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 Closed Doors and the old school Philly flavoured Party With Saddam set alongside their cover of Sublime’s Date Rape, they still sound fresh, promising some solid skanking and moshing on the floor tonight.

7.30pm. £12.50. Carling Academy 2

Tuesday November 14


FO Machete

Discordant minimalist noise pop from Glasgow, Paul, Callan and Natasha are raw, wired intense and yet deceptively melodic, variously drawing on references to Bjork, joy Division, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, all qualities that have seen audience numbers swelling and music critics drooling at their feet, On the road with Canadian punk rock crew Boys Night Out (touring their conceptual album Trainwreck about a guy in a mental institution coming to terms with the fact he killed his girlfriend), they’ll be spotlighting naggingly catchy recent single What’s The Signal (Simbiotic), lifted from upcoming debut album Blaze Of Flashes, and, no doubt treating one and all to their deconstructed cover of Olivia Newton John’s Physical.

 7.30pm. £6. Barfly

Tuesday November 14/Wednesday November 15

Muse

Currently ruling the roost among the hierarchy of UK rock acts, Muse are, quite frankly, colossal. And as befits their status, latest album Black Holes (Warner) is a majestic beast that strides confidently from the Prince-style electro funk of Supermassive Black Hole to the flamenco, mariachi brass and Ennio Morricone-style beats that thrillingly close the album with the triple punch of City of Delusion, Hoodoo and Knights of Cydonia, a surf-progressive rock epic complete with the sound of galloping horses.

There’s enough power here to run the national grid of a small nation, and while Starlight, from which comes the album’s title, may prompt the tired Radiohead comparisons, the fact is this couldn’t be anyone but Muse.

Even when they’re exploring new genres with dance floor grooves, fusing Queen, Depeche Mode and Bond theme moods on the unstoppable Map of the Problematique, turning to the unexpected tender lullaby of Soldier’s Poem with its 50s lounge crooner backing or conjuring a mix of the classical, tropical shores and military march beats on Assassin, their individual stamp, veined by Matt’s emotionally weary voice, is unmistakable.

And if the music is earth-shakingly potent, the lyrical content of songs is equally muscular. As the album title may suggest, there’s a certain apocalyptic note. The end of civilisation occupies Knights of Cydonia, unjustifiable wars and the death of hope inform Soldier’s Poem and Invincible while Supermassive Black Hole applies Stephen Hawking theories to an emotional metaphor for the state of humanity. On Take a Bow, they even see identity cards as portents for the end of the world.

But no band who can make such gloriously stirring music can possibly exist without finding hope in the darkness. And so it is here with Assassin, a call to arms to rise up and overthrow the world’s oppressors. Not bad for a rock n roll band, really. The gig? Monumental, what else!

Support comes from Noisettes, unveiling new single Don’t Give Up and previewing material from next year’s debut album What’s The Time Mr. Wolf?

7.30pm. £27.50. NEC

Tuesday November 14/Thursday November 16/Friday November 17

Cliff Richard

Not quite the presence he used to be and largely absent from radio these days, even so Sir Cliff still remains a busy boy. He recently launched his own wine (Vida Nova) and perfume (Devil Woman, what else) and found time to pop by the studios to lay down a series of duets for the Two’s Company (EMI) album that mixes up old collaborations such as She Means Nothing To Me (Phil Everly), Thrown Down A Line (Hank Marvin), Slow Rivers (Elton) and Suddenly (ONJ) with new recordings that team him with, among others, G4 on Miss You Nights, Daniel O’Donnell on not exactly wonderful new download single Yesterday Once More, and Barry Gibb for Fields of Gold.

The real diamond here though is a re-recording of his first hit, Move It, a hard (though still squeaky clean) rocked up version with Brian Bennett and drums and Brian May on guitar, though it’s unlikely they, or any of the duet guests, will be along to repeat performances for the live show. Quite what will be cropping up on the set list is anyone’s guess, though it’s pretty certain to contain a healthy splattering of classic hits, the odd medley or two and, as the festive season looms, his latest bid for the seasonal chart stakes, the immensely forgettable 21st Century Christmas.

 7.30pm. £45/£37.50. NIA

Wednesday November 15

Cara Dillon

An early Christmas treat for folkies, the Co Derry folkstress returns for another outing on behalf of new album After The Morning (Rough Trade), marking a definite push towards mainstream crossover evident on Never In A Million Years, the sort of Celtic soft folk rock you might expect from The Corrs while I Wish You Well takes in banjo and fiddle for a bluegrass sound likely to wake up American ears.

But it’s the trad flavoured numbers that are the strongest, many harking back to her roots and family with Brockagh Braes a song she used to sing as a child, October Winds written for her late father and the plaintive self-explanatory Streets of Derry. The self-penned Bold Jamie and the strings orchestrated The Snows They Melt The Soonest offer two further stand out moments, so it’s a slight disappointment that the album rather falls away in the final moments with Grace where limp love song lyrics let down the beguiling simplicity of the arrangement. The album should figure prominently on tonight’s set, though it’s likely to be her haunting cover of There Were Roses’ tragic tale of sectarian divides that’s going to be the one everyone’s waiting for.

8pm. £13. Glee Club

Wednesday November 15

Amy Winehouse

Though somewhat eclipsed by the buzz surrounding Joss Stone, the London born British jazz-blues talent still made an impressive entry into the public consciousness with her debut album of two years back, fusing her parents Carole King and Sarah Vaughan record collection with a contemporary hip hop and r&b stylings to emerge sounding like some 40s Black torch jazzer with a modern girl sensibility.

Now 22, she’s back stronger than ever with Back to Back (Island), opening single Rehab (where she talks of dad trying to get her off the booze) sounding for all the world like a cross fertilisation between Bobby Gentry and Aretha set to a 60s girl group melody and burping sax.

The jazz colours have been toned down considerably, replaced by more of 60s Motown and Philly soul flavours (she even titles the sassy blues lounge slink Me and Mr Jones in homage to Billy Paul), complete with doo wop backing, on forthright songs that pull no punches in their content urban contemporary woman sexual attitudes and content.

Short, sharp and not entirely sweet in its unapologetically blunt lyrics, it doesn’t make a fuss about itself, but with numbers like the piano moody Eartha Kitt-like title track, skittering speakeasy soul jazz Tears Dry On Their Own, the slurred and drugged out Dionne Warwick she becomes for Some Unholy War and the whisky fumed salsa of You Know I’m No Good, it has the assured confidence of an enduring classic.

Winehouse may have to work hard to recover some lost ground, but on the evidence here, if the booze doesn’t work its mischief and she’s as smouldering on state as she is on disc, then the world lies within her grasp.

7.30pm. £12.50. Carling Academy 2

Wednesday November 15

Subtle

Fronted by Doseone, the Oakland based six piece cart up the turntables, drums, bass, cellos, woodwinds and samplers to bring the word on new album For Hero For Fool (Lex) to the UK. Ostensibly a hip hop outfit with beat poet Dose doing the rapping, they also embrace more Zappa like experimental rock, electronica and urban psychedelia with metaphor laden, thought-intensive songs that deal in social issues on what’s essentially an allegorical conceptual album about a grim post-industrial 21st century seen through the eyes of the Everyman Our Hero Yes. And you can dance to it.

Or, more specifically, you can dance to current beats friendly single The Mercury Craze and, to some mutant degree, Midas Gutz and A Tale of Apes I, it might require a restructuring of synapses and a degree of chemical stimulation to get the limbs around things like the shifting time signatures of Middleclass Stomp, Bed To The Bills and Nomanisisland, the latter heading off into a vague Flaming Lips gone funk direction. Still, no reason not to just stand back, open the ears and marvel at the twisted grooves spraying out of the speakers.

7.30pm. £6. Bar Academy

Thursday November 16

Deacon Blue

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Scottish soul (and a bit of country) pop outfit’s long serving line up, 2007 that of their debut album. Reasonable enough time then to take to the road with a retrospective best of tour, conveniently accompanied by the Singles (Columbia) album. With remastered versions of their 16 Top 40 entries, they’ve also fleshed things out with three new tracks, current choppy blue-eyed soul single Bigger Than Dynamite, a not entirely memorable Haunted and, originally written for Ricky Ross’s solo tour, mid tempo big ballad The One About Loneliness. It’s unlikely they’ll find the time to run through everything, but it’s pretty much guaranteed they won’t be able to go home without playing such chart bothering gems as Dignity, Real Gone Kid, Fergus Sings The Blues, Chocolate Girl and, ironically their biggest hit, the smoky slow cover of I’ll Never Fall In Love Again. It would, however, be criminal if they didn’t find a space in the set list for Lorraine to take the spotlight with Celtic mist anthemic ballad Cover From The Sky, quite simply one of the best things they ever recorded.

7.30pm. £25. Symphony Hall

Thursday November 16


Kamila Thompson

After Teddy firmly established himself as his father’s son, now comes Richard Thompson’s daughter proving the illustrious musical genes have been equally inherited by the female side of the family too. Having supported her brother twice at the venue, she now returns to headline her own show, and while there’s not yet any music available early demos of such numbers as Cars, For A Dog To Chew and Little Boy Blue reveal she’s no slouch on the acoustic guitar either, her music leaning towards the English folk-blues end of the spectrum, her vocals moodily dark and loamy. It’s early days yet, but the smart money would advise getting in and discovering her before the rush starts.

8pm. £6. Glee Club

Thursday November 16

Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriguez

As songwriter (Angel of the Morning, I Can’t Let Go, Storybook Children and, of course, Wild Thing, which he still includes in his set), singer (many excellent folk-country Americana albums), gambler, drunk, and incurable romantic, Taylor’s had a pretty colourful and impressive lengthy career.

Now, at 62, he’s currently in the middle of a something of a renaissance. Returning to making music back in 1995, he’s since released the stunning Black and Blue America and a clutch of fine albums in tandem with Mexican-American singer and fiddler Rodriguez. While still a musical item (their last joint effort being Red Dog Tracks) and likely to cross pollinate over the course of the evening they’re each currently touring solo albums.

Seven Angels on a Bicycle is Rodriguez’s debut (though most of the 12 tracks are either written or co-written by Taylor), offering bluesy hoe down Never Gonna Be Your Bride, the waltzing Border town attitude on I Don't Wanna Play House Anymore and sleazed blues rock groove slink with 50s French Movie.

She's not got the strongest of voices, but she knows how to sock a number across, investing the ghost boned sensuality of Dirty Leather, the moody title track, a wistful Got Your Name On It and the haunting He Ain't Jesus, a song about an abusive relationship, with lived in character and real rich blood.

But, as ever spoken more than sung, it’s Taylor’s whispered dusty tones and tales that will command the evening, drawing from his extensive library of nuggets but also paying due attention to his new double set Unglorious Hallelujah/Red, Red Rose & Other Songs of Love and Destruction (Trainwreck). There’s some wry political commentary here, I Don’t Believe In That comparing the Iraq war with past conflicts and the loss of life, Hallelujah Boys an acerbic dig at two faced politicians and Thursday Night, Las Vegas Airport which, in its image of bombing Baghdad on one TV screen and football on the other, observes how war has become a spectator sport.

But he balances the political with the deeply personal, James Wesley Days a look back on life with his wife and kids, Christmas In Jail a memoir of a humiliating night spent in the drunk cell, I Need Some Help a reflection on addiction and Michael’s song a poignant tale of his guilt over letting down a homeless youth who later died.

Along with the likes of What Would Townes Say About That and Daddy, Why’d You Take My Guitar Away, it’s a pretty downbeat collection, which may explain why he counterpoints it with the second disc’s love songs. However, while witty, sexual and playful they may be, it’s fair to say that, with the honourable exceptions of One More Lousy Picture Show, Santa Cruz and Bride In Pink, they don’t carry quite the same impact as the companion set. Even so, Taylor’s dusty Van Zandt/Guy Clarke voice could probably have you spellbound even if he were singing a grocery list. Expect to be entranced, the man’s a legend.

7.30pm. £12. Little Civic

Thursday November 16

Show of Hands

Steve Knightley and Phil Beer hit the closing stages of their current tour, putting to bed another successful year that’s marked, arguably, their finest album yet with Witness and its songs largely inspired by historical events in their West Country home. If you’ve yet to taste the fruits, prepare for songs about communes (Witness), sea rescues (The Dive), and seaside towns (Undertow) alongside tales of child abuse (Innocent’s Song), gambling (The Bet) and English musical heritage (Roots), as well as material plucked from their rich back catalogue.The ever reliable Martyn Joseph provides support.

7.30pm. £14. Wulfrun Hall

Friday November 17

The Holloways

Their fiddle friendly, guitar jogging Cockerney ska pop recently exhibiting its joie de vivre across the Two Left Feet that came complete with a cover of old swingtime standard Hallelujah I Love Her So, they’re back on the road plugging debut album So This Is Great Britain (TVT). A rabble rousing bunch of good time tunes stitched with a social and political conscience on tracks like the Caribbean calypso bouncing new single Generator, Dancefloor, Malconented One, Happiness and Penniless, and Nothing For The Kids, they serve up an energetic and danceable brew, seasoned with shots of Madness, Sham 69, Clash and, you might suspect, even Chas n Dave.

 9.30pm. £6. Barfly

Friday November 17


Rodrigo y Gabriela

Things are going rather well for Dublin based Mexican guitar duo Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero. Their self titled current release became the first instrumental album to ever top of the Irish charts while their tours have seen increasing numbers of converts piling into the venues. If you’ve yet to discover their brilliance, they combine self-penned material with classic hard rock covers, giving them an acoustic Spanish guitar treatment. This time round they really take on the big guns with a sultry version of Metallica’s Orion and a truly remarkable interpretation to Led Zep’s Stairway To Heaven that’s likely to prove something of a set showstopper.

The original material’s no padding either, scorching from the opening with the fiery blooded rhythm shifting Tamacun and intricate tumbling Diabolo Rojo, conjuring passionate Latin sun evenings on Vikingman and the percussive Satori and inviting gypsy violinist Roby Lakatos to provide a blistering solo on Ixtapa.

Dazzling live performers with fast flying fingers that seem to defy the laws of motion, the gig is guaranteed to leave jaws hanging down to the floor.

Opening the evening will be Scottish singer-singwriter James Yorkston, serving reminder of his own current album, The Year Of The Leopard, a spare, folksy affair with gently rustic arrangements, the songs generally meditations and reflections on love in all its shades.
 

Warm, romantic and brushed with dew and cobwebs, the intoxicating charms of songs like the lilting I Awoke, the dolorous Don’t Let Me Down and the lazily lovely sun dappled Us Late Travellers prove a beguiling unassuming affair from the man with the jumper and receding hairline, one you’ll want to lie back, close your eyes and soak up as it washes over you with its world-weary magic.

7.30pm. £12.50. Wulfrun Hall

Saturday November 18

Chris De Burgh

Having enjoyed a string of Top 10 albums, the hits dried up around the same time it was revealed he’d had an affair with his children’s nanny. It might be coincidence, or it might say something about his predominantly female audience and their response to his somewhat smug contriteness.

Whatever the reason, he’s not bothered the singles charts in almost a decade, but while he may have fallen from favour (he’s rather pompously declared he sees little quality evident in repetitive contemporary pop music) there’s still a certain kitsch appeal to his melodramatic bombastic songs and operatically mannered vocals.

There’s certainly plenty of it in evidence on current album The Storyman ("I will be there where the eagles fly," "ravens stood on the walls of Jerusalem", come on!) where he invites listeners to ‘journey through space and time’ on a musical storytelling trip around the globe, roping in local sounds as he goes.

There’s a Russian choir on Leningrad, Africa’s Mahotella Queens lend their charms to Spirit and One World (which, let’s face it, has little of its own), Egyptian singer Hani Hussein duets on the Eastern flavoured My Father’s Eyes, BBC Busker of the year Kristyna Miles does the honours on Raging Storm (which sounds like some Lloyd Webber outtake) while De Burgh even enlists his old school’s choir to supply a cod Gregorian intro for the overblown The Mirror of the Soul.

Those who’ve stuck with him won’t be disappointed, however, with what is, to a large extent, a return to the sort of stuff he was doing around the Crusader, Far Beyond These Castle Walls and Spanish Train albums, and, kicking off his European tour, it’s a good bet that there’ll be plenty of chest swelling cinematic drama here tonight. And, of course, Lady In Red.  SEE COMPETITION - CLICK HERE

7.30pm. £40/£30. NEC

Saturday November 18

Scritti Politti

Having apparently become rather distracted by the joys of Welsh boozers, Green Gartside’s not exactly been prolific over the past twenty years. Cupid and Psyche appeared in 1985, then it took five years for Provision to appear and another nine before Anomie and Bonhomie. Now, he’s roused himself to make another, White Bread, Black Beer (Rough Trade), as sweet and bitter a set of jazz flecked blue eyed r&b and soul as he’s done, dreamily unfurling with homespun and occasionally (as with Dr. Abernathy) folksy, harmony rippled melodies and grooves, the sort of music Jack Johnson fans will get into once they’ve put away the surfboards.

The old Brian Wilson comparisons surface again on tracks such as the tinkling Snow In The Sun (which surely references God Only Knows in the lyrics), Cooking and the lengthy Mrs Hughes while thoughts wants towards Simon & Garfunkel at times during Robin Hood, Road To No Regret and the lovely loping After Six with its Punky’s Dilemma’s mood.

It’s a lovely, lazy and creamily lazy affair that, filtered alongside old favourites such as Wood Beez, Oh Patti and The Word Girl, will make you want to drift away in a haze of woodsmoke and fine ale.

7.30pm. £16.50. Carling Academy 2

Saturday November 18

The Enemy

Variously likened to Oasis and Kasabian, the Coventry trio recently signed to the resurrected famed Stiff label for whom they debut with 40 Days & 40 Nights, a track that rattles along in 60s British garage rock style but also veins it with a nod to the city’s Two Tone heritage with an undercurrent hint of reggae rhythms.

7pm. £4. Bar Academy

Saturday November 18


Ben Kweller

One for devotees of the Matthew Sweet brand of skinny kid guitar based power pop, the baby-faced Texan may not have the greatest voice in the world, but his somewhat naive nasal tones are well suited to the hummable melodies and bruised love songs in which he trades.

Following on from the sunny 60s pop and garage guitar rock of 2004’s On My Way, now signed to Sony and recently having entered the realms of fatherhood, his eponymous new album tends to stick around the same musical inclinations but with a more twentysomething take on the life of the heart and domesticity.

It’s a fine soft pop collection of world-weary and at times self-pitying ballads and mid tempo rockers that variously summon thoughts of Brian Wilson, Ben Folds, and (on Penny On The Train Track especially) Springsteen. Skip the closing This Is War which just shows he doesn’t do spiky jerking indie very well, and elsewhere you’ll melt away to the sounds of the sunny piano rolling folksiness of Run, a Pettyish I Gotta Move, wistful piano ballad romantic lament Thirteen and the classic American pop of Sundress. Give him a hit and he’ll be soon filling larger venues than this.

 7.30pm. £11.50. Barfly

Saturday November 18


The Killers

With Brandon Flowers swapping eyeliner for facial hair, ditching the glam and fully embracing his love of Springsteen and U2, the Vegas band’s second album, Sam’s Town (Vertigo) goes for the anthemic arena rock sound with a vengeance, littering the songs with highways, cars, and big dreams in small town America. They even sing about the Promised Land on Read My Mind.

They pretty much pull it off too, coming out racing on all cylinders with the gloriously overblown title track, unfurling the flags and firing the cannons as they thunder through the clarion call guitar riffery grandeur of When You Were Young, For Reasons Unknown, and Bones, almost putting Meat Loaf to shame with This River Is Wild and the rockoperatic Bling. And yes, you’ll need lighters to hold aloft and scarves to sway for the piano pomp ballad My List too.

It’s probably not a good idea to look too closely at the lyrics, where there’s little evidence of Bruce’s genius (‘don't you wanna feel my bones on your bones?’ hardly rivals ‘wrap your legs 'round these velvet rims and strap your hands across my engines’), but if it ultimately falls some way short of Born To Run there’s no denying it’s got a fine pair of legs that’ll take it the distance. What really intrigues though is what on earth the band’s new Heartland America sound and direction will make of the 80s Manc rock synth songs from Hot Fuss.

7.30pm. £22.50. W’hampton Civic Hall

Sunday November 19

Alabama 3

Forged in the cauldron of gospel, Deep South Americana, and techno dance, the ever elastic homegrown line up will be putting the emphasis more on the first two ingredients of their musical cocktail for this acoustic tour. Drawing on material from the Exile On Coldharbour Lane and Outlaw albums (hopefully Speed Of The Sound Of Loneliness and Have You Seen Bruce Richard Reynolds? included) as well as selections from their Last Train To Mashville acoustic blues reshaped covers collection, it’ll be a suitably Bourbon and cactus flavoured affair.

Support is London bluegrass Americana quartet Hey Negrita, plugging The Buzz Above, their current album much fuelled by singer Felix Bachtolsheimer’s break up with his girlfriend, an experience that haunts the bitterly melancholic acoustic shanty Abandon Ship.

Opening sounding not unlike a throaty meeting between Steve Earle and Joe Ely with Can't Walk Away, they slip swiftly into the twangy All About Me where Felix rings the vocal changes to come across like vintage Johnny Cash and The Message hints towards Tom Russell.

It's not a bad set of reference points, and while uptempo numbers Nine To Five, Good Times and Good Times aren't as strong as bar room ballad waltzes like the marvellous Celtic-folk Lust and Bones and the dappled Sunlight Hits Your Eyes or the banjo rippling waterfall tumbling rhythms of Penny Drops, the album and the live show warrant the strongest of recommendations.

 7pm. £10. Carling Academy 2

Monday November 20

New Rhodes

The latest outfit to channel the ghost of The Smith, certainly on new single The History of Britain and You’ve Given Me Something That I Can’t Give Back which even sounds like a title Morrissey might have come up with. Not that this should be taken of debut album Songs From The Lodge (Salty Cat), a rather good collection of chiming guitar spangles and bouncy tunes cloaking songs of variously depressed and optimistic romanticism. It’s true that James Williams has a habit of phrasing his vocals exactly like Mozza on too many occasions, but such familiarity tends to make the likes of I’m Bored With You, I Wish I Was You and Cowardice even more listener friendly.

They throw in a slow ballad, A Different Time, at the end of the album, but otherwise When We Were Young, Please Tell Me Something, Open Your Eyes and the rest are custom built to have both band and audience swirling around the room. They’ll be circling round bigger ones this time next year.

7.30pm. £7. Bar Academy

Monday November 20

Hayseed Dixie

The band were the highlight of the first Moseley Folk Festival earlier this year and regularly pack in the crowds, leaving jaws agape at their musicianship, but is the gimmick perhaps starting to wear a bit thin. If you’ve not come across them before, they basically take rock songs and give them bluegrass treatments, past albums having transfigured classics by such names as AC/DC, Kiss, Led Zep and Motorhead, sprinkling the set with the occasional number of their own.

Indeed, it seems the band themselves have acknowledged the need to stretch the concept a little, recent mini-album You Wanna See Something Really Weird (Cooking Vinyl) digging back into the archives to splash banjos over Bobby Pickett’s 60s novelty Monster Mash. It doesn't really come off, though things are more successful on Creedence’s Bad Moon Rising, a song born in the bayou and always asking to get a dose of banjo and fiddle. There’s some fine picking on Dead Turkey In The Straw while again having fun with genre titles they take a fiddle to the blues with Didn’t Wake Up This Morning.

It’s all masterfully played, but you can’t help feeling the freshness has run its course and that, if the band are looking to sustain a viable career then they need to start coming up with a fair few bluegrass originals to match their abundant abilities.

 7.30pm. £12.50. Carling Academy 2

Tuesday November 21

Karine Polwart

Two years on from her award winning debut album, Faultlines, the former Battlefield Band singer’s consolidated her status with Scribbled In Chalk (Shoeshine), an album that stretches further beyond the Scottish trad roots evident on something like Hole In The Heart and Baleerie Baloo into the CeltAmericana that colours the lilting I’m Gonna Do It All and the jingling Daisy.

Positivity and innocence is celebrated with I’m Gonna Do It All while Take It’s Own Time is a kick back and let things rolls by number, a mood echoed in Follow The Heron, a song about the Shetlands. But she’s no lyrical ingenue. The moody I’ve Seen It All details history repeating itself as towers are built and pulled down, with the infectiously hummable Maybe There’s A Road reveals itself as a song about prostitutio0n.

She’s less convincing playing the funky folk Joni Mitchell card on the choppy Where The Smoke Blows, but there’s few to compare when she’s in her rootsier moods, and with the new material mixing it up with the likes of Harder To Walk These Days Than Run, Azalea Flower and the award-winning The Sun's Comin Over The Hill from her debut, you can guarantee a night to remember.

Special guest is fellow Scot Freddie Stevenson, a folksy troubadour whose Body On The Line (Juicy) album reveals clear Paul Simon influences on the melodies and delivery of easy rolling folk flavoured songs like Lost American, My Fingernails Are Piano keys and Always Is A Long Word.

Having said that, there's times when he evokes a Scottish Van Morrison melded with a hint of Donovan and a wash of Jack Johnson, notably so on the lovely dusk tempered Heart Shaped Stone, the lilting slow dance of Not Real Careful and the hymnal flavours of Hangdog.

It doesn't all work. The Morrissey-like She's Chinese and the hustling along Rhythms of the Saints styled talking slide guitar blues What's The Sign For Love prompt an urge for the skip button, but for the most part this is a very promising debut by a name I'll guarantee we'll be hearing a lot more of, and if justice were to be done then If You Don't Kiss Me would be plastered all over Radio 2 for months.

 8pm. £12.50. Glee Club

Tuesday November 21

Gomez

Back when, Bring It On, won the Mercury Music Prize, Gomez sounded like a bunch of wannabe Tom Waits, growling out an American roots-blues frazzled shuffle and 70s southern soul laced with a sheen of techno hip hop lurches. Then, come fourth album, Split The Difference, they appeared to have reinvented themselves with a breezy collection of sunny West Coast psychedelic pop and lashings of 60s Beatles and Hollies influences.

Today finds them doing the round flogging How We Operate (Independiente), arguably their bets yet, a melding of both influences with Ben Ottewell on fine throaty form but with Ian Ball, who handles the laid back soul-searching Notice, and songwriter Tom Gray who sings his own lopingly jangly Girlshapedlovedrug, also more featured.

That said, it’s the Ottewell tracks that stand out, most notably the glorious Van Morrisonesque See The World, the album lifting whenever he’s upfront. It’s notable too that, for the most part, the Ball and Gray numbers are veined with an English folksiness while those Ottewell sings lean towards Americana. Quite who provided the Monkees influence on Tear Your Love Apart and Hamoa Beach is open to debate.

The reflective, acoustic folk blues Chasing Ghosts With Alcohol, the Mississippi waters lapping around its feet, is unquestionably the highpoint but everything here denotes a band with a continuing bright future freed from the hype of expectations.

More usually found headlining, Josh Ritter turns up in support armed with a new single Girl In The War (V2), a chiming piece of weary Springsteenesque folk-pop about Iraq lifted from current album The Animal Years with its lyrically hard hitting tracks reflecting his anger and confusion at the current political state of his country.

The single’s also loaded up with a hushed acoustic version, an early version of the stand out Monster Ballads sounding even more like something off Nebraska, along with three new tracks, Blame It On The Tetons, the very Don Mclean like wistfully reflective Harbortown and Peter Killed The Dragon, a sort of gospel nursery tale number that sounds like it was plucked from some early Donovan album. Yet further proof that the man’s heading for national treasure status.

7.30pm. £16. Carling Academy

Wednesday November 22

Ben Taylor

As becomes rapidly apparent from the moment he starts singing, Ben is the son of James Taylor and Carly Simon. He’s back promoting new album Another Run Around The Sun (Independiente) which, you’ll not be surprised to learn, is a mellow singer-songwriter affair peppered with melodic folk rock songs of love and loss, delivered with a laid back warm voice and a familiar Taylor guitar sound.

While influences of McCartney, Cat Stevens and Paul Simon might be detected, he’s decidedly his father’s son; there’s no rock n roll break outs here, but he and the band do a nice line in acoustic shuffle for I’ll Be Fine while Lady Magic and You Must’ve Fallen are easy on the ear examples of the jazz flavours that have also gone into the music.

The sunny slow swaying opener Nothing I Can Do is a perfect example of Taylor’s stock in trade while the gently upbeat One Man Day, break up aftermath song Digest and the beautifully understated arrangements of the wistful Think A Man Would Know just make you want to kick off your shoes and watch the world drift by. He may not yet be as well known as his dad, but if he continues writing and recording material as strong as this, his own legacy seems comfortably assured.

 8pm. £8. Glee Club

Wednesday November 22

Albert Hammond Jr

Taking time out from chart domination with The Strokes, their frizzy haired singer (son of the bloke who wrote The Air That I Breathe and When I Need You) hits the solo acoustic album trail with Yours To Keep (Rough Trade). Stuck in the groove fans would be reassured to hear Everyone Gets A Star and Back To The 101 sounding not unlike the band, but it’s the other material here that really shines. In Transit is classic jangling 60s pop, Call An Ambulance is lazy mellow in a Brian Wilson stylee, Scared all Costello and the delightfully twee Bright Young Thing a jaunty whistling tune with a plinking vaudeville feel. Best of all though is the opening Jack Johnson surf flecked swaying lullaby Cartoon Music For Superheroes. It’s rather lovely laid back and shimmering stuff, so don’t go spoiling the lad’s reveries by calling out for some cranked up selections from the day job repertoire.

7.30pm. £8.50. Carling Academy 2

Wednesday November 22

UFO

After what feels like umpteen decades, Phil Mogg, Pete Way and Paul Raymond are still flogging the swaggering boozy blues boogie rock that’s seen them through countless albums and at least two generations of fans. Now with newish recruit Vinnie Moore on guitar and original drummer Andy Parker back on sticks, they’re out on the road grinding through latest offering The Monkey Puzzle (SPV).

There’s nothing here to cause consternation among those who’ve dutifully followed them across the years and line ups, with guitar solos, thumping drum beats, growly vocals and old school rocking riffs lining up to play their part on numbers such as Black and Blue, Rolling Man, Hard Being Me and Kingston Town which, you’ll be pleased to hear, isn’t some wayward excursion into reggae covers, but more like a meeting between Whitesnake and Springsteen.

7.30pm. £16.50. Wulfrun Hall

Thursday November 23

Beverley Knight

Gay icon, soul diva and MBE (for her Christian Aid charity work), Knight makes a mid tour hometown stopover for a set built around her Voice best of collection, racking up 13 hits that include the likes of Come As You Are, Made It Back, Shoulda Woulda Coulda, Flava of the Old Skool, Gold (still her only top 10 entry) and her cover of Piece of My Heart which takes the original Irma Franklin template and gives it a run for its money.

Opening up is Reading born Blue Note signing Louise Setara, an Irish-Brit-Brazilian-Gypsy 18 year old who’s making something of a noise over in America with her debut album, Still Waters that’s seen her collaborating with Seal (who wrote gospel flavoured single Can’t Stop The River for her) and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, taking on covers of Springsteen and Dylan as well as penning her own material. This is basically a taster for the album, showcasing her soulful vocals and demonstrating the power she brings to ballads like Faith, Hope & You. It’s not out until next February, by which time the queues should be pretty deep.

7.30pm. £21.50. W’hampton Civic Hall

Friday November 24

Hummingbird

A new name, but you might recognise the singer-songwriter trio behind it. Wales based Amy Wadge was around these parts not too long back with her own current album of melodic, folksily AOR No Sudden Moves, while you really should be aware of Indonesian/Yorkshire string band family offspring Rosalie Deighton’s taking time out from recording the follow up to Truth Drug. Completing the line up is Dublin born, Lancashire raised Edwina Hayes whose debut album, On My Own, slipped out under the radar last year.

Taking their name from the brand of guitar Emmylou Harris plays, they’ve come together with three acoustic guitars and some fine vocal harmonies for a tour and rootsy acoustic album, They Don’t Make Mirrors Like They Used To.

Due for release in January on Happy Tree Records, they’ll be preparing the ground tonight with such numbers as Shine On (a track that bears out the female CS&N comparisons), the Southern folk soul Sing A Lullaby, a dreamy country sunshine dappled Under The Apple Tree, You Don’t Love Me Like You Should (sure to raise Be Good Tanyas references), the Dolly Partonish Pearls and the Sandi Thom co-written wistful title track and jaunty Live Your Life Laughing. They’ll be back on the road next March, by which time word of mouth should have expanded the audience numbers greatly.

 8pm. £8.50. Glee Club

Saturday November 25

Tiny Dancers

For those who like to keep track of these things, the five piece hail from the former mining towns of West Yorkshire and clearly spent their young soaking up their parents’ 60s records collection, then straining the pop through country, techno and punk filters. A debut album’s due next Spring, but for now they’re looking to start the ball rolling with their debut Parlophone EP Lions Tigers And Lions, a five tracker that ably shows off their ambition and abilities rolling from the marching 60s beat anthemics of 20 To 9 and Sun Goes Down (where the XTC influences surface), a glockenspiel tumbling playful Hemsworth Hallway, and the handclappy swayalong Russian Snow to the glam stomping Going Away where Billy Joel, the Glitter Band, and Beach Boys get together for a knees up.

With an eccentric stage show that sees them swapping instruments and filling the place with balloons, flowers and stuffed toys, the smart money should be taking bets that they’re going to be of the big names of 2007.

9pm. £5. Barfly

Sunday November 26

Christina Aguilera

She may be, as she sings, Still Dirrty, still winding up the moral guardians with a knowingly slutty image, but according to her current album and tour she’s gone Back To Basics (RCA). Which, roughly translated, means while paying homage to the soul legends like Otis, Etta and Ella on which she was raised by coming over all earnest to a sprinkling of samples.

It’s supposed to mark her arising phoenix like from the sex n leather of Stripped to become a serious artist in the manner of Aretha and Marvin. Now, to be fair, she belts it out in inimitable powerhouse R&B fashion on the likes of Ain’t No Other Man, Slow Down Baby, Steve Winwood collaboration Makes Me Wanna Pray and the relative ballad Oh Mother, but she’s more than prone to letting the lungs off the leash and slipping out too many oooh yeahhhs and so forth.

Still, this is what most will be there for so it’ll be interesting to see just how far she dips into the second disc on the album where she looks further back to the 40s with the likes of Candyman, Naughty Naughty Boy and the relatively laid back I Got Trouble.

Even so, it’s going to be difficult even for the most dedicated fan to keep a straight face during those poor me I’m just misunderstood and it’s a hard life songs, the embarrassing paeans to hubbie (The Right Man) or the quite dreadful tell me how wonderful I am fans tribute Thank You. At which point, cries for Genie In The Bottle might even drown out Ms A herself.

7.30pm. £35. NIA

Sunday November 26

Capdown

The skacore lads seem to go on forever, even though it’s been some while since they actually last released anything. Still, they make up for that now with this low key Kerrang sponsored bustle round the music halls in aid of new single Keeping Up Appearances (Fierce Panda). A predictably noisy outing, it shows off their new hard rock edge and, along with Serious Is Not A Sin, should keep the mosh pit occupied while waiting for the Wind Up Toys album next year.

7.30pm. £7.50. Barfly

Sunday November 26

Good Shoes

A chirpy little pop combo from Merton who are supposedly akin to classic British bands like The Cure but, at least on the evidence of choppy staccato debut single The Photos On My Wall (Brille) sound rather more akin to a dodgy union of Jilted John and Pulp. Still, worth trying them on for size.

7pm. £6. Bar Academy

Sunday November 26

Dirty Pretty Things

Former Libertine Carl Barat seems to be doing reasonably OK for himself with the new band, even if debut album Waterloo To Anywhere never quite reconciles keep fans of the old outfit in line and trying to reach new ears.

Which means there’s a lot of stomping glam rock along the lines of Bang, Bang You’re Dead and Deadwood spliced with the uppity pop of Last Of The Small Town Playboys, Blood Thirsty Bastards, Doctors & Dealers and Wondering. It’s a bit ragged and sounds somewhat rushed, but you can’t deny it’s not got some good tunes and that it bounces along with an infectious energy and cheekily likeable charm. Part of the so-called Thamesbeat movement, openers Larrikin Love have a fondness for bouncy gypsy rock, ska n soul that, on things like Edwould and Meet Me By The Getaway Car come across like a cross between Dexys and The Specials. They’re giving it some more stick for The Freedom Spark (Transgressive), an album generally studded with less than sunny references to their hometown and country, recent single Happy As Annie being an ironically chirpy tale of rape and murder.

A little uncertain of musical identity as they leapfrog between different sounds and comparisons perhaps, but Ed Larrikin has an appealing vocal catch and with the likes of the fiddle fleshed Celtic village dance clumper At The Feet Of Rae, the poppy Well, Love Does Furnish A Life and the boundingly Bluebirds-like joyous Forever Untitled, they seem set to shift a fair few albums until, if he puts his passport where his mouth is, the band sell up and move to the outer Hebrides.

7pm. £15. Carling Academy

Sunday November 26

Be Good Tanyas

It’s been a while, but Sam Parton, Frazey Ford and Trish Klein have finally found time to regroup and make a new album. Namely, Hello Love (Nettwerk), a fairly more laid back and bluesier affair than its predecessors, this time leaning less on reviving old tunes and more open to showcasing new writers such as Sean Hayes who contributes the halting stripped down vulnerability of A Thousand Tiny Pieces and Jeremy Lindsay’s prowling country blues Scattered Leaves. Oh there’s something called For The Turnstiles by some bloke named Neil Young too.

Not that the oldies aren’t here, represented by the slow waltzing brushed lullabying version of Nobody Cares For Me by Mississippi John Hurt and a couple of trad tunes, the blues spiritual Out Of The Wilderness, starkly carved out here with shuffling beat and slide guitar, and family Bible folk crooner What Are They Doing In Heaven Today.

Elsewhere, while not perhaps as strong as those from the debut, their own songs more than stand the test, with A Little Blues harking back to the jaunty newgrass mood of The Littlest Bird, the slow woozy and warm blues title track, and, best of all, Parton’s moving piano and cello ballad Song For R written for a friend dealing with addiction.

They’ll be sprinkling a goodly number of the new tracks around the set alongside old favourites such as Lakes of Pontchartrain, Broken Telephone, and In Spite of All the Damage. It’s also a fair bet that they’ll bring a smile to the face with the new album’s hidden bonus track, a fabulous loping mountain music rootsy blues take on Prince’s When Doves Cry that sounds like something cooked up after a heady day breathing in fumes from the still.

 7.30pm. £19.50/£17.50. Warwick Arts Centre

Sunday November 26

Vega 4

Quite why the ridiculously catchy single Traffic Jam didn’t storm the Top 40 I do not know, but the Anglo-Irish-Canuck-Kiwi quartet remain undaunted, their debut album You And Others (Sony) surely offering many more chances to tear down the chart walls with its infectious collection of emotionally uplifting, variously soaringly melodic and affectingly fragile, chiming guitar, heart-wringing songs as Tearing Me Apart, Let Go, Bullets and the slow swellingly anthemic Boomerang that should bring a tear to the eye of any Snow Patrol devotee. Indeed Life Is Beautiful could be Chasing Car’s twin brother. They deserve to be huge. Make it so.

7.30pm. £6. Little Civic

Monday November 27

Paul Carrack

A veteran journeyman of blue eyed English rock n roll, Carrack was the voice behind classic Ace hit How Long, part of Squeeze and can still occasionally be found adding vocals to Mike and the Mechanics. He maintains a respectable solo career too that, while not throwing up hit records, does support a solidly respectable base of loyal admirers. Filtering elements of Phil Collins, John Martyn and Paul Young into his smoky vocals, he variously leads from the front on guitar or gets behind the piano for the more ballad inclined numbers.

He’s out touring on the back of career retrospective The Story So Far, an own label collection of his best moments (it says Greatest Hits, but that’s pushing it) that embraces such diverse numbers as Tempted, a fine new solo version of The Living Years, BB King duet Bring It On Home To Me, his classic Satisfy My Soul, covers of When You Walk In The Room, Any Day Now and What A Wonderful World as well as new versions of the uptempo Dedicated and Love Will Keep Us Alive, a song he had covered by The Eagles.

He’s perhaps unfashionable in the current musical climate, but there’s no denying the man’s writing and vocal talents, and, delivering a solid live performance, you may be surprised at how many songs from his ‘low key’ career you actually recognise.

 7.30pm. £22.50. Symphony Hall

Monday November 27

Rattlesnake Remedy

A meat and potatoes blues rock band from Birmingham, after four years of knocking around the dives they’ve finally come up with their debut album, Magic Man (Bem). As you might anticipate, it finds them working their way through such staple blueprints as Gillan, Ozzy, Guns n Roses, Zep et al on live tested audience favourites like Killing Time, Free To Feel, Payin’ My Dues and the title track. Competent but unexceptional, they don’t discredit the tradition they honour, but with the notable exception of their fine acoustic waltzing ballad Don’t Say Goodbye, it does tend to prove much of a muchness.

7.30pm. £5. Barfly

Monday November 27

The Zutons

Winter may be setting in but the scousers remain in summer mood as they head back out for a reminder of recent album Tired of Hanging Around (Deltasonic), the sun positively beaming through on the Kinksy lurching Valerie and new single It’s The Little Things We Do. Yet for all the sunny bounce the songs themselves are veined with paranoia and a sense of threat; How Does It Feel? heavy with despondent lost love glumness, Secrets all nervy neurosis, Oh Stacey’s bouncy jaunt masking a story of suicide and You’ve Got A Friend In Me a song about stalking told from both perspectives.

But whatever the lyrics might be asking you to ponder, the music is talking straight to your twitchy limbs, Why Won’t You Give Me Your Love a glamrock stomp that vaguely recalls The Beatles’ Got To Get You Into My Life and the title track a happy dancefloor meeting between Dexys and Teardrop Explodes. So, while they may be feeling miserable buggers, you don’t have to.

7.30pm. £17.50. W’hampton Civic Hall

Tuesday November 28

Snow Patrol

Having discovered the market for big music anthems with yearning vocals and majestic melodies with Final Straw, it was pretty obvious that the follow up, Eyes Open (Polydor) wasn’t going to rock the boat with any swerve of direction. What it did do though was max it further, opening with the surgingly massive pop friendly chiming guitar riff and soaring Gary Lightbody vocals of You’re All I Have before heading into rousing thumping mid-tempo rocker Hands Open and the anthemic likes of Make This Go On Forever, Celtic flavoured ballad Open Your Eyes and current single Set The Fire To The Third Bar, a low key duet with Martha Wainwright that distils the album’s theme of emotional despair.

Last time round they picked up a Novello for Run, chances are that they could well repeat the trick with Chasing Cars, quite simply one of the most emotionally devastating end of tether love songs ever written. Prepare to see concrete weep.

 7.30pm. £22.50. NIA

Tuesday November 28

The Bluetones

Quite why, given such great pop singles as Slight Return, Marblehead Johnson, Cut Some Rug and Keep The Home Fires Burning, Mark Morriss and co haven’t received more respect and recognition is hard to explain. Still, they keep turning out quality music in the hope someday things might progress to an upper level. Following on from Luxembourg, they’re out doing their bit to spread the word on their eponymous fifth album, their first for new label home Cooking Vinyl.

As The King of Outer Space underlines they’re musically and lyrically frequently evocative of Squeeze, while local ears might think of Gerry Colvin on Fade In/Fade Out, a track written about Little Britain’s David Walliams.

Rather depressingly, the first single, the plangent chiming guitar wonderful My Neighbour’s House, failed to register but hopefully that’s just a blip given the abundance of such great tracks as the summery melancholy of The Last Song But One, Thank You Not Today and Hope And Jump with their subtle undercurrents of Latin rhythms, and the lope along Wasn’t I Right About You? The undistinguished jerky rock Head On A Spike is probably not the best choice to return them to singles chart favour, but such minor concerns shouldn’t blight what promises to a rather fine evening.

7.30pm. £13. Carling Academy 2

Wednesday November 29

Pink

"I don’t wanna be a stupid girl", she sings on the opening track of I’m Not Dead (Zomba). Well clearly Philadelphia’s very own Alicia Moore is anything but. Bursting with attitude, her fourth album’s reveals her a grown up rock chick, packing thing with proud guitars, lungs filled stadium anthems like Long Way To Be Happy, Nobody Knows, U & Ur Hand, the sweary rolling pop rock Leave Me Alone (I’m Lonely) and the title track that will have those who remember the classic days of Pat Benatar weeping with joy.

It’s not all ballsy gusto, Dear Mr President a stripped back folksy open letter to Bush, Conversations With My 13 Year Old Self teen angst ensconced in moody goth rock drama, The One That Got Away acoustic bluesy folk number invested with the spirit of Janis Joplin while I Got Money Now suggests what might have happened had Janis Ian been born into the era of scuffed hip hop r&b beats.

Interestingly Cuz I Can is a don’t mess with me 80s stomper that owes a considerable debt to both Slade and Soft Cell’s Tainted Love while bonus acoustic track, I Have Seen The Rain suggests that if she ever fancies it there’s a career waiting out there in coffee bar folk land too. Not tonight though, this is one to get the adrenaline pumped and your rock fists punching the air, for a powerhouse reckoning complete with raunchy dance moves and aerial acrobatics.

Support comes from Mudbone; once part of Bootsy Collins's funk conglomerations four years ago he met up with Dave Stewart and got turned on to the blues, the result being Fresh Mud (Influx Music) which brings together his old and new found musical influences, and throws in a nip of gospel and hip hop for good measure.
 

Opening on blistering form with funky voodoo blues groove Make The Devil Mad, you'll hear old school soul bubbling up on several numbers. Boy From Baltimore harks to Marvin Gaye's Trouble Man days, the organ driven gospel of Freedom's Coming conjures thoughts of Curtis Mayfield, Come Together Now' evokes The Temptations while Where The Wind Lives nods in the direction of The Isleys.

Temptation and tough times inform the lyrics, but hope generally wins out, providing the poppiest track with Pray, sounding a cross between Prince and the Lighthouse Family, and the rousingly anthemic, melodically infectious gospel Home. It's a remarkable album, and likely to prove every bit as much so live.

7.30pm. £26.50. NEC

Wednesday November 29

The Charlatans

Sixteen years on, Tim Burgess and the boys show no sign of wear, the Simpatico (Creole) album earlier this year seeing them getting down with some reggae flavours on things like City Of The Dead and Muddy Ground and NYC’s punk-funk of to complement their familiar Stonesy skewed guitar pop. The most typical embodiment of the latter, Blackened Blue Eyes, also pops up on Forever (Island), a handy compilation of their singles, embracing favourite oldies like dance floor fillers The Only One I Know, Indian Rope, Weirdo and How High alongside band classic North Country boy, the Dylanish strains of Impossible and the Jagger/Richards pout and strut of Love Is The Key.

Keeping their revived baggy heads on, new single You're So Pretty, We're So Pretty is a revamped version of the sleazy and slippery swagger track from Wonderland, firm indication they’ve got a good few more years in them yet.

Support is Manchester’s 'angular post-rock noiseniks' Longcut, giving extra boost to long awaited debut album A Call and Response (Deltasonic), their intoxicating amalgam of New Order, U2, Mogwai,, Massive Attack, and Sigur Ros affording a vast, intense affair, not least on the surging A Last Act of Desperate Men, tinglingly cascading A Tried And Tested Method,, the spacy swirls of Lonesome No More, and current single Vitamin C’s New Order dance pop.

 7.30pm. £22.50. Carling Academy

Wednesday November 29

Two Gallants

Hailing from San Francisco, the drums and guitar duo clearly have a love of early Southern blues and write songs that head towards the ten minute mark. Back promoting What The Toll Tells (Saddle Creek), an that, sometimes sounding like The White Stripes were they drifting cowboys, deserves to find them challenging for mentions in those best of lists.

Slow waltzing Some Slender Rest recalls Townes Van Zandt, Las Cruces Jail is a tempo switching ride through a rollicking throaty-voiced folk-blues stomper, Threnody in B Minor burning country blues, while the epic Waves Of Grain brings together Giant Sand, Thin White Rope, Dylan and Neil Young. They write striking songs too, The Prodigal Son an almost sea-shanty rhythmed, harmonica wailing tale of woes from a Southern black man that belies the fact they’re both white and in their early 20s.

Support is Cold War Kids, an LA five piece who’ve been around a couple of years over the pond and arrive now with their UK debut, We Used To Vacation (V2), and a buzz that describes the live show as a mix of Beta Band., Velvets, Dylan and Billie Holiday.

Lifted from their incoming Robbers & Cowards album, the EP title track is a woozy, cracked affair telling a tale of a family broken by a father’s alcoholism and sung from his perspective to distorted guitars and pounded piano. A bit of Costello, a bit of Waits in there perhaps. By contrast, Quiet, Please is rumblingly dose of Velvets narcotics with spare guitar chords and tumbling percussion while In Harmony In Silver and Expensive Tastes are stripped down skygazer Jeff Buckley whines. You can be guaranteed that this time next year they’ll be headlining to packed houses several times this size.

7.30pm. £6. Jug of Ale

Wednesday November 29

Futureheads

Having announced their arrival in no uncertain terms with Back To The Futureheads, the Sunderland boys are clearly in for the long haul with follow up News And Tributes. Getting right down to business with the crunching call-and-response Yes/No, cranking up the adrenalin punkrush guitars for Cope, hammering nails with Return of the Beserker and swaggering through a syncopated white reggae lurch on Face which sounds like the Police might have done had they spent a year listening to Gang Of Four albums.

Arguably it could have done with one or two more of the quieter moments, like the title track’s tribute to the victims of the Munich air disaster and the doo wop harmony laden Thursday, but, drawing inspiration from the likes of Fugazi, Sonic Youth and Pixies, their bold time changes and juddering riffs will grab you by the ears and drag you round the room.

Variously likened to Oasis and Kasabian, Coventry trio The Enemy give another plug to their Stiff label debut with 40 Days & 40 Nights, rattling along in 60s British garage rock style but also veined with a nod to the city’s Two Tone heritage.

7.30pm. £12.50. Wulfrun Hall

Thursday November 30

The Magic Numbers

Back with another dose of dreamy sun-kissed harmony pop with its 60s flavours and references that variously embrace such retro names as Lovin Spoonful, Mamas & Papas. Harpers Bizarre and, quite possibly, the Easybeats, strangely titled sophomore album Those The Brokes (Heavenly) again pairs upbeat melodies with melancholic lyrics.

Occasionally jaunty, as with This Is A Song and the stuttering pop Take A Chance, but mostly centring around wistful ballads, it does rather overdose on the relationship downers. There’s breaking up, broken up, worrying about breaking up, wishing you hadn’t broken up, can’t get over breaking up and wishing we could get back together songs. Enough romantic misery for a lifetime, I’d have thought. Especially when they run over five minutes.

No one’s going to rush to turn off the likes of Undecided, Let Somebody In or Slow Down just because they’ve had a bad affair of the heart, while the 21st century lounge of Carl’s Song, the Dr Hook sprinklings of the acoustic lullabying strummer Goodnight and Michelle doing Dionne Warwick singing Bacharach that is Take Me Or Leave Me are real high points; but after 13 tracks you do wish Romeo Stodart would take out a membership to a dating agency.

Along for the ride is Dublin singer-songwriter David Kitt touting fifth album Not Fade Away (Rough Trade), his first collection of original material since Square One two years back and featuring vocal contributions from his headlining chums. Retaining an abiding emotional concern with that thing called love as well as a photographer’s eye of his native city, not much has changed in his musical world. So, you get some rocky pop with I Know The Reason and Say No More, the barely there laidback wistfulness of a One Clear Way, Sleep, and the lazy Nothing Else and even some 60s bluesy organ work on the slow and moody Wish And I Won’t Stop. It’s a bit unfortunate that the most direct number sports a title that instantly precludes its funky techno pop from radio play, but after there’s more than enough here to guarantee that, while he may not reach lofty chart bothering heights outside of Ireland, Kitt’s not about to fade away either.

Bringing up the rear will be spiky synth clattering indie poppers GoodBooks, paving the way for next year’s debut album with Leni (Columbia), a Bowiesque offering of breathy worn down vocals and Supertramp stabbing keyboards that, rather disappointingly after the previous hypnotic Walk With Me, turns out to be a bit of a forgettable slouch. On to the next chapter, then.

7.30pm. £15. Carling Academy

Thursday November 30

Pussycat Dolls

Formerly dancers , the Dolls were dubbed the hottest new group on the planet by GQ. That’s a bit extreme, but they certainly stake a claim as the best litter of funky r&b pop in an overcrowded girl group market.

Debut album PCD (A&M) is stuffed with ridiculously commercial but sophisticated slinky soul n strut like sassy signature tune Don’t Cha, dreamy cinematic ballad How Many Times, How Many Lies while We Went As Far As We Felt Like Going recalls the vintage days of Labelle.

Elsewhere the evergreen Sway leads them off into Vegas Latin cabaret lounge, Right Now has a brassy samba rhythm and big Broadway musical feel, Hot Stuff hits the Eurodisco beat with panting breathy vocals and Feeling Good is all slinky E0artha Kitt meets Bassey torch song. Drop in the eastern rhythmic snakesway of the sexy stand out Buttons, creamy ballad Stickwitu, sassy pop nugget I Don’t Need A Man and their already fabled cover amalgam of Tainted Love and Where Did Our Love Go and frankly the likes of Girls Aloud should call it quits before the embarrassment proves too much.

Sharing the bill is hot 17 year old Barbados born babe Robyn Fenty, better known as r&b-reggae star Rihanna and recent chart dominatrix with S.O.S (featuring the Tainted Love sample) and the rather fine slinky sass fem attitude ballad Unfaithful, both lifted from her current mega-selling and slightly rockier A Girl Like Me (DefJam) album.

We Ride only managed to just crack the 20 (better than the US where it failed to register on the Hot 100), but, released to coincide with the tour, her Sean Paul duet Break It Off, should put her back on top while Kisses Don’t Lie and Crazy Little Thing Called Love (no, not the Queen number) will keep the live crowds happy. The album itself is being repromoted as a special edition with bonus tracks that includes Top 3 hit Pon De Replay and If It’s Lovin’ That You Want from debut album Music of the Sun.

Comparisons to Beyonce flutter in her wake, not unjustified with the likes of A Million Miles Away, and she patently has the looks and the style to keep the boys slavering, which, all in all, promises to be a pretty scorching opening act.

7.30pm. £26. NEC

Thursday November 30

White Rose Movement

The gig rescheduled from September, the East Anglians are infatuated with the sort of 80s synthpop wrought by the likes of Human League, Cure, Gary Numan, Japan, Duran and Spandau. A fact evident from the Kick album with its often glacial synth patterns and the electronica dance pop of such tracks as Girl In The Back and the title cut.

If you have the vaguest awareness of the New Romantic era, there’s not going to be anything new or surprising here but at least the bluesy tinged bass pulsing Alsatian, riff heavy Idiot Drugs, stroboscopic dancer Deborah Carne and the steamrollering Speed show they’ve got their xerox machine well tuned.

 7.30pm. £8. Barfly

Thursday November 30


Paul Weller

Now firmly one of our national treasures, Weller’s likely to be in retrospective mood for this relatively low key jaunt, tying in as it does with yet another gathering together of his best moments. Former label Polydor have stuck out Hit Parade for the Christmas shoppers, a 23 track collection of singles embracing his days with The Jam and Style Council as well as solo releases.

Pruned down from a 67 track box set perhaps, but no one’s going to be finding fault with this, embracing as it does the early days of Town Called Malice, Going Underground, and That’s Entertainment through the cappuccino soul of Speak Like A Child and You’re The Best Thing to the Traffic moods of Wildwood and The Changingman.

Since which time, of course, he switched labels to V2, for whom he recently released a live album and now follows up with the first of a series of non album singles in the shape of Wild Blue Yonder. Living up to the title, it feels like it should be bets heard in the middle of a sun baked desert, its acoustic trot very evocative of America’s Horse With No Name. Weller may make the occasional misstep, but he never goes far wrong.

7.30pm. £29. W’hampton Civic Hall