Gig Guide archives November 2009

Previews by Mike Davies

Sunday November 1

Adrian Edmondson & The Bad Shepherds

In recent years there's been a plethora of albums that have taken one genre of music and reinvented it in the style of another. Hayseed Dixie bluegrassed metal, Nouvelle Vague turned punk and new wave into bossa novas and most recently Hellsongs turned metal classics into lounge. Punk gets a makeover again here, recast as folk music from a line up featuring Fairport and Tull veteran guitarist Maartin Allcock, Toss The Feathers fiddler Andy Dinan, Iona's Uillean piper Troy Donockley and Ade Edmondson. Yes, that Ade Edmondson from The Comic Strip, The Young Ones and Bottom. But, as well as being a comedy actor whose most memorable past musical excursions have been as part of rock parody Bad News, he's actually an accomplished musician (though he plays mandolin better than he sings) with a clear interest in folk music.

What Yan, Tyan, Tethera, Metheral (Monsoon) serves up is a collection of (mostly) punk classics performed in a Celtic folk stylee intercut with a hefty clutch of trad reels and jigs. Thus the opening I Fought The Law fires up on fiddle and launches into Cockers At Pockers while London Calling segues into Manchester Calling, Teenage Kicks is sandwiched between three trad tunes, including Whisky In The Jar, and a mandolin sprung, spoken God Save The Queen heads out down the trad Mountain Road.

The songs lend themselves surprisingly well to the rearrangements and there's splendid interpretations of PiL's Rise, the Jam's Down In The Tube Station At Midnight, Once In A Lifetime and even Kraftwerk's The Model, transfigured here into a moody mandolin and pipes lament.

And, just to reaffirm they're not a one-trick novelty, the title track is their arrangement of a rousingly fiery set of four trad tunes that embraces Coppers & Brass and Rip The Calico in a manner guaranteed to get any folk fest crowd bouncing along. Apparently they also do a great version of All Around My Hat. As a punk number.

Making it a family affair, support is Ade’s daughter Ella Edmondson who’ll be dishing out numbers from Hold Your Horses, a debut album that confirms her as a card carrying member of the young folkers Brit Pack.
The mood's contempo-trad, shaded with Pentangle-ish jazz (The Other Side) and Eastern/African rhythms, all the material self-penned and the voice alternately earthy and windswept pure.

Now 23, she's been writing since she was 10 and several of the songs date back to teenage years and a former relationship, the likes of the rippling Moonglow, Hunger's itchy pangs of jealousy and the hypnotic Breathe (as featured on mom's programme Jam and Jerusalem) suggesting she was a decidedly emotionally precocious adolescent.

Indeed, from the choppy, nerves scratching, fiddle scraping Tunstall-like Hold Your Horses through the swayingly moody Sing For You and the scuffling urgency of Go Without, the subject matter sticks to the neediness, doubts, insecurities and resentments of love.

Next time round it would be good to see her broadening the lyrical horizons a bit and, given reports of a rockier live presence on Go Without, letting go the restraints a little more in the studio, but for now this highly accomplished calling card certainly earns her admission to the new folk firmament. (If you miss her tonight, she’s back headlining on Dec 3) 8pm. £15. Glee Club

Sunday November 1

Passion Pit

The ubiquitous dancefloor synth pop revival continues unabated, the latest standard bearers being this Boston quintet who, led by the falsetto on helium vocals of Michael Angelakos, clearly have a place in their hearts for spangly disco too. Debut album, Manners (Sony), is a bright keyboards feast of beats-bouncing 80s pop and bubbling bleeps and jiggles on a mission to plaster smiles across dancing faces.

Whether they’re conjuring thoughts of Hall & Oates and The Cars on Eyes As Candles. running up that funky hill with Kate Bush on Folds In Your Hands or sampling Irish harpist Mary O’ Hara and sounding like The Chipmunks doing Flaming Lips on Sleepyhead or shimmering like it’s a Saturday Night Fever for the rave crew with The Reeling, it’s like being on a positivity drip feed.

There’s times (Let Your Love Grown Tall especially) when they put you in mind of a less populated Polyphonic Spree and sustained exposure to that voice and numbers such as Little Secrets, Make Light and Seaweed Song is likely to bring you out in hives while, in the live flesh, the album’s woolly fuzz might just sound like a mess, but for now, they retain the benefit of the doubt.

Support comes from Welsh trio The Joy Formidable who, following on from their sugar-rush powerpop debut album A Balloon Called Moaning earlier this year, have joined forces with for Mansun singer Paul Draper for non album new single Greyhounds In The Slips (Pure Groove), a clattering, drums driven surge of fuzzy distortion that precedes First You Have To Get Mad, a live recording of their recent Relentless Garage headliner. 7pm. £9. O2 Academy 2

Monday November 2

a-ha

Nine years on from their reunion, Morton Harket and co have gone back to their origins, rediscovering the synth pop that spawned massive hits like The Sun Always Shines On TV and Take On Me, dipped it in a sparkling studio polish and served it up as their latest album Foot Of The Mountain (Universal).

It may cause some huffing among those who regard it as a step backwards, but it should comfortably find a place in the bedrooms of young - and not so young - girls who go to sleep dreaming of Take That.

From which you’ll gather it’s big on soaringly dreamy love song ballads and mid-tempo pop, the best of which comes represented by Shadowside, Real Meaning and the rippling Midge Ure-like What There Is in the case of the former with The Bandstand, Riding The Crest , Nothing Is Keeping You Here (which sounds suspiciously like Coldplay doing Everybody’s Talkin’) and the title track flying the latter’s flag.

There’s a couple of misfires in the turgidly dragged out bontempi spottled spaceflight themed Start the Simulator with its attempts at floating space progpop and the drab, boring Mother Nature Go To Heaven, but, if there’s nothing here to match the heights of the personal era they’re seeking to recapture, there should still be plenty of occasions for waving those cell phones aloft. 7.30pm. £37.50/£27.50. NIA

Tuesday November 3

UB40

It would be reprehensibly cynical, of course, to even think that this intimate benefit gig to raise money for the venue’s new soundproofing roof and ward off the threat of closure by the noise police had anything to do with ‘back to their roots’ profile raising in the face of whispers that tickets for their winter tour aren’t flying out of box offices.

So, let’s just take it on face value as a bunch of Brummie music veterans looking to do their bit for the city’s live music scene by playing an intimate set’s worth of crowd pleaser hits, doubtless seasoned with tasters from The Best of Labour Of Love, the latest compilation that features only two tracks from the last one, Love Songs, earlier this year. 7pm. £20. The Rainbow Warehouse, Digbeth

Tuesday November 3

Alesha Dixon

Assuming she’s not barracked by incensed Strictly Come Dancing viewers less than impressed with her qualifications to pass judgement on the show’s terpsichorean contestants, Ms Dixon should deliver an evening of solid r&b pop culled from comeback album The Alesha Show (Asylum). She might be advised to steer clear of the dodgy dated disco funk that is Oooh Baby I Like It Like That and turgid ballad Do You Know The Way It Feels?, but it’s hard to envision many complaints from a set likely to include the mambo-esque swayer The Boy Does Nothing, Play Me’s Latin swing, a Madonna-esque Let’s Get Excited and the joggy pop Don’t Ever Let Me Go. Please, it would be unkind to stand up at the end with score cards. 7.30pm. £18.50. Symphony Hall

Tuesday November 3

Fleetwood Mac

There may have been individual projects, but there’s not been a note of new material from the band since 2003, which was also the last time they played over here. Although Lindsey Buckingham’s made mutterings a fragment of an unrecorded song about Hurricane Katrina’s cropped up on the US dates, there’s also no sign of them heading into the studio anytime soon. Which makes this the first time they’ve toured without a new album to promote. Well, an album of new material, anyway.

To coincide with the British leg of what they’ve dubbed the Unleashed tour, the latest reunion of Nicks, Fleetwood, Buckingham and McVie (John, not Christine, who remains ‘retired’) also happens to coincide with the pension boosting reissue of Rumours with previously unreleased material and the first UK release of the remastered 2 CD 36 track version of The Very Best Of.

Drawn from the 1975-1990 bestsellers and featuring classics, this version features none of the Peter Green material that appeared on the 2002 UK single disc, but does add Second Hand News, Songbird and Gold Dust Woman to a list of classics that include Go Your Own Way, Rhiannon, Don’t Stop, and The Chain as well as the lesser known Paper Doll, As Long As You Follow and No Questions Asked which only ever appeared on previous compilations.

Assuming they maintain the American set list, pretty much everything comes from the compilation, though you do also get Stand Back, I Knew I Was Wrong and, in a nod to the formative past, Oh Well. Those with an aversion to drum solos (and Fleetwood does tend to play like he’s using girders) might want to make their excuses and leave after the first encore’s World Turning. 7.30pm. £75-£45. NIA

Tuesday November 3

Mew

With the backwards tape effects and bleeps on the opening New Terrain, you’d be forgiven for wondering what on earth the Danish trio were playing at and whether this meant the new album, the pithily titled No More Stories Are Told Today I’m Sorry They Washed Away No More Stories The World Is Grey I’m Tired Let’s Wash Away (Columbia), was going to be one session of long art rock experimentation.

Mercifully, after an equally worrying into, the second track, Introducing Palace Players, reveals itself to be dancy progpop while Beach is all sunny electro-pop. It marks a departure from And The Glass Handed Kits and its pounding drums and big guitars on the one hand, but their move into synth territory hasn’t seen them abandon the sugar coated melodies or clever time changes. And, as Repeaterbeater shows, they can still put the foot on the heavy guitar pedal metal if need be.

Mostly though, the sonic spirit of Brian Wilson hovers over the likes of Cartoons and Macramé Wounds, Silas The Magic Car and Sometimes Life Isn’t Easy while Tricks of the Trade harks to mid period Pet Shop Boys. Suffused with a woozy melancholy underpinning the dancey grooves, it might make for an unpredictable live translation but you certainly won’t be bored. 7.30pm. £12.50. Wulfrun Hall

Wednesday November 4

Mark Eitzel

Named for the Northern California river where the album was written and mostly recorded in a remote cabin, Klamath (Decor), Eitzel’s first solo collection of new material in eight years, is a fully stripped down affair, his vocals backed by just acoustic guitar and minimal instrumentation to strike an air of stillness. With some of the melodies little more than drones, it consciously evokes the work of such influences as Drake and Martyn, although The Blood On My Hands is clearly indebted to Cohen.

There’s less of American Music Club’s faded ballroom feel and more of a folk pastoral atmosphere enfolding the romantic melancholy of numbers such as I Miss You, Like A River That’s Reaching The Sea, Remember and the rumbling dusk mists of The White Of Gold. He does get a bit charged and even plugs in for Ronald Koal Was A Rock Star, a tribute to a hometown new wave hero from Columbus, Ohio, but otherwise this is late night laid back and, while there’s not actually anything likely to have audiences singing along with the chorus, any selections should chime nicely with the other solo material and American Music Club songs on the set list.

These are intimate piano shows with Eitzel joined by AMC keyboardist Marc Capelle and labelmate Franz Nicolay of Hold Steady. The latter will also be doing his own set, promoting his own Major General, an album that ranges from the juddery punk Jeff Penalty, Confessions of An Ineffective Casanova and the Springsteenesque Quiet Where I Lie which all echo his band day job to the Cole Porter feel of Do We Not Live In Dreams, the acoustic jazz lounge I'm Done Singing and the Tom Waits influenced The Black Rose Paladins. 8pm. £12. Glee Club

Thursday November 5

Steve Earle

He may never have sold many albums while he was alive, but 12 years after his death Townes Van Zandt is a bigger cult than ever, his songs are constantly being covered and his influence evident in a whole range of roots and Americana singer-songwriters. Fans don’t come much bigger than Earle who named his son Justin Townes after his friend and mentor and has now released an entire album of acoustic covers of numbers that meant the most him personally, titled, predictably enough, Townes (New West).

Opening with a suitably dust covered wearied version of arguably Van Zandt’s best known song, Poncho And Lefty, bluegrass banjo drives along White Freightliner Blues and Delta Momma Blues while Rake wears trad folk clothes, Loretta is taken at a slow gospel stomp and the talking blues Mr Mudd And Mr Gold comes as a duet with Justin.

It’s unlikely to yield more than a couple of additions to the self-penned material on the set list, but if he at least includes To Live Is To Fly then everyone should go home happy.

Getting the ball rolling is special guest Rhett Miller, the Old 57 frontman taking time out from the band for a jaunt in support of his eponymous new solo album (Serial Lady Killer). Not renowned for writing sunny lyrics to go with his jaunty tunes, this album’s no exception, the death of his grandmother and the suicide of a personal hero feeding its subject matter and themes. However, where the band favour Texas country, Miller’s solo material is more inclined towards 60s power pop with the likes of The Beatles, Marshall Crenshaw and Jonathan Richman high among the influences.

He rocks out on the pyschpop Happy Birthday, Don’t Die, but for the most part it’s all tastefully restrained and easy on the ear mid tempo strums and, as such, while there’s individual nuggets that you’ll want to listen out for on the set list (Caroline, Sometimes, I Need To Know Where I Stand and the Buddy Hollyish If It’s Not Love), as an album it does rather tend to be more pleasant than memorable. 8pm. £22.50. B’ham Town Hall

Thursday November 5

Screaming Lights

The Liverpool four piece trade in the same sort of synth backed, big guitars indie gloom rock that’s been and being done first and better by the likes of Joy Division, Comsat Angels, Interpol. White Lies and Editors. Even so debut album Like Angels (Anti) isn’t without its dark, neurosis veined pleasures, GMN whirling up a decent danceable urgent flurry of taut drums and driving guitars with Exit Wound, Volts and 21st Century all swirling through atmospheric angst on the back of James Treadall’s portentous vocals. Unlikely to be here for the long haul, they should at least leave behind a few decent memories. 8.30pm. £5. Flapper & Firkin

Thursday November 5

Puressence

Once compared to early U2 and the pre-difficult Radiohead, the Oldham quartet have never been accorded the commercial success they deserve for their swellingly anthemic big music. Disappointingly, despite stand out numbers like Bitter Pill and Moonbeam, 2007 comeback album Don’t Forget To Remember failed to remedy this and, once again, they find themselves moving labels for the release of Sharpen Up The Knives (Caserta Red).

The postal strike means the review copy is still stuck in some sorting office, however it is, essentially, a best of collection augmented by a clutch of new recordings. Seven of the tracks are lifted from now deleted sophomore release Only Forever, including the magnificent This Feeling, a stadium ballad that, with James Mudriczki’s soaring vocals piercing heaven, made the likes of Snow Patrol look like Britain’s Got Talent rejects. and yet still failed to crack the Top 30.

Of the new material, a tremulous piano and vocal cover of Judy Collins’ Che promises to prove a live standout while new stadium ballad single, Raise Me To The Ground, is just pure, undiluted rafters lifting, lighters aloft magnificence. These are the biggest UK gigs the band have played, it would criminal neglect where they not to be packed wall to wall. 7.30pm. £13.50. O2 Academy

Friday November 6

Alabama 3

They’ve not been particularly visible on the live circuit this year, however the Brixton Americana techno blues outfit haven’t been spending their time with their feet up. Having stepped off the record company treadmill, they’ve been busy putting together new material, originally intending to come up with 36 tracks for fans to download and vote on for a remix bonus CD. That’s grown into the foundations of a new country-house album, Revolver Soul, due out next year and from which previews should be slipping into the set list tonight, along with forthcoming single Jacqueline, where they’ll be joined by Screaming Skulls vocalist Aurora Dawn who guests on the album. 7pm. £15. O2 Academy

Friday November 6

The Cheek

Previously known as Cheeky Cheeky & the Nosebleeds, the Suffolk quintet may have shortened the name but they’ve not cut back on their quirky indie guitar pop. An album’s due sometime next year, and for now they’ll be serving up previews like the infectiously choppy Slow Kids, bass and keyboard bubbling swaggering Do Nothing and recent single Hung Up (A&M) where the Pistols party with The Stranglers. 7pm. £7. O2 Academy 3

Friday November 6-Sunday November 8

Music Live

The annual hard rock music showcase returns with another weekend of demonstrations, workshops, showcases, stands and mini gigs. Friday sees this year’s Surface Unsigned winners, South East hard rockers Primitai, on the main stage with their rankly undistinguished sub Maiden single The Craft. Lunchtime also offers up They Fell From The Sky, the outfit put together by Pitchshifter drummer Jason Bowld and Hundred Reasons vocalist Colin Doran, their Crush The World single not surprisingly an indie punk hard rock sound much in the vein of their other bands.

On Saturday, the day’s highlight is probably going to be GMT, a not entirely spring chicken new trio featuring former Gillan members Bernie Torme and John McCoy with Robin Guy on drums. And, if metal tributes are your thing, Sunday will be full of them. 10am-5pm. £18 (2 day £30) + Hellfire £35 (3 day £75) . NEC

Friday November 6-Sunday November 8

Hellfire Festival

Anvil

Staged in tandem with Music Live, taking over the stage once the exhibition closes, this is three days of pummelling heavy metal in all its shades, from metalcore to death metal and beyond with a seemingly endless line up that includes up and coming names Katatonia, Electric Eel Shock, The Plight, Cinders Fall and Blakfish. Friday’s headlining names are CKY and Cancer Bats while Saturday is the turn of middle aged second division hard rockers Saxon and, over from Canada, the ever optimistic Anvil who, after having their highest profile in decades following The Story Of Anvil documentary, promise to draw one of the biggest crowds.

Sunday is the turn of metal beasts Serotonal plugging their debut album Monumental - Songs Of Misery And Hope, My Dying Bride, Anathema, and goth survivor headliners Fields of the Nephilim. 5pm. £25 (3 days £55) + Music Live £35 (3 day £75) NEC

Saturday November 7

Airborne Toxic Event

There’s no single or new material this time round, but you don’t really need a marketing excuse to catch the last gigs of the year by this terrific LA outfit. The best song ever written about seeing your ex in a bar with her new bloke, Sometime About Midnight, still stirs the blood and soul and their eponymous debut album has more where that came from, among them the Psychedelic Furs styled Midnight, the ringing guitar riffs and spraying hooks of Papillon, Gasoline’s spiked jerky pop and rolling march beat single Happiness Is Overrated.

If you were an early convert, you might be unaware that the UK album version comes with bonus tracks the barricades storming The Winning Side, a Springsteen shaded This Losing and the Jonathan Richman-like The Girls In Their Summer Dresses,; three further reasons to make this a priority on your gig calendar. 7pm. £9. O2 Academy

Saturday November 7

Lisa Mitchell

Recent support to Newton Faulkner, the Australia-based expat now takes the headline route in support of the UK release of debut album, Wonder (RCA). The Regina Spektor meets Suzanne Vega electronica croon and beats of the piano plinking Coin Laundry single turns out to be not entirely representative of the album which, while still playfully quirky, reveals her to be much more folk n country pop, her little girl voice breathy one minute and prowly the next. After an intro on which she can be vaguely heard singing Oh What a Beautiful Morning, the album proper gets under way with the skipalong upbeat brave face break up song Neopolitan Dreams before pedal steel turns up for the country rolling funky swagger So Jealous.

By the time you’re four tracks in, it’s clear that this is a late contender for the year’s best of lists and that Mitchell’s as sharp a writer and imaginative an arranger as she is a vocalist. The dreamy swaying Pirouette, Love Letter’s piano backed musical box lament about the lonely life on the road, a lollopping whistlealong Red Wine Lips (where she sound a little like Victoria Williams), Oh! Hark!’s doo be doo shuffling rhythmic groove, the irresistible combination of the glorious feelgood Sidekick’s speakeasy piano, brass, harmonica and scratchy guitar and the spare piano doodled emotion of Valium all announce an outstanding new young talent.

She’s already getting attention in the business with both Florence and the Machine collaborator Crispin Hunt and Ed Harcourt co-writing tracks, and has been compared to Bush, Mitchell and Amos, but you might be closer calling her a cocktail of Nutini, Faulkner and Jack Johnson. Either way, this is the last time you’ll get to see her this up close and personal, the girl’s going to straight for stardom. 7pm. £6.50. O2 Academy 3

Saturday November 7

Sweet Billy Pilgrim

Nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, if you’ve not yet encountered the trio’s Twice Born Men album then knowing they’re signed to David Sylvian’s Samadhisound label and that this gig finds them sharing the bill with modern jazz crew Portico Quartet should give an indication of what’s in store.

A loose concept album that starts with an emotional journey’s end and works its way back to the start, an opening dialogue sample from The Music of Chance gives way to Truth Only Smiles which, with clarinet, acoustic guitar, fingerclicking rhythm and a shanty swaying chorus melody immediately charms.

They keep you intoxicated with the folktronica Bloodless Coup with (I suspect a hint of Steely Dan) and the banjo dappled musical box Americana of Future Perfect Tense and if they pepper their songs with musical experimentation and a mix of art pop and post rock shadings, they never forget to keep warmth and melody beating at the heart so that Joy Maker Machinery and the wheezing harmonium and massed choral harmonies of There Will It End ensure your swept away by the rapture. 8pm. £14. CBSO Centre

Sunday November 8

Jimmy Webb & The Webb Brothers

Even if you’re not familiar with the name, as one of the greatest American songwriters of the 20th century you’ll undoubtedly be aware of such timeless Webb evergreens as By The Time I Get To Phoenix, Wichita Lineman, MacArthur Park and Do What You Gotta Do.

However, the chances of you having actually heard them sung by their composer is another matter entirely, so, even if there’s only a couple of the classics shoehorned into the set list then it will still be a rare treat. While he’s had a relatively successful career performing as a solo artist (though UK dates have been few and far between), this tour marks the first time he’s performed with a full band in over twenty years; which makes the fact that poor ticket sales has seen dates cancelled and venues scaled down (this was originally booked into Symphony Hall) all the more disappointing. However, the number of occupied seats has no bearing on the quality in store.

It’ll be quite a family affair too with Webb (who, these days, at times sounds a lot like Randy Newman) joined by both his father, Bob, and his four alt-country minded sons, Christiaan, Justin, James and Cornelius, while the band will also feature Glen Campbell’s son Cal on drums. As such, there’ll be a smattering of Webb Brothers songs (Maroon doubtless along them) while a sizeable element of the set list will surely showcase Cottonwood Farm (Proper), the new album featuring songs written and performed by both father and sons.

The latter contribute four numbers, Mercury’s In Retrograde (which actually sounds like the sort of classic pop dad write in the 60s), the equally retro bouncy Bad Things Happen To Good People, an Eagles-like Old Tin Can and slow waltzing Beatles-esque ballad Hollow Victory, a song written in the wake of the Iraq invasion.

There’s not actually any new material from their father, but there can’t be any complains about what he’s dug from the archives. Opening with a revival of Highwayman, the song that gave rise to the country supergroup of the same name, there’s the seasonal, never before recorded, Snow Covered Christmas, a wistful country-hued If These Old Walls Could Speak (a song about the farmhouse where the family once lived), and, dating from 1977 (and here sung by son James), achingly poignant ballad Where The Universes Are.

However, it’s the typically symphonic 12 minute title track that’s the stand out. Written back in the 70s for his grandfather but never recorded, it’s a biographical multiple narrative about the land, the people who farm it and those who take it away and leave it broken, that gives all the family members a moment to shine, among then Webb Sr whose gummy voice also gets to close out the album - and quite possibly the live show - with 40s standard Red Sails In The Sunset. Shows like these roll round once in a blue moon, so don’t let it pass you by. 7.30pm. £28.50. B’ham Town Hall

Sunday November 8

Backstreet Boys

Over here last year plugging the Unbreakable album, the quartet clearly aren’t letting any grass grow under their feet since their comeback. A return visit also brings a new album, This Is Us (Jive), one which seems them taking more of a r&b pop and beats approach on tracks like Masquerade, Bye Bye Love, and the a-ha like Straight Through My Heart rather than big lovelorn ballads though those looking for that mobile phone in the air moment will be pleased to know that new single, Bigger, continues to wave the anthemic stadium arm-swayer flag alongside past heartwringers Inconsolable and Love Will Keep You Up All Night. 7.30pm. £30. LG Arena

Sunday November 8

Frankmusik

Former BMX rider and fashion student, the falsetto voiced Vincent Frank’s been rather lost in the flood of female synthpop, debut album Complete Me (Island) stalling outside of the Top 10. He deserves better since, while firmly coated with 80s electropop cheese, there’s plenty here to provide guilty glitterball disco pleasures. Underachieving singles Better Off As Two and Confusion Girl are perfect for anyone who reckons Howard Jones, Alphaville and Nik Kershaw represent a golden age of British pop while tucked away on the album When You're Around rewrites The Stranglers’ Golden Brown to naggingly infectious effect while 3 Little Words, Time Will Tell and the bubbling surge-along Gotta Boyfriend all drip with a spangly camp fizzing club cocktail of Soft Cell, Donna Summer, and Yazoo.

He’s clearly been marketed all wrong because Your Boy, Complete Me and Vacant Heart are surely the sort of keening end of the night anthemic ballads for which retro kitsch gay discos have been hungering since Erasure stopped being fashionable. 7pm. £10. O2 Academy 2

CANCELLED *****Sunday November 8*****CANCELLED

Mickey Greaney

A mere 15 years after his debut album Little Symphonies For The Kids, the Birmingham singer-songwriter finally unveils his long overdue follow up. Unfortunately, that’s as much information I can offer since no advance previews were available. However, there are a few songs on his myspace page that may or may not feature on the album but which do serve to give a taste of where his musical head’s at these days, namely still showing Van Morrison and Tim Buckley influences and in a similar arena to the David Grays of the world while Faith hints at Dylan notes. 8pm. £5. Kitchen Garden Cafe

Monday November 9

Biffy Clyro

Having firmly finally arrived two years ago when their fourth album, The Puzzle, made its chart debut at #2, the Ayrshire trio’s success continued last year with the singles Mountains and That Golden Rule both hitting the Top 10.

The latter also provided the first taster of album number five, the just released Only Revolutions (14th Floor), which, despite euphoric shanty stadium singalong follow up The Captain surprisingly stalling just inside the 20, not only finds them at the peak of their considerable powers but in a rather more upbeat mood than last time around.

With its equally arena friendly rock and catchy melody line, Bubbles looks like being a driving live standout while further contenders for anthemic status line up with the galloping surge of Whorses, the swayingly vitriolic Shock Shock and a clutch of ballad triumphs; the skyscraping Mountains, folk tinged big builder Know Your Quarry, the soaring romanticism of Man Of Horror and the stripped to the bone existential quandary of God & Satan, the latter two both sterling examples of just how much their lyrical prowess has grown.

Serving reminder that they can still churn up the rock waters, Born On A Horse rides a funky Police rhythm while both Booooom, Blast & ruin and Cloud Of Stink spit riffs like a volcano gobs lava, all of which promises to make this something of a molten live experience.

Support is Atlanta five piece The Manchester Orchestra who’ll be getting the action started with numbers from brooding emo-esque debut Like A Virgin Losing A Child and its even more muscular sequel, Mean Everything To Nothing (Columbia) where The Only One and Shake It Out sees them coming on like a teenage Kings Of Leon, rolling in the grunge dirt for You, My Pride And Me and delivering fiery southern gospel on The River. 7.30pm. £16. O2 Academy

Monday November 9

VV Brown

For a while it looked like things had gone pear-shaped for the 6ft Northampton born sometime model Vanessa Brown. Nine different mixes of the Shark In The Water single looked like a desperate attempt to sound out potential audiences while her debut album, Travelling Like The Light (Island), constantly had its release date put back. It’s finally out there now but you can understand the label’s problem in trying to work out a marketing strategy. Blue eyed retro soul was already on the wane, doubtless providing headaches for those working on Duffy’s follow up, and female synth pop was now dominating the charts. But then Brown wasn’t even really a retro soul diva.

Her list of influences include Elvis, rockabilly figures in her musical makeup alongside Motown and 60s Spector girl pop while there’s more than a touch of 40s Andrews Sisters swing about her too. On top of which on Quick Fix she does a bit of rap and Game Over (one of several feisty end of relationship numbers) is the sort of brassy r&b swagger Sugababes (for whom she’s written) would kill to master.

There’s no question that she’s got a fabulous voice and the album oozes personality while the songs sound instantly familiar. Which is a bit of a problem since they do so because parts of them inevitably remind you of something or someone else. Quick Fix’s walking bass line instantly recalls Pretty Woman, Everybody has a Pink tinge, retro pop Crying Blood borrows from The Monster Mash, Leave casts her as a doo wop Toni Basil, L.O.V.E sounds like a lost Adam & The Ants track and the title track echoes Timi Yuro’s End Of The World. Lollopping crooner Crazy Amazing even weaves in a sample of Hoagey Carmichael evergreen, Heart & Soul.

If she can inject her own personality into the music as forcibly as she does into the singing and if she can develop a self-censor button to ensure she never writes a lyric as dire as I Love You ever again, hurdling current fads to become an enduring star should be a piece of cake. 7.30pm. £7.50. O2 Academy 2

Tuesday November 10

Muse

Opening with a cocktail of the Dr Who theme and Blondie’s Call Me set to a Glitter Band stomp, current album, The Resistance, makes the big music apocalyptic pomp of Black Holes & Revelations seem positively limp. Sounding as if they want (as on the title track) to outdo Queen and U2 combined, it’s a measure of the sense of grand overstatement at work

that, after United States of Eurasia/Collateral Damage has given 1984 a Bohemian Rhapsody workover with a chunk of Chopin’s Nocturne, Unnatural Selection’s transformed ABBA’s Lay All Your Love On Me into operatic metal, and I Belong To You incorporated elements of Saint-Saens’ Samson And Delilah (in French, no less), the album bows out with Exogenesis, a 13 minute, three movement classical symphony about the human race heading into space to repopulate another planet. It’s enough to make Rick Wakeman’s jaw drop in envy.

That, amid all the Rachmaninoff, Lizst, sci fi and George Orwell, the trio still come out the other end every inch a thundering rock band with massive melodies, is a testament to their status as one of the most exciting bands on the planet. Really, are stadiums and arenas big enough to contain them! 7.30pm. £41.25. NIA

Tuesday November 10

Seasick Steve

Touring his third album in three years, Man From Another Time (Warner) suggests the well of life experiences that waters Steve Wold's songwriting may be running a little dry. The dusty, cracked Just Because I Can may be about riding the rails for free and listening to the clickety clack while you still can, Happy (To Have A Job) pretty much speaks for itself and Wenatchee has him moaning about 'picking apples all day like a dog', but hard time tales of parental abuse, life on the road, and the hobos he met along the way are in short supply here.

Instead Diddley Bo and the talking blues Seasick Boogie are essentially about either his guitar or playing the songs themselves while lines like "freedom for most is just a word like toast" on That's All plumb the depths of banality.

Indeed, perhaps aware of his lyrical limitations, he himself seems bemused by the adulation that's been lavished on him as, on the title track, he says "don't you got nothing better to do that listen to a man from another time?"

The good news, however, is that while the songs may be a little thin, the electrifying delivery remains ample reason to listen to the 66 year old's North Mississippi blues. Whether picking his signature 3 string Trance Wonder, battered acoustic, the aforementioned one string Diddley Bo or the four string guitar made from a cigar box, he plays up a storm, slicing out the slide blues, crunching the riffs and, on Never Go West, letting rip with a full throated drawl, drums and bass for a track that recalls John Congos's voodoo pumping Tokoloshe Man.

Such is the heat and power of the playing that, rather than honing in on his talking about riding his old John Deere tractor on Big Green And Yeller, you're caught up in the smoky burping stomp while the spooked Banjo Song makes you feel like you're actually standing in some deserted backwoods road with no sense of direction and on the spare wistfully intoned Dark you realise why you were first intoxicated by that nicotine stained voice in the first place. Next time though, he'd better have dredged up some sharper memories if he's going to remain a tramp shining.

Making this a family night out, he’s supported by Wishful Thinking, the name under which son Paul is currently plying his own musical trade. Sharing your name with a British 60s harmony pop band who, as it turns out are still going and releasing a new album, is probably not the greatest of moves, but stripped down and rudimentarily recorded debut album A Waste of Time Well Spent (We Make Mistakes) seems unlikely to have anyone confusing the two.

Unlike dad, Wold Jr’s influences aren’t the blues but the folk inclined likes of Bright Eyes, Elliott Smith and Nick Drake, introspective, melancholic numbers like From Home and the country tinged This Song Doesn’t Have A Name delivered with just plaintive voice and strummed acoustic guitar while Hour’s Late features mournful violin and On & Off suddenly breaks out into a crescendo of distortion and clattering drums. Well worth checking out and a live duet between the two of them would be most interesting. 7.30pm. £17.50. O2 Academy (+ Fri Nov 13, 8pm. £17.50. Warwick Arts Centre)

Tuesday November 10

The New Beautiful South

Two years after they jacked it all after dwindling chart success suggested they’d come to the end of their 15 million sales days, here’s a reunion of sorts. Paul Heaton’s conspicuously absent, but picking up where they left off Dave Hemingway, Alison Wheeler and Dave Stead have recalled Damon Butcher, Tony Robinson and Gaz Birtles and added three new members for a tour that promises to include a selection of the favourites alongside songs the original line-up never played live plus some new material. Quite how this all pans out and whether the interest’s still out there remains to be seen, but it’ll be nice to hear the likes of Perfect 10 and Don’t Marry Her Again.

Sharing the bill is Sandi Thom who’s still trying to prove herself more than a one hit wonder after failing to follow up No 1 bestseller I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair) with anything resembling a hit. Having parted company with RCA following disagreements and disappointments over The Pink & The Lily, she’s currently putting together a third album under her own auspices, so expect a couple of tasters tonight. 7.30pm. £20. O2 Academy 2

Tuesday November 10

The Cave Singers

A bit of a diamond night from promoters Capsule, this nu-folk package is headlined by a trio whose background lies in Seattle post-punk but who have clearly discovered their inner Fleet Foxes. They’ll be showcasing their new album, Welcome Joy (Matador), a rather fine collection of earthy, psychedelia tinged acoustic folk with influences that range from the Bon Iver quietude of Brambles and the nasal of Dylan on Leap and VV to the Led Zep inclinations of low slung bluesy riffer At The Cut and the Eastern coloured Shrine. Emphasised by Peter Quirk’s quivering vibrato, the infectious jogging I Don’t Mind is also firmly enamoured of Tyrannosaurus Rex.

A lovely summery rural outdoors vibe percolates through the album, particularly evident on the ripplingly reflective Townships and the fingerpicked fireflies dancing opener Summer Light where they exhort listeners to ‘dance in the doldrums of each new day’. It’s impossible to resist their invitation.

They’re joined by Greg Weeks and Meg Baird, both back to the day job with Espers, reclaiming their crown as leading lights of the new acid folk movement with new album III (Wichita), the numerically correct follow up to II. They have, however, largely ditched the drones that dominated previous excursions and, on I Can’t See Clear and The Pearl sound positively light footed.

Not that they’ve wholly blown away the dark feedback shrouded hazes. Guitars still conjure images of gnarly branches and goblin woods on That Which Darkly Thrives and the witchy Colony while Baird’s breathy tones on Another Moon Song conjure the image of Sandy Denny on a ritualistic peyote trip in some desert reservation.

There’s atmosphere by the truckload here, mesmerisingly so on the medieval folk sounding duet Caroline, 60s psychedelic folk The Road Of Golden Dust and the bucolic intoxicated sway of Meridian with its circling guitar figure. If the government had its way, the entire album would probably be classified as a Class B narcotic, a recommendation you’ll find hard to resist.

Completing the line up is Brooklyn pastoral psych-folk quartet Woods plying songs from their Songs of Shame (Woodsist) album, a spooked collection of fuzzy low fi and wah-wah guitar with slashes of Neil Young falsetto that could well throw up a set list featuring nine minute guitar jam September With Pete or their cover of Graham Nash’s Military Madness. 8pm. £12. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Tuesday November 10

Cosmo Jarvis

Jilted John by way of a ragged folkie Mike Skinner, the New Jersey born Devonian is quickly winning admirers for his quirky, playful and often acerbic self-deprecating ditties, served up with a battered acoustic guitar backing.

This serves as a pre-launch showcase for his eponymous debut album (Wall Of Sound), so he should be on good form with a night pretty much guaranteed to include lurching folk n rap He Only Goes Out On Tuesdays, the dark alcoholism themed Mummy’s Been Drinking, Sort Yourself Out’s depressing portrait of a young loser with no life and a mom on a nervous breakdown trajectory and the wry no sex teenage nerd’s anthem Jessica Alba’s Number. Disappointingly, wittily romantic mandolin strummed shanty The Gay Pirates with its ‘yo ho Sebastian’ chorus isn’t on the album, but hopefully will find pride of place on the set list. 8pm. £3. Hare & Hounds 2, Kings Heath

Tuesday November 10

Shinedown

Florida alt-metal with a fistful of crunchy hard rock and hook laden riffs, the four piece have yet to make any real impression over here, so hopefully this set of dates might rekindle awareness of and interest in current album, The Sound of Madness (Atlantic).

Marrying solid heads down rockers like Cry For Help, Sin With A Grin, Cyanide Sweet Tooth Suicide and the stomping Zep-ish title track with the stadium filling harmonies drenched balladry of Call Me, The Crow & The Butterfly and an Aersosmithy If You Only Knew, they deserve to be far better appreciated. Throw in Devour’s melodic battering ram biting swipe at US foreign policy, and you’ll wonder how you ever overlooked them in the first place. 7.30pm. £12. Wulfrun Hall

Wednesday November 11

Megson

Stu Hanna’s been too busy producing the new Show of Hands album to come up with anything new for himself and wife Debbie, so expect an intimate set of favourites drawn from the heavily trad Take Yourself A Wife’s collection of songs by North-East songwriters between and the more 60s folk pop flavours of material of On The Side, hopefully to include the anti-war Butternut Hill and chiming break up number More Than Me. 8pm. £9. Hare & Hounds 2, Kings Heath

Wednesday November 11

Baby Bird

The mid 90s were halcyon days for Stephen Jones, riding high with You’re Gorgeous, Candy Girl and the Ugly Beautiful album. Then it all fell apart. Increasingly minor hits and the poor showing of third album Bugged (from which Gordon Ramsey theme tune The F-Word came) let to the band splitting up in 2000.

Jones moved into film soundtracks, released two instrumental albums and the lo fi, hip hop influenced Almost Cured Of Sadness to critical praise but little commercial success. So, perhaps inevitably, a band reunion was duly announced, this time as a three piece with Jones joined by Luke Scott and Robert Gregory.

This low key jaunt serves to test the waters for next year’s comeback album, Ex-Maniac, on which Johnny Depp apparently makes a cameo. Advance tasters reveal no major change of style from the mid tempo ballad friendly pop of earlier days, though Jones does, perhaps, sound a little more world weary on Failed Suicide Club, the shimmering Unloveable and a dreamily romantic Roadside Girl. Quite how much autobiographical content pours into the catchy lullabying Drug Time and the up and sha la la rocking don’t fall for me Bastard is up for debate, but both reveal an artist back to the peak of his writing and performing powers. Hopefully, audiences will accord the welcome back that he deserves.

Special guest is Iceland’s Hafdis Huld who’s finally got round to a follow up to her 2006 60s English folk flavoured debut Dirty Paper Cup featuring that ukulele strummed cover of Lou Reed’s Who Loves The Sun. However, while already out back home, Synchronized Swimmers won’t get released her until sometime next year, so tonight offers an early chance to preview what’s in store. The only track so far made available, Kongulu, sounds like Hotel California given a samba jazz sway and flamenco makeover, so it’ll be interesting to see what titles such as Action Man, Boys and Perfume, Home Made Lemonade and Robot Robot have in store. 7.30pm. £8. O2 Academy 3

Wednesday November 11

The Drones

Four albums in and the Australians remain better known back home than here, hence this decidedly low key gig. Current album Havilah (ATP), probably won’t change matters but that doesn’t mean their rustyard blues rock n roll collision of Crazy Horse, the Birthday Party, Tom Waits and Radiohead isn’t worth investigating.

Musically, the songs balance abrasive riffage (Nail It Down, Luck In Odd Numbers) with melancholic acoustics (The Drifting Housewife, Penumbra) while the lyrics rarely deviate from a sour cocktail of regret, rage, hopelessness and resignation, reaching something of a bilious peak of loathing on The Minotaur. If nothing else, they’ll put your own misery into perspective. 8pm. £7. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Wednesday November 11

Just Jack

All Night Cinema (Mercury), Jack Allsopp's second album delivers eleven tunes that do little to sway opinion that he’s just a jobbing synth popster with a nasal speak sing delivery that swiftly wears outs welcome, some ‘clever’ streetsy wordplay and a few decent catchy hooks and arrangements to distract from the sometimes so so nature of the music.

Accentuating the positive, 253 charts a suburban relationship sounding like The Streets with a sense of swing, The Day I Died offers a wryly ironic tale about cashing in your chips just as the 9-5 slog takes on a rosy hue, and Goth In A Disco spins a tongue in cheeky line in cod electro about a Saturday night misfit, bored but with nothing better to do.

However, it more often comes up short. Embers does a nice intro line of strings and flamenco handclaps but the song itself’s a bit limp, Blood lacks the lyrical depth to pull off its tale of an inner city stabbing and has mediocre tune and beats into the bargain, while the Latin flavoured So Wrong and Astronaut’s London slacker send up both have you thinking of an electro minded Madness. He’s got a keen observational eye and when things click he’s got good songs, but there’s just too much filler here for it to stand comparison to his debut. 7.30pm. £12.50. O2 Academy 2

Thursday November 12

Beyonce

Here in May and now back again on the second leg of the I Am tour, if you caught it first time then don’t expect many changes from a set list that, opening with Sweet Dreams draws extensively from current double album, I Am... Sasha Fierce (Halo, Single Ladies, Ave Maria, Sweet Dreams, Diva, If I Were A Boy etc etc), earlier fan favourites (Crazy In Love, Freakum Dress, Deja Vu) as well as a Destiny’s Child medley and covers of Sarah McClaughlin’s Angel and Morrisette classic You Oughta Know. Plus the odd costume change. 7.30pm. £49.50. NIA

Thursday November 12

Emily Maguire

Here last year supporting Eric Bibb and promoting her Keep Walking album (the title referring to her 10 year struggle to recover the use of her legs after a car crash when she was 17), the London born child cello prodigy again flies in from her home in the Australian bush, this time playing a headline showcase for upcoming third album, Believer (Shaktu).

You’ll still hear the Joni, Natalie Merchant and Dido touches and the mix of folk and jazz on numbers such as the ballad Wanting Time, plaintive waltzer Start Over Again and the bossa scuffed Autumn Leaves, but she’s also tapped into a poky AOR rock seam that’s manifested itself in the big building Brave New World, a muscular title track, the soaring Free, and the swaggery chugging guitar slinging I’d Rather Be where shades of both Rumours era Fleetwood Mac and Thea Gilmore are evident.

Vaguely reminiscent of Mike Oldfield’s Moonlight Shadow, breathy voiced, strings laced kick off acoustic single Lighthouse Man should ensure plenty of Radio 2 play to pave the way for the album and with a solid live reputation already cemented demand for her continued presence here might well warrant subletting her place back home. 8pm. £6. Glee Club

Thursday November 12

Show of Hands

They may not be as well known as Fairport and Steeleye outside of folk circles, but West Country acoustic duo Steve Knightley and Phil Beer (not to forget double bassist Miranda Sykes), are unquestionably one of the genre’s biggest names. To the extent of having sold out no less than three Albert Hall concerts. Something I doubt either the Convention or the Span could manage.

Nor, after 19 albums, do they show any sign of creative impasse. Certainly not on Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed (Hands On Music), the hard hitting new album that provides the tour’s spine. Drawing on both a gruelling period Knightley had dealing with his mother, brother and son’s serious illnesses and the generally depressing and gloomy state of the nation, as the title might suggest, it’s not full of many laughs.

IED:Science And Nature is a stark, disturbing and dark acoustic ballad about disease lurking under the skin like an unexploded bomb, The Worried Well is an a capella gospel swipe at charlatan alternative medicine, the itchy guitar scratching Evolution is a Darwinian slapdown for Creationists while, catching the flavour of the economic times and borrowing from Kipling’s A Smuggler’s Song, The Napoli recalls the looting of the freighter that ran aground at Branscombe and the rousing chorus friendly title track pretty much speaks for itself.

However, as Leoanrd Cohen, there are cracks where the light gets in. The wearied soul-searching The Man I Was strikes a redemptive note, Drift (which features Megson’s Debbie Hanna on harmonies) offers a dreamy state of grace reverie born from the hours in hospital wards) and, with Jackie Oates sharing vocals, The Vale is a tender, simple earthen ballad about a wartime evacuee romance and the first meeting of two brothers four decades on.

Three covers complete the collection, a suitably moody, fiddle burnished version of Dylan’s Senor, a rustic cloaked reading of Peter Gabriel’s Secret World (on which Beer takes vocals) and, with Sykes and Oates both fleshing the sound with whispery menace, a driving funky take on the trad Keys Of Canterbury’s tale of rebuffed seduction.

Any and all of these will be outstanding additions to the set list of past and present favourites and, if they can take the roof off the Royal Albert, then the Town Hall may well be reduced to rubble. 8pm. £17.50. B’ham Town Hall

Thursday November 12

Seeland

Joined by bassist Neil McAuley, former Plone and Broadcast members Tim Felton and Mike Bainbridge trade in Eno and Krautrock influenced electronica, showcased to persuasive effect on new single Captured (Loaf) with its clattering percussion and pulsing drone. For newcomers, the single also includes remixes of last year’s Library and Call The Incredible while the live set will be showcasing debut album, Tomorrow Today. 8.15pm. £4. Hare & Hounds 2, Kings Heath

Friday November 13

Deep Purple

Incredibly, having opened at the London Astoria in January 2006, the Rapture Of The Deep world tour has now been going for three years and, by the time it climaxes in Italy, the band will have played an incredible 347 shows. That’s one hell of a lot of smoke and water. This is the second time they’ve played Birmingham during that time, but it won’t be exactly the same set list (this time you get Wring That Neck and Steve Morse instrumental Contact Lost) and will at least tweak the running order, though Smoke remains the finale and Hush and Black Night the encores.

Gillan fans might also want to note that this year saw his first solo album in 12 years, One Eye To Morocco (Ear Music) his best non-band album yet with songs drawing on Little Richard/Jerry Lee Lewis inspired rock n roll (No Lotion For That), soul (Better Days, Always The Traveller), Latin (Don’t Stop), funk (the psychedelic Temptations feel of Deal With It), reggae (Girl Goes To Show), and country shaded blues boogie (Texas Shade Of Mind, which, actually, could make a Purple groove). Plus It Would Be Nice rounds up crunchy rock stomp, glam pop, blues, country and jazz into one eclectic parcel. Maybe after he’s had a Christmas breather he might consider a solo tour for a little light relief. 7.30pm. £38. LG Arena

CANCELLED*****Friday November 13*****CANCELLED

Rumble Strips

Hailed as the new Dexys on the release of debut album Girls And Weather, the Devonian blue eyed soulsters failed to capture much interest. On then to second stab, To The Walk Alone (Island) with its copious quantities of brass and orchestral arrangements.

But of the first one didn’t sell, it’s hard to imagine this faring any better since it is, essentially, the same but without the songs to back it up. Which, unfortunately, ends up exposing the limitations of Charlie Waller’s vocals that often sound like he’s straining too hard to conjure a young Scott Walker.

Not to say there aren’t bright moments amid its brassy retro pop. London gallops along nicely, Not The Only Person spins a playful tale of a mugger who got more than he bargained on, Dem Girls is a romping ode to letting the libido have a day out, and Douglas does a pleasing line in Bacharach and David pop balladeering. It’s just that there’s nothing here that’ll set the charts alight and without that, as far as major label futures are concerned, the title may well prove prophetic. 7pm. £9. O2 Academy 2

Friday November 13

Dawn Landes

New album title Sweet Heart Rodeo (Cooking Vinyl) may recall the classic Gram Parsons driven Byrds country album, but while there's elements of folk and blugrass, the London based Kentuckian's follow up to last year's Fireproof paints its country in more of an indie pop shade.

Its title and theme of relationship as a bucking ride inspired by her great-grandmother's boyfriend who signed on to join the rodeo during the Great Depression, things kick off with Young Girl's punky stomping and distorted keyboard pop addressing gender stereotypes before the playful clip clopping Romeo reinforces notions that you just can't rely on boys as she recalls being stood up on her birthday.

That same breezy kookiness can be heard on the Casio pop Clowns, but before you start thinking this is all fluff, bend an ear to Money In The Bank's mossily acoustic French horn brushed musing on capitalism or Little Miss Holiday, a bittersweet imagined conversation between Jodie Foster and the child prostitute on whom she based her Taxi Driver character. It's a potentially dark subject, but Landes' skill is to somehow make it all feel sweetly sad and tender.

Love's vagaries provide the pulse of the album, be that on the woozy electronic instrumental All Dressed In White, the harmonica and lurching rhythms of Wandering Eye, the brushed romanticism of Dance Area and, indeed, the jazzy tropical psychedelia sways of Love. And, just to remind you that there's country in the blood, Sweetheart of the Rodeo lopes along on a choppy bluesy backwoods rhythm with mouth organ fills and mandolin solo while Brighton celebrates a day in the seaside resort to a setting straight out of the Appalachians. Well worth saddling up for a look. 7pm. £6. O2 Academy 3

Friday November 13

Bill Wyman and the Rhythm Kings

It’s now 17 years since he stepped down as bassist for the Stones, and 12 since he put together his own band. They’re still going strong, the revolving membership still churning out goodtime rivvum n blues guaranteed to get the shoulders swaying and the feet moving. With the tour line up including Albert Lee, Geraint Watkins, and Georgie Fame, they’ll be dipping into five album’s worth of material, the choices undoubtedly focusing on the tracks compiled together for the current Best Of (Ripple) featuring, among them, Creedence’s Green River, Willie Dixon’s Down In The Botton, JJ Cale’s Anyway The Wind Blows, John D Loudermilk’s Tobacco Road and a clutch of authentic blues originals from Wyman and Terry Taylor. 7.30pm. £26.50. B’ham Town Hall

Friday November 13

Alice In Chains

Having been inactive for almost a decade, during which time singer Layne Staley died from his heroin addiction, the reunited line up, with Staley soundalike newcomer William DuVall sharing vocals with guitarist Jerry Cantrell, must be feeling relieved that comeback album, Black Gives Way To Blue (Virgin), made its US debut at #5 and was a UK Top 20 hit, its Staley tribute title track featuring Elton John on piano.

The Check My Brain single fared rather less well, quite possibly since it sounded a lot like a grinding rip off of the Chillis’ Californication, but slow burn post-grunge follow up Your Decision should comfortably seem them back in the UK singles charts for the first time in 13 years while, having being starved of their live power for so long, the fans should be out in force. 7pm. £22.50. O2 Academy

Friday November 13

Martha Tilston

Currently to be heard contributing vocals to the new Zero 7 album, this is the West Country folkie’s first visit to these parts since resuming her gigging career after maternity leave. That also meant putting work on the new album on hold, though hopefully she’ll have found time between changing the nappies to scribble a few songs to preview in tonight’s set alongside material from previous releases, Running, Bimbling, Of Milkmaids & Architects and Ropeswing. 8pm. £8. Glee Club

Saturday November 14

Elliot Minor

Curiously back in indie land after a brief flirtation with Warners spawned a Top 10 album and four hit singles, the classically trained quintet are looking to sustain their impetus with sophomore release, Solaris (Repossession).

There’s not been any major shift of sound, their background still evident in the arrangements and use of strings while pop sensibilities are balanced with punchy rock guitars and emo stylings, perfectly demonstrated on I Believe and the pop punk of current single Electric High.

The title track (which was originally going to be the single) offers Celtic tinged anthemic balladeering, a mood mirrored with the soaring Carry On. Let’s Turn This Back Around, All Along and the Take That echoing Tethered. They up the tempo and the rock fire with Coming Home, Better Than The Courtoom and Shiver but you get the feeling they’re holding back when they really want to crank things up and let rip. Hopefully the live set will see them throw off the radio play shackles and really hammer it. 7pm. £12. O2 Academy

Saturday November 14

Gomez

Given the title, you might expect A New Tide (Eat Sleep) to mark a shift of direction, but, while there’s some electronic shadowings, chill out moods and even a hint of Latin, this is more like the tide coming back in as the band return to the folk blues grooves of their early days. Indeed, the opening Mix and the closing Sunset Gates hark back even further to the West Coast feel of Buffalo Springfield and Neil Young sprinkled with some Nick Drake magic dust.

Remotely recorded with assorted band members in different parts of the world, it still comes together as a cohesive sound, Ben Ottwell and Tom Gray mining a similar air of world weariness, the latter even channelling Paul Simon on the rhythmic itch of If You Ask Nicely.

There’s some lovely trademark rippling guitar work in evidence on Bone Tired and Little Pieces while Airstream Driver ups the funky rustling tribal blues with some jazzy organ fills and if, 10 years on from the Mercury Music Prize, they’re never going to commercially progress beyond where they’re currently at, as Natural Reaction ably demonstrates, nor are they showing any signs of any creative backsliding.

Opening the night are Scottish crew Frightened Rabbit, now boosted to a five piece with the addition of multi-instrumentalist Gordon Skene and treading the boards to lay the ground for next year’s third album, The Winter Of Mixed Drinks. Its predecessor, Midnight Organ fight, is quite an act to follow with its mix of folk and jangling indie guitar rock flavours, but, with its tumbling shantyish melody line, salt tanged vocals and gradually building swell, vanguard single Swim Until You Can’t See Land (FatCat) suggests it’ll be more than up to the task. 8pm. £18. Kasbah, Coventry

Sunday November 15

Great Lake Swimmers

Here earlier this year, the Canadians return for a second helping of songs from new album Lost Channels (Nettwerk), its folk-country sound and Neil Young comparisons now given an extra Byrdsian guitar ring.

There’s plenty of stand outs vying for a place in the set list, among them the splendid She Comes To Me In A Dream and its kettle drums, the mandolin jangling Palmistry and the rousing REM feel of Still while Everything Is Moving So Fast and the hymnal Concrete Heartplay the aces in their contemplative pack. Well worth taking the plunge. 8pm. £10. Glee Club

Sunday November 15

Nell Bryden

Following Live In Iraq, the New Yorker returns with What Does It Take? (157), a new studio album that showcases her vocal and songwriting strengths on a collection that ranges across bluegrass, soul, country and jazz.

Things kick off in solid roadhouse boogie form with the title track, the band driving it along on guitars and keyboards while gospel back ups add extra fire to Bryden's belting urgency. It's an immediate change of pace then for Not Like Loving You, a country soul ballad that melds Patsy Cline and Percy Sledge. Then the tempo picks up again as a railroad rhythm guides you into Where The Pavement Ends before the rollercoaster mood repeats itself with Helen's Requiem, a gospel tinged farewell to a down on her luck mother who drowned in her attic.

Brazilian percussion, horns and classical guitar add warm colours to Goodbye, The Only Life I Know is a bluegrass dust road shuffle about a mother leaving her daughter to give her a better life, and Second Time Around takes it back to the blues boogie. Tonight and Late Night Call invites jazz swing on to the saloon dance floor while waltzing leaving song Green Dress and the Nashville rockier Meridian (I Love The Same) complete the set with country in mind. It's a classily solid rather than outstanding release, but with her voice considerably firmer in the studio than it seems life, it should boost her growing reputation considerably. 6.30pm. £7. O2 Academy 3

Monday November 16

Gerry Colvin

Taking a brief time out before Colvin Quarmby hit the December tour trail, this is a rare solo excursion from their formerly Birmingham based (now Stratford) frontman. A consummate entertainer, his infectious enthusiasm and sheer delight in performing impossible to resist, he also happens to be a fine singer and one of this country’s most underrated songwriters.

With a back catalogue of classics going back over two decades, his songs can make you feel glad to be alive or tear your heart apart, deliver incisive social comment and poignant observation on the human condition. Accompanied tonight by Elliot Rooney on keyboards. there’s no knowing what will be on the set list - though hopefully he’ll find too for protest song The Man Who Forgot To Say Please, the touching Just An Old Table and Watching Feathers Falling From Angels - but he does promise to showcase some new material of a jazz and swing persuasion. No matter what he sings though, this is going to be a belter. 8pm. £10. Kitchen Garden Cafe, Kings Heath

Monday November 16

The Outcry Collective

Hard rock with a punk core where Rage Against the Machine collides with Queens Of The Stone Age in some riffing to the death battle, the Surrey crew don’t believe in letting you go home until your ears and legs are bleeding from the onslaught. They’ll be hammering out tracks from their debut album, Articles (Visible Noise), a relentless barrage of dirty heavy rock with flesh flaying guitars, pummelling drums and raw throat screaming vocals served up over numbers such as the grinding Southern bluesy wail of A Great Day For Crows, blues jam Prepare Yourself For The News, rasping Pistols meets hardcore headcharge Out Of My System and Homecounty Killer. 8pm. £5. Flapper & Firkin

Monday November 16

Alberta Cross

Hailing from the East End but sounding like they come from the Southern States, the five piece released their seven track The Thief & The Heartbreaker EP a couple of years ago, since when things have been ominously quiet. However, rehomed at Ark, they’re back now with their full length debut Broken Side Of Time and, like a good bourbon, have matured and gained potency in the interim.

They still prompt those Kings Of Leon references filtered with touches of Starsailor and Neil Young, the latter notably so on the opening Song 3Three Blues, but they’ve deepened their folk blues groove with some hefty wailing guitars and alt-rock power chord muscle. Things ramp up with ATX, Leave Us And Forgive Us, the slow burning City Walls and a reprise of the EP’s title track, but they do lighter folk rock shades too with the synth laced Rise From The Shadows and the acoustic sway of city life jaded closer Ghost Of City Life where their soul blues groove lights a potent flame.

The flowing hooks of Taking Control evidences an awareness of pop sensibilities while Old Man Chicago, another EP retread, is a well crafted sample of country rock, and, with Petter Stakee’s quivering timbre leading them forward, they should have little difficulty in bringing 2010 to heel. 7.30pm. £7. O2 Academy 3

Tuesday November 17

The Jonas Brothers

Given their squeaky clean Disney boys image, it’s a bit hard to take the siblings seriously when, on current album Lines, Vines And Trying Times (Hollywood), they launch into the tough rock n raunch swagger of World War III. But it’s okay, they soon shake off the demonic possession and while Paranoid may share its title with Black Sabbath, the song itself’s a pop chugger that could have strayed in from Camp Rock soundtrack while Fly With Me is bubbling McFly pop, Black Keys a big ballad swayer for tweenie girls and What Did I Do To Your Heart straight ahead fiddle stomping country rock that only lacks Taylor Swift’s frequent guest appearance.

She may be absent, but their other girl chum poplet Miley Cyrus drops by to help out on sub take That lightsticks loft swayer Before The Storm. For their slightly more street savvy underage fans, they also rope in rapper Common for the, ahem, ‘urban rock’ of Don’t Charge Me For The Crime, a song that sounds as if it’s been written just to enable an onstage mini drama.

They are, at best competent mediocre teen pop who’ll fade away long before their pimples do, to be replaced by the next boy band from the Disney Channel factory, but, as anyone who’s seen their Live Concert movie will know, they do at least give their underage punters exactly what they want. Even down to some knowing phallic horseplay involving hosepipes and foam. 7.30pm. £40-£32. LG Arena

Tuesday November 17

Flaming Lips

You’d have to be a particularly obsessive and devoted fan to hope that the current tour would heavily feature new album Embryonic (Warner), an 18 track double disc that is rarely on nodding acquaintance with anything resembling structured melody or indeed actual songs. Featuring Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs doing animal impersonations on I Can Be A Frog and clicking her tongue on Gemini Syringes (a track that also features spoken word by a maths professor), it sees Wayne Coyne shooting for the stars in an attempt to outdo himself in the great constellation of experimental psychedelic prog rock. He’s described the album as Miles Davis meets Joy Division, and you can see what he means to a point with free form jams working their way through dark clouds of distortion, but there’s also some obvious Pink Floyd in the mix as well as - in the light of his cosmic and stellar themes - a dash of Hawkwind.

It is, at times, undeniably mesmerising music for a peyote trip (Powerless recalls the Lizard King prowls of Jim Morrison while The Ego’s Last Stand and Sagittarius Silver announcement transport you to the kaleidoscopic LSD swirls of the late 60s) while The Impulse, If and Virgo Self-Esteem Broadcast are lounge music for the massage parlour at the end of the universe. But are these what you want to hear reprised on stage rather than as the soundtrack to some art house sci fi movie? Probably not. And, if the movie resembled last year’s Christmas On Mars kitsch offering, not the latter either. Just hope that Yoshimi battles her way through to rescue the live show.

Getting you in (or out of) the right frame of mind, support comes from Stardeath And White Dwarfs, an Oklahoma quartet fronted by Coyne’s nephew Dennis and clearly forged from the same musical genes to judge by their debut album, The Birth (Warner). They have, however, not yet forsaken the silly notion that audiences might want to hang on to a tune and so New Heat, Keep Score and I Can’t Get Away lean more towards the acid mellow pop aspects of his uncle’s 60s psychedelia collection.

As you might surmise from the title, Those Who Are From The Sun Return to The Sun keeps up their end of the great Ummagumma psych out with The Sea is On Fire and the acoustic lo fi Smoking Pot Makes Me Not Want To Kill Myself ensuring Big Sur flashbacks are kept well stoked. 7.30pm. £20. O2 Academy

Tuesday November 17

The Mission District

Coming from Canada, the five piece are more likely to take their name from the area just outside Vancouver and the site of the country's first train robbery than from the San Francisco neighbourhood. But whatever the origins, if recent single So Over You (Relentless) is indicative, the music is clearly rooted in dancey synth driven 80s Britpop. Upcoming follow up Just Don’t Feel The Same reinforces the Tears For Fears references while the treated vocals recall the Buggles. Previewing material from next year’s album, Youth Games, warbling acoustic ballad Anchors shows they have other colours in the box while a cover of Lady Gaga’s Just Dance underlines their sense of fun. 7.30pm. £6. O2 Academy 3

Wednesday November 18

La Roux

Elly Jackson, the androgynous ginger quiffed, spangles bedecked leading light of the 80s synth-pop revival, has clearly caught the mass market imagination, only posthumous Michael Jackson mania having kept her eponymous debut album from the top spot.

So, a splash of pop, a bit of disco, a dash of r&b, slurring, scuffling and staccato electro beats. Catchy yes and she has definite visual presence but, er hang on a minute. They may cite Human League, Blancmange and Heaven 17 among the influences but this is essentially just Yazoo revisited isn’t it? And Bulletproof is really Don’t Go with a different name. Except, even on the big ballad Cover My Eyes, Jackson’s vocals don’t quite suggest she has anything approaching Moyet’s depth and range. Enjoyable and well stacked with catchy retro pop tunes, but let’s keep this in perspective, shall we. 7.30pm. £13. O2 Academy

Wednesday November 18

Jackie Leven

Having just released Autumn, the final edition of his The Haunted Year series of fan club double live album reissues, featuring Greek Notebook (a collection of work in progress chord sequence demos) and Only The Ocean Can Forgive (Cooking Vinyl), perhaps he can focus his mind on getting down to recording a follow up to last year’s Lovers At The Gun Club.

Given it was one of his best albums yet, with the slow funk groove of The Dent In The Fender And The Wheel Of Fate, My Old Home’s warm Celtic soul, the tender acoustic Woman In A Car and the gospel blues doo wop Head Full Of War, he’ll have to pull out all the stops to better it. Hints of what might follow could well be in evidence tonight. 8pm. £9. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Thursday November 19

Kasabian

In Wolverhampton earlier in the year, the Leicestershire boys return in arena mood to give a larger canvas for songs from West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum (Columbia), an album that runs the gamut from the jagged dance grooves of new single Underdog the steamrollering disco Vlad The Impaler to the Stonesy psychedelia of Where Did All The Love Go? and Fast Fuse’s garage electro-raunch. The Kinks-like autumnal pop Thick of Thieves and West Ryder/Silver Bullet spooked shanty rings the changes and reminds you that this is a band dedicated to catching you offguard, but always guaranteed to supply the swoon and the sway of an unforgettable night. 7.30pm. £25. NIA

Thursday November 19

The Fall Of Troy

Guitarist/vocalist Thomas Erak reckons “we need another Nirvana, we need another Rage Against The Machine, we need another Bad Brains and At The Drive-In.” If so, I’m afraid you’ll have to look elsewhere, because his band’s own new album, In The Unlikely Event (Equal Vision) is just a standard issue set of metal, punk, yowling vocals and vitriol with breakneck guitar riffs and thundering drums. Empty The Clip, The King Has Been Slain, Long Live The Queen deviates from herd by having a slightly jazzy flavour behind the sub Maiden headbanging, but the likes of Panic Attack, Battleship Graveyard and A Classic Case of Transference aren’t anything you’d want to smuggle a wooden horse in to hear. 7.30pm. £9. O2 Academy 2

Thursday November 19

Leigh Mary Stokes

More at the Beth Ditto or Alison Moyet end of the scale than your familiar slimline pop starlets, Leigh's a girlie voiced teenage Portsmouth singer-songwriter whose no frills, no fuss home live recordings on YouTube have been creating a bit of a buzz.

Described as being as hardcore as Winnie the Pooh and her music like tea and crumpets before work and roast dinner at your mum's, she's just released debut EP, Best Served With Tea & Biscuits (One Above). A five tracker that places her in the Lily Allen and Kate Nash corner of the playful but smartly observed, witty lyrics, catchy speak sing pop room, given the exposure Day Come Day Go, sprightly empty pockets lament Skint, the handclappy Superman and When It All Goes Wrong should easily catapult her into the charts and the nation's consciousness.

You get the feeling that the band behind her are probably not in the same age bracket, but they know their way round the instruments and even if the playing's sometimes more session solid than inspired, Stokes has more than enough bubbly charisma and natural cool to compensate. Should be immense fun, not least if she includes live favourite Tom Vek, a song about the songwriter she'd like to marry if he weren't 'a little gay man'.

Sharing the bill is homegrown talent, Cat Chinn, daughter of Carl and a rising singer-songwriter who'll be showcasing new material for her long overdue debut album, among them the swampy blues soul Stand Still and dreamy acoustic chuggalong Shooting Stars. 8pm. £3. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Thursday November 19

Blue Roses

The musical alias of Yorkshire multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter Laura Groves, this is the last date on her tour promoting the self-titled debut album (XL) before heading home to Shipley.

Citing an eclectic list of pop, folk and classical influences, she cheerily admits to not being able to properly play all the instruments she uses but then that’s part and parcel of the experimental approach to her music and, judging on the few available tasters of the album, one that seems to work remarkably well.

Working with a folk palette, she’s been variously likened to Joanna Newsom, Joni Mitchell, Laura Marling, Kate Bush, and there’s certainly evidence of all of their influences (Moments Before Sleep certainly has those Bush vocal acrobatics) but never to the point of overwhelming her own personality.

She has a light girlish voice that skips playfully across frisky melodies like I Am Leaving but is equally at home on something like the Newsom-like airily ambient Doubtful Comforts with its pixie musical box kalimba backing. Greatest Thoughts is a hypnotically fragile piano ballad and she also does a nice line in romantic melancholy on the watery Does Anyone Love Me Now? where she also demonstrates any protestations about the limitations of her guitar playing is false modesty before multi-tracked vocals lift it to the choral heavens.

The voice could do with a little more shading and earthiness in parts, but make no mistake this is a rare bloom you’d well be advised to stop by and smell. 8pm. £7. Glee Club

Friday November 20

Arctic Monkeys

Be honest, did you really think Favourite Worst Nightmare was actually a patch on the debut? No, of course not. Sure there were highlights and flashes of Alex Turner’s lyrical strengths, but generally speaking it was a forgettable affair. So, sighs of relief all round when Humbug (Domino) came along and, even if opening track My Propeller was a juvenile exercise in phallic metaphors, it proved a dark, muscular affair that, on several occasions, suggested The Doors as much as it did the spiky chunky rhythms of The Pixies.

Sex loomed large, Turner even turning a pick n mix counter into a suggestive prowl with strawberry lace and gobstoppers and ice cream offering oblique imagery in a song about lost love. It’s was almost a relief to discover that the spooky swooning Secret Door wasn’t another euphemism but a Morrissey-aping song about celebrity culture.

And even when not dealing with carnality, the music still has an itch in its pants, as on Dangerous Animals with its feral guitar and stormtrooper drum rhythm exuding heady pheromones.

It doesn’t all work and chances are the meandering ‘ballad’ Fire And The Thud and the sun Morrison Dance Little Liar will be integral live highlights, but the steamrollering Eastern tinged, lollopping dark mojo Potion Approaching (surely the most Doors-like track here) and the deranged riff chopping Pretty Visitors should loom large among the swelling madness.

After being the kitchen sink diarist of the Sheffield streets with the likes of I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor, Turner’s self-reinvention as some art clique poet given to visionary shamanesque nonsense (listen to The Jeweller’s Hands) might take some swallowing, but it certainly ensures that the gig’s a more attractive proposition than it might have been two years ago. 7.30pm. £29.50. NIA

Saturday November 21

Matt & Kim

A Brooklyn drums and keyboards boy/girl duo, they’re over here supporting Swedish outfit The Sounds and plugging just released second album Grand (Fader), a charmingly bouncy collection of bouncy bubblegum indie pop that eschews polish for endearing lollop and swagger.

They like to keep audiences on their feet, so there’s plenty here to encourage jumping around and pretending it’s dancing with numbers like the jerky Daylight, a staccato Depeche Mode pop Don’t Slow Down, the handclappy Spare Change and the jog along flurry of Cutdown.

The rather droney vocals can get a bit wearing after a while, especially when they turn to the downtempo pacing of the percussion free Turn This Boat Around, but at least hang around until they’ve rolled out the Oriental rhythmic waterfalls and clumping beat of Good Ol’ Fashioned Nightmare. 7pm. £11. O2 Academy 2

Sunday November 22

Ingrid Michaelson

Heavily featured on Scrubs, One Tree Hill and Grey’s Anatomy, the latter spawning her biggest US hit, the bossa flavoured The Way I Am, she also co-wrote Parachute for Cheryl Cole’s solo debut and is America’s biggest selling unsigned act of all time. Not having a label deal hasn’t stopped her releasing four albums, the latest of which, Everybody, is the reason she’s here now.

It’s exactly the sort of rather twee folksy pop affair that American dramedy series adore, especially things like the handclappy poppy title track with its saccharine ‘everybody wants to love everybody wants to be loved’ singsong chorus. Inoffensively lacklustre, numbers like Maybe with its hazy reggae chops and Soldier (which borrows considerably from Joan Osborne’s One Of Us) won’t have you tuning out but you’ll be hard pushed to remember them or her the next day. 6.30pm. £8.50. O2 Academy 3

Monday November 23

Beverley Knight

The UK’s Queen of Soul, MBE, returns with 100%, her first for her own Hurricane label after parting company with Parlophone after 11 years. If Music City Soul was a retro homage to her musical roots, this finds her in more contemporary mood, working with Jam and Lewis as well as regular collaborator Guy Chambers.

The opening Beautiful Night is rippling electro streaked r&b pop and, keeping electronic bubbles popping, what follows is a solid set of neo-soul dance grooves with Breakout, new single In Your Shoes and Moneyback, with midtempo Jam/Lewis collaboration Every Step firmly in Usher territory.

However, she’s not left her past totally behind. Gold Chain’s a throwback to the 70s psychedelic funk of the Temptations, Square Peg recalls Diana Ross balladeering and Painted Pony and Bare are both classic old school soul burners that bear witness to her love of such legends as Lorraine Ellison and Aretha and Erma Franklin. Brassy vintage Motown sounding belter Soul Survivor even finds her duetting with Chaka Khan.

It could, arguably, have lived without Bee Gees cover Too Much Heaven and the sluggish 100% really doesn’t have the muscle to carry the weight of being the title track, but otherwise there’s little danger of her abdicating her title anytime soon. 7.30pm. £25/£21.50. Symphony Hall

Monday November 23

Yusuf

Three years after An Other Cup marked his return to music after three decades and his conversion to Islam, Yusuf is back with Roadsinger (Island) an album that, in his own words, picks up where the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens left off. Actually, rather than the next step on from Back To Earth, with its acoustic guitar and folk-tale material, this sounds much more like a companion piece to Tea For The Tillerman and Teaser And The Firecat while the Spanish guitar mood of World Of Darkness may even recall Lady D'Arbanville.

It's a quintessential Cat Stevens album with all that entails. So, a gentle tweeness, soft sentimentality, often gauche lyrics and mellow spirituality. There's even what sounds like a kiddie choir on the new age philosophy of the tinkling piano pop To Be What You Must, but may well be a multi-tracked Martha Wainwright.

There's plenty of references to his faith, notably the Tim Hardinish title track about the outcast troubadour finding the path to enlightenment and happiness, but they're all couched in lovely folksy pop melodies with nothing so overt as to scare off non-believers or anyone with religion in song phobias. And, he's clearly still got a wry sense of humour too, the closing, rowdy Boots And Sand a recounting of his 2004 run in with US authorities when he was refused entry into America on national security grounds.

The distinctive Stevens warble now seasoned with age and experience, numbers like Welcome Here, tinkling love song Thinking About You, the cello darkened The Rain, and the strummed All Kinds Of Roses are all guaranteed to warm the cockles of old fans' hearts and maybe make a fair few new ones along the way.

Starved of hearing him perform his back catalogue for 33 years, the Guess I’ll Take My Time tour show promises to make up for things with a hefty selection of his old hits, doubtless Father And Son, Peace Train, Wild World and maybe even Matthew And Son among them. And, to make this an even more special occasion, you also get a fully theatrical preview of his Moonshadow musical complete with special visuals and full cast. 7.30pm. £75-£50. NIA

Monday November 23

The Leisure Society

A welcome return to the venue by Christian Hardy, Nick Hemming and their variable floating line up. Again they’ll be dipping deeply into the pastoral folk and country of debut album The Sleeper (Baked Goods) where The Last Of The Melting Snow offers a delicate strings soaked winter ballad, The Darkest Place I Know musically mixes a Japanese water garden with a tropical beach campfire and Come To Your Senses sounds like something from Midnight Cowboy.

Reminiscent of The Lilac Time and Ray Davies with flashes of Leonard Cohen and Nico, songs such as Save It For Someone Who Cares carry an underlying sadness, but a ukulele driven 30s vaudeville flavoured Love’s Enormous Wings shows they’re no strangers to wit and wistful humour either. If you’ve not heard them yet, there’s till time to make them one of your year’s best discoveries. 8pm. £8.50. Glee Club

Monday November 23

Hadouken!

January sees the Leeds nu rave/grime outfit release major label debut For The Masses (Atlantic), the follow up to last year’s hedonistic dance floor banging Music For An Accelerated Culture. They’ll be offering previews on this quickie round of dates and with the relentless pounding dubstep swagger of M.A.D and not entirely musically dissimilar new single Turn The Lights Out already providing a taste of what to expect, you’ll be advised to be in the mood for some serious house partying. 7.30pm. £10. Wulfrun Hall

Tuesday November 24

Chew Lips

Comprising James Watkins, Will Sanderson and singer Tigs and taking their name from a character in Brendan Behan’s Bortsal Boy, the London minimal dance pop trio have been building a steady buzz around their home base and now look to take it to the nation with this trailer tour in advance of next year’s debut album. Following on from debut single Solo, they’ll be accompanying the live dates with follow-up Salt Air (Kitsune), a decidedly retro slice of 80s electro pop that plays more like Blondie lite than their LCD Soundsytem comparisons. Nothing to get overly excited about, yet. 8pm. £5. Flapper & Firkin

Tuesday November 24

Lily Allen

Making the move to arena size venues should prove a litmus test for the ubiquitous Ms Allen continuing public appeal, especially given the rather disappointing hit and miss nature of the It’s Not Me, It’s You album. Sure it spawned #1 hit The Fear and equally catchy hits Not Fair and 22, but generally speaking it didn’t measure up to the freshness of her debut and, if there aren’t sufficient bums on seats for this ambitious upsizing then a musical rethink may be on her list of projects for 2010. 7.30pm. £23. NIA

Tuesday November 24

Breed 77

Five albums in and things aren’t much about to change for the Gibraltarian flamenco and metal rockers who, with Insects (La Rocka), seem determined to cling to a diet of flailing riffs and angry lyrics, albeit with a darker intensity. That’s certainly the case with opening track Wake Up, a generic slab of pummelling piston pumping guitars, frenzied drumming and scoured throat shouting, swiftly followed by the equally frantic fret scorching The Battle of Hatin which, save for some Eastern drones, recalls the more uninspired moments of third division head banging Brit heavy metal.

Unfortunately, this is the template for most of the album as things like Revolution On My Mind, Insects and Who I Am grind out minor variations on the theme. However, there are moments when they do rise above the herd. New Disease has its piledriving moments, but these are enfolded in flamenco and Spanish guitar fabrics, Forever soars along like peak form Judas Priest while In The Temple Of Ram:Rise Of The Bugs is a virtuoso six minute prog metal instrumental full of the flavours of Morocco and Andalucia. They’ve also recorded long time live favourite, their muscled up cover of Cranberries hit Zombie, ironically probably the one number you’re likely to walk away from the gig still humming. 7.30pm. £9. O2 Academy 2

Tuesday November 24

Detachments

Yet more dark veined electro led indie with a disco dub spirit, the fact that singer Sebastien Marshal comes from Manchester, they dress in black and were invited by Peter Hook to perform New Order and Joy Division covers for a charity gig should give a rough idea of which Factory they’re coming from. New single Circles (Thisisnotanexit) provides confirmation, though the sound’s a touch more miserablist Depeche Mode than New Order. One you can dance to while contemplating an overdose of barbiturates. 8pm. £5. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Tuesday November 24

Rodrigo Y Gabriela

Never less than breathtaking as their fingers become a blur across their Spanish guitars as they engage in fretwork interplay, the Mexican acoustic duo finally arrive in person to belatedly promote 11:11 (Rubyworks), their much anticipated follow up to 2006’s self-titled career breakthrough.

The title refers to both the fact that the album has 11 tracks and that, ploughing a world music furrow, they’re inspired by the 11 musicians who have most inspired them. It’s not always obvious, but these include Carlos Santana (Hanuman), Al Di Meola (Logos), Paco De Lucia (Master Maqui), John McLaughlin (Savitri) and Pink Floyd (11:11) with lesser known names Michel Camilo and Dimebag Darrell represented by Santo Domingo and the Middle Eastern sounding Atman, the latter featuring Alex Skolnick from metal outfit Testament.

You might not actually recognise Buster Voodoo as a Hendrix homage, but it’s certainly among the best of an outstanding set alongside the jazzy Triveni which, reflecting the album’s variety of textures, pacing and sounds, reflects the influence of Palestinian oud players Le Trio Joubran.

With fans starved of hearing them perform for a while now, the set will doubtless feature a strong selection of past live favourites with the inevitable calls for Stairway To Heaven, but it’ll be the new material that will have jaws dropping furthest.

Show opener is Irish singer-songwriter Wallis Bird who arrived a couple of years ago on a tide of Ani Di Franco and Edie Brickell comparisons with impressive debut album Spoons and its earthy songs about shaving her legs and drunkenly acting like a dog on heat. Since then, she’s parted company with Island and signed to Dublin label Rubyworks, releasing New Boots over here a couple of months back under an apparent veil of secrecy.

However, judging by the brief snippets on her MySpace, it’s equally well seeking out, maintaining the debut’s folk filtered jazz-rock but also funking things up on the swaggery chunk LaLaLand and delivering a rousing folk rocking belter on To My Bones. 7.30pm. £17.50. O2 Academy

Tuesday November 24

Lou Rhodes

It’s been six years since Lamb imploded and three since Rhodes returned to making music with solo debut Beloved One, swiftly following up with Bloom and its organic cocktail of elemental folk, sonic swirl and tribal groove. Appearing here last year as part of the Daughters Of Albion package, she and Andy Barlow reformed Lamb this August for a clutch of festival appearances, but whether this proves an ongoing reunion remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, she’s been working on her third solo album. One Good Thing, for release next March and, alongside past gems such as Rain, Icarus, Never Loved A Man (Like You) and Tremble, she’ll be showcasing what’s in store, among them forthcoming single, the hushed, fragile and leafily acoustic There For The Taking. 8pm. £11.50. Glee Club

Wednesday November 25

Lisa Hannigan

With UK reviews mirroring the praise rained down on her in Ireland for last year for debut album Sea Sew and flush from its Mercury Music Prize nomination, the Irish songstress returns to give a second airing for its heady mix of kittenish jazz (Keep It All), skittering pop (I Don’t Know), and shimmering lullaby (Lille), all coloured by her fondness for whimsy and mystical metaphor. She’s just released the Live At Fingerprints EP featuring six of the songs recorded in America, though, disappointingly, it’s not available over here. 7.30pm. £15. O2 Academy 2

Wednesday November 25

Skunk Anansie

Following three splendidly splentic albums, Paranoid & Sunburnt, Stoosh, and Post Orgasmic Chill, and nince Top 40 hits, the four piece called it a day eight years ago, saying they’d taken things as far as they could. Taking off on solo pursuits, the biggest post split profile rather inevitably belonged to charismatic singer Skin who, adopting a new non-bald image, released two solo albums, Fleshwounds and Fake Chemical State, that swapped shouty rap-metal angst for smouldering beats and torch jazz-bluesin the manner of Fitzgerald and Holiday. Fine records both, alienating old fans and failing to attract new, neither charted.

So, perhaps no surprise then to find them joining the reunion ranks, releasing a best of in the form of Smashes And Trashes (One Little Indian) and heading out on a tie in tour to whip up some nostalgia interest.

Shaven headed once more, Skin’s voice is as much a soulful force of nature as ever and they do, however, have new material to sit alongside the likes of Hedonism,Weak and Charlie Big Potato, Because Of You every bit as nervy, heavy and angry as anything they’d previously done while the single, Squander, presents a free pass to the ranks of stadium power ballads. A welcome return and, hopefully, a sustainable future.

Support is The Chemists, a competently run of the mill indie rock Bristol outfit who’ve somehow managed to get Richard E Grant to recite an intro extract from the lyrics to the opening track of debut album Theories Of Dr.Lovelock. (Distiller). The album’s title is a homage to James Lovelock, the microwave oven inventor whose Gaia hypothesis argues that the Earth is a single super-organism, but don’t worry that’s as intellectual as it gets.

Drawing on such inspirations as Queens of the Stone Age, Foo Fighters and The Police, the album’s stuffed with chugging rockalong songs about weekend debauchery (the Editors-lite Something For The Weekend), drugs, drink and hookers (This City), self-deluded knob-heads (Milk And Honey), vacuous supermodel clothes horses (Hot In That) and, er, Radio Booth, a grumble about the bland unquestioning homogenous nature of radio stations. Hear Our Song will be featuring on Sky TV’s Rugby Union coverage, fairly appropriate in the light of the band’s heads down charge in approach. The album also includes their version of Britney’s Toxic, a lumbering heavy rock deconstruction that’s apparently a live favourite. Says it all really. 7.30pm. £11.50. W’hampton Civic Hall

Wednesday November 25

The Pony Collaboration

Not unjustifiably compared to Lambchop but also bearing hints of The Beautiful South, The Go Betweens and Deacon Blue, the Cambridge eight-piece fronted by James Scallan and Claire Williams first emerged a couple of years back with their eponymously titled lo fi debut revealing their pleasurably lethargic brand of Americana.

They return to the fray now with sophomore release If These Are The Good Times (Series 8) sporting another fine collection of bittersweet bruised relationship songs that run the gamut from the regret stained melancholy slow waltz the title track to the positively scampering, brass bursting (but still broken hearted) I Never Knew with the circling piano, thrumming bass lines and brushed percussion of Monopoly On Sound showcasing their instrumental chops.

There’s jazzy tones at play on the opening male/female sharing Until It’s Gone where you might hear splashes of Prefab Sprout while the smoky wisps of end of summer romance The Funny Side highlight those BS influences and Leaving With Your Heart turns up an unexpected brief burst of brass flourished Northern Soul. Not ones to prompt mass adulation perhaps, but for those with an ear for the finer aspects of reflective melodic charm well worth trotting along to see. 8pm. £1. The Tin Angel, Coventry

Thursday November 26

The Enemy

With Music For The People (Warner) slamming into the #2 slot, the Coventry trio ably proved that they’d lost none of the air punching anthemic power that marked their debut We’ll Live And Die In These Towns. In numbers like Elephant Song with its fusion of The who and Stone Roses and the crunching Queen percussion and arabesque motifs of No Time For Tears they also announced themselves as capable of more than terrace crowd rousers and Jam soundalikes.

Not, of course, that they’ve actually cleared out their Paul Weller wardrobe and called time on stadium swayers. 51st State, Nation of Checkout Girls, Don’t Break The Red Tape and Be Somebody are all cut from Modfather cloth while both Keep Losing and a Springsteenesque Sing When You’re In Love are guaranteed to see mobile phones lighting up the night. The popular choice indeed.

Support is pop punk trio General Fiasco, one of the best bands out of Londonderry since The Undertones, whetting the appetite for next year’s debut album with current barricades storming single We Are The Foolish (Infectious). 7pm. £. O2 Academy 3 7pm. £18. O2 Academy

Friday November 27

New Model Army

It’s a long time since they had a national profile, but almost 30 years since they first formed, Justin Sullivan’s still leading his anti-capitalist agitprop outfit, still turning out albums and still sustaining a substantial and dedicated following, although these days the sound can be a lot heavier than the folk punk of yore.

Two years on from High, itself no musical or lyrical slouch with numbers like No Mirror, No Shadow, Nothing Dies Easy and Wired, they’re on the road with Today is A Good Day (Attack Attack), one of their best albums since Thunder And Consolation.

Opening with the title track’s driving metallic guitar chug account of last year’s Wall Street Collapse, they keep the energy and heavy rocked intensity powered up for Disappeared, Arm Yourself And Run and Bad Harvest but are no less charged and muscular when they take the tempo down on the striding folk of Autumn which, alongside the urgent States Radio and, another number hewn from the wild beauty of nature, an emotionally charged Ocean Rising, stands tall among the album highlights.

Calling to mind Jim Morrison’s shaman state performances, Mambo Queen Of The Sandstone City also looks to prove a fiery live highlight from a band who never fail to deliver the heart and the passion that informs everything they do. 7pm. £17.50. O2 Academy 2

Friday November 27

Dan Whitehouse

Following The Balloon and The Bubble EPs, the talented Wolverhampton songsmith now launches the third and final in the self-released collection, The Box, which will be on sale on the night.

Written some nine years ago, the slow burning Right Here In Front Of You which provides the title reference conjures the splintered heart balladry of Thom Yorke as it builds in emotional intensity while the chugging tick tocking guitar rock We All Feel The Same Pain melds Damien Rice and early U2, Holding My Head Under marries 60s English campus folk to Bolan percussion and, with whispered vocal and keening pedal steel, I Saw The End is the sort of naked soulful confessional of regret that warrants comparison with the mighty Richard Hawley.

That same open heart emotional surgery can be heard on the slow building If I Grow Old’s leafy, star-kissed and hopelessly romantic hymn to enduring love while, another soul melting moment, graced with both BJ Cole’s pedal and steel and backing vocals from Carina Round,

the scuffed melancholy of Where Is The Love has every chance of becoming 2010’s anthem for the heartbroken.

Joined by John Large on drums, bassist Steve Clarke bass, June Mori on piano and Tom Bounford providing violin, this promises to be little short of an incandescent evening, the new material boosted by past diamonds like Somewhere I Don't Want To Go, Carousel and You Can’t Give Me Anymore that will have you leafing through the thesaurus for superlatives.

Sharing the night will be Suffolk acoustic blues singer-songwriter Vashti Anna and a solo set from Michael Clarke, singer with Birmingham ringing guitar outfit Rogue States whose own Lights EP shines with the spirit of U2, Snow Patrol and REM. 8pm. £6. Glee Club

Saturday November 28

James Morrison

He may not please the critics, but ignore the vitriol and take an unbiased listen to Songs For You, Truths For Me (Polydor) and you’ll realise the raspy voiced Scottish singer is, for all his occasional tendency to mawkishness, actually rather good. On top of which the album features genuinely excellent and enduring memorable songs in the shape of the Otis Redding inspired If You Don’t Wanna Love Me, stadium swayer Precious Love and the big ballad Dream On Hayley to further add to his dominance of the airwaves with You Give Me Something and Wonderful World. Whether he’s quite read to take on arena size venues remains to be seen, but he’s certainly got the talent for it. 7.30pm. £27.50. LG Arena

Saturday November 28

The Butterfly Effect

Australian brooding emo that embraces heavy, prog and alt rock and colours in the spaces with Edge-like guitar atmospherics and yearning vocals, those versed in the band’s previous two albums have declared themselves disappointed with Final Conversation Of Kings (Superball).

However, if you’re coming to them for the first time, then it’s hard to see how you’d fail to be impressed by the opening seven minute grandeur and Zep influences of Worlds On Fire, the pulsing slow burning fire and nagging hooks of And The Promise Of The Truth, the stabbing guitar intensity and big stadium vistas of Window And The Watcher or the swirling, circling tempo shifts of the majestic Room Without A View. Little known over here, the fluttering of these wings could be the start of a tumultuous swell. 7pm. £7.50. O2 Academy 3

Saturday November 28

The Automatic

Having parted company with B-Unique after sophomore album This Is A Fix failed to make the Top 40 let alone emulate Not Accepted Anywhere’s #3 placing, the Cardiff quartet have been busy recording their third album for their own Armoured Records label. Titled Tear The Signs Down it’s due out next February, this last of their brief flurry of dates serves to provide an advance taster of what to expect, kicking off with the buzzing flurry of new single Interstate. Big on chugging distorted guitars and a driving melody line, whether going to DIY route will continue their unbroken run of Top 40 singles remains to be seen but, unless the album has something more distinctive the chances of returning to their Monster peak seem slight. 9.30pm. £5. Kasbah, Coventry

Sunday November 29

Thea Gilmore

Since this is billed as her Wintertide (not Winterlude as everyone seems to be calling it) tour, then you should expect a slightly more seasonal slant to the set list. No carolling, of course, but amid choice nuggets from the superlative singer-songwriter’s back catalogue (Inverigo, The Lower Road and Juliet, hopefully included), there’ll be a decided emphasis on her ‘Christmas’ album, Strange Communion (Fullfill).

Available on the night, it’s her take on the festive season, opening with Sol Invictus, an invocation to the sun god that reminds that Dec 25 was originally a pagan festival, and featuring songs that range from the spiritual to the cynical, the joyful to the melancholic.

TS Eliot’s Journey of the Magi inspires Cold Coming, which, to a funky bass driven groove views the nativity from both religious and a commercial perspectives, while the Appalachian tinged Old December’s celebration of hope, community and love is preceded by a spoken extract from Louis MacNiece's 1938 poem Autumn Journal.

Guaranteed to make an appearance will be the gently tumbling acoustic Thea Gilmore's Windwinter Toast and playfully jaunty new single, That’ll Be Christmas with its references to Jona Lewie, The Sound Of Music and the season of faith, hope and gluttony. Chances are good too for the inclusion of her cover of Yoko Ono’s Listen, The Snow Is Falling, originally the B side to Happy Xmas (War Is Over), and, if one of the band stands in for Mark Radcliffe, then perhaps the Celtic rollicking The St Stephen's Day Murders, an old Elvis Costello drunken family gatherings companion pastiche to Fairytale of New York.

Since this is also her first appearance here since the release of live album Recorded Delivery earlier this year, hopefully she’ll also find space to showcase its two new songs, the Cohen-like Concrete and, written by partner Nigel Stonier, You And Frank Sinatra’s wistfully sad reflection on lost love and lingering hurt. But, whatever, she unwraps, this is going to be as welcome as a lof fire and hot mulled wine on a frosty evening. 8pm. £15. Glee Club

Sunday November 29

Gossip

Having broken into the mass consciousness with Standing In The Way Of Control, the Portland bred dance punk blues trio fronted by Beth Ditto roll into town for a belated live outing of follow-up, Music For Men (Columbia).

More polished but otherwise there’s no huge departures, Ditto belting it out like an unholy Janis Joplin and Dolly Parton clone on the slinky, Femme Fatale quoting Dimestore Diamond and the fluttering guitars of the country tinged Heavy Cross.

Brace Paine chops out the guitar with unswerving focus and Hannah Blilie keeps the drums steamrollering along as they elbow through the likes of gay themed Duran dancefloor groove of Men In Love, the Gloria Gaynor styled Love Long Distance, a Billie Jean-esque For Keeps, and the staccato riffing disco soul Pop Goes The World.

But, while 2012 sounds like Blondie channelling New Order, Spare Me From The Mold recalls the punky thrash of CBGBs and Four Letter Word revisits glitterball 80s synthsoul, the album generally suffers from a tendency to not fix what isn’t broken, which means that after a while familiarity begins to sound a lot like repetition. Old tricks can only keep hungry crowds entertained for so long and while this undeniably does the job it set out to do, next time round they’re going to have to start working up a different strand of chatter. 6.30pm. £16. O2 Academy

Sunday November 29

Cracking under the pressures of the business, the Leeds outfit called it a day following the 2005 flop of Teen Dance Ordinance, Adam going on to drum for Philadelphia’s The Bloodhound Gang, Jason and Dan turning songwriters for hire (and writing five UK No 1s), Mark playing sessions and Daniel presenting Radio One’s Rock Show.

However, the itch returned and they got back together last year and, while Dan’s opted out of touring, the others are back on the road with for five UK dates that will feature material from their three albums, hit singles Nothing and Starbucks among them. New material’s unlikely, but back in harness, the show should be pretty storming. 7pm. £12.50. O2 Academy 2

Sunday November 29

The Saw Doctors

While their albums never disappoint, as anyone who’s seen them will tell you, the Galway lads are really in their element on stage, delivering a rousing stomp and sing along set of folk tinged Celtic pop rock. If you’ve never had the pleasure, then you really should experience them first hand but, if you need persuasion, then lend an ear to Live At The Melody Tent (Shamtown), a rip roaring belter of a show that has them racing through such fan favourites as the ska bouncing Will It Ever Stop Raining?, Green And Red Of Mayo, arms linked swayer Clare Island, the country inflected N17, and, pretty much their anthem, That’s What She Said Last Night.

If you need visuals too, there’s the Clare Island To Cape Cod DVD, a film of the same gig but with a different choice of material that adds in To Win Just Once, Joyce County Ceili Band and their jubilant cover of About You Now. You’ll need to rest for a week from the sheer ebullience. 7.30pm. £20. Wulfrun Hall

Monday November 30

Goldhawks

A new name on the London scene perhaps, but the sound of this five piece is firmly rooted in the musical past, debut single Running Away (Vertigo) such a dead ringer for vintage Echo & The Bunnymen even Ian McCulloch might think it was a recording he’d forgotten about. Nothing original then, but a dynamic big noise which, if it represents the general tenor of their set, should see them gathering considerable momentum next year. 8pm. £5. Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath

Monday November 30

Regina Spektor

A Spektor show is always something to be eagerly anticipated, but even more so given this will see her playing material from Far (Sire), her most playful and idiosyncratic album to date without sacrificing any ounce of emotional depth.

Listen to Laughing With, a brooding piano ballad with a wry lyric about how no one laughs at God when they find themselves in need or The Wallet, a New York City flavoured tale about finding and returning a wallet to Blockbuster that offers a subtle affirmation of human decency. Then there’s Blue Lips, a thoughtful reflection on the meaning of life that links humanity and the planet.

She twists the tempo for Eet with its yodelly chorus and frisky tempo changing melody line, keeping you off balance with the quasi operatic Amosisms Of Machine, her hiccupping vocal tic eccentricities on the jerky Dance Anthem Of The 80s, and the barbed whimsy of a collapsing relationship in The Calculation.

She can bring you up short with the story of misfit’s suicide by drowning on The Genius Next Door Folding Chair or put a smile on your face with the jaunty summery pop bounce of Folding Chairs with a quirky delivery to go with quirky lyrics about having a perfect body with eyelashes that catch her sweat. Not to mention doing an impression of dolphins singing.

Intermingling with previous quirky gems like Fidelity and Samson from Begin To Hope or the Carbon Monoxide of Soviet Kitsch, nobody’s going home disappointed. 7.30pm. £22.50. O2 Academy