Jun 01

Villagers + John Fell @ The Glee Club, Birmingham, 1 June 2010

Villagers Whilst the name may conjure up an image of a huge band of angry country folk waving pitchforks and burning huge phallic symbols made of straw Villagers is, essentially, just one bloke, Conor J. O’Brien. Attracting gushing reviews for his/their debut album, earning comparisons with such greats as Laughing Lenny Cohen, Elliot Smith and king of the cabin blues Bon Iver, he’s got himself well and truly stuck on the tastemakers ‘ones to watch’ lists. First up tonight though someone who’s in a band that’s well and truly on my own personal ‘ones to watch’ list (smooth link eh...I should be on local news), it’s John Fell from Goodnight Lenin.


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May 27

Dan Sartain + The Rivers Presley Set @ The Hare and Hounds, Birmingham, 27 May 2010

Dan Sartain Man, that’s some powerful voodoo going on there. How else could you explain the sudden transportation of the Hare and Hounds from humble ol’ Kings Heath to the darkest depths of the Mississippi delta eh? Yep, shut your eyes tonight and you can almost hear the ‘gators a snappin’ at yer heels (if they hadn’t all been poisoned by several trillions of gallons of oil that is).


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May 22

Fuzzbox + [dweeb] @ The O2 Academy2, Birmingham, UK – 22 May 2010

Fuzzbox From scuzzy punk schoolgirls to glossy pop vixens, Fuzzbox crammed a fair amount in to their brief career (just three years from first album ‘Bostin Steve Austin’ to their demise not long after scoring a string of top 30 hits with follow up ‘Big Bang’). In fact I’m struggling to think of many other bands who went through such a rapid change of sound and vision – which might partially explain their disintegration at the height of their powers. I’ve no doubt that, had they carried on, they’d have settled into their own distinctive style and it’s one of pop’s great tragedies (if you can have such a thing) that they didn’t. But dry your tears pop kids. Put down that tatty copy of Smash Hits and bin that scratched to buggery Big Bang CD ‘cos they’re back, back, BACK!


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May 16

Dinosaur J. + Built To Spill, O2 Academy1, Birmingham, UK – 16 May 2010

Dinosaur Jr There seems to be a bit of an indie revival going on at the moment. What with Slint marking the release of their landmark album 'Spiderland' last year by playing it live, and with Pavement currently hitting the road, now it's the turn of Built To Spill, who sound eerily like Stephen Malkmus and co, although a three guitar line up gives them a lush edge to their jangly antics, with their Hendrix-esque freakout moments. Frontman Doug Martsch is a low key but steady presence at the microphone, but then the crowd weren't here for flashy.


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May 15

The Graham Coxon Power Acoustic Ensemble @ Town Hall, Birmingham, UK – 15 May 2010

The Graham Coxon Power Acoustic Ensemble Old Albarn may be the most famous Blur-ite but GC’s been putting out all kinds of good shit over the last decade or so, culminating in 2009’s 'The Spinning Top' – an ambitious concept album that tells one man’s story from birth to death (actually, as Graham pointed out tonight it doesn’t... not really... he just said that in an interview and now it’s all people talk about... and I’ve just gone and compounded this misconception... balls).


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May 10

The Drums @ The Civic Hall, Wolverhampton, UK – 10 May 2010

The Drums Is too much hype a good thing? According to the NME The Drums are "New York's official coolest new band". Thankfully I had no idea of the hype or the NME statement proclaiming them to be so cool when watching them warm up the Civics crowd prior to the emergence of Florence and her ever-expanding Machine.


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Apr 20

Reef @ O2 Academy, Birmingham, UK – 20th April 2010

Reef Ladies up and down the country clamour to obtain the miracle anti aging cream that Gary Stringer and the boys from Reef have evidently using during their self imposed hiatus from the music scene for the past 7 years... A spokesman for the band refused to comment on the boys lack of aging, although reports are now in that they have been adopting some vehicular method of cheating the space/time continuum. Evidently this vehicle must have been a 3 seater, as the aging process has been a little less kind to the Bass player Jack Bessant.


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Mar 20

Interview with The Joy Formidable, Birmingham, UK – 20 March 2010

Interview with The Joy Formidable Entering the reasonably salubrious surroundings of the Academy 3 dressing rooms we’re met by two thirds of The Joy Formidable. Lead singer Ritzy’s curled up demolishing a pot of hummus and packet of pitta bread and co-vocalist and guitarist Rhydian’s sipping a beer.  Drummer Matt joins us, wrapping bits of tape around what’s left of his fingers and we’re all set for a delightfully ramshackle interview (you can blame me for that...I’m no Alan Carr...I might look a little like him and I’m as camp as tits but that’s as far the comparison stretches). We start off by randomly discussing such pressing matters as floating poo, Rhyl, flatmates and Walsall before I remembered what we were there for and actually got my scrappy list of questions out.


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Mar 20

The Joy Formidable + Baddies + Airship @ The O2 Academy 3, Birmingham, UK – 20 March 2010

The Joy Formidable In the week in which I discovered that Birmingham’s last remaining independent record shops (Swordfish and Tempest) are to close, tonight’s gig proved, once more, that both the live scene and new music in general is as healthy as ever. There’s something about gigs featuring new bands (by which I probably mean a band on its first album) that’s hard to beat and each one of tonight’s groups still had that mixture of excitement and freshness that, I guess, often gets knocked out of you when you’re on album number 6 and making appearances on The One Show (in between a feature on men who dress up as their favourite vegetables and a salutary warning – presented by Dom Littlewood naturally – of the dangers of sticking parts of your anatomy in food blenders).


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Mar 15

Vix n’The Kix + Kat Vipers + Little L @ The Hare and Hounds, Birmingham, UK – 15 March 2010

Vix n'The Kix Ladies make up 50% of the human race (roughly). Strange then that relatively few of them seem to make it into bands. Why is that? Answers on a thong please. Tonight there were plenty of ‘em though. Ladies that is. Maybe there were plenty of thongs too, I wasn’t looking, although the barman was walking a bit funny...


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Mar 05

The xx + These New Puritans + Glasser @ O2 Academy 2, Birmingham, UK – 5 March 2010

The xx Somewhere across town this evening cheeky, chirpy Irish chappie Ronan Keating is getting ready to entertain a no doubt packed NIA with his tales of life being a bit like a rollercoaster. Actually I reckon (WARNING: Cheesy link ahead) life’s a bit more like tonight’s openers, who didn’t actually bother to announce who they were (I later discovered they were called Glasser).


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Mar 01

Los Campesinos! + Swanton Bombs + Islet @ The Rainbow, Birmingham, UK – 1 March 2010

Los Campesinos! The Interweb. You really have to be all over it (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, Asbo, Hobo, GoGo blah blah blah) if you’re in a band these days don’t you? Well, you don’t have to be, but I can’t think of any band that’s deliberately (I presume it’s deliberate...either that or they can’t be arsed...which isn’t half as exciting) shunned the world wide web...until now that is. Meet Islet. Billed as a ‘No Wave’ group from Cardiff they seemingly don’t want to be part of the wwworld as we know it. Can’t blame ‘em really. A couple of chaps have set up a Islet fan site for them but that’s as much as you’re going to get... for now.


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Feb 22

First Aid Kit + Goodnight Lenin + Jodie and the Jet Plane @ The Rainbow, Birmingham, UK – 22 February 2010

First Aid Kit Plane Isn’t it Summer yet? You know I really don’t mind a bit of Winter...log fires, hot toddys, newsreaders wetting themselves with excitement at all the chaos that a list dusting of snow seems to cause...but this one seems to be going on foreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeever. Enough I say. I’m taking a leaf out of that nice Mr Billy Bragg’s book and holding back my taxes until the Government puts a cap on minimum temperatures (not that I really pay taxes at the moment...being only semi-employed and all that). Perhaps our lovely PM, ‘Basher’ Brown, could bully the weather into getting warmer in between giving that Cameron fellow a well deserved ‘wedgie’?


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Feb 13

The Telescopes + Jesus Deluxe + Einstellung + One Unique Signal @ The Victoria, Birmingham, UK – 13 February 2010

The Telescopes On the 40th anniversary of the original release of Black Sabbath’s debut album it’s a joy to find myself in a room above a pub in the centre of Birmingham just up the road from the site of the (not) infamous (enough) Henry’s Blues House. For 40 or so years ago, in a room not dissimilar to the one in which promoters The Sound of Confusion host monthly psychedelic gatherings, they key players in Sabbath, Zeppelin and Priest would be propping up the bar in a room above the Crown enjoying legendary acts of the time such as Dr Ross Harmonica Boss and Jimmy Fast Fingers Dawkins.


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