past material on the lines of Cruel, Who Will Sing Me Lullabies? and the superbly buttered Underneath The Stars itself. If you’re lucky she may even throw in her fine version of Richard Thompson’s Withered and Died. Close your eyes and whatever the weather’s been, you’ll be swept away to a sepia postcard landscape of village chapels and sunsets on the green on the wings of music as simple and as lovely as an English country summer's day. 8pm. £15.50. Warwick Arts Centre. Friday September 30 Tom McRae
Having supported Tori Amos, he’s now doing the headline route to further promote new album All Maps Welcome (Bubblegun). Once again surrounding his moody guitar and softly feathered voice with strings, piano, organ, brass and pedal steel, it opens with the narcoleptic strung out late night desert moods of For The Restless unfurling into a bluesier setting for his songs of loss and loneliness that distil melancholy and hurt into slow burning melodies cracked along the fault lines of emotion. It’s not immediate but the longer you allow it to soak inside the skin, the more it reveals itself as his best yet. Try the wistful fragile woozy Humming Bird Song or the resigned despair of Packing For The Crash, pay attention to the imagery and darkness that slips along the pathways of the atmospheric Strangest Land and surrender to the plaintive wounds of Silent Boulevard, the self-admonishing cello waltzing My Vampire Heart, the tumbling Celtic folk beauty of The Girl Who Falls Downstairs and the dying fall of the soaring closing track, 9, and you’ll find yourself wanting to stop strangers on the street and share the epiphanies within. Support comes from Sarah Blasko, an erstwhile young missionary in the French speaking Reunion Island whose early encounters with music occurred in church pews before boys, jazz and blues started exercising their influences. That’s a while back now and today’s incarnation arrives on the back of her debut album The Overture & The Underscore, recorded in America with Wally Gagel of Folk Implosion fame behind the knobs and drumming legend Joey Waronker providing percussion.
6pm. £12.50. Carling Academy 2. Friday September 30 Dogs
Flailing guitars and chugging punkpop riffs are the order of the day on Turn Against This Land (Island), the debut album from these London canines. It has to be said though that, when he’s not doing Phil Daniels impersonations on the spoken verses of She’s Got A Reason (which bizarrely quotes a line from Love), mouthy frontman Johnny Cooke seems to be working too hard to sound like a shouty Johnny Rotten, notably so on things like End of An Era and Heading For An Early Grave. They do though, as London Bridge, Selfish Ways and Tuned To A Different Station testify, have a fistful of strong loud, noisy and frenetic rock n roll bombs ready to detonate on stage with the broody walking basslined Tarred And Feathered on hand in case they and the crowd need to catch their breath. Mongrels rather than pedigrees perhaps, but they have both the bark and the bite. 7.30pm. £6. Barfly Club,Sanctuary. Digbeth.
DO YOU HAVE NEWS ??? IF SO PLEASE CLICK HERE TO LET US KNOW BACK TO BIRMINGHAM101 HOME PAGE - BACK TO GIG GUIDE HOME
If you wish to contact us either : PHONE
Do you want to link to our site ? Feel free to use the Image below , let us know and we'll give a return link.
BACK TO BIRMINGHAM101 HOME PAGE © Copyright Birmingham101.com 2000, 2001 |
