Good Shoes/Lightspeed Champion - Birmingham Academy 2, 11/11/07

Musical taste is a strange and wonderful creature. Not content to divide bands between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ there’s an annoying subset I call ‘good on paper but you’d rather not actually listen to them, y’know?’. Catchy, isn’t it? These ones tick all the right boxes and

Kate Nash/Metronomy/Dockers MC @ Birmingham Irish Centre, 9/11/07

I’d never been to the Irish Club before and it was nothing like I expected. If anything it looked like a school hall, only one with a bar on the right-hand side of it. It was probably the murals on the walls that did it but the place is

Shy Child @ Bar Academy, 27/10/07

No-one ever came up with a better name for it than nu-rave did they? No-one came up with an alternative that stuck anyway. Who cares what’s in a name anyway? If the original rave scene hasn’t been reborn by a bunch of indie kids with drum machines and

Flamboyant Bella @ Bar Academy, 21/10/07

In time-honoured fashion I turned up too late to catch any of the support acts, but only barely. I got to the top of stairs to find myself dodging sweat-covered, panting kids making their way back from the stage. I couldn’t help feeling I’d missed something so I

David Ford @ The Glee Club, 9/10/07

Everyone that plays at the Glee Club comments on how quiet and polite everyone is. It’s not that all Brummies are naturally diffident, it’s that the staff seem to be pretty sharp on their ‘behaviour in the club policy’ which points out that customers aren’t spending a

The Maccabees/Laura Marling @ Birmingham Academy, 7/10/07

I have to say I didn’t used to like The Maccabees. In fact I didn’t dislike them. I nothinged them. They were another one of the wearying stream of bands that have nothing but a tenuous USP to distinguish them – the one with their dad in, the ones

Feist @ The Glee Club, 22/07/07

I have a pretty dreadful record when it comes to catching support acts. When I think about it it’s a pretty irrational thing, I mean, I’m all in favour of value for money and live music for live music’s sake and a support act gives you both.

Operator Please @ Birmingham Barfly, 8/09/07

It’s a funny business going to a gig specifically to review it, especially when you only have a fleeting familiarity with the band you’re going to see. Often instead of losing yourself in the music, jumping around like a loon and enjoying yourself you’ll stand there trying

Hadouken!/Does It Offend You, Yeah? @ Birmingham Academy 2, 12/06/07

“Over 14’s?  I reckon I can pass for that” – message on the Hadouken! fan forum. Yep, the kids were out in force for this one and that, for any grumpy old men out there, was no bad thing. There was a palpable sense of excitement in the venue and

Adem/Richard Swift @ Midlands Arts Centre, 9/06/07

Kicking off a season of open air concerts in June is a brave move as the early summer weather can be an unruly beast, but the Midlands Arts Centre are seasoned in this game by now so for the opening night it should have been no surprise that the forecast