London electronic rock band Three Trapped Tigers are hitting the road this April in support of their newest effort ‘EP3′. Check out the video for ‘6′ below and go see them in a town near you!

Friday 23rd April 2010 – Cardiff, Arts Institute
Saturday 24th April 2010 – Bristol, Start The Bus (Tickets)
Sunday 25th April 2010 – Manchester, DEAF Institute (Tickets)
Monday 26th April 2010 – Edinburgh, Electric Circus (Tickets)
Tuesday 27th April 2010 – Birmingham, Hare & Hounds (Tickets)
Wednesday 28th Apr 2010 – Brighton, Freebutt (Tickets)
Thursday 29th Apr 2010 – London, Institute of Contemporary Arts (Tickets)

Talons is the support act for this tour.

In order to test the “new live band” before next month’s headlining gig at Coachella, Gorillaz will be embarking on a short 6-date tour of the UK in a little over a week. The lineup will likely include former Clash members Paul Simonon and Mick Jones, who collaborated with Damon Albarn on Gorillaz’s new album, ‘Plastic Beach,’ which was released this past Monday, March 8th.

Sunday 21st March 2010 – Portsmouth, Wedgewood Rooms
Monday 22nd March 2010 – Bristol, Trinity
Tuesday 23rd March 2010 – Cambridge, Junction
Thursday 25th March 2010 – Brighton, Old Market
Friday 26th March 2010 – Birmingham, Irish Centre
Saturday 27th March 2010 – Lincoln, Shed

Tickets are limited and are only available to members of the G-Club on a first-come-first-served basis. If you’re unable to get tickets for these shows, console yourselves by watching their new video and don’t worry – rumour has it they’ll be doing a more extensive tour later in the year.

Championed last summer by Steve Lamacq, Austin rockers the Strange Boys will be touring the UK in April.

You can buy tickets for this tour from Gigs and Tours.

Thursday 15th April 2010 – Leeds, Nation of Shopkeepers
Friday 16th April 2010 – Glasgow, Nice ‘n’ Sleazys
Saturday 17th April 2010 – Manchester, Deaf Institute
Sunday 18th April 2010 – Birmingham, Academy 3
Wednesday 21st April 2010 – London, ICA
Thursday 22nd April 2010 – Brighton, Freebutt
Friday 23rd April 2010 – Bristol, Louisiana
Saturday 24th April 2010 – Southampton, Lennon’s

“Everyone is being so quintessentially English and not sitting next to each other” grumbled one woman as she and her boyfriend tried to find a place to sit before the gig started. How true it was – what’s more English that sitting in a 134 year old church, on wooden pews that make your bum go numb?

However who we’d gone to see wasn’t English – oh no. He was Ben Kweller,Texas’ finest singer songwriter to hit these shores for a while. But we’ll get to that in a couple of moments.

Once we’d navigated our way to the gorgeous chapel (with some of the nicest venue staff I’ve yet to see – take note, Academy venues), we took to our pews, complete with hot-dog and settled in for half an hour of Carrick, lead singer from “Everybody Else“, an LA three piece. After being amazed and awed by how skinny his legs were (seriously, they bewildered us for a good few minutes), we slowly fell for his wistful tunes, strong voice, and interesting bow-tie.

However, we were really there for Ben, and a couple of minutes after 9 he ambled on stage, joined by Kitt Kitterman, the sort of guy you don’t want to meet down a dark alleyway. Plowing through a set full of material both from his previous albums and his forthcoming “Changing Horses”, it seemed that whilst he worked incredibly hard the crowd were a bit subdued… whether that was due to the nature of it being a church, or just the collection of people is hard to guess, but either way there was no doubting Ben’s efforts.

Throughout his 90 minutes on stage we had such gems as a cover of Neil Young’s “From Hank To Hendrix” and “Different But The Same”, which was dedicated to Kitt as “he quite likes playing it and we don’t play it that much…”. To be honest, the 90 minutes flew by a bit too quickly – I would have been quite happy to sit there for a few more hours, hearing a whole back-catalogue, however I have a feeling everyone’s bums would have been completely numb by then.

My highlight of the evening wasn’t one of the established songs that everyone knew. Nope, it was one of the new ones, “Homeward Bound”, the closing track to “Changing Horses” and written by Willie Nelson’s parents in the 1950s and one little gem that has sat around for 50-odd years before Ben recorded it. It fitted the chapel perfectly, just needing a little choir and it would have been complete.

Shortly before closing out with “Penny on the Train Track”, Ben announced that he’ll be back in London on May 15th at Koko as part of a proper tour for “Changing Horses” – definitely a date to add to your diary.

A big thanks to Megan @ C3 Management for sorting out tickets.

Pictures after the jump.

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Those nice folks over at Somerset house have announced details of their Summer Series 2008 events. This summer sees the likes of Fratellis, We Are Scientists and Justice all grace the old courtyard over the course of 10 days in July.

Tickets are available here on presale from Ticketmaster, and go on sale on Wednesday (14th May) at 10am.

Thursday 10th July – The Fratellis
Friday 11th July – Justice
Saturday 12th July – Unkle
Sunday 13th July – The Blue Nile
Monday 14th July – Lupe Fiasco
Tuesday 15th July – We Are Scientists
Wednesday 16th July – The Zutons
Thursday 17th July – The Feeling
Friday 18th July – Duffy
Saturday 19th July – Adele

“These shows are always far too short” moaned Tom McRae as he brought down the curtains on almost 3 hours of non-stop music that, frankly, would put most lesser artists to shame. In those 3 hours, we’d seen beard shaving, mass-singalongs, surprise special guests and more off-the-cuff jokes than most comedians manage in a year. All for a mere £15 too.

This was the second time that the Essex-based singer/songwriter had bought over his motley crew of artists from the US to play the Hotel Cafe tour, named after the famous venue in LA which plays host to a range of a wide range of artists for a cabaret-like performance where anything can happen. As they showed, anything really can happen when they decided to shave the beard of lead organiser Jason, live on stage towards the end.

Each playing one or two songs, Tom introduced each one with amusing tales, and before 9:30 had even swung round we’d already hurtled through three Tom McRae songs as well as songs from Catherine Feeny, Brian Wright, Jim Bianco, Cary Brothers, and Greg Laswell. Poor Greg hobbled around after spraining his ankle in Brighton whilst drunkenly chasing a fox, much to the amusement of the audience.

Part of the tradition of the Hotel Cafe shows are special guests – two years ago we got Aqualung, this time round Turin Brakes played previous single “Dark on Fire” and old favourite “Pain Killer”.

Tom then came back, joined by the rest of the performers for a rousing version of “Dose me Up”, which was quite amazing to hear everyone looping round the haunting chorus of “So dose me up / Once is not enough / I can still see the ground / And from this high rise view looking down on you / Im not the one wasting my time”. Personally, that was my highlight, but with time getting on the performers got back into the swing of things with renewed passion – Jim Bianco’s “striptease” routine provided a moment of amusement as his “smoky backroom” voice fitted the setting perfectly. Greg told us stories of his family, with tales of his Mum and Dad’s worries about him, and Catherine just played amazing songs whilst adding a sexy element to the male-dominated proceedings. Brian, well, what more can I say. The man can play. And has facial hair that would make lesser men weap, it’s so thick. Cary Brothers was the musical genius that needs more credit – amazing songs, he should be able to tour the UK more.

All too soon 11:30 had rolled around, and with one more sing along to “Silent Boulevard”, they were gone – too quickly for my liking, but still – £15 for 3 hours of brilliant entertainment – amazing.

After the jump: A video of Cary Brother’s “Ride” and pictures. If you want large versions of any of the pictures, just yell and I can sort that out for you

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Nothing quite like a bit of last minute tour action. Envy Corps have announced a string of dates starting on Saturday around the UK for two weeks – be sure to catch them, as frankly they deserve to be massive by the end of the year. Their new album, Dwell is out on Monday – read my review here.

Tickets are on sale now, priced around £5 – £6.

Saturday 26th April – London Astoria (with the Courteeners)
Sunday 27th April – Birmingham Bar Academy
Wednesday 30th April – London 229
Thursday 1st May – London 229
Friday 2nd May – Bath, Moles
Sunday 4th May – Brighton Freebut
Tuesday 6th May – Oxford Jericho Tavern
Wednesday 7th May – Bristol Fleece
Thursday 8th May – Cambridge Barfly
Friday 9th May – Peterbrough Met Lounge
Saturday 10th May – Tunbridge Wells, Forum

Idlewild have announced their first tour since last October, playing three tiny shows in early July. Hopefully they’ll add some more venues to the list shortly!

Tickets go on sale at 9am this morning, 18th April.

Wednesday 2nd July – Birmingham Glee Club
Thursday 3rd July – London ULU
Friday 4th July – Manchester Ruby Lounge

One of my favourite ever artists, Mr. Ben Folds has (thankfully) announced a string of UK shows for the summer, in between the major European festivals.

Tickets go on presale for his headlining shows today (Wednesday 9th April) at 9am from here, and on general sale on Friday (11th April) at 9am.

PLEASE NOTE: The Bristol date has just been changed from Monday 7th July to Sunday 13th July.

Tuesday 24th June – Newcastle Academy
Wednesday 25th June – London Shepherds Bush Empire
Friday 27th June – Glastonbury Festival
Tuesday 8th July – Sheffield Academy
Wednesday 9th July – Liverpool Academy
Friday 11th July – Oxegen Festival
Saturday 12th July – T in the Park
Sunday 13th July – Bristol Aademy

Death Cab For Cutie have announced a trio of dates around the UK for the summer, almost exactly two years since their last trip over the Atlantic.

Tickets are on sale now for all dates, but expect them to go quickly as they sold out Brixton Academy last trip over here. Prices are £16 for Birmingham and Manchester, £17.50 for London.

Tuesday 15th July – Birmingham Academy
Wednesday 16th July – Manchester Apollo
Thursday 17th July – London Brixton Academy