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VenuesReviews Archives - Birmingham101 Home


Jack Johnson
NIA, Birmingham
July 3 2008
CLICK  FOR MORE PLUS COMPETITION FOR FREE TICKETS


Previews by Mike Davies

Wednesday May 7

Colin MacIntyre

Formerly operating as The Mull Historical Society, the Tobermoray songster’s ditched the pseudonym along with the optimism of past albums. But he’s stuck with those Beach Boys,  Mercury Rev, Todd Rundgren, and XTC influences for his first solo album The Water (Pebble Beach), an album that turns its attention to celebrity culture (You’re A Star, Famous For Being Famous), politics/religion ((Future Gods And Past Kings, Faith No 2), self-examination (Stalker) and, of course relationships.

Unfortunately, he seems to have lost the knack for a memorable melody somewhere along the way, without which his reedy voice becomes somewhat lost amid the rockier tracks or exposed as thin on the quieter tracks. There’s some pleasant touches as tuba, harmonium and cello weave around the mix, while the lengthy Pay Attention To The Human brings together his hometown high school girl’s choir and Tony Benn, who recites his humanist poem over the closing notes, but ultimately the charm’s no longer there. 7.30pm. £10. Barfly


Thursday May 8

Johnny Flynn & The Sussex Wit

The first UK artist to land a US deal with  American label, Lost Highway, home to Ryan Adams, Lucinda Williams, Shelby Lynn and the late Johnny Cash, things are clearly going well for the  Johannesburg-born, Wales-raised new nu-folk contender and occasional Shakespearean actor. Following on from catchy strummed single  The Box, they head out on a headline tour to plug debut Vertigo album Alarum. No promo copies were made available, but from the brief clips of Tickle Me Pink, Cold Bread and Brown Trout Blues on his MySpace page you can expect more of the cider swigging English folk and backporch southern American roots blues. He’s been likened to Nick Drake fronting the Pogues, which, while not entirely accurate, should be reasonable incentive to discover further. 7.30pm. £7. Glee Club


Thursday May 8

Backstreet Boys

Down to a quartet after Kevin Anderson’s departure and hardly boys now two of them have turned 30, but otherwise things remain much the same for America’s stadium rock version of Take That. Re-emerging in 2005 after a three year absence, comeback album Never Gone saw them reaching out to a more FM rock audience and now follow up Unbreakable (Jive) travels further down the road with a relentless onslaught of piano driven lovelorn power ballads clearly aimed at the Bon Jovi/Eagles market.

As such, the likes of Something That I Already Know, Helpless When She Smiles,, You Can Let Go and the soaring Inconsolable do the job with unbridled efficiency with Love Will Keep You Up All Night surely a close relative of Aerosmith’s Don’t Want To Miss A Thing.

And, by way of relief from the heart-wringing anthemics, Any Other Way, One In A Million, Panic, the electro grooved Everything But Mine and Treat Me Right offer some light uptempo funky rock and beats.

Ultimately, it’s going to be  but like sitting through an hour or so of Back For Good on repeat play, but there’s plenty of folk out there willing to pay good money for that. 7.30pm. £30/£25. NIA


Thursday May 8

Black Lips

A lo-fi retro-blues outfit from Atlanta whose live antics (vomiting, urinating, nudity, inter-band snogs, and a chicken) have seen them banned from numerous venues, they’re mates of Jack White and take influences from the garage rock of the Stooges, Troggs and early Stones.

They’re in town plugging new countrified power pop single Bad Kids (Vice), lifted from the Good Bad, Not Evil album from which they’ll also likely to chucking in Jaggerish slow lurch, low slung blues Veni Vidi Vici (Vice), hurricane song Oh Katrina where Iggy meets Sam the Sham, the rockabilly twanged Cold Hands and How Do You Tell A Child That Someone Has Died, the song inspired by the death of original founder member Ben Eberbaugh. 7.30pm. £3. Club NME, Custard Factory


Thursday May 8

Eastern Champions Conference

From Philadelphia with occasional Radiohead inclinations shadowing its garage rock and avant folk, the keyboard driven trio are busy establishing a foothold over here with current album Ameritown (Island). Single Sedative offers juddery garage swagger with hints of early Free, Noah hints at Thom Yorke fronting Smashing Pumpkins while To The Wind tosses in some gypsy folk punk, Some Sorta Light adopts a wasted country sway and Rabbit Hole feels oddly like the Hey Jude playout. On this showing, they’ll be staying here a while longer to cater to bigger venue demands. 7.30pm. £5. Little Civic (+ Sat 10 8pm. £5. Jug of Ale)


Friday May 9

Jesse Malin

After his excellent if overlooked The Fine Art of Self-Destruction and Glitter In The Gutter, the nasally voiced punk frontman turned singer-songwriter takes a swerve from his self-penned Springsteen cum Young material for an album of covers. On Your Sleeve (One Little Indian). Alarm bells often go off in such circumstances, especially when the result’s something like Patti Smith’s recent embarrassment, but for the most Malin succeeds in coming up with one of those rare diamonds among the usual pile of nutty slack. 

It’s an interesting mix of the familiar and unknown, reinterpreted rather than regurgitated, he gives a bouncy Americana reading to Neil Young’s Looking For Love, gives Sam Cooke’s Wonderful World a soft acoustic reading, offers a weary laid back treatment to Everybody’s Talkin’, turns Jim Croce’s Operator into a more uptempo guitar tune and puts the Stones’ Sway through the electro mixer.

Eleswhere he does Ramones (Rock n Roll Radio), Clash (Gates of the West), Elton (Harmony), Lou (Walk On The Wild Side), Simon (Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard), Tom Waits (a fine I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love with You) and, on a more contemporary note The Kills (Rodeo Town) and The Hold Steady (You Can Make Them Like You).

Not everything works, not everything suits Malin’s high pitched voice, but generally speaking you’ll not get in a huff when he slips this in the set list between  nuggets of his own like  Black Haired Girl, Queen of the Underworld, Almost Grown and Downliner. 7pm. £10. Carling Academy 2


Friday May 9

Eliza Carthy Band

The launch tour for her new album, Dreams of Breathing Underwater finds Carthy working from trad forms but twisting them around, mingling English and American traditions as, for example, on Follow The Dollar which marries English folk singing with gutbucket blues riffing. Then there’s Two Tears with its West Country sounding wheezing squeeze box and scraping fiddle lurch and a melody that borrows from the traditional romantic love song,  but has a lyric that namechecks Marianne Faithful.

Elsewhere Rows of Angels has percussive beats and touches of dub,  Mr Magnifico is a mariachi flavoured number with brass and spoken poetry between Carthy’s Deitrich styled cabaret chorus surges, Like I Care has zydeco feel squeeze box, Lavenders is all Spanish baroque, Little Bigman a cider swigger morris dance tune, Hug You Like A Mountain visits Eastern European wedding/funeral folk music and Oranges And Seasalt is a great vaudeville singalong with some shanty shaken over it. In short, quite possible the most adventurous and best album she’s yet made. The gig should be revelatory. 7.30pm. £14. W’hampton Civic Hall Bar.


Saturday May 10

The Wombats

Following last year’s  rowdy bounce pop Kill The Director and Let’s Dance To Joy Division and debut album A Guide To Love, Loss & Desperation (14th Floor), the Scousers continue their momentum with current single Backfire At The Disco.

With their flurried guitars, snotty nasal vocals, indie pop carousel waltzers and witty teenage tales of  love and sex, the likes of Little Miss Pipedream. Moving To New York, the stomping Help Me Rhonda meets Kaiser Chiefs  Dr Suzanne Mattox PhD and Party In A Forest, are all proven live flor-fillers while their silly short doo wop handclapping Tales Of Girls, Boys And Marsupials has become something of a pub chant. 6pm. £13. Carling Academy


Saturday May 10

The Castanets

Sounding like Neil young singing underwater, in an echo chamber, former surfer Raymond Raposa is the guiding light to this NewYork avant-folk outfit whose In The Vines (Asthmatic Kitty) album runs the gamut from icy electronic weird out (Rain Will Come) to keening backporch spiritual (This Is The Early Game) to strummed country (Westbound, Blue), from acoustic tribal rhythms (Strong Animal) to hymnal folk soulfulness (The Swimming).

White noise and electronica would, on the face of it, seem incompatible with stripped down dark Americana but listening to the six minutes of Three Months Paid the background electric hum and synthesised wind noise works with the flutters of chimes, tapped echoey percussion and Raposa’s cracked voice to create something quite hauntingly magical.

Devotees of Lamb Chop and Iron & Wine  alike should swoon over the timeless slow waltzing The Night Is When You Can Not See while Sounded Like a Train, Wasn't a Train is a simple two string metronome guitar figure that gradually gathers around it tremulous synth horns and a desert hum to produce striking spooked gothic country.

Sparse, fatalistic and melancholic (Raposa spend a year suffering depression after being mugged prior to recording the album) but tinged with redemption, it’s an unexpectedly beguiling work that suggests this is a gig well worth travelling to catch. 7.30pm. £8. Tin Angel, Taylor John's House, Canal Basin, Coventry


Sunday May 11

Captain Phoenix

Fronted by Ben Burrows, younger brother of  Razorlight drummer Andy, this lot make summery Southern tinted soul-pop mingled with British indie rock, driven by catchy infectious melodies with nagging chorus hooks. However, Life.Temper.Riot (Kind Canyon) rather undermines the chance of things like the sunshine jaunty Stand By and the jazzy heat haze pop of Same Old Story dominating the Radio 2 airwaves by including some unnecessary expletives.

Still, they can always make up for that with Didn’t Know Sam, suburban strummer Blackheath, the Squeezy Living On The Guestlist or  Where Did You Go providing the perfect soundtrack for some tanning on the beach while Baby’s Back takes on a Jean Genie glam stomp, Loneliness parades their Lennon influences, Find The Time dips its toes into lush ELO waters and Water/Sun takes a folksy shuffle through Andy’s contribution to the song set. If they realise swearing’s not only not big and not clever, but not a great career move when you have such commercial sensibilities, they could become a solid proposition for major success. 7pm. £5. Little Civic


Monday May 12

MGMT

The latest American  sun-kissed stoner college rock outfit to be invited into the next big thing paddock with their 70s filtered psychedelia squelchy synth-pop and its borrowings from Bowie, Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, Bolan and the brothers Mael.

The swirly pitched perfect Time To Pretend set the Brooklyn boys’ ball rolling with its fuzzily warm ode to hedonism, then the Oracular Spectacular (Columbia) album revved up the momentum with Weekend Wars conjuring memories of 60s Neil Young, Kids bouncing along on a belching synth line and a cocktail of glam and acid, Electric Feel coming over all Europhunk, 4th Dimensional Transition plunging headfirst into memories of Klaatu and Sparks with some added tribal drumming and tinkly carousel keyboards while Of Moons, Birds & Monsters, The Youth and The Handshake curl up under the blankets and snuggle close to the Lips and Lennon as  clouds of flowers and sweet smoke billow around them. Enjoy while the incense stick still burns in their favour. 7.30pm. £10. Carling Academy 2


Monday May 12

Jonah Matranga

Back in town for another helping of debut solo album And (Xtra Mile) with its summery sounding songs of love and loss,  dressed up with piano, strings and, on Not About A Girl Or A Place, jangling 12 string guitar. Aside from the power pop and folksy ballads mix supplied by the likes of I Want You To Be My Witness, Every Mistake and the fragile Fathers And Daughters, he’ll also be trawling his back catalogue for material from his more punk inclined days with such outfits as Gratitude, Far, and  New End Original. 7.30pm. £7.50. Barfly


Monday May 12

Willie Nelson

Providing the 75 year old country outlaw doesn’t get busted for cannabis possession again before he leaves or on arrival, this looks likely to be one of the remaining chances to catch the living legend before he decides he’s had enough of traipsing around the globe. Given he’s released dozens of albums, the set list could include pretty much anything from a recording career of over 50 years. However, it’s a reasonable bet that  he may include such classics as Always On My Mind, Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain, Crazy and Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys and Till I Gain Control Again along with a smattering of tracks from his latest collection, Moment Of Forever (Lost Highway).

Clearly demonstrating he’s still got an edge, it’s enveloped in a dark cloud of anger and protest with Nelson laid back but solidly felt interpretations of Dave Matthews' Gravedigger, Dylan’s Gotta Serve Somebody and Randy Newman's Louisiana balanced by the funky relationship themed Takin’ On Water and a world weary take on the evergreen Keep Me From Blowing Away. 7.30pm. £32.50/£30. W’hampton Civic Hall


Tuesday May 13

Cancer Bats

After demolishing heads last year with the Birthing The Giants album, the Canadian quartet are back to sonically stove in a few more skulls with their  latest gathering of high octane hardcore metal and piledriving Black Flag style punk on Hail Destroyer (Hassle).So more blistering bass and coruscating guitar riffs then as rage, disgust and defiance spill over in relentless mosh and metal assaults that are Harem of Scorpions, Deathsmarch, Sorceress, Let It Pour and Pray For Darkness. They do ease up on the party hammering for a moment, but given their idea of a ballad is a weltering blues swagger titled Lucifer’s Rocking Chair you shouldn’t expect to be slow dancing at anytime during the set. 7.30pm. £7. Barfly


Wednesday May 14

The Bluetones

It’s 12 years now since debut album Expecting To Fly entered the charts at No 1, since when they’ve amassed 11 top 40 singles (13 in total with those prior to the album) and two further Top 10 albums plus a singles collection and, while it’s fair to say their success and profile has waned (the last two studio albums failed to set the world alight), they’ve never thrown in the towel.

And they’re back again now with another compilation and tie-in tour. It’s the second retrospective in three years but The Bluetones Collection (Spectrum) is the first for which the band has selected the tracks and, other than  obligatory inclusions like Slight Return, they’ve  mostly avoided duplication, so you get things like The Last Of The Great Navigators, Tiger Lily, The Fountainhead and Sail On Sailor.  However, given these aren’t exactly the most glittering diamonds in the band’s mine, you have to hope they’ll be a little more audience friendly with the live set list. 7.30pm. £12.50. Carling Academy


Wednesday May 14

The Thirst

Featuring brothers Mensah and Kwame on vocals and bass with schoolmates Mark and Marcus on rhythm and drums, the Brixton boys blend old punk with Afro-Carribean flavours, hip hop and drum & bass influences to produce a sort of funky Arctic Monkeys filtered through inspirations taken from The Jam and Specials. Signed to Ronnie Wood’s label, current single Sail Away (Wooden) has an urgent hot summer jam vibe but upcoming debut album On The Brink needs to be more persuasive if they’re going to get quenched. 7.30pm. £5. Barfly


Wednesday May 14

Marissa Nadler

Raised in Massachusetts in an artistic family, Nadler studied illustration and painting at university before adding music to interests that included woodcarving and encaustic art. Making her recording bow in 2004, she’s very much of the American Gothic tradition, her dreamy melancholic songs rooted in folk but coloured with electronics. Rock n roll she isn’t, her latest release, Songs III: Bird On The Water (Peacefrog) a fresh, ethereal and gossamer light collection that, backed by mandolin, cello and harp and taken at an almost narcoleptic pace, prompts comparisons to Vashti Bunyan.

Nadler’s pure crystal mountain waters voice is a thing of beguiling wonder, drawing you into her leafy arbours and caverns as she weaves magic around Leonard Cohen’s Famous Blue Raincoat or mesmerises with self-penned tales of loss and love, life and death such as the haunted Diamond Heart, Dying Breed, the trad hued Thinking Of You, an almost hymnal Silvia and the sorrow slung story of Leather Made Shoes. Be prepared to be intoxicated. Especially if she does her cover of Neil Young’s Cortez The Killer.

Support comes from Jesse Sykes whose , the Seattle singer-songwriter androgynous whispery rasp of a voice jumbles shades of Melanie, Marianne Faithful, Grace Slick, and Janis Joplin into a melting pot of churning emotions.

She’ll be showcasing current album Like, Love, Lost & The Open Halls of the Soul (Fargo), a set of dark country soul songs of isolation, loss, regret, fraying nerves and fragile hopes of love and connection. And if there's few tunes you’ll find yourself humming on the way home (the Beatles echoes of You Might Walk Away the closest),  equally there’s few that don't seep inside you as you listen.   

Give an ear to the tremulous desperation of The Air Is Thin that suggests an alt-country Peter Gabriel, the ache of Eisenhower Moon with its Midnight Cowboy harmonica, or the emotional desolation of  Aftermath where she sounds like Janis Ian after three nervous breakdowns, and discover new subtleties with each curl of her voice.7.30pm. £7. Glee Club


Thursday May 15

Mystery Jets

Blaine Harrison’s dad may no longer be part of the touring line-up, but the lads don’t need any gimmicky angles to sell themselves or their music. Certainly not in the light of sophomore album Twenty One (Sixsevenine), a marvellously skewed collection of songs that tip the hat to 80s synth pop (Two Doors Down), Syd Barrett era Floyd (Umbrellahead), 70s summery pop soul (Young Love) and, on Flakes,  the quivering big ballad emotions of Chris Martin. 

The Duran strokes to MJ might be a little overcooked and the slightly Haircut 100 meets The Smiths of Half In Love With Elizabeth could do without the vocal whoops, but the likes of the smartly observed Veiled In Grey and the high-voiced, high-strung suicide themed piano ballad 21 are more than enough to keep on the contenders list for another year. 7.30pm. £10. Barfly


Friday May 16

Jack Savoretti

Having done a decent job of impressing ears with  debut album Between The Minds (De Angelis) and its melding of  Blunt, Ashcroft, Drake and Dylan, the husky voiced Anglo-Italian’s selling it a second time, now with an added unplugged CD, four new songs and the inclusion of bonus track Gypsy Love.

Stripped down to acoustic basics Without exchanges the Verve soul influences for a more wearied naked confessional ballad that sits more obviously along the regret-hued folk inclinations of Dr Frankenstein.

Of the new material, One Man Band is firmly in train-hopping Eric Andersen territory, Russian Roulette a spare strummed torch song with gypsy guitar notes and Lucy a lot like Van Morrison folk-soul without the Celtic gospel. And, for that fourth cut, he turns in a finely bruised heart live version of Johnny Cash’s Ring Of Fire that you’ll have to insist he includes tonight before he leaves. 7.30pm. £7.50. Glee Club


Friday May 16

Caribou

The musical alter-ego of maths PhD Dan Snaith. this should take you back to the summer of love days of the mid 60s  with choice cuts from his Andorra (CitySlang) album, the likes of  Sandy conjuring the psychedelic harmony pop of  Sagittarius while After Hours evokes early Floyd and She’s The One, Desiree and Eli are all day-glo LSD dreamy spaced bliss outs. Pack the beads and joss sticks and let the sunshine in.7pm. £8. Barfly


Friday May 16

Pendulum

Now based over here, the Aussie drum & bass outfit would clearly seem to have set their sights on stadium seating if recent Top 10 single Propane Nightmare was any indication of things in store with the In Silico (Warner) album they’re launching here. However, dance beat addicts will be glad to hear that, while more rock oriented than Hold Your Colour,  Showdown, Granite and Midnight Runner reveal they’ve far from ditched their Freestlers and Prodigy colours. 8pm. £20. Custard Factory


Saturday May 17

All Time Low

Apparently one of the hottest new outfits currently spraying guitar licks across America, with the snotty vocals, buzzing guitars, circling melody lines and singalong hooks the Maryland four piece don’t sound a million miles removed from such acknowledged pop-punk influences as Blink-182 and New Found Glory. Having just played the Give It A Name Festival at Earls Court, they now headline their own dates in support of debut album So Wrong, It’s Right (Hopeless) and new single Dear Maria, Count Me In. Like that, numbers like Let It Roll, Six Feet Under The Stars, This Is How We Do It, Shameless, Vegas and Come One, Come All are infectiously catchy but resolutely generic and often melodically samey.  Remembering Sunday is a token nod to the open heart ballad, but they’d be advised not to stake their future on such offerings.

Still, they don’t pretend to be anything than what they are, they seem to have an awareness of irony and they clearly are dab hands at putting together radio friendly high school pop rock for budding punks and emos who have already become bored with Cute Is What We Aim For. 6pm. £9.50. Carling Academy 2


Saturday May 17

Little Man Tate

Having worn the songs from debut album About What You Know down to the bone, the  Sheffield quartet are out laying the ground for the second wave with meet and greet introductions to material from the as yet untitled follow-up. Having already paved the way with the stadium arm-waving balladry of  Boy In The Anorak, a second taster arrives with the far rowdier slashing guitar and Jam jerky riffing new single What Your Boyfriend Said (Yellow Van). 7pm. £10. Wulfrun Hall

 

 

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