Thursday November 1

The Good, The Bad, and The Queen

While the Blur reunion remains firmly in the realms of speculation, Damon Albarn continues to enjoy his collaboration with former Verve member Simon Tong,  Tony Allen and ex Clashman Paul Simenon. Their eponymous album playing like a Parklife sequel with its ode to London’s grey cityscape of gasworks kitted out with strummy folk and scratchy electronica (History Song),   chugging pop (Herculean) and the titular fuzzed rock, they’re an intriguing live proposition.

Appearing here as part of this year’s Gigbeth Festival, they’re actually supporting Indigo Moss, the mutually  monickered New Cross sextet Tong’s signed to his Butterfly Recordings label. He’s also produced their self-titled debut album with its grab bag of skiffle, bluegrass, Brit folk and country banged out on instrumentation that includes washboards, mandolins and banjos.

That they have a track titled Dang Nabitt gives a reasonable idea of what to expect, and Nature Of This Town and The Sweet Spirits o' Cats a Fightin' duly oblige with wild hoedowns while Haven’t You Heard scrapes the Appalachian woods, Red Shoes sucks the country straw and Nature Of This Town conjures the ghost of Lonnie Donegan.

Meanwhile back on their native shores of influences, you can discern traditional home grown folk weaving through Suicide Song and Swimming. If you’re too young to remember The Boothill FootTappers, this is going to sound fresh and novel. If you’re not, well it still does. 8pm. £6. Glee Club

Thursday November 1

Jesse Malin

With a voice that sounds like a strangled Springsteen circa Born To Run filtered through Neil Young's whine around Heart of Gold, Malin used to front D Generation before he gave up punk and hair extensions and reinvented himself as a New York singer-songwriter. These days he's a streetwise storyteller weaving Springsteenesque tales of the Big Apple's helpless romantics, losers, dreamers and survivors.

The Fine Art of Self Destruction proved an auspicious calling card a couple of years ago, and now he's back with equally impressive follow-up Glitter In The Gutter (One Little Indian), offering further widescreen guitar rock laced with hooks and big choruses.  He even gets Bruce to duet on the Young-like Broken Radio while Ryan Adams' guitar is once more all over the place.

His themes remain much the same with songs about hanging on to your sense of self, defiant youth, reflections on growing up, surviving the daily grind and changes, finding love and, as the title says, those diamonds in the gutter.  Save for a Neil Young like reading of Paul Westerberg's Bastards Of Young, it's all self-penned material, hitting rousing guitar punk pop whirlwinds with In The Modern World, Little Star and Prisoners of Paradise,  striking Springsteen poses with the anthemic Black Haired Girl and filtering in hints of Mink DeVille with Lucinda and NY Nights. The view from this gutter looks particularly good. 7.30pm. £6.50. Carling Academy 2

Friday November 2

Gigbeth

The Morrissey devotees Boy Kill Boy are still slogging along, still clinging to a major deal despite the generally underwhelming nature of debut album Civilian. Still, at least No Conversation (Vertigo), the first single from next year’s Stars And The Sea follow-up, doesn’t sound like a Smiths copy. Problem is it doesn’t really sound like much at all other than a very ordinary and forgettable chunk of indie guitar rock. There’s a hint of better things in store with a taster of the soaring surge of Paris and the London’s Calling riff borrowing Promises, but I wouldn’t get hopes up too high.

A rather better proposition for the Gigbeth bill is Cannock outfit Guile who have welded the influences of the Velvets, Johnny Cash, Doors and Jesus & Mary Chain into a darkly muscular, shadowy psychedelic sound that pads like a panther dealing narcotics across such tracks as the Bible black country feel of I Walk Alone from their self-titled EP. Armed with equally potent storm gathering clouds as The Horizon and the spooked desert mood of  the spoken vocal Love Around Here, they’re definitely going to be making their presence felt over the next year.

Also parading their wares are another rather fine local outfit, Destroy Cowboy, who mesh riff happy heavy guitars with swirling synths in waves of tumbling melodies. They can conjure thoughts of Sigur Ros one moment with the icy soundscapes of  1000 Candles or turn your ears towards the soaring of Radiohead with Waltz Test while delivering an indie rock battering ram with the nervy juddering Needles of the Revolution. They’re supporting The Hoosiers later this month, so it’s worth investing in double pleasures. 7pm. £6 (£15 weekend pass). Barfly

Friday November 2

Untitled Musical Project

They’ve kept people waiting for the follow up to last year’s EP, but the punky Brum trio finally return with an eponymous 8 tracker debut album (Tigertrap) that clocks in at barely 16 minutes, exploding with the furious live energy and spleen of their live sets. What matter that the songs are over before you realise they’ve begun or that Keiran Duffy yells them out at such a rate you can barely make out what he’s singing some of the time. Listen to the Ramones on crack that is I Don’t Need You Honey, All I Need Is Rock, the yowling punk hammering cacophony of  The A Minor Pentatonic Scale or the hardcore bass jolting thrash The People Versus Michael Miller and the flurried assault of I May Not Be Jimi Hendrix But At Least I’m Alive and try catching your breath afterwards. Now get ready to sing along to the chorus of Endless Deodorant And Bad Shoes - “all you’ll get here is dead rock stars”. Don’t you love em already. 8.30pm. £5. Flapper & Firkin

Friday November 2

Paul Carrack

His first visit here in almost a  year sees the blue eyed rock n soul journeyman following up his best of compilation with Old, New, Borrowed and Blue (Carrack UK) an album that mixes up new recordings, remixes, and various covers. He sounds uncannily like a mellowed out Van Morrison on the opening What’s Shakin’ On The Hill, one of three contributions from Nick Lowe who keeps the mood sustained with Raining, Raining and the bluesier I Live On A Battlefield.

Armed with a tight backing band, Carrack’s in particularly good voice, bringing new colours to his versions of Crowded House’s Don’t Dream It’s Over and Kristofferson’s Help Me Make It Through The Night. And, while Ain’t That Peculiar never really catches fire, he doesn’t disgrace himself with the other Marvin Gaye classic here, What’s Going On.

He’ll be joined on tour by backing singer Lindsay Dracass with whom he duets on Love Will Keep Us Alive, a song written for the Eagles, so it’s a fair bet that’ll turn up on the set list too. There’s no support, rather Carrack will perform two sets, drawing on his back catalogue of hits with new numbers, acoustic versions and a bunch of soul standards. An underrated talent, he’s never had the commercial success he deserves. But then, when your boyhood dream is to perform with Ringo Starr perhaps he’s never set his ambitions too high.   7.30pm. £24.50  B’ham Town Hall

Friday November 2

Van Morrison

Relatively speaking, he’s been a bit quiet this year after what seemed to be an endless succession of tours and flood of recordings. There’s not even a new album to coincide with this spate of gigs but there is yet another addition to the best of collections with Still On Top (Exile), a double CD Greatest Hits compilation of 37 tracks that gathers together some of his best work in one place for the first time.

So, here’s everything from Gloria, Baby Please Don’t Go and Here Comes The Night from his days with Them and seminal Brown Eyed Girl from the 60s, through 70s classics Moondance, Jackie Wilson Said, Domino, Crazy Love, Into The Mystic, Warm Love and Bright Side of the Road to 80s nuggets Irish Heartbeat and Torn Down A La Rimbaud with picks from his 90s and more recent output including Stranded, Precious Time, Days Like These and an alternative version of The Healing Game.

Undeniably the cream of the crop in terms of his most memorable and signature songs, if you only own one Morrison compilation, this has to be it. Of course, cantankerous bugger that he is, chances are he won’t even include any of the numbers in his set list! 7.30pm. £40/£32.50. W’hampton Civic Hall

Saturday November 3

Gigbeth

Following up 2005’s Black Hole, Grandmaster Gareth and his chums head even closer towards mainstream accessibility with Funny Times (Grumpy Fun) which, save for the vague exception of the clockwork circus parade bouncing The Long Conveyor Belt, sees  Misty’s Big Adventure eschewing politics in favour of a break-up album featuring such titles as the jaunty keyboard driven My Home Is No Longer My Home, I Can’t Bring The Time Back and, with its ‘fight, fight’ intro, Home Made War, as in domestic rather than Blair engineered.

 Although there’s little bubbles here and there with spoken passages, whirlygig musical moments and perky time signatures, their quirkier tendencies have also been reined in. What emerges is very much a pop album that (on We Do! Do We? We Do! especially) could well see them being compared to Madness with hints of Squeeze, There Might Be Giants and even Split Enz. What is certain that, whether it’s the musical box pirouetting ballad Everything Goes Wrong, clanking fairground vaudeville How Did You Manage To Get Inside My Head?, the driving brassed up rock of Serious Thing or the naggingly catchy undulating sway meets Dexys brass of the hit in waiting title track, this is one of the year’s best releases and deserves to reach as many ears as possible. Go and revel.

Sharing the night, fresh from the Town Hall triumph, will be Shady Bard along with The Scarlet Harlots, Gravity Crisis, The Priory and The Riptide. 8pm. £6 (£15 weekend pass), Sanctuary, Digbeth

Saturday November 3

Sons & Daughters

Fronted by Adele Bethel, the indie Glasgow quartet released The Repulsion Box a couple of years back, now they’re hitting harder and more direct with their Bernard Butler producer third album, The Gift, due out early next year. So, to ensure advance orders are in early, they arrive now for a taster of what’s in store, headed up by first single Gilt Complex (Domino), a swaggering pop dervish with an Eastern European flavour that marries Blondie and the Banshees and should lay the ground quite nicely. If you’re good they might even throw in their stomping cover of Adamski’s Killer too.

Support from art school trio The Victorian English Gentleman’s Club who’ll again be digging their B52, Tom Tom Club, Talking Heads, Gang of Four and Devo influences out of the wardrobe to recap on songs like  the marvellous Under The Yews,  My Son Spells Backwards and Ban The Gin from their self-titled debut album with, one would hope  by now, a fair smattering of new material. 7pm. £8.50. Barfly (Also Wed Nov 14, 7.30pm, £8.50. Little Civic, W’hampton)

Saturday November 3

Dave Pegg’s 60th

Having just released the four CD A Box Of Pegg’s charting 43 years in the business, Acocks Green’s most famous bass player celebrates his sixth decade with a bit of a birthday party bash (it’s actually the day after, but who’s counting) and some old mates. So, you can pretty much expect some form of Fairport to be on hand to pay respects, alongside such names as Ian Anderson and Martin Barre, Steve Gibbons, PJ Wright, and Ian Campbell, all of whom he’s worked with over the course of his lengthy career and assorted musical projects. 7.30. £17.50. B’ham Town Hall

Saturday November 3

America

Coming together in London, the sons of American servicemen, it’s been 35 years since Gerry Beckley, Dewey Bunnell and Dan Peek climbed into the Top 3 with the immortal Horse With No Name (originally called The Desert Song, trivia fans). However, while they would chart two albums here that year, it would be their only UK Top 40 single, with not even the great summer driving classic Ventura Highway or Sister Golden Hair, their second US No 1, managing to break the one hit wonder tag.

Peek quit in 1977 and you’d be forgiven for thinking the band disappeared. Far from it. Although their star had dimmed considerably, the duo still kept turning out albums, even finding their way back into the Billboard Top 10 in 1982 with their You Can Do Magic single. Consistently touring for over three decades, they recently stepped out of the shadows with their first major label deal in 20 years, signing to Sony and releasing current album Here & Now, produced by James Iha from Smashing Pumpkins and Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schelesinger and featuring Ryan Adams, and, on covers of their own songs Nada Surf (Always Love) and My Morning Jacket (a tenderly lovely version of Golden).

Nothing’s must changed in their musical outlook and if you didn’t like their brand before, you won’t now. But they do make pleasant, unassuming, melodic harmony soft rock and songs such as Chasing the Rainbow, Indian Summer, All I Think About Is You, the choppy pop Ride On and the summer of love sounding Walk In The Woods are as easy on the ear as you could wish.

The release also comes with a bonus live CD from a  couple of years back, polished performances of the hits sitting alongside punchier numbers like Sandman and Don’t Cross The River showing they can rock it up a bit too.  Not just one for the nostalgia market. 8pm. £27.50. Warwick Arts Centre

Saturday November 3

McQueen

Born in Brighton, the all girl quartet storm into the ears on a flood of hammering dirty punk and scum-metal that makes the likes of such rock chick veterans as Girlschool sound like Boyzone. Raspy voiced singer Leah Duors can also deliver a ripped throat guttural roar to rival any of her male hardcore counterparts.

With Hayley Cramer on drums, Cat de Casenove (yeah!) on guitars, and Sophie Taylor hugging the bass, they’ve made quite an impression with debut album Break The Silence (Demolition), delivering skull crushing riffs and a ton of attitude, grinding through the title track or giving the melody lines a good kicking on things like Running Out Of Things To Say, The Line Went Dead, the snarly Neurotic, a Joan Jett barrelling Break It To You and the manifesto declaring Not For Sale.  Perhaps inevitably they have a track titled Bitch. They certainly rock like one. 7.30pm. £6. Little Civic, W’hampton

Monday November 5

Elvis Perkins

Let's get the facts out of the way first. His dad was Psycho star Anthony Perkins, his mother Vogue photographer Berry Berenson, the former dying of an AIDS-related illness, the latter being aboard one of the 9/11 planes. Understandably, their singer-songwriter  son's folk-rock debut album, Ash Wednesday (XL), is shadowed by songs of loss, death, memory and sadness. But, half penned before his  mother's death and half after,  it's a fine melancholy as, at times sounding not unlike a tremulous Loudon Wainwright fronting The Handsome Family, he muses on finality and mortality on things like the six and a half minute title track, strings finally sweeping in over the steady rim shot percussion, and the broken waltz of Emile's Vietnam In The Sky as he muses 'do you ever wonder where you go when you die?'  The simple acoustic lament It's A Sad World After All, keening album closer Good Friday with its churchy harmonium,  and the drunken lurch The Night & The Liquor keep the mournful introspection upfront, but it's not all so sombre.

The opening While You Were Sleeping (the most obvious Wainwright comparison) is a bittersweet reverie of childhood and mothers, the desert night gypsy folk moods give All The Night Without Love a lift while the jaunty la la la-ing May Day is a cheery tear stained stomp and the crooning torch-folk Moon Woman II dreamily floats on thoughts of love, albeit forbidden as he sings 'my shadow hungers for you but we must not ever meet'.

An album that seeps deeper inside the more you hear it, it's a heartwrenching debut.  Let's just hope Perkins doesn't have to go through similar shattering tragedies in order to make a second. 7pm. £8.50. Bar Academy

Monday November 5

B.C.Camplight

That’ll be skewed Philadelphia singer-songwriter Brian Christianzo, a man who, listening to cyrrent album Blink Of A Nihilist (One Little Indian),  you might believe was inhabited by the souls of Brian Wilson, the Flaming Lips, Burt Bacharach, Ben Folds, and Todd Rundgren. Often in the same song. Drenched in lushly orchestrated pop, mellifluously crooning sugar-candy harmonies, cosmic cruising guitars, plinkety pianos and widescreen soundscapes, it's all his own work, from the arrangements to every note played. It's all incredibly sunny, upbeat stuff, deftly encapsulated by numbers like the whistlingly buoyant The Hip And The Homeless, the euphoric tango Suffer For Two, tumblingly joyous show tune Lord, I've Been On Fire, the toe tapping shuffle Scare Me Sweetly and the genre cocktail of Soy Tonto which shifts from salsa to Spector pop. So, it comes a surprise to discover, suffering mental illness himself,  Christianzo trawled inspiration for his stories from a New Jersey jail and various mental hospitals, seeking out, as he says 'people that were in horrific psychological pain' for an album that's intended 'to make the listener awkward enough to recognise it is different and yet comfortable enough to want to keep listening.' These are love songs, but shot through with a sense of  schizophrenic unease,  Surf's Up meets One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest if you will. Go warm in his glow. 8pm. £6. Glee Club

Tuesday November 6

The Foo Fighters

They may never be held in quite the same reverence as Nirvana, but over the course of the past five albums Dave Grohl’s outfit have proven far more globally successful. And without selling out to commercial formula either. New album Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace (RCA) hones their blueprint to even sharper relief, opening with the trademark anthemic rocking The Pretender, flexing weightlifting riff muscle with Erase/Replace and swelling from acoustic to electric storm on the Kurt and Courtney inspired Let It Die while Long Road To Ruin is a banged out slab of hook heavy Foo pop.

 This, all balanced by the quieter, more reflective passages of the piano driven ballads Statues and Home, the Beatlesy Come Alive and acoustic strummer Stranger Things Have Happened.

 They’re will to try new tricks too. Summer’s End has them in swaggery Neil Young mode while, sadly unlikely to figure live, The Ballad Of The Beaconsfield Miners is a bluegrassy instrumental collaboration with jazz guitarist Kaki King inspired by a request by one of the trapped miners for an iPod of Foo Fighters songs. And lest there be any doubt that they have a mischievous sense of humour too, Cheer Up, Boys (Your Make Up Is Running) is a simple pop rush joke at the expense of moping emos.

With so many old favourites vying for inclusion (and they’re never going to get away without including Monkey Wrench or My Hero), they’ll probably only find time for three or four of the new numbers, but whichever ones end up on the set list, no one’s going home disappointed.

Support comes from System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian who’s taking time out for a solo career with debut album Elect The Dead (Serjical Strike). It is, as you might imagine, an ear-bleeding, flesh-lacerating beast with him bellowing and yowling like a banshee with a toothache through Empty Walls, Money and The Unthinking Majority as he laments the decline of the American empire.

Unexpectedly though, as with Sky Is Over,  he also takes off into the realms of operatic metal while there’s times (Saving Us), Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition is an almost straight wedge of juddering rock while, clutching Spanish guitar, Saving Us  sees him fancying himself a bit of a Balkan emo balladeer and the title track’s all widescreen brooding.  A little more conventional than SoD’s laws, but, on the whole, also a lot more accessible for more mainstream tastes. 7.30pm. £40. NEC

Tuesday November 6

The National

Brooklyn’s answer to Tindersticks with a dose of Joy Division, the Bunnymen and Leonard Cohen for good measure, they’re not quite as musically morose as that makes them sound. Not that baritone voiced frontman Matt Berninger’s delivery or his songs of isolation, angst fear of homogenisation and civilisation’s decline ever suggest he might one day pop up on Eurovision, but on Boxer (Beggars Banquet) there’s hot blood flowing through such numbers as Mistaken For Strangers, Brainy, Guest Room, the majestically swelling Fake Empire with its brass flourishes and a shuffling Slow Show while Squalor Victoria even subtly fuses U2 and The Kinks. 

Their more meditative moments are luminescent too,  applying a rippling acoustic massage with Green Gloves, folksily waltzing with Ada and staining tears on the haunting closer, Gospel.

There’s  myriad highlights here but the album’s heart beats strongest in the three song sequence that begins with the strumming uptempo Slow Show with Berninger at his Tindersticks best while keyboards waltz a cafe melody behind him. Then comes the Joy Division persistent drum beat of the hypnotic Apartment Story as a relationship begins to crumble before the lullaby chiming Start A War returns to sad resignation, disillusion and a last attempt to paper over the cracks.

They remain something of an undiscovered treasure, but hopefully getting out on the road to spread the word will finally lead more ears to discover the diamonds in the mine. 8pm. £11. Irish Centre, Digbeth

Tuesday November 6

Andrew Bird

The erstwhile whistling violinist with Squirrel Nut Zippers made his solo bow with Weather Systems, following in two years back with breakthrough album The Mysterious Production of Eggs, both marvellously weird,  beguiling chamber folk growers that threw up talk of Nick Drake, Jeff Buckley, and Rufus Wainwright.

Now he’s back with a third, Armchair Apocrypha (Fargo), that sees him stretching out into more immediately accessible realms, firing up the guitars and beefing the rhythms and percussion. The naggingly catchy Fiery Crash positively rocks out, in a gentle sort of melodic way, while there’s times on Imitosis where the drumming gets really crunchy. Plasticities toys with handclappy power pop (and glockenspiel tinkles) while Dark Matters soars right up there to Snow Patrol skies.

Romantic and anguished equally, forever pondering existential thoughts of self and death while the banjo plinking Scythian Empires takes an oblique look at the Middle East and doomed conquest and, one of several songs sprinkled with nature imagery, Small-Ohs casts its eye over eco matters.

Bird’s lyrics may not always be obvious, but there’s always an emotional resonance to hook you in and, of course, that soft, yearning and bruised ache of a voice to carry you away into the raptures.

He’s joined by Swedish multi instrumentalist Loney Dear whose Loney, Noir album affords shimmering, low fi folksy pop that variously calls to mind Brian Wilson (Saturday Waits),  Paul Simon (I Am John, Hard Days 1.2.3.4) and Roy Orbison (No One Can Win). Well worth an early arrival.  8pm. £10. Glee Club

Tuesday November 6

The Whip

Much praised practitioners of electro dance music, the Mancunians have been likened to  New Order, The Klaxons, and Kraftwerk though oddly what their new single, Sister Siam (Southern Fried) most calls to mind Manfred Mann’s Earthband circa their Somewhere In Afrika album. Having gathered new followers after supporting Hadouken, this campus tour seems them building a solid foundation for next year’s debut album. 8pm. £6. Cooler, Warwick University

Tuesday November 6

Hadouken

Banging dance floor tune smiths and remixers, they slam into town for a night of electronic grime-pop serving to wave a flag for Not Here To Please You (Surface Noise), their USB memory stick only release. A mixtape that throws together a bunch of remixes of old tracks (including a throbbing lager swilling Bloc Party remix of The Prayer) with six new jerking limb offerings, of which Bounce almost falls over itself in its tumbling rap and beats, dance-punk Love, Sweat and Beer sounds like a Prodigy classic in an Underworld stylee while both You Can’t Do That and a hammering Leap Of Faith see them exploring Nine Inch Nails pop brutalism. A new album’s due next spring, so this looks like being an interesting indication of where their heads are, er, heading. 7.30pm. £10. Wulfrun Hall

Wednesday November 7

Young Knives

Emerging from Ashby de la Zouch’s hotbed of indie rock, the trio’s XTC cum Pulp angular art rock found many admirers with their Voices Of Animals And Men debut and its English everylad songs about girlfriend’s parents, office boredom, small town depression and how life’s a shoddy affair no matter where you go.    Although his falsetto warbling moments sound disturbingly like Feargal Sharkey, singer Henry Dartnall mostly comes across as a provincial pop mix of Damon Albarn and Andy Gill, heard to persuasive effect on new single Terra Firma (Transgressive), a stridently marching beat  cruncher with strobe spraying guitars that bodes well for next year’s sophomore album. 7.30pm. £10. Barfly

Wednesday November 7

Karine Polwart

Those patiently awaiting her follow up to Scribbled In Chalk, somewhat inevitably delayed by the arrival of her first child, should take heart to learn she’s finished recording a collection of new songs for a spring release. She’ll be road testing a  couple here, most likely including her Joni Mitchell sounding Better Days which certainly gets the saliva working overtime to hear the finished album.

Prior to that, she’s also hawking around The Fairest Floo'er, an acoustic album of traditional folk songs that will be getting a hefty preview tonight when she’s joined by brother Steven Polwart on guitars and banjo and Inge Thomson on accordion and percussion. Throw in some of the old nuggets such as the CeltAmericana lilting I’m Gonna Do It All, the  infectiously hummable Maybe There’s A Road’s tale of prostitution and the crowd favourite The Sun's Comin Over The Hill, this should warm your very cockles. 8pm. £14.50. Glee Club

Wednesday November 7

Vincent Vincent & The Villains

Not exactly prolific, it’s been over a year since the London retro pub rock combo released their EMI debut Johnny Two Bands. Finally, however, here they are with the follow-up On My Own. A taster of next year’s album, it’s pretty much what you might expect if you know anything about then, a touch of Dexys rock n roll soul  (complete with the Rowland vocal roll) with a hint of calypso rockabilly and a song largely built around the title. Shakin Stevens and the Sunsets live. Homegrown support from ska-popsters Dexter. 7.30pm. £6.50. Bar Academy

Thursday November 8

Dodgy

Fronted by Redditch bassist Nigel Clark with Andy Miller on guitar and Matthew Priest on drums, the trio enjoyed minor success in the mid 90s with pre Brit-pop hits Staying Out For The Summer, In A Room and, their biggest, Good Enough. Then in 1998, Clark left to pursue (but never really find) a solo career, releasing one album and with a dance rework of Good Enough with SFG still waiting in the wings. The band slogged on with new members but, again, their album failed to rouse much interest.

So, earlier this year, the inevitable reunion was put together, a collection of  radio recordings released, and now here’s the tour. Don’t expect any new material, but if you’ve been pining for their 60s summery sound, make the most of the get together.

Support from Brum magicians Misty’s Big Adventure busy rolling out the welcome wagon for their rather splendid The Long Conveyor Belt album and its jaunty set of break-up songs. 7.30pm. £15. Carling Academy 2

Thursday November 8

The Hoosiers

The Trick To Life (RCA) having taken the top spot in the album charts on the first week of release, they can afford to shrug off iffy reviews whinging about Irwin Sparkes’ falsetto, the ELO, Supertramp and Cure influences and the supposed Radiohead aspirations of the carousel rolling  Run Rabbit Run.

No, I’m not about to leap to their defence and take a bullet, after all their singles, Worried About Ray and the fairground pop Goodbye Mr A (which sounds an awful lot like early Jeff Lynn outfit The Idle Race), are undeniably irritating after the 30th play.

It’s fair to say that such numbers as Worst Case Scenario, the choppy wah wah waltzing A Sadness Runs Through Him, the bouncy Mika-esque title track and the relentlessly bouncy Cops And Robbers will prove likewise. Chances are fans will be about as interested in the slow ballads, Clinging On For Life and Everything Goes Dark, as the band themselves sound. But, built around a universally identifiable theme about trying to find your place in the world and the soul mate to share it with, for now, at least, their jugs runneth over.

Support comes from London quintet Grace whose Genesis/Bowie influenced Detours album now spawns new anthemic aspiring single Sink Like A Stone,  and local Sigur Ros admirers Destroy Cowboy. 8pm. £6. Barfly

Thursday November 8

Nancy Elizabeth

Having dropped the Cunfliffe surname since no one could pronounce it properly, the harp playing Lancashire folkie’s  busy plugging Battle and Victory (Leaf), an album that clearly wants to be thought of in the same breath as things like Liege And Lief, the first Pentangle album, Bert Jansch and other such 60s reanimations of trad folk.

Playing an assortment of instruments that also include melodica, dulcimer, harmonium, glockenspiel, khim, and bouzouki, it’s a bit unfortunate that her voice, reedy and a touch like a flatly colourless Sally Oldfield or Anne Briggs, too often works against her.

Which is a pity since, given the songs are all self-penned, she clearly has an ear for an authentic sounding medieval madrigal or ballad lament. Witness Off With Your Axe with its images of her home county’s industrial landscapes, a rumbling I Used To Try, the title track and Weakened Bow. Plaudits too for  tavern waltzing lurchalong, Coriander, a love song with herbs. 

Maybe she sounds better live, but while her musicianship is dazzling on the likes of  Hey Son, the drone What Is Human? and the mysterious, menacing Eastern tinged hammered dulcimer instrumental 8 Brown Legs, you have to work hard to listen when she weaves the stories. 8pm. £8. Taylor John’s House, Spon Lane, Coventry

Friday November 9

Kate Nash

Blame Lily Allen, in her wake there seems to be a never-ending stream of Larndan chav wannabes mixing up dance beats and savvy street poetry with urban kitchen sink tales of larging it and the like. Drama school reject Nash is at least one of the better examples, whose debut album, Made Of Bricks (Fiction) rises above the lazy female John Cooper Clarke comparisons with more shades that you might expect. Recent single Foundations was a naggingly catchy slice of  Streets pop, follow up Mouthwash  (another of her teenage confusion songs) builds on that with touches that wouldn’t be out of place on a  Squeeze album while the self-explanatory Dickhead finds her getting into the purring blues favoured by Nina Simone. Not that Nash is in anything like the same vocal league, but at least it shows she’s got ambitions. Likewise Birds, a lovely airy modern folk pop song about clumsy first love, the jaunty piano jogging 50s girl pop of We Get On’s unrequited love anguish, and the dark novelistic tale of Mariella that suggests she may also find a career writing outside of music. The press blurb’s suggestion that Merry Happy has shades of Joni Mitchell and Carole King is a bit wishful thinking, but the brassy clumping swagger Pumpkin Soup, the acoustic melancholy Nicest Thing and a clattering kletzmer Skeleton Song contain evidence that she’s mercifully not limited to that chewing gum Catherine Tate voice and delivery. At the moment she’s still a bit of a novelty, but don’t be surprised to find her going far in more than the one direction. 8pm. £10. Irish Centre, Digbeth

Friday November 9

50 Cent

Having lost out in the chart battle with Kanye West, Curtis James Jackson III looks to steal a march on the touring front but it’s hard to imagine how a live set is going to persuade those already turned off by the formulaic mix of dull r&b ballads and tired N word peppered gangster rap that makes up the Curtis (Shady) album. Just in case you’re not quite sure what you’re getting, Fiddy handily provides titles like My Gun Go Off, I’ll Still Kill, Fully Loaded Clip and Man Down.

Sadly there’s no such warning to prepare you for the dismal balladry of Follow My Lead with a bored Robin Thicke, vapid Timberlake collaboration Ayo Technology, a turgid Fire with Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger or the painfully bad Peep Show with Eminem phoning things in. Mary J Blige comes to his rescue on All Of Me, but she ain’t gonna be around waiting in the wings to pull his fat from the fire here. Small change, no refunds. 7.30pm. £35/£30. NEC

Friday November 9

Cherry Ghost

Taking his name from a Wilco song and inspired by the likes of them, Sparklehorse, Smog and Johnny Cash, Bolton’s Simon Aldred is all about country infused acoustic melancholy delivered with a nicotine stained rough edged voice. Shimmering debut single Mathematics conjured thoughts of fellow Northerner Richard Hawley while follow up People Help The People offered another strings soaked dose of romantic aching and yearning choruses.

Now he’s touting the full works, Thirst For Romance (Heavenly), and tasty fruit it is too, opening with the title track's night wind blown country blues title track while a haunted piano tinkles away in the corner of the lost saloon. His taste for Americana's evident too in the shuffling train chugging rhythms and chorus catch of 4AM's hymn to devotion and heartbreak, spare Neil Young like piano ballad Roses and the bluesy lope of Mountain Girl.

But that's not the only flavour here. Alfred The Great is out and out gunslinging rock n roll with crashing chords and driving drum beats, reminiscent of early Costello crossed with Bob Seger, Here Come The Romans a rollicking chorus line sax blowing swayer that sounds like Randy Newman demoing for a Southside Johnny dance party movie while, by complete contrast, Mary On The Mend is an eight minute, orchestrated Hawley-like rusted romance kitchen sink tale of a triple divorcee on a Northern estate. A very impressive debut and, if he’s half as good live,  a solid foundation for the future. Drink deep. 7pm. £9. Carling Academy 2

Friday November 9

The Mules

Oxford University graduates, this oddball five piece started out playing Dylan covers before graduating to their own short sharp jerky cocktail of folk, blues, country, cow-punk, silent movie vaudeville, jazz and mutant skiffle. Cue debut album Save Your Face (Organ Grinder), a meeting place between The Fall, Gang of Four and  Young Knives with hints of Talking Heads and Sparks, crammed with 15 shambolic, energetic art rock numbers spooled out with a raggedness that belies the musical abilities behind them.

While hardly what you’d call commercial, it defies you not to warm to the twisted charms of the lurching knees up Tule Lake Shuffle,  Ham Shank with its hot club Louis Jordan Egyptian shuffle swing, the fiddle frenzy title track, Devoesque alien abduction track We’re Good People, twisted funksting Polly-O or the deliriously quirky Plenty Warning. Should be an interesting live experience. 8pm. £6. Glee Club

Friday November 9

David Gray

It’s 14 years since the release of his debut album, A Century Ends, seven since he finally broke through with Babylon, so the Manchester born, Wales-raised singer-songwriter’s taking stock  with his first Greatest Hits (Atlantic) album. Looking back, you may be surprised to find he’s only actually had two big hits, Babylon and The One I Love, most everything else hovering around the lower reaches of the Top 20.

But never mind the width, feel the quality of things like Sail Away, Please Forgive Me, This Year’s Love and Shine (included here in a live version), while the inevitable new sales incentive new single You’re The World To Me is a fine, if slightly disposable, example of his Celtic troubadour style.

He’s never quite been as big here as Babylon threatened, eclipsed by the Blunts and the Morrisons, but his standard’s haven’t dipped over the years and he remains a reliable and ever listenable stayer. 7.30pm. £27.50. W’hampton Civic Hall

Friday November 9
CANCELLED****Tesla****  CANCELLED

Biggish in the 80s, the bluesy hard rock outfit fell apart in the mid 90s only to come back together seven years ago, Now, with Tommy Skeoch having left for good to be a dad and Dave Rude sharing guitar duties with Frank Hannon, they return to the UK with their Real To Reel (Future) album, a collection of covers of the music that inspired them.

 It’s an interestingly mixed set that ranges from Mott The Hoople hit All The Young Dudes, Sammy Hagar’s Make It Last and a riff grinding version of Sabbath’s War Pigs to Sly and the Family Stone’s psychedelic funk I Want To Take You Higher, Alice Cooper’s Is It My Body, ZZ Top boogie barrel Beer Drinkers And Hellraisers, and an elbowing swagger strut through Street Fighting Man.

And that’s just on the freebie disc, the one in stores has them riffing and stomping with the best on Lizzy’s Bad Reputation, Space Truckin’, Ball of Confusion and Honky Tonk Women while getting into slower bluesy waters with Zep’s Thank You, a leather and bourbon version of The Beatles’ I’ve Got A Feeling and Traffic’s  Dear Mr Fantasy. I doubt they’ll be able to not slip in some of the old favourites such as Comin' Atcha Live, Modern Day Cowboy, and Love Song, but even if they keep to the rock karaoke this should be a welcome reunion with long standing fans. 8pm. £16.50. JB’s, Dudley

Saturday November 10

Motorhead

A bit of a rock gods get together here with Lemmy and the boys doing their usual ear-bleeding best hammering through a set of the band’s blues-metal classics, doubtless to include Ace of Spades, Iron Fist, Overkill, and more recent assaults like Sucker and Under the Gun.

They’re joined by fellow veteran Alice Cooper with another lengthy, if a little hit and miss, career to draw on. His most recent release, Dirty Diamonds, was a self-parodying disaster, all the more disappointing after the return to early form shown on Dragontown, but, with follow-up Along Came A Spider due next year, hopefully just a temporary blot on the copybook.

The one to really get excited about though is Joan Jett who’s not toured here in like forever. Former singer with The Runaways, she’s only ever had one UK hit. But then that was with the enduring anthem I Love Rock n Roll, more than enough to keep her name well above the rock waters. And it’s not like that’s all she has to offer. Her versions of Crimson and Clover, Have You Ever Seen The Rain, Do You Wanna Touch Me and Everyday People are solid power-pop rock while it’s always been a travesty that Bad Reputation was never a world conquering hit.

She’s over with her band The Blackhearts touting recentish album Sinner, still on gunslinging ringing guitar form belting out  self-penned blood surging, beat crunching, dance friendly punky pop rock swaggers like the politically biting Riddles, Everyone Knows, Change The World , the infectiously catchy A 100 Feet Away and a stonking cover of Sweet’s AC DC. Jett doesn’t get anywhere near acclaim she deserves for either her music or the influence she’s had on the history of female rock, so it’s about time you got down there and showed some respect. 7.30pm. £32.50. NEC

Saturday November 10

Two Gallants

Over here last year with What The Toll Tells sounding like a drifting cowboys version of  The White Stripes, the San Francisco duo return now with their eponymous album (Saddle Creek) and more, but (at an average of five minutes) shorter, tracks showing their love of  early Southern blues and rustic Americana. And, of course, Neil Young and Bob Dylan.

Very much a break-up album, it allows singer Adam Stephens full reign for his self-laceration and cracked, tearstained ache of a voice on heart-splintering songs like Trembling Of The Rose, The Hand That Held Me Down, Reflections of the Marionette and Ribbons Round My Tongue.

Elsewhere he’s sounding pretty hacked off with the country’s administration and prejudices on Miss Meri, Despite What You’ve Been Told is a rowdy self-scalpeling while Fly Low, Carrion Crow digs into traditional acoustic folk blues of sober, thick-throated proportions. Top off with the rumbling cavernous Zep-like blues howl of My Baby’s Gone and you just know this is a date you need to pencil in the diary in big letters. 6.30pm. £10. Carling Academy 2

Saturday November 10

Make Model

For those keeping notes, this is apparently ‘therapy music’, put together by Glasgow’s Lewis Gale following his brother’s death and informed by influences ranging from Huey Lewis to Flaming Lips to Arcade Fire. The result of all this (now expanded to sextet format) is new single The Was (EMI), a shimmering shudder of breathy voiced pop with cascading melodies, wounded soul lyrics and big brass flourishes. Ones to keep an eye on. 7.30pm. £5. Barfly

Saturday November 10

Martin Simpson

Scunthorpe’s long-serving veteran of the folk scene with a well deserved reputation for his guitar playing virtuosity, it’s just over 30 years since he found a wider audience with The Golden Vanity, going on to form an acclaimed partnership with June Tabor.  Following on from his award-winning Righteousness & Humidity of two years back, he’s out plugging current album Prodigal Son (Topic), another collection of the self-penned and traditional. There’s a fine example of his love of American traditional and banjo plucking to be found on Pretty Crowing Chicken while other nuggets from the mists of time include Lakes of Champain, Little Musgrave, Andrew Lammie and trad hobo number Good Morning Mr Railroad Man. Of the originals, it’s hard to listen to Never Any Good’s tribute to his father or the instrumentals  She Slips Sway and  Mother Love, the former about his dying mother, the latter an ode to his baby daughter, without feeling a lump in the throat. Unfortunately, Jackson Browne won’t be around to repeat his contribution to Simpson’s cover of Randy Newman’s Louisiana 1927, a reminder of an earlier flood disaster, but it’d be worth slipping a note on the stage to try and persuade him to slip it into what promises to be a magical evening. 8pm. £9. Red Lion, Kings Heath

Saturday November 10

The Pigeon Detectives

I don’t know what it says about the Leeds band and their label’s confidence in the Wait For Me debut album but they’ve chosen to follow up Romantic Type with a new version of shouty pub pop debut  I Found Out (Dance To The Radio). There again, given the rest of the album’s xeroxing of Libertines, Kaisers, Arctics,  and Strokes maybe it’s understandable to try and milk whatever success they’ve already had. Not that there’s anything exactly dreadful about choppy guitar punky pop bouncer like Caught In Your Trap, Can’t Control Myself, I’m Not Sorry, 'Don't Know How To Say Goodbye and I’m Always Right but they do all rather tend to merge into one, especially given their habit of repeating the lines and assuming it’s a song. They should enjoy their place on the perch while they can, they’ll be going home to roost when the bubble bursts.

Support come from Yorkshire lads One Night Only fresh from the chart nibbling success of debut single You & Me (Vertigo), a catchy little piece of jaunty night down the pub with Chas n Dave indie pop with a fairground carousel melody and shouting background vocals. Not a great song by any means, but annoyingly hard to dislodge once heard. 7.30pm. £11.50. Wulfrun Hall

Sunday November 11

The Kissaway Trail

A Danish five piece with a thing for pink cravats, this lot could well be Denmark’s answer to Flaming Lips with less of the experimental psychedelics and more of the Brian Wilson influences. Their splendid eponymous debut album (Bella Union) is packed with the sort of euphoric pop music on which Arcade Fire have soared to great heights, tracks such as Forever Turned Out To Be Too Long, Bleeding Hearts, the anthemic military beat 61 and Tracy bursting like summer suns across a frozen landscape while still keeping clouds of melancholy in the sky.

With a fierce live reputation and reports of  numbers like Sometimes I’m Always Black,  Soul Assassins and Smother+Evil = Hurt transcending even the album’s splendour, they seem set to be one of the major names for 2008.

Opening up are LA labelmates The Autumns, a cinematic combo who favour soaring, at times operatic,  falsetto vocals, and  riffing guitars and crunching drums painting skewed rhythms. Epic rock that sews together threads from Sigur Ros, ELO and Muse while harbouring a deep desire for shoegazing days, their Fake Noise From A Box Of Toys album operates on a grand scale even if the songs generally clock in around the three minute mark. As the intro to Clem and the swathes of  strobing guitar on the Duran-like Boys denotes, you get the feeling that should the whim take them they could rock out hard and heavy but generally they seem to prefer the tinkling cosmic snowfalls of Killer In Drag, Night Music and The Beautiful Boot. The closing Oh My Heart suggests a worrying prog possibility they may morph into a latter day Yes, but for now they’re the time of the season. 7pm. £6. Bar Academy

Sunday November 11

The Imagined Village

A bit of a folk concept show this. Taking songs collected by 19th Century folk historian Cecil Sharpe and recasting them with modern musical textures intermingling with ancient, it’s the brainchild of Afro Cely System founder Simon Emmerson and brings together a stellar line up that includes Eliza and Martin Carthy, Sheila Chandra, Benjamin Zephania, Tuung, the Copper Family, Billy Bragg  and Paul Weller for the self-titled album (RealWorld).

It’s a fascinating, intoxicating listen with Zephanie and Eliza reworking Tam Lyn for the asylum seeker present day on an electro-reggae backdrop, Tuung putting Death And The Maiden through their quirky folktronica paces, Weller and the Carthys offering a fiery rework of John Barleycorn, Cold Haily Night getting a sitar and Dhol drum treatment, Chandra delving into English trad delivery with Welcome Sailor and Tiger Moth kicking up a fine pair of contemporary ceilidh feels with Sloe On The Uptake.

  Obviously, not everyone’s going to be along for the live performance, but Chandra, the Carthys, Chris Wood and Bragg will be present and correct, backed by a band drawn from  members of the Afrocelt Sound System, Transglobal Underground, The Bays and The Dhol Foundation, so it promises to be a bit of rousing night, doubtless climaxing with Bragg and the Young Coppers sinking their teeth into a bitingly fine  version of Hard Times of Old England that addresses such pressing rural concerns as post office closures and agricultural crisis. Folk music as it truly is. 8pm. £19.50. Warwick Arts Centre

Sunday November 11/Monday November 12

Stereophonics

Having taken time out for his underpromoted, depressing acoustic blues solo album Only The Names Have Been Changed. Kelly Jones is back with the rest of the gang following up Language, Sex, Violence, Other? with Pull The Pin (V2).

It’s a bit like a route march through as many rock styles as it can muster, kicking off with the steamrollering strobeing nu-metal of Soldiers Make Good Targets, playing in the swaggery Stooges garage on Bank Holiday Monday, rolling out the Coldplay carpet for the 7/7 themed It Means Nothing, doing Rod Stewart impressions with Stone, rummaging through old Oasis boxes for I Could Lose Ya, Pass The Buck and Ladyluck and tossing in a little acoustic crooning blues with Bright Red Star.

It sounds like they decided to make a straight ahead rough rocking album but, despite some provocative lyrics,  the result is all rather ordinary, well below the challenging standards of its predecessor and lacking any truly cracking songs that would deserve a place on some future best of compilation. There was much bluster around the solo album that this didn’t mean the band were calling it a day. Such rumours might be harder to fend off after this.

Support from rollicking Coventry rockers The Enemy. 7.30pm. £28.50. NEC

Tuesday November 13

Heaven & Hell

Not exactly the classic Black Sabbath line-up, but some metalheads apparently have fond memories of the years when Ronnie James Dio fronted them and Vinny Appice hammered the drum kit. So, to give a push to The Dio Years album, a compilation of tracks from Heaven & Hell, Mob Rules and brief reunion album Dehumanizer, they’ve got back together for a tour and even recorded three new numbers, The Devil Cried,  Shadow Of The Wind and Ear In The Wall, to flesh things out. Whether this means the set will wholly concentrate on tracks like Neon Knights, Die Young, Turn Up The Night, and After All (The Dead) or whether they’ll slip in some of the ‘real’ Sabbath classics remains to be seen. 7.30pm. £29.50. NEC

Tuesday November 13

Biffy Clyro

Having been  through the business mill,  the Scottish trio returned heads high earlier this year with the Saturday Superhouse single. They’re now consolidating things with this tour on the back of the Puzzle (14th Floor), an album that finds them parading their strongest work yet.  The opening Living Is A Problem Because Everything Dies is firm evidence of their decision to go for broke, an epic storm of riffing guitars and slashing violins that thunders like a hard rock opera showcase. It’s a feeling reinforced by 9/15ths with a gothic choir of Queen proportions and more apocalyptic violin.

But they do straight between the eyes direct catchy hooks too, Who’s Got A Match? and A Whole Child Ago all thrusting steel capped melodic pop with a jabbing beat while live favourite Love Has A Diameter and Folding Stars are songs built for nothing less than stadium anthems. If these don’t have the Americans on their knees weeping with joy there’s no hope.

And they do gentle too, the bruised balladeering of As Dust Dances and  the closing acoustic Machines as intimate and wounded heart as anything you could wish to hear. It’s going to take some hard work, but with a little luck this should finally make them the global conquerors they fully deserve to be. 7.30pm. £14. Carling Academy

Tuesday November 13

Example:

A Fulham rapper by the name of  Elliot Gleave (e.g, geddit), he’s one of the Mike Skinner posse, his inventive and well observed hip hop rhymes talking street stories of big ambitions,  rusted dreams, politics, knuckled hearts, brazen birds, and the state of the nation. With a video filmed in Chernobyl, kick off single What We Made addressed mankind’s penchant for turning invention into self-destruction, his Soviet trip rubbing off on the Georgian folk music backdrop to the tongue in cheek You Can’ Rap. The album, What We Made (The Beats) is out tomorrow so this is pretty much a launch night and a chance to check out the likes of the r&b shaded I Don’t Want and the wit evident in Popcorn & Fisticuffs, Posh Birds and Care 4 U. He’ll doubtless be taking it on the road in more regular venues next year, but this is a useful chance to check out a guy you’ll be hearing much more of. And, as he does with So Many Roads,  anyone who samples The Carpenters' Only Just Begun has to be worth a listen.  8pm. £6. Cooler, Warwick University

Wednesday November 14

Amy Winehouse

Rarely out of the tabloids these days with tales of drugs, booze, arrests and one word award acceptance speeches, Winehouse has become the distaff Pete Doherty, a self-destructive celebrity car crash whose wasted exploits have both overshadowed the music and propelled it to ever more massive sales.

Should she manage to drag herself on stage, however, she’s likely to serve reminder that she is first and foremost a scorchingly talented soul singer who marries Bobby Gentry, Eartha Kitt and Aretha in a cocktail of Motown and Philly with no punches pulled, sexually upfront lyrics. She’ll be digging deep into both her albums for tonight’s set, with already established contemporary classics like Me And Mr Jones, You Know I’m No Good, and, of course, Rehab. She might even chuck in her version of the Klaxons’ Valerie currently to be found on the Radio One Live Lounge album (BBC) which, coincidentally also includes You Know I’m No Good given the Arctic Monkeys treatment. Experience her now, who knows if there’s another Billie or Joplin lurking in the shadows.

 Opening proceedings is emergent guitar playing, black singer-songwriter Remi Nicole who’ll be looking to prove she’s not just another wannabe hitching a ride on the  Lily Allen chav bandwagon. It won’t be easy since My Conscience And I (Island) clearly paints her in the same mouthy Larndan pop colours with her colloquial lyrics and bubbly melodies.

However, persist and you’ll her much wider shades, drawing on her love of rock music, some ska roots and a songwriting approach that bears comparison to the Arctics in its social observations and cultural referencing.

The jaunty New Old Days is cheeky pubescent nostalgia name dropping Byker Grove, Kriss Kross, and Timmy Mallett, Go With The Flow a punky pop quickie career to date snapshot, Rock n Roll gives the finger to those thinking she should be doing r&b since she’s black, while Dates From Hell is a pretty self-explanatory dear diary about lousy boyfriends, Na Night celebrates her love of football and skateboarding, Tabloid Queen views celebrity culture through an unimpressed lens and Inside Of Me is a frank look at herself and the ‘Bonnie and Clyde driving through my mind’.

She’s going to find it hard to escape pigeonholing in the current fad boxes but the 60s Beatlesy psychedelia flavour to Soul Back, the jazzy acoustic brushing Fed Up (which underlines her Oasis influences) and the Eastern mazurka hints to Go Mr Sunshine are further proof that she’s about much more than kneejerk comparisons. I’d say Kirsty MacColl meets Liam Gallagher might be about right. 7.30pm. £20. NIA

Wednesday November 14

Martyn Joseph

A two set show, this afford plenty of opportunity for Joseph to include the ever growing pile of  gems from his extensive back catalogue with a showcase for his 29th album, Vegas (Pipe). Although the set list is an ever changing creature, among the former there’s always likely to be room for such nuggets as Sing Out My Soul,  Dic Pendaryn,  Working Mother, Good In Me is Dead, This Being Woman and Some Of Us as well as live favourite covers like One Of Us.

There’s certainly plenty on the new album to claim a similar place in the hearts of his army of fans. A more stripped down yet also more electric sound (with Coming Down taking a diversion into warm sax soaked jazzy blues) that puts increased emphasis on the lyrics, it again spotlights Joseph’s observational eye and humanity; the plaintive Kindness inspired by the Toronto homeless, the shuffling  title track a snapshot of a widowed cab driver veined with memories of Elvis and themes of hope, Nobody Loves You Anymore a sharp reminder the politicians and celebrities alike that you can fall as well as rise.

Elsewhere the quiet folksy strummed Things That We Have Carried Here celebrates the endurance of the human spirit, Fading Of Light offers a touching tribute to those fallen for the politics and mistakes of their leaders, and both Invisible Angel and Nobody Gets Everything celebrate the blessing of love. It’s another fine addition to a sterling body of work and a further guarantee of an evening of warm intimacy and great music. And if he doesn’t open the show with I Have Come To Sing then I’ll eat my latest copy of Passport Queue.  7.30pm. £16.50. Glee Club

Thursday November 15

Beach House

Brown, fallen autumn leaves, woodland dusk, grey winter days with frost nipping the air, those are the musical images conjured by singer-organist Victoria Legrand and guitarist Alex Scally on their self-titled debut (Bella Union). Her voice buried in the mix like roots under the earth, it’s narcotic stuff in the manner of Mazzy Star, Nico and Galaxie 500, ghostly, fragile lo fi melodies and lo fi waltzes more concerned with evoking the mood than musical perfection.

Songs such as Saltwater, Auburn and Ivory, the whispery bossa nova of Lovelier Girl, the frozen spaces inside House On The Hill and the dreamily languid Apple Orchard are undeniably lovely, soul massaging things; whether they can hold the rapt, quiet attention they demand in a live setting competing with the sound of  glasses, murmured conversation or even breathing, is another matter. 8pm. £5. Glee Club

Thursday November 15-Saturday November 17/Monday November 19/Tuesday November 20

Take That

Visually if nothing else, they have a lot to live up to after the over the top spectacle of the reunion tour, so this, the first set of shows on the UK tour (Howard recovered and back on stage) is going to be of particular interest to see what they’ve pulled out of the hat. Although Leona Lewis kept their Rule The World single from Stardust off the top spot with they should be in high spirits given the staggering success of  Beautiful World (Polydor) proved the response to them getting back together wasn’t just short lived nostalgia.

With both the glorious Patience and the more vaudeville like Shine both topping the charts (though I’d Wait For Life stalled outside the Top 10) and the album still selling by the truckload, the likes of Reach Out, Ain’t No Sense In Love, Beautiful World and the classy acoustic Jason spotlight Wooden Boat easily rival and in some instances outstrip their first time round hits.

No confirmed details of what shape the UK set list is taking, but if they keep to the same pattern as the European dates then, along with the new numbers you can look forward to It Only Takes A Minute, Everything Changes, Relight My Fire, Never Forget and, of course Back For Good, with Pray waiting in the encore wings. It’ll be tremendous.

Support is Sophie Ellis-Bextor but that seems to have been kept a closely guarded secret by all concerned. 7.30pm. £45/£25. NEC

Friday November 16

Alexisonfire

Emo by the book, the Ontario outfit head up a night of squally metal, prising out numbers from their speed metal paced  Crisis (Hassle), piledriving through the likes of frenzied new single Drunks, Lovers Sinners and Saints, the anthemic We Are The Sound and the delightfully singalong ditty that is  Boiled Frogs.

Less ear-pulping noise comes from the more radio friendly Saosin following the scaling guitars and anthemic of Voices with album live favourite You’re Not Alone (EMI),   a stock but still tremblingly good stadium filling ballad born to be featured on teen American drama series.  Finally, all guitar posing, head nodding and riff hammering, there’s Bright post-hardcore outfit  Ghost Of A Thousand splurging on debut album This Is Where The Fight Begins. 6pm. £13.50. Carling Academy

Friday November 16

Enrique Iglesias

If nothing else, you can’t accuse the fruit of Julio’s loins of not giving value for money. His current album, Insomniac (Interscope), contains a whopping 17 tracks, none of them under three minutes. Whether his decision to try for the clubby r&b market is to be equally applauded is another matter. The chap’s no Timberlake and the bump n grind of Push with Lil’ Wayne, On Top Of You and the Armand Van Helden remix of Not In Love with Kelis don’t do him any favours in the cred stages.

Mercifully then, most of the album stays close to the Latin tinged pop and swarthily moody ballads on which he’s made his name, at its best on the slinkily seductive opener Ring My Bells that could get a rock moist, Wish I Was Your Lover, the acoustic aching Somebody’s Me and the yearning trembling double act of Little Girl and Don’t You Forget About Me. One for a swoonsome date concert, just keep your fingers crossed it doesn’t feel the need to include the irritating Do You Know? (The Ping Pong Song), in either English or Spanish.

Taking time off between his Bev Knight slots, support comes courtesy of David Jordan whose debut album Set The Mood firmly marks him out as the  new Seal/Terence Trent D’Arby. 7.30pm. £32.50. NIA

Saturday November 17

Reg  Meuross

Formerly of the Panic Brothers and currently a regular in Hank Wangford's band, this is a rare venture around these parts by the West Country's answer to Martyn Joseph. If you’ve never heard of him, then do yourself a good turn and investigate. His second album, Short Stories, appeared three years back covering jangly piano pop (Your Face Again), bluegrass (Back Door Man), Brill Building pop (And They Danced), English folk (Roslyn Banks) and backporch gospel (Walking To The Light) on songs of love, family and keeping faith.

Most recently he released Still, an equally splendid affair that built on its predecessor’s foundation, adding a touch of trad English folk with The Poacher to the roots rock country that provides the main thrust. As before he sings songs of love and family, about searching for inner peace on My Nirvana, or being far from home in The Man In Edward Hopper's Bar, but, as on Do You Really Want My Love, there’s also references to broken marriages and relationships that have drifted apart. But there’s no bitterness to his songs, more a quiet acceptance that sometimes things change and drift apart.

With a voice often eerily reminiscent of Art Garfunkel, he’s a criminally unsung talent whose songs frequently touch poignant emotional nerves, and hopefully his set list tonight will include both Good With His Hands, the poignant tale of his father and the wife who left him, and its sequel, Don't Give Up, which finds compassion for a woman with an unsatisfied need to be loved, and, in a kind of forgiveness, acknowledges the influence she had in making him who he is.

There’s also the chance that he might try out some of the new material he’s working on, among them the story of the real Dick Turpin and Harry Farr, executed for cowardice in WWI , who last year, became the first soldier to receive a government pardon. Well worth discovering.  8pm. £9. Red Lion, Kings Heath

Saturday November 17

Raveonettes

A welcome return from Danish duo Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo with another dose of their echo-twanged 60s Spector and narcotics pop in the form of new album Lust Lust Lust (Fierce Panda). Getting back to their original fuzz drenched Mary Chain minimalism, it’s another glorious lysergic retro pop rush (You Want The Candy’s chorus sounds suspiciously like The Primitives’ Crash) to be injected straight into your arteries to experience the heady pleasures of the twangy noir Aly, Walk With Me and Lust and  the tumbling acid-sugar of Hallucinations, Black Satin, Blitzed, The Beat Dies and the tinkling nursery pop Dead Sound. Apparently they’ve been covering Joy Division’s She’s Lost Control in recent live shows, a treat that can only regarded as the cherry on the top of some truly fine icing. 7.30pm. £8.50. Barfly

Sunday November 18

Megson

Debbie Palmer and musical partner Stu Hanna started out singing in their local Teeside choir, a background that undoubtedly went some way to shaping her pure soprano vocals. As with debut album On The Side album, the current Smoke of Home  mix the trad with self-penned material, the former including Just As The Tide Was Flowing and Durham Gaol’s setting of a mine worker’s poem. Of the original material, murder yarn Lambkin and the jangling ghost story Sammy’s Song are reworkings of old tales while their 60s  folk-pop roots sound brightly through the chirpily downbeat Fell To The Breeze,  the politically charged Humanlands and the title track’s story of a northern girl seeking her fortune in France only to wind up dressed as Disneyland bear.

Mixing the newer material with old favourites like the trad anti-war Butternut Hill and their gorgeous break up song  More Than Me, if you’re already into the likes of Eliza Carthy, Kate Rusby and Seth Lakeman, they’ll slip down nicely. 7.30pm. £8. mac

Sunday November 18

Hot Hot Heat

If the first thing you heard off new album Happiness Ltd (Sire) was the catchy guitar pop single Let Me In, then you’d be understandably excited at the prospect of more of the same and a live set to match. Unfortunately, with the arguable exception of  the propulsive drive of Harmonicas & Tambourines and the Spectorish intro to Good Day To Die, everything else comes as a major let-down. The band don’t sound as if they’re much enjoying or involved with what they’re playing, and the feeling is catching with overblown arrangements disguising a paucity of  decent, memorable songs. A rote sounding new version of 5 Times Out Of 100 from their debut EP pretty much captures the problem, the band losing their old swaggering edge amid strings enhanced formulaic material that maintains their  established tempo changing approach but singularly fails to disturb the airwaves with a lasting impression. Worse, something like Outta Heart just plods while Give Up? sounds like bad Duran Duran. The album end son a forgettable ballad, Waiting For Nothing. A sentiment many may well endorse.

While they slip away, opening outfit The Thirst are clearly on their way up. Signed on the spot to his new label by Ronnie Woods after he saw them play, the Brixton boys mash up indie punk rock, reggae, dance and a dash of Eastern European trad folk with a vibrant garage band energy that percolates through debut out on the booze single Ready To Move (Wooden). On the downside, accompanying track On The Brink pretty much just repeats the same trick, to noisier and less effective ends. If the upcoming album shows they’ve got other shades to their palette then they could be one of next year’s bigger names. If not, then the hype may dehydrate all too fast.  6pm. £11. Carling Academy 2

Sunday November 18

Caribou

There’s not been any  Brian Wilson/Flaming Lips comparisons floating around for a few weeks, so here’s maths PhD Dan Snaith’s musical alter-ego to end the drought. Actually, listening to Sandy on the Andorra (CitySlang) album, older ears may find memories of 60s psychedelic pop names like Sagittarius and, er The Flowerpot Men, coming to mind too. Tracks such as She’s The One, Melody Day, Desiree and Eli are all very day-glo LSD dreamy spaced bliss outs floating on fluffy acid clouds with After Hours also suggesting the early Floyd albums while the synth pulsing Irene reminds you of his old Krautrock influences. Whether the aural intricacies to be found on the nine minute psych-out Niobe can be recreated live remains to be seen, but it's worth packing the joss sticks and hairbands and getting along to find out. 8pm. £7.50. Glee Club

Monday November 19

Beth Nielsen Chapman

Well, this looks like being a spiritually inclined evening of  soothing tranquillity. Her past two albums, Deeper Still and Look, informed respectively by her husband’s death and her diagnosis with breast cancer, both had hymnal qualities, touching on death, love and life. Now Prism (BNC) takes things a step further. A double disc, one is taken up with songs of devotion culled from myriad religions and cultures and sung in nine different languages, ranging from the Gaelic hymn Durrow, Tibetan chant Hymn To Tara, the Gregorian Veni Creator Spiritus and a setting of Farsi poem Bad-e-Saba to Zulu hymnal Masibulele Ku Jesu, Hebrew devotional Shalom Alecheim, a capella Shaker song In Yonder Valley and a Navaho chant.

Mostly self-penned, the other disc maintains the spiritual theme, celebrating the planet's peacemakers and the connections that bind all humans together regardless of religion and culture. Again musically eclectic on a global scale, embracing African, hip hop, soul, gospel and spare Americana, here you’ll find such titles as My Religion, Prayers Of An Atheist, God Is In, Thank You My Lord, Be Still My Soul (a 1752 piece with music by Sibelius) and the choppily upbeat That Mystery.

It’s not as God-bothering as it may sound and you certainly don’t have to subscribe to any of the faiths to appreciate and understand its sentiments. And, it goes without saying, that, whether the set list majors on this album or is well balanced with older material from her luminous career,  Chapman’s voice is a thing of shimmering grace and beauty, balsam for the heart and soul.

Putting you in the mood will be equally pure voiced special guest Julie Fowlis, a singer from the Western Isles whose Cuilidh (Spit and Polish) album is a collection of mostly traditional regional material sung entirely in Gaelic. You may not have any idea what’s she’s singing about, but the magic translates in a universal language. 7.30pm. £20. B’ham Town Hall

Monday November 19

Joseph Arthur

The softly falsetto voiced American singer-songwriter, poet and occasional artist remains more of a critics favourite rather than someone likely to boost record store turnover. But this clearly doesn’t limit his output. Thanks to the vagaries of  UK release schedules, he’s touring on the back of not one but two albums, the recent Nuclear Daydream and, recorded with his band The Lonely Astronauts, last year’s Let’s Just Be. Together that’s a whopping 28 numbers that will be mostly unfamiliar to fans here, so chances are the set list is going to be far more reliant on material from his previous three releases.

 There is, though, much to savour in the anticipation of which of the newer songs might figure. The most recent of the two albums finds Joseph in familiar mellow pop mood with numbers like  Enough To Get Away, Black Lexus, Electrical Storm and Don’t Tell Your Eyes, piano ballad Don’t Give Up On People evoking Lennon while When I Was Running Out Of Time recalls vintage acoustic Bowie.

 By contrast, while it has its softer moments in Chicago and Lack A Vision, the material on the band album, knocked together on first takes,  is altogether a more rockier affair; the opening  Diamond Ring all very Stonesy r&b, Good Life a fuzzing boogie with Bolan shades, Cocaine Feet indulging his occasional Hendrixisms, and coming over all psychedelic freakage with Spaceman.

Fans of Arthur’s acoustic guitar persona might find themselves drawn to the bar should too many of these surface tonight, though I suspect even he won’t be risking causing a mass exit with the 20 minute meshing of laid back introspection and discordant noise that is Lonely Astronaut. Some frontiers are perhaps best left unexplored. 7.30pm. £11.50. Carling Academy 2

Monday November 19

Sam Isaac

Apparently being touted as the new Get Cape Wear Cape Fly (which won’t mean much to 99% of the population), Isaac hails from Malvern and lists Bright Eyes and Ed Harcourt among his influences. There’s also perhaps a touch of  Billy Bragg fronting Snow Patrol to  upcoming chiming debut single Sideways (Big Scary Monsters/Alcopop) while A Cinematic Low reinforces the folksy rolling hills romanticism. Early days yet, but he could well put Malvern back on the musical map for the first time since Elgar started scribbling notes. 8pm. £5. Flapper & Firkin

Monday November 19

Oysterband

Veteran folk rockers of some 30 years standing and still featuring the founder member core of John Jones; Alan Prosser and Ian Telfer, their profile’s slipped somewhat in the five years since their last studio album. So, good to report they’re back with a vengeance for Meet You There (Westpark), an album that plays to all their strengths while augmenting the familiar violins, melodeon, guitars and accordion instrumentation with pedal steel, marching band and African marimba.
Musically and melodically, it’s a stirring set of songs, toying with rockabilly on Someone Somewhere, going 60s beat rock with Everything Must Go, hitting full on Celtic tang and chorus chant on Over The Water  (the sort of thing Runrig might have done at their peak) and swelling to anthemic ballad choral heights for Dancing As Fast As I Can. And, as you’d expect, they have something to say too, their political banners unfurled  for Here Comes The Flood’s attack on globalisation, lamenting the plight of Gypsies on Bury Me Standing and ranting at all those ‘self-promotors, self-deceivers....born winners born takers’ in the clatteringly angry Control. Good to have them out and about again. 8pm. £14. The Robin 2, Bilston

Tuesday November 20

David Garside

Having released debut EP Mr Wise back in July, the Birmingham singer-songwriter’s now gearing up for next year’s album. Doubtless he’ll be showcasing numbers tonight, the MySpace sample of Playground reinforcing the EP’s McCartney, Wilson and Ed Harcourt comparisons. 8pm. £5. Bull’s Head, Moseley

Tuesday November 20

Paul Heaton

With The Beautiful South finally calling it a day last year, Heaton’s now planning the next stage of his musical career as a solo artist. There’s nothing yet primed for release, but tasters from his MySpace page throw up the rock n soul of I Do, a bluesy rock The Pub and rumbling Johnny Cash chugging rockabilly The Kids These Days suggesting both album and gig could take off in any direction. She Rolled Her Own vaguely recalls Rotterdam (Or Anywhere), but it’s uncertain whether he’s now drawing a line under his past, so inevitable calls for  BS classics may or may not be well received. However, withdrawal symptoms can be alleviated with Soup (Go Discs), a 22 track best of compilation drawn from both his days with the South and (for those who remember Five Get Over Excited and Happy Hour)  their predecessors The Housemartins. 8pm. £12.50. Glee Club

Tuesday November 21

Slaid Cleaves

Described as Loudon Wainwright fronting Wilco, the Austin based  singer-songwriter also throws up such reference points as Dylan, Prine, Springsteen, Guthrie, Earle and Cash. He writes barroom stories about roads travelled, populated by dreamers and losers who don't know enough to lie down on the canvas, searching for or running from their hearts and souls. Six years back, Broke Down established him among the ranks of Texas troubadours, with the Wishbones album’s  beer stained barroom ballads and slap rhythm boogie confirming his right to remain there.

Unexpectedly, last year’s follow up, Unsung, sidestepped his material to feature that by his own favourite writers,  most pretty much unknown outside of their own circle, but generally covering the same ground as his own character-driven songs of the daily struggles faced by the ordinary man.

He’ll likely be throwing in a couple of those alongside self-penned nuggets like broken boxer saga Tiger Tom Dixon's Blues, the death of a jockey recalled in Quick As Dreams and Borderline’s tales of rising above life’s adversity, and, you’d hope, some tasters of new numbers too. 7.30pm. £12.50. Tower of Song, Pershore Rd, Kings Norton

Tuesday November 20

Marah

Following their excellent 2002 album Float Away With The Friday Night Gods, I have to confess I’ve rather lost track of Dave and Serge Bielanko's Philadelphia combo during which time two albums, a collection of outtakes and a set of Christmas songs have passed me by. However, acquaintance has been renewed with an advance taster of next year’s sixth album, Angels of Destruction (Munich), songs of religion, destruction, redemption and joy forged from the fire of Dave’s recovery from alcoholism.

Perhaps because of the experiences it’s neither in the alt-country vein of the early albums or (save perhaps for the Springsteen meets Los Lobos Santos De Madera)  the ringing guitar spiked pop rock from the last time I heard them. Rather it’s a largely meatier, harder rockier and piano boogieing affair, muscularly embodied in things like Coughing Up Blood, Old Time Tickin’ Away, Wld West Love Song and the Stonesy swaggering Wilderness and title track. There are quieter moments, with Songbirds and the jazzy 40s dance halls wing of Can’t Take It With You, but even here you can feel them flexing tough fibres. Bielanko says everything he’s been through has made the band better and stronger, on the evidence of the album they may need to reinforce the walls before the band takes to the stage. 7.30pm. £10.  Bar Academy

Wednesday November 21

Taste of Chaos

Hardcore noise comes in an explosive package of crushing riffs from several rising stars of the bludgeon rock genre. Utah outfit The Used parade their driving heavy emo putting the emphasis on their current, third, album Lies For The Liars, hoping to persuade the more disillusioned among the fans that tracks like Pretty Handsome Awkward, Hospital and the remarkably poppy With Me Tonight are up there with already established favourites from the earlier, tougher-minded albums.

Fronted by the wiry skeletal Frank Carter whose attention-seeking tends to manifest itself in audience baiting, getting tattooed on stage and generally throwing himself about, keyboard dominated Brit punks Gallows will be all screamy and shouty in hammering service if their  lyrically sordid and musically vicious album Orchestra Of Wolves, prompting outbursts of mosh pit diving during  reworked new single Staring At The Rude Bois, coming over all thrash metal for In The Belly Of A Shark and generally giving it plenty of clog with the likes of Just Because You Sleep Next To Me, Abandon Ship, and I Promise This Won't Hurt.

Then there’s Seattle outfit  Aiden  trying to claw back lost ground after the disappointing Nightmare Anatomy with current album Conviction (Victory) embodying its title manifesto in the punk pop driving Teenage Queen.  Unfortunately, the rest of the album’s all rather by the numbers in an attempt to repeat the formula over and over. There’s nothing inherently dreadful about such numbers as Darkness, Son Of Lies or big ballad moments like Hurt Me and Moment, it’s just that there’s nothing especially inspiring about them either. Chaos? Not quite. 5.30pm. £22.50, Carling Academy

Wednesday November 21

Josh Ritter

Three studio albums in and Ritter still isn’t the world conquering force that The Golden Age of Radio, Animal Years and Hello Starling should have made him. Unfortunately, the situation’s not about to change with his latest, The Historical Conquests Of Josh Ritter (V2). Again spotlighting his articulate lyrical prowess with clever references to cowboy mythology, the Civil War and nuclear physics, it’s a far more musically upbeat set of bittersweet songs that parade his Springsteen, Dylan, Neil Young, and Ron Sexsmith influences to catchy effect while adding extra big band brass colours, strings and piano to flesh out the acoustic bones.

But you can’t help thinking that while classy singalong rock, the likes of  Right Moves, Mind’s Eye and the barroom piano hammering Real Long Distance are probably just a little too out of step with the mass market to move beyond their radio friendly nature to translate into sales.

These and the early Dylanish rolling Next To The Last Romantic and  To The Dogs Or Whoever are certainly energetic pounders, but long time devotees who prefer their Ritter in more reflective, quieter mode may well be hoping the set list leans more in favour of the simpler, romantic bruises of The Temptation Of Adam, Wait For Love, Moons and Still Beating. Given the lad’s current ebullient mood, you have to suspect they may be in for a disappointment on that score, though  hopefully there’s still room for past nuggets such as Bone Of a Song and the still relevant Iraq themed Girl In The War. 8pm. £14. Glee Club

Thursday November 22

Great Lake Swimmers

Over from Canada, Toronto based songwriter Tony Dekker and his fellow band members play dust-coated, rural Americana with songs of worn down hearts and lovers' aches etched out with ghostly voice, acoustic guitar and occasional shades of  piano, drums, lap steel, and accordion. With two well received albums under their belt, they’re currently spreading the word on their latest, Ongiara (Nettwerk), again conjuring thoughts of Neil Young and Iron And Wine on the lovely aching Backstage With The Modern Dancers and Where In The World Are You Now while getting almost frisky with the bluegrass Your Rocky Spine and the almost bluesy I Am Part Of A Large Family. Talking in terms of loneliness, desolation and despair, they may not be the most uplifting of musical encounters but their soothingly reflective songs are a perfect balm for troubled hearts and firefly evenings. 8pm. £8.50. Glee Club

Thursday November 22

Efterklang

  Efterklang

A Danish five piece from Copenhagen who play otherwordly cinematic pop not entirely unlike Sigur Ros (but with a little less of the anthemic bombast), the recently released Parades (Leaf) features three separate choirs, string and brass quintets and church organ. None of which are likely to fit into the pub’s upstairs room, so the live experience is likely to be a rather more stripped back affair. Even so, that’s unlikely to much diminish the innate sculptural elegance and sun-kissed icicle nature of numbers like Mirador (very Polyphonic Spree), the marvellously titled gurgling Horseback Tenors, the Caligari cabaret oompah of Polygyne, the jazz textures to Blowing Lungs Like Bubbles or the widescreen epic canvas of Cutting Ice To Snow and Caravan. Take your own mental visuals and let them provide the score. 8pm. £8. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Thursday November 22/Friday November 23

Mika

Having proven far more than the one hit wonder Grace Kelly seemed to promise, it’s testament to the high camp falsetto popster’s appeal that he can pack in two sell-out nights. Having already scored a further two top 10 hits with Big Girl (You Are Beautiful) and Love Today, he’s recently notched up a fourth with Happy Ending, also lifted from his Life In Cartoon Motion (Casablanca) debut album. Whether he can justify going for a fifth (possibly the Pet Shop Boys ballad style Any Other World) remains to be seen, but he really ought to be seriously considering getting down to working on material for the follow up to avoid falling victim to fickle fame’s short term memory.

Support comes courtesy of Palladium who’ll be looking to tickle the fancies of those whose music preferences remain rooted in 80s pop wallpaper. Following on from the Happy Hour and High Five singles, they’ll be showcasing songs from next year’s debut album, The Way It’s Not, from which Greatest Dancer reveals they weren’t joking in citing The Police as an influence while, more worryingly, both Miracles and White Lady suggest they might well have the entire Styx and Asia back catalogues in their record collection too. 7.30pm/6pm. £18.50. Carling Academy

Friday November 23

Asobi Seksu

Fronted by Japanese singer Yuki Chikudate and guitarist James Hanna, the Brooklyn outfit are a sort of shoegazer Cocteau Twins crossed with My Bloody Valentine without all the ethereal bits and a touch more poppiness to go with the feedback and reverb. They’re here promoting Citrus (One Little Indian), an album that variously sounds fluffy cloud twee and urgently noisy with soaring swathes of  guitar storms, Chikudate both whispery cute and seductively wicked as she sings in both English and Japanese

Their 60s hearts beat affectionately on Thursday (with perhaps a hint of Cranberries) while Red Sea and Strawberries both hark to the shimmery punky pop of the early 80s  and New Years is just a sheer full on rush of cascading acid guitar waterfalls and sugar-sherbert vocals. Exotic Animal Paradise shows them doing both the dreamy astral ballad and the wall of guitar noise within the same number while, those who just want the dreamy touches should switch the dial to Strings with its tang of sea and surf while the catchy Mizu Asobi will catch you singing along even if the lyrics are in Japanese. They could just well be your new favourite band. 7.30pm. £7. Barfly

Saturday November 24

Michael Buble

Ray Quinn for grown ups, Harry Connick for those who like things a little smoother, Buble’s recently been looking to expand on the Sinatra lovers market with current album Call Me Irresponsible (Reprise) balancing the Frank flavours of That’s Life, The Best Is Yet To Come and the title track with easy soul with a cover of Me And Mrs Jones and duetting with Boyz II Men on the r&b flavoured gospel blues swing Comin’ Home Baby.

It’s slickly polished and Buble’s delivery is like double cream, whether he’s getting into the Latin of It Had Better Be Tonight and his interpretation of Wonderful Tonight, playing jazz piano lounge with Always On My Mind or reimagining Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man as a Tony Bennett standard. A lot more imaginative in his choice of material and arrangements than many of the swing set, once again he proves himself streets ahead of the competition. 7.30pm. £37.50. NEC

Sunday November 25

The Hives

Dressed in razor sharp ties and blazers, the Swedish trio’s a musically schizophrenic outfit, their The Black And White Album (Polydor) flicking between Stonesy garage and barroom swagger through surf punk and electro hip hop with breathless abandon.

On Well All Right! and T.H.E.H.I.V.E.S they join forces with Pharrell for whooping soul and robo disco funky beats respectively, Tick Tock Boom explodes just like the title suggests with throbbing Strokes riffs and wha hoo yelping, the instrumental A Stroll Through Hive Manor Corridors and the carnival burlesque Puppet On A String both set themselves up as a Tim Burton soundtrack audition. Those who prefer them rock n rolling won’t go wrong with the punk surging You Got It All… Wrong or the no frills head down Square One Here I Come while the world at large should bow down at the feet of the rowdy barrelling snotty nosed Fall Is Just Something Grown-Ups Invented with a rhythm and a chorus that sounds like Blink 182 were they an Oi band. Who cares if they don’t play anything from the other albums, this is a storming party time. 6pm. £15. Carling Academy

Sunday November 25

Jessica Rhaye

One third of a Canadian singer-songwriter package all playing their first UK gigs, New Brunswick’s Rhaye will be spotlighting her self-released Short Stories, a pleasantly listenable collection of folksy pop with a leaning to country delivered with a sunny twang and a hint of Beth Orton.

 The gentle lilt of opening track Wild Flowers sets the standard with acoustic piano ballad Forgotten  (a sort of folkier Tori Amos) and Chasing Sunsets keep up their end of the quieter passages while a slightly rocking Only One and the bouncy bluegrass flavours of Running For The Door and Holding Out aim straight for tapping toes.

Hailing from Nova Scotia, Dave Gunning is firmly in the storytelling mould of  fellow Canucks  Stan Rogers and Gordon Lightfoot, current album House For Sale (Wee House Of Music) showing just why he’s been making a name for himself and picking up awards back home. His songs are simple but engaging as he sings of being on the road (These Roads, Cowboy’s Dream), broken relationships (Fade On The Line), the decline of  local industries (House For Sale), the worn out working man (Hard Workin’ Hands) and men forced to live outside the law when times get hard (Nothing But A Song). Musically, he stays within fairly narrow boundaries but his melodies and lyrics invest the songs with all depth and textures they really need, and he does a fine cover of Robbie Robertson’s Twilight too.

The third corner’s mounted by Matt Andersen, another New Brunswick native who provides some musical variation with  his own label album Second Time Around providing the night’s quota of soulful rootsy blues. He’s got an easy going style, a throaty voice and  (as borne witness by Tell Me) a talented pair of hands on the acoustic and slide guitar), at times not unlike Ted Hawkins at others (as with the lengthy I Play The Fool For You) more Big Bill Broonzy. He’s no slouch on the songwriting side either with If I Can’t Have You, When My Angel Gets The Blues and the good timing Rollin’ Home and Leavin’ Blues sounding like solid bluesy mood enhancers while his Richie Havens influenced version of Bill Withers’ chestnut Ain’t No Sunshine is sure to be a live highlight.

With all three acts taking turns to back each other and, no doubt, coming up with a group effort somewhere along the line, this is a useful introduction to names you’ll be wanting to learn more about. 8pm. £10. Tower Of Song, Kings Norton

Monday November 26

Zico Chain

While the Manchester hardcore punk metal trio’s Food album displayed a welcome  pinch of melody here and there it mostly stayed true to the flesh flaying thundering Motorhead riffs and bleeding throat vocals demonstrated by Anaemia and Pretty Pictures, the  brain pummelling Junk giving even Lemmy a run for his money. They’ve lifted the bluesy swagger Where Would You Rather Be? as the tour tie-in single, a track which, perversely, sounds like a cross between The Stooges and Slade.

They’re supported by  Brighton based (by way of Toronto) outfit Cat The Dog whose name apparently reflects the tension and aggression of the music. Not so much though with Gotta Leave (Virgin), which is a fairly catchy little rock throbber filtered through the prism of Television, Queens of the Stone Age and 60s beat pop. More bark than miaow though and I suspect they’ve got live claws. 7.30pm. £6. Barfly

Monday November 26/Tuesday November 27

Kaiser Chiefs

The middle point between Oasis and the Buzzcocks, their debut album was a steamrollering collection of hook packed, chorus friendly pissed off, cocky and sarky young man songs. Now they try and pull the same trick off twice. And like all good tricks, while you’re still impressed with how it’s done, you’ve still seen it before. Not a huge amount has changed, the song still often relying on having the chorus or title line repeated over and over (seemingly forever on the end of The Angry Mob) while Thank You Very Much even repeats the same vocal and musical phrasings of I Predict A Riot. And, maybe because anticipation is so high, the songs don’t seem as catchy, as instant or as lasting.

Ruby relied almost totally on its pubby chorus, everything around it rather ordinary, while Highroyds and the almost boy band balladeering Try Your Best with its yawnsome stadium guitar solo sound like fillers and, for all the clever title, new single Love’s Not A Competition (But I’m Winning) is just Oasis lite.

That said, some tracks dig deeper; the lurching spidery folk My Kind Of Guy, a Beatlesy  singalong I Can Do It Without You, brief piano ballad Boxing Champ and, the Buzzcocks-like Everything Is Average Nowadays. The Adam and the Ants drumming of Learned My Lesson Well is fun too.

They’ve sharpened some of their edges, taking a swipe at tabloid readers with ‘we like who we like, we hate who we hate. But we’re so easily swayed’ of Angry Mob, but not only does Wilson remain lyrically very much in the doggerel kennel on Thank You Very Much and the sour Retirement he also sounds old and disillusioned before his time. No doubt two sell out nights will put a smile back on his face.

 Special guests are those barmy New York rockers We Are Scientists who’ll likely be testing out a few numbers from their new album in progress alongside the angular riffs, thudding bass and infectious riffing art rock dance tunes from With Love And Squalor. Whether they’ll be dipping into Crap Attack’s oddity collection of B sides and remixes remains to be seen, but if they do then fingers crossed they decide to treat one and all to the acoustic rework of Nobody Move Nobody Get Hurt, the witty Bang Bang Rock & Roll and the wholly unlikely cover of Spector nugget Be My Baby taking the ball out of the Ramones court and giving it back to The Ronnettes. 7.30pm. £25. NIA

Tuesday November 27

Queensryche

Formed in the early 80s, the heavy rock outfit have notched up 25 years and 15 albums, finding their biggest critical and commercial successes with concept album Operation: Mindcrime and Empire, the latter providing their first major hit single with the heavily orchestrated Silent Lucidity. However, the slide began with Here In The Now, compounded by label problems and line-up changes with fading popularity leading to cancelled shows and smaller venues. So, last year they looked to respark interest with a sequel to Operation: Mindcrime imaginatively titled Operation: Mindcrime II. It seems to have done the trick to some extent, providing the band with their highest charting album since 1997.

So, in a move designed to restimulate the faithful and provide a potted history for newcomers, they arrive now with their Sign Of The Times (EMI) best of collection, a useful opportunity to reflect on a musical spectrum that embraces jazz, acoustic and blues as well as heavy metal and progressive rock. Sometimes dismissed as a second division Metallica, it’s salutary to hear numbers like The Lady Wore Black, Jet City Woman, Real World, Some People Fly and the stadium swelling Bon Jovi like ballad Until There Was You and be reminded of the band’s own distinctive stamp.

The release comes with a bonus CD too featuring demo recordings, an acoustic I Dream In Infrared, the MTV unplugged Della Brown, a live Silent Lucidity and even a cover of folk standard Scarborough Fair with Geoff Tate doing his best Scott Walker. And, perhaps as a pointer forward, there’s Justified, a hard and heavy new track featuring founding member guitarist Chris DeGarmo. He won’t be along for the live ride, but this still promises to be a night worth repledging the faith. 7pm. £24. Carling Academy

Tuesday November 27

Rooney

Sunny California pop with the requisite ELO, Beatles, Cheap Trick, Weezer, Beach Boys stripes, this lot are fronted by Jason Schwartzman’s younger brother Robert (he acts a bit too having been in The Princess Diaries) and tend to suggest they might well be the American answer to The Feeling.

Certainly the Calling The World (Geffen) album is bundled with plenty of upbeat alt-pop hooks, radio friendly guitar solos and catchy choruses, notably effervescent on Believe In Me,  recent single When Did Your Heart Go Missing, the glorious Love Me Or Leave Me and, surely giving a small nod to George Harrison, Jump In My Bed.

You won’t find much of an edge to them and frankly the obligatory strings dripping yearning ballad Help Me Find My Way would be laughed out of any boy band training school, but if all you want are infectious tunes that send you home feeling lighter in spirit, then these are your lads.

Support, from this side of the pond, is provided by The Days, a four piece from Ivybridge who share a similar mindset, their Evil Girls (Atlantic) EP sounding as if they’d be much more at home over in LA with both the title track and Kate likely to prompt Ben Folds 5 comparisons. 7.30pm. £8. Bar Academy

Tuesday November 27

St Vincent

Formerly part of both Sufjan Stevens’ crew and the Polyphonic Spree, multi-instrumentalist Annie Clark now strikes out on her own with Marry Me (Beggars Banquet), a quirkily eclectic collection of art-rock pop that draws on influences as diverse as gospel, folk, jazz and classical. At times she harks back to the 20s or 30s, as with the piano instrumental We Put A Pearl In The Ground, but then again while Paris Is Burning may open with that vibe it soon takes off into skittering beats and Tori Amos style Weimar cabaret.

Elsewhere All My Stars Aligned begins with a piano line straight out of some wartime melodrama before sliding into a Patsy Cline torch to a backdrop of strings, choir and Ferrante and Teicher classical piano fills plus a snatch of the Bond theme, Now, Now throws together naive girlie vocals, squiggly electronics, guitar distortions and playground chorus while the whimsical Jesus Saves, I Spend features her caroling bom bom bom in the background. And then she gets down to a sly folk-pop swoon and Apocalypse Song breaks into a handclap rhythm solo.

Suffice to say, she’s constantly catching you offguard which could well make for an unsettling live experience if you’re not prepared to work with her. Those who fancy an art rock hybrid of Carol King and Tori Amos won’t be disappointed though.

Guest for the evening is Peter Von Poehl, a German-Swedish singer-songwriter who’s just released debut album Going To Where The Tea Trees Are (Bella Union). Of a decidedly European flavour with precious little percussion it leans rather obviously on the 70s and 80s, at times suggesting a nu-folk version of Howard Jones by way of Soulwax. All very restrained and languid with his voice sweetly air brushed, it’s fair to say he’s unlikely to prompt any sudden urges to get up and boogie but if you’re in need of music to gently soothe the troubled brow then the dreamy pop of The Story of the Impossible, Travellers, Scorpion Grass and the tweely titled nursery lullabying Tooth Fairy will do the job nicely. 8pm. £7. Glee Club

Wednesday November 28

Babyshambles

After the inconsistent Down In Albion, Pete Doherty needed something a little more head-turning to make you focus on the music and not his tabloid exploits, court appearances and general snotty attitude. Well, Shotters Nation (Parlophone) was a step in the right direction  with its shades of the early Who and the garage r&b of the Kinks (especially on Delivery and French Dog Blues) conjuring a distinctly 60s shaded English indie-rock.

Doherty sounds more engaged with his songs, notably so on Baddie’s Boogie tale of domestic abuse and sparse ballad Lost Art Of Murder’s nods to his fraught Kate Moss relationship.

It’s not all so consistent, with both You Talk and the cor blimey Blur goes punk of Side of the Road sounding tossed off fillers but when he can turn out something like the bluesy shuffle There She Goes or Crumb Begging Baghead which is vastly better than its title might suggest, then you’re almost encouraged to get along in the hope he’ll turn up and not do an Amy if he does.

They’re teamed up here with Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong who, if you can excuse the Dolly Parton pun, are a fairly nifty jerky pop outfit who cite Smokey Robinson and Big Star among their influences. Merging the Jam and XTC, the slightly calypso flavoured debut single Lucio Stars Fires (Young and Lost Club) served as a promising two minute announcement of intent so it’ll be interesting to hear what else they have up their collective sleeve. Also putting in their contribution to Doherty not having to spend too long on stage, further support sets come courtesy of Dizzee Rascal and The View. 7.30pm. £23.50. NEC

Wednesday November 28

Lynn Miles

One of the leading lights of the Canadian country scene. Miles once worked as voice teacher with one of her students being a 14 year old Alanis Morrisette. These days, she’s putting her own pipes to good use. most recently on Love Sweet Love (Rounder), a collection of songs about up and down relationships, emotional openness and the scars left behind. The right side of mainstream country, close to the Americana border, it’s a perfect showcase for her affecting vocals and well crafted melodies as likely to appeal to fans of Suzy Bogguss as Emmylou admirers.

Opening with the easy rolling Flames of Love, she serves up a clutch of highlights with numbers like the late night open skies yearning of Night Drive, a banjo dappled This Is The Night, the twangy open road rolling 8 Hour Drive, a chorus catchy waltzing Rainmaker and the plaintive gospel-infused ballad Trying Not To Be So Sad. Best of all though is the title track, a drum beat tumbling, train rhythm chug with a beat and a soaring chorus that, once heard, refuses to budge from the head. She may not yet be that well known over here, but it’s a guarantee that those who catch the show will be spreading the word with fervour.

  Opening proceedings is fellow Canadian Alana Levandoski whose debut album, Unsettled Down, pulls together influences of gospel, folk and country to entrancing effect. Like Miles, the sound evokes the widescreen Canadian panoramas while Levandoski’s  twangy crystal voice is often reminiscent of both Nanci Griffith and the young Emmylou Harris. Drawing on her and her family’s lives, songs variously concern her childhood (Prairie Sun),  her mother (Red Headed Girl’s tale of 60s prairie girl’s joys and tragedies), lovers outgrown (the keening Bring Me On Home), childhood romances (a creek skipping Don’t You Remember), wanting back what you’ve pushed away  (the hymnal Sold Your Wings) and, of course, love itself (I Ain’t No Saint)). She’s at her best at her most uncluttered and direct, but as the scorchy rocking bluegrass Jezebel’s Ringin’ shows, she can kick up a dust cloud or too when the need arises. She really doesn’t get over here often enough. 8pm. £10. Tower of Song, Pershore Rd South, Kings Norton

Wednesday November 28

Emma Pollock

Formerly of Glasgow’s The Delgados, when they finally broke up Pollock focused attention on forging a solo career. As debut album Watch The Fireworks  (4AD) ably shows, she’s off to a pretty good start while sufficiently evocative of her old band’s brand of guitar pop to carry along old fans who miss that dark tinged melancholia and lyrical bitters.

The carousel waltzing New Land starts the ball rolling, both it and the dreamy Scottish folksy pop of Here Comes The Heartbreak likely to test the loyalty of KT Tunstall devotees. Elsewhere the stabbing keyboards and circling guitars of Adrenaline, the sparkily rocking Acid Test with its scratchy guitar figures and 60s beat influences and the jazzy raggy waltzing If Silence Means That Much To You should all go a long way to lighting the touch paper to a future that should finally see her receiving the wider acclaim and awareness so long denied her band. 7.30pm. £9. Little Civic, W’hampton

Thursday November 29

Noah and the Whale

Surely taking their name from Noah Baumbach’s film The Squid and the Wale, these London busker folk pop types are a  sunny sea shanty bunch who brighten their tunes with ukulele, fiddle, glockenspiel and lots of handclaps. The word’s not yet really started to spread so chances are this is going to be somewhat sparsely populated evening, all the better for those who turn up to bore chums by recounting how they were there at the start before  upcoming chirpy whistling Jonathan Richman-ish single Five Years Time (Young and Lost Club) has everyone eating out of their hands. 8pm. £6. Glee Club

Thursday November 29

Newton Faulkner

Sharing a similar surf scene vibe to Jack Johnson, the  whiskery ginger dreadlocked crooner’s done extremely well for himself with debut album Hand Built By Robots and its soft pop melodies. So here’s another helping to warm the cold winter nights with the sunkissed grooves of Feels Like Home and Lullaby and UFO’s jazz-blues scat. 7.30pm. £12.50. Wulfrun Hall

Friday November 30

McFly

They may get some cynical sniping but the facts are that, taking into account the songs he co-penned for Busted, frontman Tom Fletcher has written 10 number ones. All of the band’s own seven chart toppers are gathered together on the Christmas present package of the Greatest Hits album (Island) along with a bunch of their others 60s pop coloured tracks plus two new acoustic ballads The Way You Make Me Feel and the chiming The Heart Never Lies.

Naturally all of them will be paraded in the live show and while it would be pushing it to suggest they’re a classic pop act, another chance to listen to Room On The Third Floor, Star Girl and Baby’s Coming Back does suggest they might have been underrated. There again the covers of You’ve Got A Friend and Don’t Stop Me Now are strong arguments to the contrary. 7.30pm. £23.50/£16.50. NEC

Friday November 30

Martin Stephenson

Always a welcome visitor with his easy going, off the shoulder folk pop, this is doubly attractive since he’ll be dipping into his current release, High 7 Moon 5 (Stoveport), an album that basks in his love of Western swing and string band music. The opening Teardrops In My Tequila sounds like it could have been lifted from an old Bob Wills album while, adorned by Hawaiian pedeal steel, Time Changes Everything was actually a big Wills favourite.

Then there’s a clutch of trad tunes popularised by Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers, among them a swaying Once I Loved A Sailor and, firmly in the Oh Brother vein, The Hangman, plus another fine selection of Stephenson numbers in similar vein, of which Ballad of the English Rose, the shuffling blues The Joy That U Give and the cowboy country swing title track easily up there with the best he’s written. Add his warm banter and likeable unassuming personality and a splendid evening’s guaranteed all round. 7.30pm. £9.50. Little Civic, W’hampton