Monday 22nd November 2010 @ Academy, Bristol

During the 90s, Skunk Anansie were one of the most controversial and provocative rock bands this country had ever seen. After a nine year hiatus, they were back last year with a greatest hits album and a sell out tour that heralded a roaring return. This year their new album, Wonderlustre, has bought them back to the audiences that sorely missed them and also cemented the band in the hearts of new fans of all ages.

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Beautiful people making beautiful music as effortlessly as cutting a slice of cheese; the folk lot are an achingly pleasant bunch aren’t they, all simple gorgeousness. Johnny Flynn and Laura Marling are right in front of the barge boat too, casually meandering on the folk river, probably on cycling swans. Sometimes they join together on a gondolier and make music like the stunning single, The Water, on Flynn’s latest album, Been Listening. Their impressive talent and wondrous audible merge of nature, voice and instrument is stunning.

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Thursday 18th November 2010 @ The Bierkeller, Bristol
With Support From: Austere, Hello Lazarus, Stuart Warwick

Vessels waits patiently like a Zen master before blowing our minds. Austere, however lucked out they may have been when the set times were handed out, gave a competent and intentionally eerie atmospheric warm-up to a gig pregnant with expectation. Often described as prog-rock, at a push the mute collection of hirsute Hammets’ sound was reminiscent of an early Metallica with Fade To Black springing to mind. However, their set was more memorable for its lack of purpose (apart from that of setting a brooding atmosphere) than individuality. Not many bands have the balls to place talent before popularity, and fewer still can make it work.
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Saturday 13th November 2010 @ Colston Hall, Bristol

Jools Holland and his Rhythm and Blues Orchestra were never really going to disappoint to be honest; the band boasts so much talent each member would be more than capable of producing a great show all by themselves. Jools may be the first billed but this is far from a one man show. Entering the stage with all the presence and charisma that has populated and made his flagship BBC shows so popular, Jools is humble enough to present each of his band as well as giving the individual moments to shine and reigns praise upon them as they do so. Highlights include an incredibly technical drum solo and a saxophone duel, both earning standing ovations. Make no mistake, the band are the real stars here.
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Wednesday 10th November 2010 @ Bristol Old Vic, Bristol

Well, I wasn’t expecting that! On a cold and murky night in November, wrapped up into a cycling blob of wool, I did not think that upon entering the Bristol Old Vic and a show by Bellowhead, that I would leave wanting to start social singing in my pub and learn to play the violin. I’m not sure that my local pub in Redland would appreciate my sing song efforts, but resolute in my mission to find a ‘social singing pub’, I cycled up Park Street (horrid!) very happy indeed.

This is because Bellowhead are epic. As soon as the eleven-piece band started, it was like being swished around by a giant wave in the ocean and then coming out of it in some sort of parallel world. I want to say nostalgic, because this is how I see ‘olde’ England; lots of vibrant head bouncing and clapping to the strings, percussion, horns, trumpet, sax - Wow! Excitable riotous antics! - all with the warm attribute of a welcoming embrace. However, these guys are more than nostalgia. They are a modern culmination of a variety of genres (soul, jazz, ska, 60s folk, classical) all performed with exceedingly likable charm. This allows for an exploration into music and its possibilities.
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Released: 10.10.10

This six track compilation of nay on perfect indie harmony is a ‘kiss with a fist’ to those critics that had written off this labour-intensive group after two years in radio wilderness since their debut LP.
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Monday 25th October 2010 @ St Georges, Bristol

In 2000, an unassuming young man from Lancashire released a solo album called The Hour Of The Bewilderbeast. It won UK music’s greatest accolade, The Mercury Prize. Ten years and seven albums later, Damon Gough aka Badly Drawn Boy, is 41 years old and he’s still going strong. Tonight he’s with us at the stunning St George’s music hall to tour his latest album, It’s What I’m Thinking.

Dressed all in grey with his trademark beanie and shaggy beard, Badly Drawn Boy is just as unaffected, humble and honest as ever and he gets us rolling early on with a series of solo acoustic songs, recalling some of the best moments of his ten year career so far. With themes of suicide notes and friends going missing, the tone starts pretty morbidly but it is countered wonderfully by the beautiful fragility of the songs themselves and, of course, Gough’s thick Lancashire accent and dry humour; “Our new single is #1 in 45 countries – no, wait – it’s #45 in 1 country.” Watching his unshowy performance as he pulls hit after hit from his seemingly bottomless well of honest and fantastic songs, you are reminded just how much Badly Drawn Boy is one of the understated masters of acoustic indie from the past decade.
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Monday 25th October 2010 @ Anson Rooms, Bristol

It’s a pleasure these days in British music to see so many bright, new, original female voices coming out of our small nation. For every Katy Perry and Rihanna our friends across the pond throw at us, we have more than met their match with a Florence, a Lily, or even a Paloma. So perhaps it is even more of a testament that tonight’s headline act, Marina And The Diamonds, have still managed to sound original amongst our nation’s other female big hitters.

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Friday 15th October 2010 @ The Croft, Bristol
With Support From: The Fuck Buddies

Celebrating the release of their new tunes, Unforgivable and 66sexy, The Hit-Ups are partying down at The Croft. Supporting are The Fuck Buddies. If The Darkness were inspired by The Strokes or The Ramones, instead of Queen, this is what you’d get. But it’s fun and interactive. The band are setup on the dance floor, not the stage, with the audience semi-circled around them. You get a real sense of engagement with them.

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Friday 1st until Sunday 3rd and Thursday 7th until Sunday 10th October 2010 @ Bridewell Island, Bristol

And so as the last flaming tightrope is extinguished, the final remnants of thick make-up are removed, and the doorway to the crypts are closed and padlocked, Bristol finally waves goodbye to Carny-Ville, the Invisible Circus and Artspace Lifespace at Bridewell Island. It’s been a drawn-out and emotional farewell but now this is surely it. The arts initiative who tour the city inhabiting semi-derelict spaces, rejuvenating and managing them as active creation centres while throwing some of the best god damn parties Bristol has ever seen, even for them time is up.

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