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ARCHIVED REVIEWS November 2006
Wednesday November 1
The Feeling

Shameless proponents of the soft rock revival, the lads
have no manifesto or agenda other than to make upbeat sunny
pop music. Listen to debut album Twelve Stops And Home
(Universal) and you’ll readily hear the influences of ELO, the
Beatles, 10cc and Supertramp. Musically, they have it all
sorted, a fistful of cheerfully overindulged songs packed with
catchy melodies, harmonies, redundant guitar solos, hooks and
those 80s memories. The songs are a different matter. There’s
nothing exactly wrong with things like Fill My Little World,
Sewn, Never Be Lonely, Love It When You Call or Blue
Piccadilly (from whence the album title springs), but stand up
alongside even the lesser efforts of their models and they
just don’t seem to have the
lyrical nous or wit to endure in the same manner as, for
example, Dreamer or Mr Blue Sky.
However, if they’re just here to enjoy the moment and put a
little sunshine back into the radio while keeping their
tongues in cheek, then all power to their wearily melancholic
but radiantly joyous cliches.
7.30pm. £13. Carling
Academy
Wednesday November 1
Betty Curse

If you ever saw Stephen Fears’ film Liam or, more
likely, Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, you’ll likely have been
much impressed by Megan Burns whose performances suggested a
potent screen career. However, her real ambitions lay in music
and so it is that she now resurfaces with a new moniker and a
forthcoming debut album, Hear Lies Betty Curse (Island), a
rush of goth punky pop full of spiked sherbet bubble, foaming
guitars and biting teen attitude songs.
Not as balls-busting as fellow actress turned rock chick
Juliette Lewis perhaps, but kick off single God This Hurts is
a fine flurry of wall of guitar distortions and kitten with
claws vocals that, as with album cuts like the chugging
tumbling Girl With Yellow Hair and Do You Mind If I Cry?,
suggests a collision between The GoGos, underrated power-pop
punks The Boyfriends, Cyndi Lauper and Ash. I’m not sure the
goth revival isn’t all talk and no mascara, but on the
evidence here Ms Burns can keep turning down script offers for
a while yet.
7.30pm. £5. Bar
Academy
Wednesday November 1
Scott Matthews

Hailing from Wolverhampton but with his spiritual roots in the
muddy deltas, Matthews is a Black Country amalgam of Beck and
Ben Harper with heady traces of Robert Plant for good measure.
Now signed to Island, reissued debut album Passing Strangers
offers a solidly muscular folk, delta blues, rock and world
music stew, notable for the use of tabla, violin and cello on
the bluesy Dream Song, the strong percussion driven rhythms of
The Fool’s Fooling Himself, the leafy folk of Eyes Wider Than
Before and the slide guitar driven Blue In The Face Again and
Sweet Scented Figure.
The album tends to fall away rather during numbers like Earth
To Calm and the finger-picked folk White Feathered Medicine,
but there’s ample here to suggest he’s a name well worth
keeping an eye on.
8pm. £8.50. Glee Club
Wednesday November 1
Badly Drawn Boy
Titling his new album Born In The UK (EMI) might seem to be
begging yet more Springsteen comparisons, but while Damon
Gough may indeed hold The Boss in high regard (he actually
references Thunder Road on One Last Dance), the influences
here are far closer to home. A quasi conceptual album about
growing up in the 70s and finding your own identity, peppered
with talk of Jilted John, the Queen’s Jubilee, Maggie T and
hosepipe pans and full of introspective piano ballads about
the problems and pleasures of love, much of it (a feeling
enhanced by the way tracks run together) actually sounds like
songs and music from some play.
If there’s one significant guiding influence here, it’s that
of Ray Davies, and, in its very English feel, the Kinks’ The
Village Green Preservation Society album. Unfortunately, it
falls somewhat short of that benchmark. Too many of the songs
just meander along in a fashion that may be okay as part of a
musical narrative but doesn’t hold up as an album. A little
too much over-egging of the production pudding doesn’t help
either, making the less cluttered tracks like The Time of
Times sound rather better than they are. Given his past
lyrical output, it’s strange to find Gough often sounding so,
well, banal, really, ditching the heroic or poetic line in
favour of something that might have come from an Alan Sillitoe
novel.
Assuming he approaches the live set in similar fashion to the
album and allows it to unfold in similar order and at the same
pace rather than fragmenting it with insertions from the back
catalogue, then there’s no reason to suspect the likes of
Degrees of Separation, Welcome To The Overground, Without A
Kiss and the mutedly sad Long Way Round won’t make for a
pleasantly gentle, self-contained evening. Chances are that’s
not going to be the case, however, and taken in isolated
bites, the new material is going to have to work very hard to
maintain its already tentative charms.
7.30pm. £15. Wulfrun
Hall
Thursday November 2
Audrey

More barely there Scandinavian pop melancholy, this
cello sporting female quartet hail from Sweden, bringing with
them their debut album Visible Forms (STK), a shimmeringly
fragile musical icicle that conjures thoughts of the more
restrained side of Bjork or even Red House Painters as they
weave their way through the cello hung beauty of Views and the
frost hung melodies of Treacherous Art. They do get a bit
worked up at times, what with the hypnotic hollow tribal
drumming of Six Yields and the veritable sauna heat imparted
by the brass of Traverse, but mostly they’re content to let
their elegant chills work the magic on tracks like The
Significance of Being Overt and Leaving/Letting Go, conjuring
the sort of ambience a glacier might make were it set to
music.
They’re supported by fellow fragile and quirky voiced
Scandinavian Hafdis Huld,
formerly singer with Iceland’s Gus Gus.

However, while you do get some homegrown drone on the
n traditional Sumri Hallarm, her solo album, Dirty Paper Cup
(Red Grape) largely confounds expectations by teaming her with
English pastoral pop songwriter Boo Hewardine who shares
production credits with former Bible cohort Neill MacColl.
Introducing banjo and acoustic guitar into the mix variously
conjures Icelandic bluegrass on Diamonds On My Belly (though
also veined with Eastern flavours) while Hometown Hero fuses
medieval troubadour moods with a click track, Plastic Halo
offers trad finger-picking 60s English folk (while she
prettily sings ‘I hope you choke on your plastic halo’),
Happily Ever After adds impishness to the title line’s
romantic fantasy, while Tomoko could be lifted from the theme
music of some pre-school TV
programme and Lou Reed’s Who Loves The Sun in transformed into
a vaudeville jaunt. Intoxicatingly spooked and skewed stuff,
those months of endless light clearly have a special magic.
8pm. £6. Glee Club
Thursday November 2
Gossip

Dance punk with some bluesy rock chick sassy
attitudinising courtesy of singer Beth Ditto, the Arkansas
bred girl trio arrive with Ditto and guitarist Brace Paine
joined by new drummer Hannah Billie and sporting the title
track of their Standing In The Way Of Control (Back Yard)
album as a new single.
Written in response to the Bush administration's decision to
deny gays the right to marry, it’s a cry for solidarity and
determination set to a throbbing bass line, Motown drumming
and Ditto’s powerful torchy howl, a keen signifier of a
sweaty, down home n dirty night in store.
7.30pm. £10. Barfly
Friday November 3
The Aliens
Risen from the ashes of the Beta Band, reuniting Fife
spawned founder members Robin Jones, John Maclean and Gordon
Anderson (mental illness and medication hopefully now
permanently behind him), tips are in place that this new
outfit will realise everything the former failed to achieve.
Reaction to their live shows has been exuberant while musical
comparisons have conjured everything from Dire Straits with
Setting Sun and Pink Floyd on Ionas to an electro rapping
Stones for Only Waiting. Early single Robot Man has proven a
crowd favourite with its warped disco funk and the recent The
Happy Song pretty much summed up its own vibe with the guys
roaring out ‘happy happy happy’ like some demented Eurovision
entry from another dimension. With Anderson prone to appear on
stage togged out in anything from skiing goggles to goalie
gloves, predictability is clearly not a factor in their
makeup. The gig will afford an early taster of next year’s
debut album, expect it all to be seriously off planet.
7.30pm. £8. Barfly
Friday November 3
The Datsuns

Following on from the underwhelming tired trudge
through the Stooges, Saints, Led Zep and AC/DC collection that
was sophomore album Outta Sight/Outta Mind, the New Zealand
outfit needed to find an injection of inspiration if they were
going to survive past a third album.
To which end Smoke & Mirrors (V2) holds on to the old
reference points (Maximum Heartbreak a quintessential blues
metal Zep) but throws in The Who (Who Are You Stamping Your
Foot For?, Waiting For Your Time To Come sounding like a Tommy
cast off), Aerosmith (All Aboard), ZZ Top (Stuck Here For
Days), Thin Lizzy (Blood Red) and even a touch of the Tubes
(System Overload).
Noisy, shouty, thundering riffage (with album closer Too
Little Fire the token slow burner), it kicks up one hell of a
wall battering storm but at the end of the day it still has a
hollow heart, the sound of a band trying to batter down the
walls of the blind alley up which they’ve driven themselves.
7.30pm. £10.
Wulfrun Hall
Friday November 3
Mary Gauthier

Though oft compared to Lucinda Williams, Louisiana born
Gauthier (pronounced Go-Shay) more accurately sounds like a
female version of John Prine or Kris Kristofferson, spinning
her half-spoken, half-sung world weary country noir tales of
lives that ‘dangle 'tween hell and hallowed ground’, of
losers, barflies, junkies, down and outs, bruised lovers and,
inevitably, herself.
Now in her forties, she didn’t start writing until she was 35
by which time she’d survived a dirt stained world of life
battering experiences, filtering them back through the albums
Dixie Kitchen, Drag Queens In Limousines and Filth & Fire. A
regular visitor to these parts, she’ll be mining both those
and her current release, Mercy Now (Lost Highway), where the
opening slow desert blues Falling Out of Love with its
lonesome guitar and harmonica adds thoughts of Daniel Lanois,
Mark Eitzel and Tom Waits to the gold standard reference
points.
Unusually, it also includes both collaborations and covers,
the former repped by the jauntily bitter Prayer Without Words,
the Prine-like autobiographically bittersweet I Drink and the
broken relationship loneliness of Empty Spaces while the
latter slow waltzing through Harlan Howard’s She’s A Rhymer
and Fred Eaglesmith’s burned and bruised lament Your Sister
Cried.
Good news for UK fans is that the album’s being
reissued to coincide with the tour, only this time with the
limited edition bonus EP Season Of Mercy featuring four extra
tracks, among them her version of Woody Guthrie’s classic I
Aint Got No Home and, to get you into the festive mood early,
Christmas In Paradise.
7.30pm. £14. Little
Civic
Saturday November 4
Lily Allen

She may have upset a fair few people with her mouthy
attitude and behaviour, but Keith Allen’s daughter seems to be
holding on to the fans for the time being with her songs about
the ‘harsh realities of life’. Whether she’ll maintain their
interest once they see her live is another matter, with
reviews of shows earlier on the tour being less than impressed
with her lack of stage charisma.
Musically, if you’ve heard LDN or Smile, you know what you’re
getting, Larndan ska pop as much in thrall to Chas n Dave as
it is Madness with cynical songs about how blokes are a waste
of time, going out on the pull, drugs and sexual frustrations.
Those who can be bothered to listen will suspect her record
collection also features albums by the Spice Girls, Shampoo,
Streets and even Kirsty MacColl while it’s hard not to think
of Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String during the carnival intro
to Alfie, a song about her stoner brother that comes on like a
German oompah band knees up. Whether, accompanied by a three
piece backing band and pre programmed beats, this mix of
novelty and grittiness is enough to sustain interest through
an entire gig remains to be seen.
6pm. £12.50.
Carling Academy
Saturday November 4
The Spinto Band

Hailing from Delaware and featuring two sets of
brothers, this youthfully bubbling six piece have been making
considerable waves with their debut album, Nice and Nicely
Done (Virgin), a catchy cocktail of nu-indie guitar pop that
casts its net over such apparent influences as Brian Wilson,
Talking Heads, XTC, Yo La Tengo, the late 60s pop of the
Turtles and The Flaming Lips.
The vocals can be a bit shaky at times, but there’s more than
enough quirks among the instrumentation and arrangements going
down on tracks such as Brown Boxes (hear that kazoo), the
lovelorn Oh Mandy (a bit 10cc this one), Trust vs Mistrust (
glockenspiel and ah-hoo chorus yelp), synth pop Spy vs Spy,
dreamy Devo meets Barry Manilow skewed summer ballad Direct To
Helmet and the Beach Boys go disco Crack The Whip to find
yourself distracted by the itch in your feet.Support’s
provided by Brighton four piece Make Good Your Escape. They’ve
been described as ‘purveyors of euphoric rock’ which, roughly
translated means they can whip up a bit of noise and get
people to throw out comparisons to Muse and U2 then turn in
something a little quieter to show their more sensitive
Radiohead side.
However, debut mini-album Never look Back Here Again (Fierce
Panda) suggests they may have the songs and the muscle to
eventually back up the press hype.
Certainly, while nothing many similar, better bands are doing,
a little more production polish would have given the likes of
After All This Time, Out of My Skin, Real and new single Cut
The Ropes what they need to stand out from the crowd and
reveal vocalist Mike to be about more than just the acrobatic
vocals he parades soaring and swooping through the lyrics.
If they can use the live shows to build on the initial wave of
interest, and comeback with a fuller, denser and less palpably
over influenced set of material, they may well be heading for
the arena gigs they so clearly have in their sights.
7.30pm. £7. Barfly
Sunday November 5
Jet

You won’t have forgotten that the Australian four piece
were responsible for the raw, garage rock urgent brilliance of
Are You Gonna Be My Girl, the powerhouse dynamo around which
the electrifying Get Born album was formed. So, anticipation
for the follow up is understandably high. Sighs of relief then
that, while they’ve polished up the image somewhat, Shine On
(Atlantic) effortlessly lives up to hopes simply by not
messing around with a good thing. Which, basically means, a
balance of 70s heads down rock boogie along the lines of Rip
It Up, Holiday, That’s All Lies and Put Your Money Where Your
Mouth Is, and tracks that ape Oasis in their fervent Beatles
worship.
Indeed, Bring It Back, Come On Come On, piano ballad Shine On
and the arms swaying All You Have To Do are haunted by the
ghost of John Lennon while Shiny Magazine and even Everlys
homage Eleanor, are veined with McCartneyisms.
It’s not all so single-minded in the influences, Skin And
Bones sounds like early barroom
brawling Faces, complete with burring Ronnie Lane guitar,
while there’s times when Stones rock n roll swagger pokes its
head through the curtains.
To be honest, nothing here has quite the same stature as their
seminal hit, and you have to wonder at times quite why they
want to sound like they come from Manchester, but with hooks,
wit and sheer energy to spare they’re a good time that’s hard
to say no to.
Also along for the ride are Dublin based mischief makers the
747s, their well received debut
album Zampano (Ark) which reveals a fondness for 60s American
teen-beat on things like Rain Kiss, Night & Day and Leave Your
Job Today, and on Missed That Sun, Nature’s Alibi and the
samba hints of Death Of A Star, an enduring love of that very
English 60s rock emblemised by The Kinks.

Mixing it up even more, Miles Away is out and out music hall
pop with a pub piano while Green & Blue puts on folksy smocks,
Goodbye For A While is all Roy Orbison and Into The Shadow is
Surfer Girl era Brian Wilson.
Buoyant and wistful in equal measure, as capable of
being spiky as they are tender, they probably need to exercise
a little more editorial control (at 14 tracks the album
outstays its welcome), but if they put on the sort of varied
life set the album promises, they can hopefully look forward
to avoiding the new Zutons tag.
Bringing up the rear are Action Plan,
a frankly undistinguished Chelmsford four piece who’ve rather
optimistically been spoken about in terms of Six By Seven,
Smashing Pumpkins and The Pixies.

There’s little to encourage such over-enthusiasm in new
single He (Modern Art), a thrashy mix of garage and distortion
pedals which unfolds the story of dodgy fertility expert Cecil
Jacobson, or the, admittedly melodically more attractive,
Blood Brothers.
7.30pm. £15. Carling
Academy
Sunday November 5
Tapes n Tapes

Much touted on the Internet, this Minneapolis quartet’s
debut album, The Loon (XL), has seen them declared the heirs
apparent to the lo fi American indie alternatives of the 80s
and 90s embodied in the likes of Pavement and the Pixies. So
spiky and intense but imbued with pop melodic sensibilities
then; perfect case in point being Insistor with its galloping
drums, twangy rockabilly guitar and Josh Grier slightly spooky
staccato vocals. They pull off the same magic with 10 Gallon
Ascots, a number that moves from lazy shrug-shouldered lope
into bursts of fuzzy guitars, and the strobe swampy blues
Crazy Eights which sounds like it might have been lifted from
some late night cops show.
Demonstrating their fondness for nerve twitching and neurosis
there’s the frayed Houston which deceives with its loungecore
vibes intro before spare military beat and fuzzed guitar stabs
set in and Grier groans out "no sex, and no sleep!" like a man
on the edge of collapse; or equally the choppy distortopop
Cowbell as Grier spits out ‘I've been a better lover with your
mother’ before declaring ‘I hate you from the heart’. Clearly
you don’t want to upset this guy.
The hype may be over-enthusiastic, and there’s a couple of
things here that just drift past on a cloud of influences
without making their own mark. But when confronted with the
likes of the off-kilter itch of Just Drums with its euphonium
and whistle, the lush countrified sway of Manitoba (which
suggests Brian Wilson’s in there too), the uncluttered spry
folk pop Buckle and the surfy rhythms and distortions of the
closing Jakov’s Suite that slides into an almost grind metal
riff before spreading into a druggy waltz, it’s clear they
have a lot of fresh ideas to offer too.
7.30pm. £7.50.
Barfly
Sunday November 5
Mundy

When Dublin's Edmund Enright released debut album
Jellylegs some years back, he was instantly saddled with a new
Dylan tag. He wasn’t and the label quickly dumped him.
However, with songs like Rescue Remedy, impressive follow up
24 Star Hotel gave hope he might rise from the ashes. But then
came the unmemorable Raining Down Arrows with, Mundy’s voice
lacking both colour and power. Unfortunately, that’s much the
same story with Live & Confusion (Camcor), a live set that
almost never rises to the promise offered by his
Strummer/Elvis pose on the front cover.
Not that there’s aren’t flashes of the old spirit, Rescue
Remedy hitting a Springsteen stride and Gin & Tonic Sky
explaining those early Dylan comparisons while, joined by
Sharon Shannon the closing Galway Girl kicks up a mean pair of
Irish punky folk heels. But the newer material lacks any real
shape; 10,000 Miles all bluster and guitar solo rather than
real passion, Raining Down Arrows a dreary end of relationship
trudge and Love & Confusion sounding like someone asked if he
could knock off a Clash meets Steve Earle number in under five
minutes. Visually he has stage charisma, but it can only cover
up so much.
7pm. £8. Bar
Academy
Sunday November 5
Neko Case

Occasional member of the New Pornographers, although
Case released live album The Tigers Have Spoken in 2004,
marking her debut for her new label, it’s been a long four
years since her last studio recording, the ineffably wonderful
Blacklisted. However, the wait’s been worthwhile, the husky
but tough voiced Virginia born singer arriving on these shores
to promote Fox Confessor Brings The Flood (Anti). Her voice
remains a husky cross between patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn,
but the long gap between recordings has seen her songwriting
and performance become even more maturely seasoned, even if
the lyrics often remain bafflingly enigmatic and shrouded in
mythic narrative.
Again working with The Sadies (her regular backing band), Howe
Gelb, Calexico’s Joey Burns and John Convertino, and longtime
collaborator Brian Connelly as well as guests like Garth
Hudson, there’s an interesting collection of musical shapes
here, respectively embracing hillbilly and gospel folk on A
Widow’s Toast and the rousing traditional John Saw That Number
while bringing a surf rock twang to That Teenage Feeling and
hitting a blues vein with added discordance on the title track
(taken from Ukrainian mythology), a lament for the destruction
of the natural landscape.
Themes of displacement and loss of self certainty curl through
the songs and animal imagery, ruefully musing on her
hometown’s changes on The Needle Has Landed, favouring the
comfort of strangers over the dangers of family blood on Hold
On, Hold On, or obscurely
addressing dementia as a wolf on Dirty Knife.
There is too the dark waltzing pessimism of Little Sparrow and
the elusive metaphors of passion and regret that stalk country
blues honky tonk slow dance Lion’s Jaws.
Though the songs demand work before they yield their deep
secrets, she’s again proves a keen observer of human emotion
on the opening Margaret vs Pauline, a poetic but no less
bitter story of envy (the living jealous of the dead?) laced
with images of chlorine and satin. And, as befits any artist
steeped in the old country from which Case’s roots draw their
sustenance, there’s death too. It hangs heavy but defied over
the brief acoustic strummed Lynchian soundscape At Last while
Star Witness sees her reinventing the 60s teen tragedy genre
with its snapshot of a car wreck, the ‘glass in the thermos’,
the blood stained jeans and the girl in the nightgown weeping
‘please, don’t let him die.’
It’s rare you get vocal purity, melodic beauty and songs that
give your synapses an emotional and intellectual work out
wrapped up in one package, so come along and get lost in the
flood.
8pm. £12.50. Glee Club
Monday November 6
Midlake

A five piece from smalltown Texas, they’ve attracted
comparisons to Flaming Lips, Granddaddy and Mercury Rev. All
references you’ll hear on The Trials of Van Occupanther (Bella
Union), but also the influence of Fleetwood Mac, Neil Young,
Joni Mitchell and (on Roscoe especially) CS&N with a sound
that is both contemporary and steeped in the late 60s and
early 70s.
Dealing with themes of retreat from the modern world, it’s
a folksily pastoral album that takes its title from the figure
of a village-dwelling reclusive, ostracised scientist while
the songs talk of the changing seasons and getting back to the
earth. The band do crank up the rock heat here and there,
nudging the guitars into buzzing flurries on In This Camp,
Head Home and Young Bride, but it’s the more reflective, often
keyboard based, numbers that really see them glow. The dreamy
Bandits, a driftingly lazy Van Occupanther with its woodwinds,
the cloud-tipped harmonies of Branches and the softly strummed
quilted folk of Chasing After Deer all offer a musical and
spiritual balm to wash away the grime of the rat race.
Well worth catching is opening act
Fionn Regan. The latest name on the acoustic
singer-songwriter scene to find himself draped in the new Nick
Drake/Elliott Smith cloak depending on your age and reference
points, Regan hails from Dublin and picks a rather fine guitar
that suggests he's also not unfamiliar with the collected
works of Bert Jansch and John Fahey.

As debut album The End of History (Bella Union)
demonstrates, he also has an open hearted voice that will
conjure comparisons with Damien Rice and Conor Oberst but also
Loudon Wainwright (Hey Rabbit's lament for the destruction of
nature) and Paul Simon (Snowy Atlas Mountains).
What's also caught the attention is his way his often
skeletal arrangements are accompanied by original lyrics
steeped in melancholy, despondency and, in some instances (as
with 'my jumper is soaked in pig's blood' on Snowy Atlas
Mountains), downright disturbing weirdness. Many of his images
are plucked from rural nature. On the darkly urgent Hunter's
World he uses a fox in a trap as a twisted romantic metaphor
and even end of relationship song Put A Penny In The Slot sees
him 'sit like a doc leaf sit beside a stinging nettle'. The
same song bears witness to his sense of wit as, having broken
up with his lover he apologises for having "arrived home with
items in my bag from your house, there's some cutlery, a table
cloth, some Hennessy and a book on presidents deceased."
It doesn't always come off; the bit about needing a full
stomach to drill for oil on Campaign Button feels forced as do
some of the rhymes on the sprightly strummed Blackwater Child.
But these are minor quibbles when faced with an artist you
know you'll still be able to listen to long after the fashion
parade has passed by.
7.30pm. £7.50. Barfly
Monday November 6
The Fratellis

Their pub floor laddy rock pop romping with songs that are
almost exclusively about the sex and having a bit of a larf
out on the town has seen the Glasgow trio elevated to sell-out
headline slots in a comparatively short space of time, debut
album Costello Music (Island), shifting truck loads of copies
among moping Libertines fans. All power to them, but it might
be a good idea to enjoy the lifestyle while they can.
Certainly songs like Chelsea Dagger, the dance friendly
Flathead, Creepin Up The Backstairs, Clash flavoured Everybody
Knows You Cried Last Night and Whistle For The Choir have
sufficient jauntiness and cocky attitude to see blokes singing
them drunkenly as they stagger down the street come closing
time. But there’s a certain sameness in there too, and a
certain feeling they might be trying too hard to with titles
like Vince The Loveable Stoner and Got Ma Nuts From A Hippy,
to sustain the initial rush beyond a disappointing second
album.
7.30pm. £11.50.
Carling Academy
Monday November 6
Sean Lennon

He may be looking increasingly like his dad, but the whiny
falsetto, dreary tunes, banal rhymes and turgid songs of new
album Friendly Fire (EMI), his first in eight years, is hardly
going to earn any other comparisons. Written, it would seem,
in response to the collapse of his relationship with Bijou
Phillips, the material’s restrained, resigned and reflective,
largely dribbled out as soft rock ballads that stand far
removed from the noisier, more experimental work he’s done
with assorted collaborators in the time between albums.
His debut, Into The Sun, didn’t set the world alight and
this is unlikely to start any fan fever either.
Being generous, spite fuelled opener Dead Meat isn’t
bad, Tomorrow’s passable 40s crooner pastiche, Would I Be The
One is a pleasant enough glam slam cover of an obscure Marc
Bolan number and the closer, Falling Out Of Love, benefits
from an injection of musical oomph, but it’s hard to imagine
the prevailing woozy doodling and Lennon’s languid singing
stifling any conversations already begun before he takes to
the stage.
7.30pm. £15. Warwick
Arts Centre
Tuesday November 7
Ron Sexsmith

Reunited with producer Mitchell Froom, Sexsmith's tenth
album, Time Being (V2), is his most reflective with songs
that, sporting titles like I Think We're Lost, Reason For Our
Love, Some Dusty Things and Hands Of Time, ponder mortality,
the passing years and why we're here in the first place.
As befits the subject matter, the approach is relaxed and
mellow and although he does turn up the heat slightly on the
jangling I Think We're Lost and the poppy singalong Ship Of
Fools, it’s mostly acoustic strummed soft folk pop that
recalls vintage McCartney lullabies on more than one occasion.
There's a nice bluesy groove at work for Jazz At The
Bookstore, a lament about how great music is so often
relegated to in store aural wallpaper while The Grim Trucker
is a witty if slightly unsettling number that breaks out into
cod burlesque vohdeodoh jazz routine. But it's fair to say the
best stuff here is the softer balladry, Sexsmith's husked
croon lulling you into a cosy melancholic warmth on the spare
beauty of And Now The Day Is Done, and the tenderly lovely
faded love of Snow Angel.
Never less than an entrancing live performer, the new
material should bring an added gloss to tonight’s gig.
8pm. £16.50. Glee Club
Tuesday November 7
Mumm-Ra

A five piece from Bexhill On Sea, as you might surmise from
influences that embrace the Beta Band, Kinks, XTC and Sigur
Ros they tend to favour slightly skewed tempo shifting rock.
Their last EP, Black hurts Day And The Night Rolls On threw up
the clattering Davis Essex meets Kasabian indie of Song B on
one hand, the sparse loss and loneliness ballad Light Up This
Room and the Yes prog shades of The Temple on the other.
They’re back now though with Out Of The Question (Columbia), a
shamelessly direct slice of bopping along jangly guitar pop
rush that you’d be forgiven for thinking even had sleigh bells
ringing away in the background. A considerably more optimistic
indication of future developments and commercial success,
it’ll doubtless prove something of a live highlight in a set
that promises to be a book now taster for next year’s debut
album.
7.30pm. £5. Bar
Academy
Wednesday November 8
Lucinda Williams

Finally making her Birmingham debut after the 2004 European
tour dates were cancelled following her mother’s death, the
influential feisty country n blues star was something of a
latecomer to success, critically lauded and with having
provided hit songs for other acts but not cracking the
commercial market in her own right until she was 45 with 1998s
Grammy winning album Car Wheels On A Gravel Road.
Since when she’s gone from strength to strength, each
successive album impossibly better than the last. Now 53,
she’ll be looking to do it again next year when her long
awaited new studio set West arrives in February.
But until then, she’s plugging a remastered reissue of Car
Wheels which not only comes with alternate takes of Still I
Long For Your Kiss and Down The Big Road Blues and the
original version of Out Of Touch but also includes the bonus
disc WXPN Live At Penn’s Landing, a full concert recording
from the same year that includes almost everything from the
breakthrough album as well as earlier material such as Pineola,
Hot Blood, and Changed The Locks.
Regularly absent from the live set in recent years, whether
Cars Wheels itself will return to the show for this tour
remains to be seen, depending on how loud you holler. But
recent US gigs bode well for fans here with set lists
featuring old classics Pineola, Drunken Angel, Lake Charles,
Bust To Baton Rouge and Joy alongside solid such gold nuggets
from 2003’s World Without Tears as Fruits of My Labor,
Righteously, Ventura and the brilliant Those Three Days.
Better yet, there’s likely going to be tasters of the
forthcoming album with Jailhouse Tears, Where Is My Love,
Unsuffer Me and Knowing among the new songs that have been
finding their way into the gutsy shows.
Support comes from the ever welcome
Teddy Thompson.
7.30pm. £22.50.
Symphony Hall
Wednesday November 8
Luke Haines

Formerly frontman for the Auteurs, Black Box Recorder and
Baader Meinhof, last year Haines was out flogging copies of
his collected works 3CD set Luke Haines is Dead. Good to see
then that he’s now working to the future, back touring with a
brand new set of material from Off My Rocker At The Art School
Bop (Degenerate Music) and sporting white suit, Panama hat and
Victorian tache.
He’s thankfully still as sardonic and sour in his jaded
snapshots of England, a worm eaten Ray Davies referencing the
likes of Peter Sutcliffe on ostensible football song Leeds
United, Jonathan King and Chicory Tip on teenage fumbling
nightclub memoir The Walton Hop, and 60s boxer Freddie Mills (rumouredly
murdered by the Krays) while taking to task the little
Englander mentality on Here’s To Old England and chastising
Gary Glitter for sullying his rather fine glampop band by
association on Bad Reputation.
As might be expected from a man who recorded a song titled
Bugger Bognor he makes no apologies for his singular lyrical
vision and the undisguised vitriol of his potshots while his
musical bent follows a similar self-willed path, cheerfully
plastering things with 80s electropop, pub rock, chugging punk
and even a dash of swing. A very English individual to be
cherished, even if he’s probably hate the prospect.
7.30pm. £7. Bar
Academy
Wednesday November 8
Radio 4

More Gang of Four meets the Clash dance floor agit-pop from
the New York outfit with swirly snarly stabbing guitars,
writhing bass and crisp drumming, occasionally interspersed
with some faux reggae loping rhythms. However, while they
clearly know their way round the instruments these days,
inspiration seems to have deserted them on the songwriting
front.
Too many tracks on current album Enemies Like These sound
indistinguishable from one another, most never seem to be
going anywhere and give up long before they arrive. At the
worst, Packing Things Up On The Scene they sound like Duran
imitators, but even the best cuts here, the pop swinging
(Always A) Target and the melodic Grass Is Greener, just come
across as minor shades of Interpol or The Killers. With
enemies like this, they’re unlikely to win many new friends.
7.30pm. £8.50. Barfly
Wednesday November 8
Gretchen Peters

You might not know the name, but, covered as they have been
by the likes of Bryan Adams, Martina and Shania Twain, you've
probably heard her songs.
But nobody sings them like she does, so you really owe it
to yourself catch her while she’s here promoting Trio, a
stunning live set of uncluttered, pure and achingly lovely
stripped down tales of 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 the coming of age Like Water
Into Wine. And from Halcyon, arguably her best and most potent
collection to date, comes Museum’s wistful tale of turning a
broken heart into a work of art and the devastating This Used
To Be My Town 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, the show also includes Faith
Hill’s 1998 hit, 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.
She may not be as widely known as those who have benefited
from her writing, 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.
8pm. £13.50. Glee Club
Thursday November 9
Motorhead

Some things never change, and having recently reissued
their 80s classics Another Perfect Day, Orgasmatron and Rock n
Roll with bonus live CDs, Lemmy and co gird up their jeans to
make ears bleed in the cause of brand new studio set Kiss of
Death (SPV).
It doesn’t sound like 20 years have past between Rock n
Roll and now, the album slamming into the concrete from the
opening track, Sucker, and continuing to deliver ramped up
blues metal boogie split through with aggression, attitude and
the smell of cigarettes, beer and sweat soaked leathers that
haven’t been washed in months. Hammering through the
unrelenting but still melodic likes of Devil I Know, Trigger,
Living In The Past, Going Down and the guttural death metal of
Living In The Past and Kingdom Of The Worm, it’s hard to
believe Lemmy’s not far short of his bus pass but can still
bellow young pretenders off the stage from 30 foot.
Flitting across a variety of metal variations in the course
of the album, the marginally folk inflected God Was Never On
Your Side even lets you catch a glimpse of Lem’s sensitive
acoustic blues side, though it’s unlikely to intrude into the
raw rock of a live set that promises to mix up tracks from the
album with 30s years worth of ‘Head highlights.
7.30pm. £22.
Carling Academy
Thursday November 9
Flaming Lips

For many the best band in America, after two decades of
critical praise and minor cult success, the Lips have morphed
into one of the biggest and most influential names around,
finally catapulting into global consciousness with 2002's
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and its accompanying live
shows.
Now Wayne Coyne, Steven Drozd and Michael Ivins return as
conquering rock band heroes for their second tour built around
At War With The Mystics, another experimental journey into the
psychedelic cosmos of Coyne’s imagination, a world that often
makes Brian Wilson seem like Chas n Dave.
Yes Free Radicals is basically the band mucking about with
some Prince disco, but the rest takes off into the gargantuan
stratosphere with the trademark blend of perfect pop and
barking quirkiness that is The Sound of Failure and My Cosmic
Autumn Rebellion with its twittering electronic birds and
spacey burbles.
Druggy, surreal, warped and patently the illegitimate
offspring of the Mothers of Invention, Todd Rundgren and Yes,
they get pretty funky on The W.A.N.D and Haven’t Got A Clue
while Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung is everything excess the
title suggests, and then adds some Pink Floyd too.
New single It Overtakes Me is an epic little ditty that
shifts from crunchy dancepop into a symphonic psychedelic wash
while the soft soul Mr Ambulance Driver and Goin’ On are
reminders that they can also make simple, crystalline pop that
doesn’t feel the need to shake the galaxy with prog excesses.
Not of course that anyone’s going along tonight in the hope of
seeing a low key show of restrained balladry, to which end the
Lips will pucker up and deliver admirably.
7.30pm. £20. NIA
Thursday November 9
Bruce Springsteen &
The Seeger Sessions Band

Back in 97, Springsteen recorded We Shall Overcome for a
Pete Seeger tribute album. Self-confessedly no expert on
Seeger's music, he spent several days boning up on the songs
and emerged a man obsessed. Over the following years, the idea
of recording a whole album of Seeger's music simmered away on
the back burner. Then, after being introduced to a bunch of
musicians who'd played at a fiesta on his farm, he finally
decided to do it instead of talking about it.
Recorded totally live, the result was The Seeger Sessions
(Sony), the sound of Springsteen having fun again, shouting
out cues to the musicians as they play and generally letting
it all hang out.
Since Seeger was interpreter rather than songwriter, with
the exception of My Oklahoma Home and additional lyrics by 50s
civil rights activist Alice Wine to the gospel hymn Eyes On
The Prize, all of the material is trad or public domain.
Opening in frolicsome, banjo plucking form with the knees
slapping hoe downing Old Dan Tucker, it swishes its skirts and
coat-tails through railroad rouser John Henry, Negro spiritual
Jacob's Ladder, the ramshackle clattering spiritual O Mary
Don't You Weep, sea shanty protest Pay Me My Money Down and,
as a good time closer, the veritably ancient Froggie Went
A'Courtin'.
Quieter notes are struck on 1815 Irish anti-war ballad Mrs
McGrath (where the Boss gets to sing too-ri-aa,
fol-did-dle-di-aa) and the haunting work song Erie Canal, but
the album's finest moment comes with a hymnal reading of the
classic world weary Shenandoah which with lonesome banjo,
choral backing, slow march beat and a play out flourish of
melancholic tuba, conjures heart aching images of some John
Ford epic with early mist rising over the fields and mountains
of the Civil War devastated South as a bone tired Henry Fonda
leans against a pine and dreams of home.
As you might surmise from the tour billing, it’s this album
and songs that forms the bulk of the shows but that’s not to
say there won’t be a few Springsteen originals in there too.
Set lists from the tour to date have been featuring the
thematically complementary likes of Atlantic City, The Ghost
of Tom Joad, My City of Ruins, Fire, The Promised Land and The
River while a staple ingredient now, usually among the
encores, his their cover of Love of the Common People, once a
hit for the Everlys but probably better known here by way of
Paul Young. But whatever you get, this is going to be a very
special Springsteen night to remember.
7.30pm. £50. NEC
Thursday November 9
Unkle Bob

Another Glasgow based outfit (though only one of them’s
Scottish) with a love of the Byrds, bluegrass, REM, vocal
harmonies and all things jangly guitar, the five piece have
earned themselves a place on several year Best Of lists
already with debut album Sugar and Spite (Friendly Sounds).
playing here as support to Cosmic Rough
Riders, there’s times when you find yourself also
thinking of Prefab Sprout or even early Radiohead without the
band actually sounding like copyists.
Reflecting the title, the album deals in assorted shades of
love songs, from the bitterness of slow swaying soarer Better
Off and a spare This Way to the stifled emotions of Hold It
Down (a song Rod Stewart should be lining up to record), the
blues banjo darkness of Vagabond and the more romantic sunny
day uplift of One By One.
Anyone who’s encountered their sublime lovelorn single Hit
Parade with its tumbling hook melodies and "I wanna get laid,
I wanna get played, I wanna walk down the hit parade" chorus
will surely have be become a disciple on the spot, and if that
somehow didn’t do the trick then the scuffed bittersweet
folk-pop lament Too Many People or the early REM flavours of
Put A Record On will bring them to their emotional knees. Get
in early and this time next year you’ll be dining out on how
you saw them when you didn’t have to queue a week in advance.
7.30pm. £6. Little
Civic
Friday November 10
Wolfmother

Having caused a bit of a stir among the music press with
their self-titled debut album, the Australian power trio
headline their biggest UK tour yet. Sporting a cover featuring
one of those semi-clad warrior women that only seem to exist
on heavy metal album sleeves, they make no bones about their
influences. Listen to tracks like Dimension, Woman, Mind’s
Eye, Vagabond, Jackass 2 featured new single Joker & The
Thief, and Colossal and your head immediately fills with
images of Cream, Zeppelin, The Who, Hendrix and Deep Purple
while fleshing out the landscape a little more Apple Tree
offers White Stripes garage blues, Witchcraft has a touch of
Jethro Tull flute solo and Tales even hints at the Small
Faces.
Musically adept with their shifting time signatures, they
crank up raspy big guitars, Percy Plant vocal howls and
massive riffs and if they don’t actually bring anything new to
their old school blues rock, audiences will be too busy
fingering those air guitars and bobbing heads to give a damn.
Taking up the other dressings rooms will be South London’s
Maccabees, an outfit whose songs
have been likened those of Ray Davies and Ian Dury, wide eyed
romantic single First Love the middle ground between The
Futureheads and Blur;

Bloc Partyish Leeds combo
¡Forward, Russia! giving another nudge to album Give Me
A Wall (Dance To The Radio) with its numerically titles noise
mongering art rock; and, by way of something a little
different, the folkier harmony indie pop sounds of
Fields.
7.30pm. £13.50.
Carling Academy
Friday November 10
Taste of Chaos
A riff fest package tour with no particular outfit taking
the headline tag, this promises to deliver a night of
blistering contemporary metal, even if originality may be in
shorter supply.

Ontario emo by the book’s provided by
Alexisonfire, over here with
Crisis (Hassle), their third album crammed with guitar
squalls, thundering drums, and screamo rock yowls all taken at
a speed metal pace as they pile drive their way through such
numbers as the frenzied Drunks, Lovers Sinners and Saints, the
anthemic crowdrouser We Are The Sound and the delightfully
titled Boiled Frogs.

More post-hardcore’s served up by young Californians
Saosin, their overproduced
eponymous debut with the new line up (EMI) doing the stock in
trade quiet bit, loud bit, buzzing guitars and swoop n soar
vocal thing on a dozen melody fisted tracks that clearly have
an awareness of West Coast pop harmony sensibilities to go
with the rock maelstrom generated on things like It’s So
Simple, Collapse, and Bury Your Head. There’s not exactly a
huge display of variation between the songs, so you can at
least slip out to the bar between numbers without noticing the
gap when you return.

New York emo rockers Taking
Back Sunday give another clout to the Louder
Now album, the hardcore assault of Spin, the limb jerking
What’s It Feel Like To Be A Ghost and body crashing rockfest
Twenty Twenty Surgery balanced by the poppier Blinkish radio
sniffing shades of new single Liar (Warner), the slow surging
Miami and obligatory acoustic ballad Divine Intervention.

Finally there’s New Jersey’s Senses
Fail, joining the tour to promote Still Searching
(Vagrant), the follow up to 2004 debut Let it Enfold You and a
further collection of snotty screamo rock punk that’s full of
bluster but doesn’t really stand out from the crowd. That
said, kick off single Calling All Cars with its familiar
bubblegum Blink formula and big ballad Lost And Found have the
potential to cross them over into more mainstream territory
while All The Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues and the
thundering Shark Attack keep the faithful happy, suggesting
they may well prove the highlight of the evening.
7.30pm. £20. NIA
Friday November 10
Untitled Musical
Project

Hailing from Stafford via Birmingham, UMP are a punky trio
spitting out vitriol and contempt at the usual complacent
targets, believing you can change the world with a snarling
guitar, throbbing bass and gobbed vocals. They make their
debut with a bare boned three tracker (White Heat) that clocks
in at just under seven minutes, spraying out untrammelled
energy and noise with the juddery Pistols inflected Beards &
Drugs and a furious metal boogie driven Facsimile while their
bluesier Jack White inclinations surface on the shouty Why
Isn't Paul McCartney Dead Already?, a track that could well
become the anthem of the Heather Mills fan club.
10.30pm. £3. Barfly
Saturday November 11
Paul Simon

Of course he’ll be obliged to drop in the old chestnuts
everyone wants to hear, a Mother And Child Reunion and
Gracelands here, a Mrs Robinson and a Bridge Over Troubled
Water (possibly) there, but the reason for this first visit in
a seeming eternity is to promote Surprise, his first album
since You're The One six years ago and his best since 1990's
Rhythm of the Saints, Simon sounding a lot younger and more
sprightly than his 64 years might lead you to expect.
And yet it’s clearly an album of a man seasoned by life and
experience as he sings about his family, the malaise of
alienation that's occupied his thoughts since he first started
writing songs, regret, God and the post 9/11 world.
Never the most direct of political commentators, preferring
to mask things with metaphor and allusion, he's nevertheless
fairly upfront here on the opening How Can You Live In The
Northeast which encompasses Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans
floods and how religion more often leaves us in the dark than
leads us into the light. Likewise Wartime Prayers is a gospel
hued post 9/11 hymn for the nation and the battered American
Dream while Outrageous romps along on chicken scratching
guitar licks as the narrator bemoans corporate greed in the
verses and spends the chorus wondering 'who's gonna love you
when your looks are gone' as he does 900 sit ups a day.
Eno may bring his own electronic sheens to the material and
perhaps have prompted the complex arrangements and elliptical
musical structures, but this is unmistakably Simon. Indeed,
despite some buzzing techno colours, Once Upon A Time There
Was An Ocean melodically harks right back to You Can Call Me
Al while Everything About It Is A Love Song, That's Me and the
poignant Another Galaxy shimmer with his distinctive folk pop
warmth. There's even a wry self-deprecating nod towards his
own supposed arrogance on the choppy Bo Diddley rhythmed Sure
Don't Feel Like Love where he sings "once in August 1993 I was
wrong and I could be wrong again."
Rounding off with his parental love song Father And
Daughter, this is no album from some ageing musician content
to recycle well worn past formula as he grows older but the
work of a man who takes the foundations of his past and
consistently seeks to redevelop and redesign the structures
erected upon it. A pleasant surprise, indeed.
7.30pm. £45/£40.
NEC
Saturday November 11
Switches

The Guildford four piece must have an interesting record
collection. New single Law Down The Law (Degenerate) kicks out
like some glam stomping disco funky Franz Ferdinand but come
Solid Gold and they’re displaying Queen and Sparks pretentions
while I’ve Got A Problem’s a throwaway knees up romp before
the acoustic simplicity of She’ll Push Me Away drifts off into
Simon & Garfunkel folksiness. It’s one thing to cover all
bases, quite another to expect them all to cross pollinate
when you need to sell tickets at this stage in your ascent of
the ladder.
7.30pm. £6. Bar
Academy
Sunday November 12
John Power

Formerly bassist with Liverpool cult heroes The Las whose
There She Goes was once a staple soundtrack inclusion for
every high school/college movie out of Hollywood, Power’s
largely lived in the shadow of their songwriter Lee Mavers,
his own material rarely surfacing in the band’s output.
Quitting the band he went on to form Cast, enjoying sizeable
success before that all fell apart four years ago in the car
wreck that was the Beat Route album.
Last year he rejoined Mavers for a LA’s tour, a reunion
that may prove an ongoing existence and even produce a long
overdue second album. More immediately, it prompted Power to
pick up the guitar again and record another solo album, Willow
She Weeps (Tanuki Tanuki), an acoustic gentle folk blues
collection that points up both his Nick Drake and Captain
Beefheart affections and includes the lovely shanty swaying
All My Days was the first song he ever wrote, way back in the
mid 80s.
There’s a country gospel touch to the slide guitar folk
galumphing Old Red Sea, Give It To Me is clattering swampy
blues, the title track more of a mossy back porch folk tune,
Jumpin’ Bean a rustbucket stomp and Goodbye a wry taste of the
folksy pop that hued some of the early Beatles albums. None of
it’s going to put gold discs on the wall or resurrect the days
of hit singles and sell out tours, but it all sounds like a
man happy with the music he’s making, and ready to spread
those smiles around among those who share the same
uncluttered, honest tastes.
8pm. £10. Glee
Club
Sunday November 12
Dufus

Part of the same New York anti-folk scene as Moldy Peaches,
they’ve been going for around ten years now, a shifting line
up revolving around mainstay Seth Faergoaliza. They’re
arriving here with their tenth album The Last Classed Blast,
issued here via Birmingham’s Iron Man label, a typical mix of
the beguiling and the difficult, the accessible and the
experimental, respectively ably represented by Dawn Crusade
and You Weren’t Ready on the one hand and War Is Over and the
poppy fuzz guitar charms of Tuto on the other.
A curiosity about where things might progress if left to
their own devices tends to make some of the tracks ramble on
long past their interest buffers, Heaven Is Waiting and On And
On cases in point, but then you get the six and a half minute
doodling childlike Balloon Rocking Chair that could happily
extend for the same again. Who knows, live it may well do. It
says much that numbers titled Dissassemblement Hymn #
Exponential and Nenglich Phlarlooselee
are infinitely more pleasurable listening
than they sound, the latter a lovely ramshackle circus
waltz that might have sprung from a band featuring Lewis
Carroll and Edward Lear.
Given the roam from the unaccompanied folk gospel of Sacred
Charney to the mutant klezmer of Babylon Com, it won’t
surprise newcomers that the live show could take off in any
direction, numbers extending up to 30 minutes with the band
sometimes augmented by fans climbing on stage to add their own
contributions. An acquired taste perhaps, but certainly an
individual one.
8pm. £5. Jug of Ale
Sunday November 12
Less Than Jake

Less of the ska punk outfit they started life as, the
Florida boys have grown up (the lyrics now seasoned and
stained by life experiences and 15 years together) and moved
more towards mainstream poprock with current album In With The
Out Crowd, songs such as Soundtrack Of My Life, Overrated,
Landmines And Landslides and Hopeless Case clearly looking to
capture the same market as the army of chewy indie pop guitar
bands currently soaking up American youth record sales. Still,
you have to keep the old fans happy too, so trumpets and sax
and ska lope rhythms are back in action for the tour’s tie in
single, P.S. Shock The World (Warner), though ironically it’s
also one of the least interesting or memorable cuts from the
album.
7pm. £17.50.
Carling Academy
Sunday November 12
Show of Hands

Over the 15 years that Steve Knightley and Phil Beer have
been working together as Show of Hands, they’ve been quietly
building such a solid and substantial audience that they’ve
proven quite capable of twice selling out the Royal Albert
Hall. They look set to repeat the performance for a third time
next Easter. Not bad for what most consider just some acoustic
folk duo.
But while their roots may be in folk music, there’s much
more to them than that, embracing world music and rock in
equal measure, showing more affinity with names like The
Levellers than, say, Fairport. Certainly their current album,
Witness (Hands On), is firm testament to the musical and
lyrical muscle they pack, the fiery instrumental The Falmouth
Packet/Haul Away Joe displaying their global influences while
the songs largely take inspiration from incidents and events
around the West Country.
Witness itself celebrates the alternative lifestyle of a
Devon commune, the rousing Roots is a proud defence of English
musical heritage and identity and The Dive recalls an East
Devon father’s sea rescue of his son. Elsewhere Undertow sings
of being trapped in a small seaside town while Johnny Coppin’s
Innocent’s Song uses the image of Herod to address child
abuse, Union Street unfolds the moving story of the last
letters between a Royal Marine and his wife and, heading into
parable territory, The Bet spins a Tales of the Unexpected
story involving a car crash, a suitcase full of money, a
winning streak on the horses and a bitter twist.
Given the wealth of material they have, quite how much
they’ll be mining from the album remains to be seen but
chances are pretty high that the set list will include their
highlight version of George Harrison’s If I Needed Someone.
It’ll be worth the ticket to hear that alone.
Opening proceedings will be their mate
Martyn Joseph doubtless taking
the opportunity for another reminder of current album, Deep
Blue with its response to the world under Bush and Blair; How
Did We End Up Here forthrightly referencing prisoner abuse,
rigged elections and the economic agenda behind American
foreign policy and Yet Still This Will Not Be addressing
political self-interest and the ‘nurturing child soldiers with
the munitions from our factories’.

With a set likely to include old favourites This Being
Woman and Dic Penderyn alongside his riff on What If God Were
One Of Us and his staple live cover of U2’s Stuck in A Moment,
this is guaranteed to be as classy as ever.
Friday November 10
Wolfmother

Having caused a bit of a stir among the music press with
their self-titled debut album, the Australian power trio
headline their biggest UK tour yet. Sporting a cover featuring
one of those semi-clad warrior women that only seem to exist
on heavy metal album sleeves, they make no bones about their
influences. Listen to tracks like Dimension, Woman, Mind’s
Eye, Vagabond, Jackass 2 featured new single Joker & The
Thief, and Colossal and your head immediately fills with
images of Cream, Zeppelin, The Who, Hendrix and Deep Purple
while fleshing out the landscape a little more Apple Tree
offers White Stripes garage blues, Witchcraft has a touch of
Jethro Tull flute solo and Tales even hints at the Small
Faces.
Musically adept with their shifting time signatures, they
crank up raspy big guitars, Percy Plant vocal howls and
massive riffs and if they don’t actually bring anything new to
their old school blues rock, audiences will be too busy
fingering those air guitars and bobbing heads to give a damn.
Taking up the other dressings rooms will be South London’s
Maccabees, an outfit whose songs
have been likened those of Ray Davies and Ian Dury, wide eyed
romantic single First Love the middle ground between The
Futureheads and Blur;

Bloc Partyish Leeds combo
¡Forward, Russia! giving another nudge to album Give Me
A Wall (Dance To The Radio) with its numerically titles noise
mongering art rock; and, by way of something a little
different, the folkier harmony indie pop sounds of
Fields.
7.30pm. £13.50.
Carling Academy
Friday November 10
Taste of Chaos
A riff fest package tour with no particular outfit taking
the headline tag, this promises to deliver a night of
blistering contemporary metal, even if originality may be in
shorter supply.

Ontario emo by the book’s provided by
Alexisonfire, over here with
Crisis (Hassle), their third album crammed with guitar
squalls, thundering drums, and screamo rock yowls all taken at
a speed metal pace as they pile drive their way through such
numbers as the frenzied Drunks, Lovers Sinners and Saints, the
anthemic crowdrouser We Are The Sound and the delightfully
titled Boiled Frogs.

More post-hardcore’s served up by young Californians
Saosin, their overproduced
eponymous debut with the new line up (EMI) doing the stock in
trade quiet bit, loud bit, buzzing guitars and swoop n soar
vocal thing on a dozen melody fisted tracks that clearly have
an awareness of West Coast pop harmony sensibilities to go
with the rock maelstrom generated on things like It’s So
Simple, Collapse, and Bury Your Head. There’s not exactly a
huge display of variation between the songs, so you can at
least slip out to the bar between numbers without noticing the
gap when you return.

New York emo rockers Taking
Back Sunday give another clout to the Louder
Now album, the hardcore assault of Spin, the limb jerking
What’s It Feel Like To Be A Ghost and body crashing rockfest
Twenty Twenty Surgery balanced by the poppier Blinkish radio
sniffing shades of new single Liar (Warner), the slow surging
Miami and obligatory acoustic ballad Divine Intervention.

Finally there’s New Jersey’s Senses
Fail, joining the tour to promote Still Searching
(Vagrant), the follow up to 2004 debut Let it Enfold You and a
further collection of snotty screamo rock punk that’s full of
bluster but doesn’t really stand out from the crowd. That
said, kick off single Calling All Cars with its familiar
bubblegum Blink formula and big ballad Lost And Found have the
potential to cross them over into more mainstream territory
while All The Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues and the
thundering Shark Attack keep the faithful happy, suggesting
they may well prove the highlight of the evening.
7.30pm. £20. NIA
Friday November 10
Untitled Musical
Project

Hailing from Stafford via Birmingham, UMP are a punky trio
spitting out vitriol and contempt at the usual complacent
targets, believing you can change the world with a snarling
guitar, throbbing bass and gobbed vocals. They make their
debut with a bare boned three tracker (White Heat) that clocks
in at just under seven minutes, spraying out untrammelled
energy and noise with the juddery Pistols inflected Beards &
Drugs and a furious metal boogie driven Facsimile while their
bluesier Jack White inclinations surface on the shouty Why
Isn't Paul McCartney Dead Already?, a track that could well
become the anthem of the Heather Mills fan club.
10.30pm. £3. Barfly
Saturday November 11
Paul Simon

Of course he’ll be obliged to drop in the old chestnuts
everyone wants to hear, a Mother And Child Reunion and
Gracelands here, a Mrs Robinson and a Bridge Over Troubled
Water (possibly) there, but the reason for this first visit in
a seeming eternity is to promote Surprise, his first album
since You're The One six years ago and his best since 1990's
Rhythm of the Saints, Simon sounding a lot younger and more
sprightly than his 64 years might lead you to expect.
And yet it’s clearly an album of a man seasoned by life and
experience as he sings about his family, the malaise of
alienation that's occupied his thoughts since he first started
writing songs, regret, God and the post 9/11 world.
Never the most direct of political commentators, preferring
to mask things with metaphor and allusion, he's nevertheless
fairly upfront here on the opening How Can You Live In The
Northeast which encompasses Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans
floods and how religion more often leaves us in the dark than
leads us into the light. Likewise Wartime Prayers is a gospel
hued post 9/11 hymn for the nation and the battered American
Dream while Outrageous romps along on chicken scratching
guitar licks as the narrator bemoans corporate greed in the
verses and spends the chorus wondering 'who's gonna love you
when your looks are gone' as he does 900 sit ups a day.
Eno may bring his own electronic sheens to the material and
perhaps have prompted the complex arrangements and elliptical
musical structures, but this is unmistakably Simon. Indeed,
despite some buzzing techno colours, Once Upon A Time There
Was An Ocean melodically harks right back to You Can Call Me
Al while Everything About It Is A Love Song, That's Me and the
poignant Another Galaxy shimmer with his distinctive folk pop
warmth. There's even a wry self-deprecating nod towards his
own supposed arrogance on the choppy Bo Diddley rhythmed Sure
Don't Feel Like Love where he sings "once in August 1993 I was
wrong and I could be wrong again."
Rounding off with his parental love song Father And
Daughter, this is no album from some ageing musician content
to recycle well worn past formula as he grows older but the
work of a man who takes the foundations of his past and
consistently seeks to redevelop and redesign the structures
erected upon it. A pleasant surprise, indeed.
7.30pm. £45/£40.
NEC
Saturday November 11
Switches

The Guildford four piece must have an interesting record
collection. New single Law Down The Law (Degenerate) kicks out
like some glam stomping disco funky Franz Ferdinand but come
Solid Gold and they’re displaying Queen and Sparks pretentions
while I’ve Got A Problem’s a throwaway knees up romp before
the acoustic simplicity of She’ll Push Me Away drifts off into
Simon & Garfunkel folksiness. It’s one thing to cover all
bases, quite another to expect them all to cross pollinate
when you need to sell tickets at this stage in your ascent of
the ladder.
7.30pm. £6. Bar
Academy
Sunday November 12
John Power

Formerly bassist with Liverpool cult heroes The Las whose
There She Goes was once a staple soundtrack inclusion for
every high school/college movie out of Hollywood, Power’s
largely lived in the shadow of their songwriter Lee Mavers,
his own material rarely surfacing in the band’s output.
Quitting the band he went on to form Cast, enjoying sizeable
success before that all fell apart four years ago in the car
wreck that was the Beat Route album.
Last year he rejoined Mavers for a LA’s tour, a reunion
that may prove an ongoing existence and even produce a long
overdue second album. More immediately, it prompted Power to
pick up the guitar again and record another solo album, Willow
She Weeps (Tanuki Tanuki), an acoustic gentle folk blues
collection that points up both his Nick Drake and Captain
Beefheart affections and includes the lovely shanty swaying
All My Days was the first song he ever wrote, way back in the
mid 80s.
There’s a country gospel touch to the slide guitar folk
galumphing Old Red Sea, Give It To Me is clattering swampy
blues, the title track more of a mossy back porch folk tune,
Jumpin’ Bean a rustbucket stomp and Goodbye a wry taste of the
folksy pop that hued some of the early Beatles albums. None of
it’s going to put gold discs on the wall or resurrect the days
of hit singles and sell out tours, but it all sounds like a
man happy with the music he’s making, and ready to spread
those smiles around among those who share the same
uncluttered, honest tastes.
8pm. £10. Glee
Club
Sunday November 12
Dufus

Part of the same New York anti-folk scene as Moldy Peaches,
they’ve been going for around ten years now, a shifting line
up revolving around mainstay Seth Faergoaliza. They’re
arriving here with their tenth album The Last Classed Blast,
issued here via Birmingham’s Iron Man label, a typical mix of
the beguiling and the difficult, the accessible and the
experimental, respectively ably represented by Dawn Crusade
and You Weren’t Ready on the one hand and War Is Over and the
poppy fuzz guitar charms of Tuto on the other.
A curiosity about where things might progress if left to
their own devices tends to make some of the tracks ramble on
long past their interest buffers, Heaven Is Waiting and On And
On cases in point, but then you get the six and a half minute
doodling childlike Balloon Rocking Chair that could happily
extend for the same again. Who knows, live it may well do. It
says much that numbers titled Dissassemblement Hymn #
Exponential and Nenglich Phlarlooselee
are infinitely more pleasurable listening
than they sound, the latter a lovely ramshackle circus
waltz that might have sprung from a band featuring Lewis
Carroll and Edward Lear.
Given the roam from the unaccompanied folk gospel of Sacred
Charney to the mutant klezmer of Babylon Com, it won’t
surprise newcomers that the live show could take off in any
direction, numbers extending up to 30 minutes with the band
sometimes augmented by fans climbing on stage to add their own
contributions. An acquired taste perhaps, but certainly an
individual one.
8pm. £5. Jug of Ale
Sunday November 12
Less Than Jake

Less of the ska punk outfit they started life as, the
Florida boys have grown up (the lyrics now seasoned and
stained by life experiences and 15 years together) and moved
more towards mainstream poprock with current album In With The
Out Crowd, songs such as Soundtrack Of My Life, Overrated,
Landmines And Landslides and Hopeless Case clearly looking to
capture the same market as the army of chewy indie pop guitar
bands currently soaking up American youth record sales. Still,
you have to keep the old fans happy too, so trumpets and sax
and ska lope rhythms are back in action for the tour’s tie in
single, P.S. Shock The World (Warner), though ironically it’s
also one of the least interesting or memorable cuts from the
album.
7pm. £17.50.
Carling Academy
Sunday November 12
Show of Hands

Over the 15 years that Steve Knightley and Phil Beer have
been working together as Show of Hands, they’ve been quietly
building such a solid and substantial audience that they’ve
proven quite capable of twice selling out the Royal Albert
Hall. They look set to repeat the performance for a third time
next Easter. Not bad for what most consider just some acoustic
folk duo.
But while their roots may be in folk music, there’s much
more to them than that, embracing world music and rock in
equal measure, showing more affinity with names like The
Levellers than, say, Fairport. Certainly their current album,
Witness (Hands On), is firm testament to the musical and
lyrical muscle they pack, the fiery instrumental The Falmouth
Packet/Haul Away Joe displaying their global influences while
the songs largely take inspiration from incidents and events
around the West Country.
Witness itself celebrates the alternative lifestyle of a
Devon commune, the rousing Roots is a proud defence of English
musical heritage and identity and The Dive recalls an East
Devon father’s sea rescue of his son. Elsewhere Undertow sings
of being trapped in a small seaside town while Johnny Coppin’s
Innocent’s Song uses the image of Herod to address child
abuse, Union Street unfolds the moving story of the last
letters between a Royal Marine and his wife and, heading into
parable territory, The Bet spins a Tales of the Unexpected
story involving a car crash, a suitcase full of money, a
winning streak on the horses and a bitter twist.
Given the wealth of material they have, quite how much
they’ll be mining from the album remains to be seen but
chances are pretty high that the set list will include their
highlight version of George Harrison’s If I Needed Someone.
It’ll be worth the ticket to hear that alone.
Opening proceedings will be their mate
Martyn Joseph doubtless taking
the opportunity for another reminder of current album, Deep
Blue with its response to the world under Bush and Blair; How
Did We End Up Here forthrightly referencing prisoner abuse,
rigged elections and the economic agenda behind American
foreign policy and Yet Still This Will Not Be addressing
political self-interest and the ‘nurturing child soldiers with
the munitions from our factories’.

With a set likely to include old favourites This Being
Woman and Dic Penderyn alongside his riff on What If God Were
One Of Us and his staple live cover of U2’s Stuck in A Moment,
this is guaranteed to be as classy as ever.
7.30pm. £15.50.
Warwick Arts Centre
Monday November 13
Scissor Sisters

Despite shifting some two and a half million copies of
their debut album in the UK alone, some may have felt the
outfit were a bit of a novelty fun pop act who’s struck lucky
and wouldn't be able to pull off the same trick twice.
However, follow up Ta-Dah (Polydor) firmly silenced any
doubters, repeating their Leo Sayer meets the Bee Gees disco
parlour trick with kick off No 1 single I Don't Feel Like
Dancin' featuring Elton John on piano and echoing the man
himself on She’s The Man and Lights.
Onwards and upwards with the pub piano tinkling I Can’t Decide
(shades of 70s jugband poppers The Mixtures) showing dark
lyrical patches peering from beneath their sunny surface, the
Prince dancefloor grooves of Paul McCartney, while Christmassy
feeling ballad Land of a Thousand Words could grace any early
Take That album, The Other Side revisits Duran trying out for
Bond themes, Kiss You Off (one of the few numbers where Ana
Matronic takes over from falsetto voiced Jake Shears on lead
vocals) calls to mind 70s Donna Summer and Everybody Wants The
Same Thing takes the blueprint Robbie Williams lost along the
way.
In short, pretty much irresistible good night out pop music
though, as slow strobe effect bonus track Transistor shows
with its Gary Numan-esque industrial overlay to a Barry Gibb
squeak they’re more than capable of abandoning the glitter
ball and ripping off your sequins if the mood takes them.
Tonight, however, you’ll wanna party like it’s 1979.
Fresh from their own low key tour, Arkansas dance punk
blues trio Gossip find themselves in a brighter spotlight as
the value for money opening act. They’ll be laying down some
muscular groundwork with tracks from their Standing In The Way
Of Control (Back Yard) album, the bass throbbing Fire With
Fire seeing singer Beth Ditto crossing Janis and Hendrix,
Jealous Girls hammering out a CBGB’s pulse, and the nervy
keyboard underpinned Dark Lines prowling the city’s 2am
shadowy backstreets. Likely stand out though is Coal To
Diamonds, bringing the house down with a gutsy blues ballad
that crosses Etta James with Loretta Lynn.
7.30pm. £23.50. NIA
Monday November 13
Clocks

Hailing from Epsom, they four piece have been ticking
around since 2000, taking a further two years before making
their live debut. Four years later, they hit the tour bus in
company with their first single, That Much Better (Island), a
chirpy little pop number that, along with the sunny English
jaunt of In My Arms, bears witness to such influences as The
Beatles, The LAs, Teenage Fan Club and The Kinks. Well worth
giving them the time of day.
7.30pm. £5. Bar Academy
Monday November 13
To My Boy

The Liverpool futurist electro-pop duo are patently in
thrall to Sparks if new single The Grid (Abeano) and B side
Mono are anything to go by with their staccato rhythms and the
Mael-like vocals, though it’s possible that beneath the
poppity computer sheen you might also hear a hint of The
Undertones too. Not original perhaps, but undeniably
infectious fun.
7.30pm. £5. Little Civic
Tuesday November 14
Fishbone

Briefly big in the mid-80s when they were snapped up by
Columbia and released two albums worth of ska driven funk punk
nailed to skateboarder humour and social commentary, the ‘bone
have slipped off the rader in the past couple of decades. Even
so, they’ve now notched up a quarter of a century in the
business and, after a hiatus of six years, return now with
their 8th album, Still Stuck In Your Throat (Ter a Terre).
There’s not been too much of a change of sound and style in
the interim, Angelo Moore still blowing the sax between
singing, the music still deeply informed by the same
influences with tracks roving from the frantic ska jazz fiesta
party The Devil Made Me Do It and a shanty town Forever Moore
to the punk scoured Let Dem Ho’s Fight, and freakfunk workout
Faceplant Scorpion Backpinch. With toasting ranka Behind
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