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
