Friday January 11

Envy and Other Sins

Variously channelling Dexys, Duran, Roxy and Madness influences, the lads should be in good spirits following their landing of a million pound record deal with A&M before Christmas after winning the MobileAct best new band competition. Not bad given they were ejected from the comp after reaching the final 12 only returned via a wild card public vote. They’ll be busy working out what tracks to feature on the debut album, so expect them to be revisiting live favourites like Highness, the piano plinking It Gets Harder To Be A Martyr and the acoustic swayalong Words Fail to see how they fly. I tipped them for big things back in 2005, and while it’s taken a while, the world now seems to be theirs.

Support comes from fellow rising local stars The Heathers who, described as a cocktail of The Kinks and REM , but perhaps more reminiscent of The Bible or Lloyd Cole and the Commotions with their hooks and harmonies, are also gearing up for their first release of 2008. the set likely to include achingly yearning acoustic ballad Keeping Secrets, the scratchy pop of Healer and the excellent chiming pop of potential single Heartache & Hairdye. 8pm. £4. The Rainbow, Digbeth

Thursday January 17
Hundred Reasons

Back from the dead after setbacks that would have seen off less determined outfits, the post Britrock boys have apparently even managed to survive the recent firesale at their V2 label. After years of being constantly tipped as new big things, they finally seem to be tottering on the brink of fulfilling predictions with their fourth album, Quick The Word, Sharp The Action. They’re still founded on throaty, hard guitar driven songs with punchy lyrics but there’s a new influx of melody and anthemic choruses, ably evidenced by the likes of recent download single No Way Back, the chiming Sick Little Masquerade, the surging rush of Boy and the boundalong Out Of Time.
The Shredder shows their snarly heavier side still intact, She Is Poison’s a swirling dose of jagged pop with piston driven rhythms while both Break The Glass and the vitriolic Opera show they’ve been practising those piano scales to good effect. That the album failed to dent the Top 40 shows the comeback struggle’s not over by a long way, but there’s certainly a hundred or more reasons to be optimistic.

Support comes from New York hard-rock crew From Autumn To Ashes who’ve recently done a bit of a Genesis with drummer Francis Mark stepping up to take over lead vocals. That’s the only comparison likely to be made to Phil Collins though as they rip through a dozen samples of throat slashing metalcore from the new Holding A Wolf By The Ears (Vagrant) album. While Delusions of Grandeur has a more melodic style and a steadier pace and Pioneers and Daylight Slaving hint at shades of emo, nothing here’s going to be mistaken for wimping out as numbers such as Deth Kult Social Club, On The Offensive, Sensory Deprivation Adventure, Everything I Need and Love It Or Left It slam through punishing riffs and Mark’s yowling delivery. Take something to soak up the blood from your ears. 7.30pm. £11.50, Wulfrun Hall

Friday January 18
Plain White T’s

Originally featured on their 2005 album All That We Needed and resurrected for major label debut Every Second Counts (Hollywood), acoustic singalong ballad Hey There Delilah has proven the band’s genie in the bottle. Not only did it top the US charts and make the UK No 2 slot, but has seen the band nominated for two Grammys, Song of the Year and Best Pop Performance. But real confirmation of its status as a modern classic is news that it’s now a regular feature in school concerts. Now that’s success.
The band return now with follow-up single, the chugging summer pop Our Time Now, but while undeniably catchy and guaranteed high chart placings, it’s unlikely to rival its predecessor’s track record. Not that they should be too bothered, as the title boasts, the Ts are deservedly riding high with the fresh faced Blink-like power pop punk and Fab Four inclinations of melody friendly numbers like Hate (I Really Don’t Like You), Let Me Take You There, waltzing ballad Making A Memory, and Friends Don't Let Friends Dial Drunk. Pop fashion statement of the year, then. 7.30pm. £11. Carling Academy

Friday January 18
Slaves To Gravity

Out of London and forged from the ashes of the The GaGa’s and Ariel-X, there’s a twinge of Nirvana grunge to quartet’s riff grinding rock with its throaty vocals, swelling choruses and industrial strength guitars. Following up last year’s Meantime (Gravitas) single, they’re here warming up for the March release of the debut album, offering sneak previews of that might prove one of hard rock’s more formidable battle cries of 2008. 7.30pm. £5. Little Civic, W’hampton

Saturday January 19
The Courteeners

The latest in a line of bands looking to be the next big thing from Manchester (they even have a singer called Liam), the four piece pull together elements of The Libertines and The Smiths for a melodic dose of swaggery singalong indie pop that found them playing a sell out tour last December. This latest flurry coincides with new single What Took You So Long (Polydor), a swipe at music fans who prefer to experience everything from the comfort zone of their iPods rather than in the flesh, trailing the imminent debut album from which live favourites such as Aftershow, Not Nineteen Forever, Fallowfield Hillbilly and former single Acrylic (another music biz referencing song) should all be figuring on the set list. 7.30pm. £7.50. W’hampton Civic Hall Bar

Sunday January 20
Korn

Still slogging along after 15 years, the nu metal pioneers haven’t exactly made a habit of tearing up the blueprint that made their name. They hit the shores in service of last year’s self-titled eight album (Virgin), a return to their dark dirge, throatily aggressive days but without much to offer by way of stand out songs or head-squeezing riffs. They’re lifting the steamrolleringly heavy but thoroughly forgettable Hold On as the tie-in single and will likely be previewing Haze, a track written for a new video game that’s also planned as a summer single release.

Fronted by one Whiplasher Bernadotte, Swedish death-glam core cyber sex rockers Deathstars open the night’s proceedings with selections from their Termination Bliss album, the fantasy-metal operatic Tongues, cello haunted stormer Blitzkrieg, glam stomping Play God and the sprawling widescreen metal mazurka grandeur of The Last Ammunition revealing that, while they may look like Marilyn Manson clones they sound much more like Lordi without the costumes.

Also slotting into the bill are Flyleaf, a Christian rock Texan quintet headed by Lacey Mosley who proves girls can do guttural screams and growls as easy as their male metalcore counterparts. Stuffed with breezy ditties about abuse, addiction, neglect and dysfunction, the eponymous debut album (A&M) will form the foundations of the live set, throbbing through numbers such as bass crushing single I’m So Sick and stuttery stop-start dervish whirl Cassie with the urgency of Red Sam and Breathe Today, acoustic and anthemic There For You and the moody, jazz tinged All Around Me showing they’re not just about slamming your head into the wall. 7.30pm. £25. Carling Academy

Sunday January 20
Teddy Thompson

Two years on from Separate Ways, the last thing you might have expected as a follow up was to find Richard’s son getting in touch with his inner George Jones for an album of old school country covers of songs made famous by the likes of Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, the Everlys, Elvis and, yes, that'll be She Thinks I Still Care, George himself.
Other than string arrangements, it's not even as if he's done anything especially radical with them. Rather they're affectionately faithful readings that have his vocal stamp but stay true to the spirit of the originals to the extent you could imagine hearing them crackling over the steam wireless from the Lousiana Hayride.
Not that there's any problem with that, especially given the gorgeous tearstained barroom melancholy of Change of Heart with its clip clopping rhythm, a bluesy flavour to Ernest Tubb's Walking The Floor Over You, waltzing Haggard hits From Now On My Friends Are Gonna Be Strangers and The Worst Is Yet To Come, and a guitar slapping perky version of Bob Luman's Let's Think About Living.
It may not push any envelopes and, ultimately, it's probably a self-indulgent treat that may baffle those who bought his first two albums, but it's hard not to be won over by his relaxed rework of Elvis hit I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone, the cover of the Ev's Don't Ask Me To Be Friends or his duet with Iris DeMent on My Heart Echoes.
It's not totally without Teddy's own contribution, either. One of three tracks on which dad lends guitar, Down Low is a self-penned Orbison-esque country ballad that, haunted by the ghost of Gram, can confidently hold its head high among such esteemed company. Even if he doesn’t throw in anything from the other albums, this is well worth saddling up the horse for.

Warming things up will be emergent New York indie folk singer-songwriter Jamie Kristine Seerman aka Jaymay whose Autum Fallin’ (Heavenly) debut album gathered a sheaf of glowing reviews at the end of last year. She’ll be headlining her own dates shortly, but this is a good opportunity to make early acquaintance with her lovely melancholic tales of bruised love, Ill Willed Person (on which she sounds a little like Victoria Williams), the heady heart rush of Sycamore Down, the nine minute carnival whirligig You’d Rather Run and the wistfully sad You Are The Only One I Love all competing for gig highlight status. 8pm. £9. Glee Club

Sunday January 20
Jacob Golden

He spent much of last year doing the support slot routine, but now here’s the chance to step into his own spotlight with songs from his much praised Revenge Songs (Echo) album that’s earned him comparisons to the likes of Elliot Smith, Nick Drake, Jeff Buckley, Paul Simon and even George Harrison.
There’s a wealth of autobiographical references, on the psychedelic folk Pretend he says how his mom loved If I Had A Hammer while the Simon-esque strummed Shine A Light has him remarking how “my favourite Daniel Johnston song was recorded on a tape deck before you were born.” Such disarming personal touches give the album an intimate, almost chatty feel on songs that variously stem from bruising encounters with both the opposite sex and a former record label.
The opening, melodically tumbling Out Come The Wolves may well prove his signature classic but there’s plenty of other contenders here; the full blooded Church Of New Song, the flow from the stark to the soaring of Shoulders, the spidery echoing Hold Your Hair Back, torch-slurred bedsit blues Love You, and the delicate title track itself, another fine example of his finger-picking skills. Confessional, soulful and a bit of a willowy pin-up to bring out the mothering instincts, the year is waiting at his feet to do with as he will. 7.30pm. £8. mac

Sunday January 20
Black Tide

Here supporting Orange County metalcore thrashters Avenged Sevenfold, the youthful outfit may be a new name from Miami but upcoming single Shockwave (Interscope) shows they’re well rooted in the old school metal of such names as Deep Purple, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and early Metallica. An album’s due later in the year, so this is a useful opportunity to make the introductions. 7pm. £16. W’hampton Civic Hall

Monday January 21
Dashboard Confessional

Back plugging The Shade of Poison Trees (Vagrant), this sees Chris Carrabba hitting the musical highway with songs designed to be belted out with the windows down, arms out in the breeze jabbing the air.
Opening with the emotion quivering vocals of Where’s There Gold and Thick As Thieves, the standard rarely slips as Carrabba slashes the guitar strings for the jerky Keep Watch Of The Mines, hits a almost bossa nova groove with These Bones, strums pop patterns for Fever Dreams and wraps himself around the aching heartfelt ballad tree for the title track and the piano based The Widow’s Peak. A sold out gig, those prescient enough to get advance tickets can expect Matters of Blood And Connection and power pop flurry Little Bombs to prove highlights of the evening. 7.30pm. £13.50. Carling Academy 2

Monday January 21/Tuesday January 22
James Blunt

I know you couldn’t turn the radio on without hearing the ubiquitous You’re Beautiful, but the man didn’t deserve the snide and often cruel comments as every self-proclaimed cool music critic rushed to denounce him for the sake of their own perceived credibility. Let’s be honest here, packed with catchy songs (albeit with at times trite lyrics), reedy voiced Blunt’s debut album fully deserved the success it enjoyed.
On the other hand, it’s far harder to mount such a spirited defence for follow up All The Lost Souls (Atlantic). The annoyingly irritating 1973 with its wilful mispronunciation of Simone for the sake of a bad rhyme, was fully deserving the approbation heaped on You’re Beautiful while self-pitying whines about being slagged off, fears about fame fading, and not entirely tongue in cheek numbers trumpeting his own glories and scores with drugs and women are surely guaranteed to get backs up.
But, bravely, or foolishly, it’s much less of a housewives choice album (it’s hard to imagine anyone setting the CD alarm to wake up to Give Me Some Love), and, save for perhaps One Of The Brightest Stars (a touch Gilbert O’Sullivan), the songs don't have the same immediacy. However, if you can forgive some of the ill-advised, open to misinterpretation lyrics, and apply patience to let the likes of Shine On, Carry You Home, I Can’t Hear The Music and Annie reveal their deeper charms, then you may realise that Blunt is far from the flash in the pan many would like to believe. 7.30pm. £26. W’hampton Civic Hall

Tuesday January 22
AlterBridge

An Atlanta based hard rock outfit formed by three ex members of Creed and new singer Myles Kennedy, their name taken from a bridge at the intersection on the border between Detroit and Grosse Point Park, this is, when you get down to it, basic meat and potatoes hard rock with guitar solos, metal riffs and, as you might imagine from their origins, a heady veneer of Christian rock influence to the lyrics.
Latest album, Blackbird (Universal), is the reason for this visit, containing mammoth US rock hit the swelling quiet-loud Rise Today, yearning acoustic ballad Watch Over You, the urgent rage of Ties That Bind and the hefty muscled rifforamas of Come To Life, the Soundgarden-like Coming Home and White Knuckles. They’re arguably at their best at their most emotional, a colossal anthemic Before Tomorrow Comes and the eight minute prog rock title track lament’s swing between moody acoustic and powered up riff tumult guaranteed to raise the roof if they’re slotted into the stage set. 7.30pm. £15. Carling Academy

Tuesday January 22
Levy

That’ll be Brooklyn singer James Levy and his band, a theatrical pop combo with rather more fondness for musically dramatic posing and overblown crescendos than is possibly good for them to judge by new album Glorious (One Little Indian). There’s certainly widescreen melodies to be found and Levy has a reasonably attractive catch in the throat nasal vocal, but you can’t help but think that something like So Hard or Beneath ‘em all would fare better without the overblown arrangements drowning out any sense of finesse.
Certainly, more stripped back samples like the dreamy summery power pop King James or the more economically produced pop of Your Demise and Squeeze indicate where they might profitably explore further. At times, as on Mint, sounding like a noisier, rougher neighbourhood Travis, they have some basic potential but at the moment the horizon looks a long way off. 7pm. £6. Bar Academy

Tuesday January 22
Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong

Following up calypso flavoured debut single Lucio Stars Fires, gangly former Pipettes drummer and occasional actor Lean and the boys enter 2008 to try and fulfil that big thing buzz. Once again new single Lonely Buoy (Mercury) is all a tumble of jerky shiny bright pop welded from bits of The Jam and XTC, although they say it’s not representative of the April scheduled album which is closer to their raw live sound. Pleasant enough disposable toe tapping, but not one to yet place bets on fulfilling the hype.

Support is Preston’s Team Waterpolo, a four piece who pull together classic pop with electronics and samples. They’re touting double-headed debut single Letting Go/Problematic Girls, the Weezer meets Beach Boys latter track more likely to tingle ears than its thin, watery indie companion piece where attempts at cosmic surfing falls painfully flat. But neither suggest they’re going to make much of a splash. 7.30pm. £7. Little Civic
 

Wednesday January 23
Air Traffic

Having consistently failed to impress these ears with their singles to date, sounding variously like Jam and Supergrass wannabes, the Bournemouth boys now turn up with their debut album, Fractured Life (EMI). It doesn’t prompt any conversions. Adequately played indie pop rock with some passable melodies, they actually prove better in ballad mode, No More Running Away a decent drum patterned mid-tempo ballad that might get some stray Snow Patrol fans excited while I Can’t Understand and the title track take a stab at the Coldplay anthem crowd, but they even manage to blow that with the overwrought Empty Space and Time Goes By. They’ll be grounded soon. 7.30pm. £11. Carling Academy 2
 

Wednesday January 23
Stone Gods

Formed from the implosion of the Darkness after Justin Hawkins went off to make a prat of himself by failing to get the British Eurovision nomination, Richie Edwards now handles the singing bit with Dan Hawkins graduating to lead guitar, Ed Graham sticking on drums and new boy Toby Macfarlaine coming in on bass. An album’s in the can, apparently, as the band name implies, a tougher, heavier affair than their previous incarnation, an early sample in the form of Born The Witch sounding like a cross between Slade and Sabbath while You Bought A Knife To A Gunfight is standard issue barroom rock swagger. 7pm. £11. Barfly

Wednesday January 23
Athlete

Three albums in since Wires, they’re not looking to change the blueprint of melancholic, downbeat lyrics, major chords and radio friendly melodies. Unfortunately, as Beyond The Neighbourhood (Parlophone) reveals they’re not looking to improve upon it beyond adding some new electronic clothing.
There are aspirations to the epic and portentous, as per scene setting ambient instrumental, In Between 2 States but the fact that The Outsiders would very much like to be Pink Floyd and Hurricane addresses global warming over a choppy sub-Sting groove is ample cause to worry. And how tasteful is Best Not To Think About It, a track about those who jumped from the WTC on 9/11 featuring the chorus singalong line ‘it’s a long way down from here’.
There are bright moments; the driving beat and soaring skies of Tokyo, a delicate pulsing Flying Over Bus Stops, and the spooked frayed nerve Airport Disco which is far better than its meeting between Radiohead and Phil Collins would suggest. But, at the end of the day - and at the end of the album with the resigned This Is What I Sound Like - you can’t help but feel it’ll be the old neighbourhood audiences are going to want to revisit.7.30pm. £10.50. Wulfrun Hall

Thursday January 24

Meg Baird

Vocalist and songwriter with nu-folk combo Espers, plans for a solo release via a Philadelphia based label never progressed beyond an initial single. Recorded between sessions for the band’s second release, the completed album would have remained on the shelf had Wichita not stepped up to the base and, conscious of a duty to the music loving public, offered to take it on board.

 So it is that Baird’s now playing a few solo shows over here in support of Dear Companion, a rather lovely Appalachian hued mix of traditional folk songs, covers of 70s originals and a couple of her own songs, all given that pure voiced treatment with simple guitar, dulcimer or banjo backing.

It’s pretty much a given that the live show is going to include most, if not all, of the material, probably fleshed out with a few more trad tunes and some Espers songs to take it to around the hour mark. So, to keep tabs, the traditional check list will include the leafy folk title track (which she also reprises for a spine-tingling a capella version), a freshly minted take on the well worn The Cruelty of Barbary Allen, a dulcimer accompanied Sweet William and Fair Ellen, and a waltzing Willie O' Winsbury.

Best known of the covers has to be a vulnerably plaintive reading of Jimmy Webb’s Do What You Gotta Do but she’s just as mesmerising on her forest-stream clear versions of  All I Ever Wanted by John Dawson from New Riders of the Purple Sage, a bittersweet The Waltze of the Tennis Players by forgotten 60s folkies Fraser and Debolt that conjures thoughts of  Jerry Jeff Walker, and a trad arranged take on River Song, penned by sometime Manfred Mann singer Chris Thompson.

Again underlining her trad folk inclinations, Baird’s own contributions. Maiden In The Moor  Lay and Riverhouse In Tinicum,  are more than up to standing tall in such company, the latter sounding like a cross between Nick Drake and Annie Briggs, adding up to a hushed but rather splendid evening.

Setting the mood, support will be ethereal voiced Brooklyn singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten with her self-styled ‘sad Prairie folk’ and Birmingham’s own eco-folk answer to Sigur Ros, Shady Bard. 8pm £7. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Friday January 25

Tom Paxton

Despite having recently turned 70, Paxton remains active both in the studio and treading the boards, both here and around the world. This time around he arrives with a new album, his first in six years, Comedians & Angels (Appleseed).

His voice sounding ever more like a slightly reedier Stan Rogers, the music coloured in shades of backwoods folk and Americana with hints of Celtic mists, it’s no surprise to find him in warmly reflective mood on this collection of what he broadly calls love songs. A mix of new tunes and re-recordings from the back catalogue, there’s songs for his wife of 40 years (at his best on reprises of a waltzing The First Song Is For You and the simple hymnal feel of You Are Love) and his two daughters (the parental pride of  Jennifer And Kate) but also for those who walked the same political activist path in the 60s (How Beautiful Upon The Mountain) and, on the melancholic glass raised on the title track, such Greenwich Village contemporaries as David Van Ronk, the Clancy Brothers and Phil Ochs.

He’s got a vast repertoire to drawn on and it’s unlikely he’s going to be allowed to get away without singing at least a couple from an evergreens list that includes My Lady's A Wild Flying Dove Now, Ramblin' Boy, Bottle of Wine and, of course,  The Last Thing On My Mind. But hopefully, somewhere during the night, there’ll be room for one of the album’s best tracks, And If It’s Not True, a delightful, accordion backed swaying French cafe chanson of romantic fantasies and tall stories that will leave you with a twinkle in your eye and heart. 7.30pm. £20. Birmingham Town Hall

Saturday January 26

Seasick Steve

Who’d have thought that, a couple of months on from his last low key tour, the old dog would be back selling out larger venues with the stripped to the bone Mississippi acoustic/electric blues that make up his Dog House Music album.  Not bad for a grizzled, grey bearded white boy whose hard life songs such as Dog House Boogie, Fallen Off A Rock, Things Go Up and Hobo Low are planted firmly in the tradition of  bluesmen John Lee Hooker, Son House and Blind Willie Johnson. Not usually the sort of stuff you’d expect to strike a chord with the young audiences he’s obviously attracting. One of the stand-out acts on Jools Holland’s New Year’s Eve show, booming out the blues, strumming a battered slide guitar and stomping the beat on a tin, his tales of the drifter’s life have clearly caught the imagination. 6.30pm. £13.50. Carling Academy

Monday January 28

Robyn Hitchcock

He’s never really enjoyed popular success, but then again, with his determinedly idiosyncratic psychedelic pop, he’s never really courted it either. He has, however, long sustained an enduring cult following and a critical reputation as one of the country’s most interesting songwriters. He’s also been pretty prolific. To which end, he’s finally got rounding to compiling the catalogue of  solo recordings he’s released following the break-up of The Soft Boys.

The first of two collections comes in the shape of I Wanna Go Backwards (Yep Roc), a box set that pulls together his first three albums (also reissued individually) along with  bonus material that includes two discs worth of unreleased B-sides, outtakes and home recordings, as well as assorted poetry, cartoons, and even a sample of his novel in progress.

Black Snake Diamond Role (from which comes The Man Who Invented Himself and the whimsical Brenda’s Iron Sledge) was his solo debut, Eye, with its mix of electric folk and stripped back acoustics and memorable numbers like Cynthia Mask and Queen Elvis II, was the third.

But it’s 1984’s all-acoustic I Often Dream of Trains that forms the basic of this tour. Generally regarded as his definitive solo release, it took an undercurrent theme of death and gave it a witty treatment dressed up in stark but resolutely non-gloomy arrangements. The album comprised 19 tracks, among them the surreal Furry Green Atom Bowl, the train journey fantasy romance of the title track, a wintry wistful instrumental Heart Full of Leaves and,, Uncorrected Personality Traits, a pithy Freudian  summation of sexual deviance and hang-ups sung a capella in the manner of a trad unaccompanied ballad.

Now, with Isobel Campbell on cello and vocals and Terry Edwards playing horns and keyboards, they’ll be performed in their entirety for the first time along with, as he puts it, other Phenomena from what is, you have to admit, a brilliantly eccentric career.  8pm. £13. Glee Club

Monday January 28

Nine Black Alps

Having been heaped in with the grunge movement and tagged a wannabe Nirvana after their debut album, the Manchester boys have made a concerted effort to show their true colours with Love/Hate (Island), revealing themselves as much more an indie pop rock outfit.

The kick off single, Bitter End, pretty much spread the cards on the table with its circling guitar riffs, harmonies and soaring sunny day at the beach melodies,  with numbers like Painless, Burn Faster, Everytime I Turn and Happiness And Satisfaction following suit.

The old, harder, darker days are still there with Heavier Than Water, the anguished Burn Fast and the wasted desolation of Future Wife, but the fact they contributed the pretty acoustic Pocketful Of Stars to the Surf’s Up soundtrack should give an idea where their sights are set. 7.30pm. £8. Carling Academy 2

Monday January 28

Stars

Montreal’s electro pop quintet return to wave the flag again for current album In Our Bedroom After The War (City Slang), an airy pop  amalgam of Human League, New Order, Saint Etienne and The Smiths.

 It could have done without the ersatz Bee Gees falsetto disco strut of The Ghost of Genova Heights and the title track’s overdone aspiration to a Broadway musical, but between the night sky shimmer and the walking bass line New Order meets U2 of The Night Starts Here, a  whispery samba-tinged My Favourite Book  and the piano ballad Barricade, they twinkle brightly in the pop firmament.  8pm. £8.50. Barfly

Tuesday January 29

Steve Earle

Was a time when Earle seemed to be on a self-destructive collision course for an early grave, until his body started putting up warning signs he couldn’t ignore. Since then, he’s cleaned up his act and, in the process, has recorded some of his best work since the early days of Copperhead Road. 

Many have called his latest, Washington Square Serenade (New West), his finest to date and while it doesn’t quite match the politics fuelled anger of Jerusalem, its stew of the personal and political is a far stronger set than the somewhat throwaway and unfocused The Revolution Starts Now.

Bidding farewell to ‘guitar town’ in the opening Tennessee Blues, this is Earle’s New York album, most specifically so with City Of Immigrants where TexMex flavours mix with a Brazilian calypso folk rhythm and shades of Paul Simon, the drawled spoken Manhattan snapshot Down Here Below,  and the ticking beats and folk rap Satellite Radio. And it’s hard to imagine him ever tackling Tom Waits’ bluesily clattering Way Down In The Hole if he was still in Nashville

Old school Earle is present and correct on Jericho Road, the dulcimer struck Red Is The Color and a banjo dominated Oxycontin Blues while Come Home To Me is a vintage slow-waltzing love song sure to add warmth to the dimmed lights.

There will, naturally, be a sizeable handful of past favourites sprinkled around the set, but if his eventual choices aren’t easy to predict it’s a fair bet he’ll be getting sixth wife Alison Moorer up on stage for their duet on Days Aren’t Long Enough.

No hardship there, nor in the fact she’ll also be providing the opening act with numbers from her own, slightly more conventional mainstream country albums, signature hit A Soft Place To Fall naturally pride of the pack.

She’ll also be previewing her forthcoming seventh release, Mockingbird (New Line) which, save for the r&b styled title track, comprises covers of other female songwriters. It’s an interesting set of choices, ranging as it does from the classic country of  June Carter’s Ring Of Fire (taken at a slow scuffed beats pace), Jesse Colter’s I’m Looking For Blue Eyes and sister Shelby Lynne’s She Knows Where She Goes to a faithful cover of Patti Smith’s Dancing Barefoot, Nina Simone’s torchy I Want A Little Sugar In  My Bowl, a raw New Orleans slouch through Ma Rainey’s Daddy, Goodbye Blues and a delicate reading of Cat Power ballad Where Is My Love.

It doesn’t always work. She brings nothing fresh to Joni Mitchell chestnut Both Sides Now and fails to capture the heartbreak anguish of Kate McGarrigle’s original recording of Go Leave. But if she opts to include her stormy, dark cover of Gillian Welch’s Revelator in the set list, no one’s going to be going home disappointed. 7.30pm. £22.50. Birmingham Town Hall

Tuesday January 29

Angus and Julia Stone

Having toured their Chocolates & Cigarettes and Heart Full Of Wine EPs last year, the Australian brother and sister acoustic folk blues duo make their first appearance this year to start the ball rolling for their upcoming debut album. It’ll be interesting to see if they’ve been reworking their narcotic leafy folk moods with its marriage of Joanna Newsome and Paul Simon, but perhaps a clue can be found in recent, overlooked EP The Beast, its title track headily evoking thoughts of the desert stoner folk of America’s Horse With No Name.  8pm. £7.50. Glee Club

Tuesday January 29

My Ruin

Recovered from the crash that left singer Tarrie B’s arm mashed up, the California hard rock return to rip open a few skulls with blistering new album Throat Full Of Heart (Rovena), a metal behemoth that takes their Southern fried version of Sabbath sludge riffs and stabs you throat the spine with numbers like Ready For Blood, Memento Mori and Through The Wound

Support’s provided by the no softer venom of the equally female fronted (Grog) UK alt-rock trio Die So Fluid who’ll be looking to open veins with the sharp razors packed into new album Not Everyone Gets A Happy Ending (Cargo). Sledgehammering through Existential Baby, The Kiss And Then The Kick, the brutal riffer of Pigsy and Gang Of One, this is all very Sabbath too but on the other hand listen to Happy Hallowe’en, the brooding Vorvolaki and the quiet-loud title track and you might well hear Siouxie and the Banshees in there too. 7.30pm. £10. Carling Academy 2

Wednesday January 30

Johnny Flynn

A new nu-folk contender and occasional Shakespearean actor, Flynn and his occasional travelling band The Sussex Wit (who may or may not be along tonight)  filter together the sort of old fashioned English folk sung to cider swigging in in hayfield and upstairs folk clubs with a backporch southern American roots blues. It’s not yet anything to get sweatingly excited over although it has landed him a major label deal and current single The Box (Vertigo) is a catchy enough strum in praise of the simple life that wraps itself up with a strings and trumpet finale. And you have to be willing to give the benefit of the doubt to anyone who has a number about football star screw ups titled Wayne Rooney Song. 8pm. £5. Glee Club

Wednesday January 30

Gretchen Peters

You might not know the name, but, covered as they have been by such names as Bryan Adams (loads), Martina McBride (Independence Day) and Shania Twain (Dance With The One That Brought You), you've probably heard her songs.  Well, it’s about time you discovered the woman who wrote them.

A good way to play catch up would be with Trio, her stunning recent live set,  an achingly lovely collection drawn from her previous three studio albums and featuring such gems as the heartbreaking Circus Girl,  lost love lament On A Bus To St. Cloud,  Souvenirs’ wistful journey across America’s broken promised land, the previously unrecorded  Main Street with its reflective portrait of a dying town, and, from the outstanding Halcyon, the devastating This Used To Be My Town’s narrative about a murdered girl's ghost returning to where she once lived.

Then you should make a point of getting a  copy of Burnt Toast & Offerings (Curb), the new album she’s touring here, a deeply personal set of songs birthed in her divorce from her husband, manager and producer after 23 years and her journey to self-rediscovery that begins with the wistful frustrations of Ghost and ends on her bittersweet opening farewell To Say Goodbye.

The sadness of a marriage gone cold on Breakfast In Our House and the jazzy Thirsty is balanced by the untrammelled joy of finding new love in The Way You Move Me and the storysong Lady Of The  House while Sunday Morning just basks in the simple contentment of the sounds and sights of your neighbourhood.

Poignant, uncluttered, and affectingly honest, the songs here should provide several of the evening’s highlights, though if she’s going to do a cover my vote would have to be not for the melancholic Rat Pack blues of One For My Baby included here but rather her sublime version of Paul Simon's American Tune. But then whatever she sings, you’re a guaranteed winner. 8pm. £16. Robin 2, Bilston