The lineup for the 2009 XFM Winter Wonderland in London has been announced.

Razorlight, The Temper Trap, The Big Pink, Bombay Bicycle Club, Local Natives (pictured right), Goldhawks and Cassidy will all play the gig, taking place at the O2 Academy in Brixton on Wednesday 16 December 2009 – just over a month away. With that many bands I doubt there will be much of the usual “standing around looking bored”, which is what we like to see.

Don’t be at all surprised if there are some top-secret “special guests” as well… we might well be wrong, but it’s always possible…

Many of the live sets will be broadcast on XFM.

Tickets are available to purchase for just £25 from the Xfm Xchange 084547 83936 or at See Tickets

Meanwhile the Manchester leg of the Christmas shows has sold out, featuring Delphic, Frank Turner, The Cribs and Echo & The Bunnymen.

It’s undeniable that V Festival is a lot more commerical than other music festival’s across the country, and while the bash has certainly recieved the odd bit of criticism for it’s uber radio-friendly line up, the fest is no less fun in our eyes. Certainly – going by the awesome line-up, it’s unsurprising that the event managed to sell out in just two hours this year.

The summer bash – which is happening on Saturday 22nd to Sunday 23rd August – will be taking place across it’s two usual sites this ‘09: Hylands Park, Chelmsford and Weston Park, Staffordshire.

Oasis (pictured right) and The Killers are the two big name headliners confirmed to be playing the festival’s top spot this year. Other major acts gracing the fest’s main stage (aptly titled ‘V Stage’) across the weekend include Razorlight, Snow Patrol, The Specials, Elbow, Biffy Clyro, Lily Allen, James, Seasick Steve and, intriguingly, Taylor Swift.

The smaller sized ‘4Music’ stage will also be featuring further super cool artists including Fatboy Slim, Pendulum, The Ting Tings, The Wombats, Keane, The Enemy, Katy Perry and Dizzee Rascal.

If nothing has still managed to catch your eye (or ear!), why not head over to ‘The Arena’ where you can check out a varied selection including MGMT, Lady GaGa, Happy Mondays, The Streets, Pete Doherty, and latest girl band sensation, British Sea PowerThe Saturdays.

If that’s still not enough, the festival has another 50 acts up its sleeve to announce in the coming few weeks. Exciting!

As I told you earlier, tickets for the Chelmsford leg have sadly sold out. There are still some available for the Staffordshire event, however. For more information regarding ticket outlets, check out V Festival’s website.

Top photo comes from stevec77’s flickr stream, and side photo from John Griffiths’ flickr stream under the Creative Commons License.

Earlier in the week we gave you a preview of Lovebox, a two day festival in London. However, whilst that’s all well and good for those of us who like our beds and a nice warm shower at the end of the day, some people like to get “back to nature”, and one of the best to do this at is the Isle of Wight Festival, which takes place on the 12th – 14th June in Seaclose Park, Isle of Wight.

Having just announced Neil Young as the last of their headliners for the main stage, this year’s festival looks set to continue to mix new rising talent with old-hands, with Neil heading up the rest of the as yet unannounced Sunday lineup. The Prodigy, Basement Jaxx, The Ting Tings and Pendulum all open up the festival on Friday night, whilst Saturday is just as impressive with Stereophonics and Razorlight topping the bill.

The festival was only re-introduced in 2002 after a 32 year absence, after over 600,000 people attended the third festival in 1970, ending in chaos. Since coming back, the likes of David Bowie The Who, The Police and The Sex Pistols have all graced its stage, becoming one of the most successful festivals at combining young and old talent together.

In 2007 it was named “Best Major Festival” at the UK Festival awards, and looks set to go strength to strength over the coming years.

Tickets are on sale now, priced at £140 for a camping ticket and £120 for a non-camping ticket for the weekend.

To find tickets, we suggest you try using Needtickets Festival search. Needtickets.com offers you the most comprehensive ticket service in the UK. With one click you can search every nationwide online ticket agent and as a result you can find tickets for any live music event that can be booked online. Every ticket is 100% guaranteed as Needtickets.com only offers links to official agents.

Razorlight have announced a string of tour dates for early May.

The 5 date tour will see Johnny Borrell and friends play to a mixture of large and small crowds, with the tour interestingly mixing the big arenas in London and Manchester with the smaller, cosier venues.

Tickets for all dates below go on sale on Friday (30th January).

Saturday 2nd May 2009 – Glasgow King Tuts
Monday 4th May 2009 – Buxton Opera House
Tuesday 5th May 2009 – Leamington Spa The Assembly
Thursday 7th May 2009 – London O2 Arena
Saturday 9th May 2009 – Manchester MEN Arena

To find tickets, we suggest you try using Needtickets. Needtickets.com offers you the most comprehensive ticket service in the UK. With one click you can search every nationwide online ticket agent and as a result you can find tickets for any live music event that can be booked online. Every ticket is 100% guaranteed as Needtickets.com only offers links to official agents.

Deep down, I had secretly hoped that Slipway Fires – Razorlight’s third album, released this week – would prove to be a mighty comeback after the let-down that was the band’s self-titled second release 2 years ago.

Oh, how my hopes have been dashed.

The album kicks off with current single, ‘Wire to Wire’, an easy on the ears track which I’ve grown to like. “Love me, wherever you are”, Johnny Borrell cries. Sadly, this is quite a tough task when listening to cliché tracks such as Tabloid Lover and North London Trash, which, to put bluntly, are just awful. For starters, one only has to look at the terrible lyrics of the latter track – “I’ve got a hot bodied girlfriend, I’ve got a wallet full of cash”, Borrell boasts. I’m sure you’d agree such words are hardly worthy of Johnny’s claim that he’s better than Dylan. To make it all worse, I cannot help but notice how Tabloid Lover sounds like a complete rip-off of The B-52s, Love Shack. But then again, maybe that’s just me..

Another thing which strikes me about Slipway Fires is the sheer amount of dull, slow tempoed tracks scattered throughout the album – examples being Stinger, 60 Thompson and You and the Rest. After a short while, the album begins to sound like one uninteresting, unmemorable tune rolled into the other. Generally, it’s very hard to maintain interest in the CD, with only the odd track like terribly-titled Burberry Blue Eyes and Monster Boots picking Slipway Fires off the floor and injecting a bit of melodic life back into it. It’s hard to feel any emotional connection towards album closer, The House, after the disappointing ride of Slipway Fires.

All in all, the album is thoroughly unsatisfactory. It’s a shame that a band who created great tunes such as ‘Vice’, ‘Rip It Up’ and even ‘In The Morning’, are now releasing such lacklustre material as Slipway Fires.

Buy Razorlight’s new album, Slipway Fires from Amazon

Following on from last year’s amazing lineup, the Mencap Little Noise sessions are back again this November to raise more money for the mental disability charity.

The series of gigs at London’s Islington Union Chapel will take place over about 2 weeks, with more dates and artists to be announced

The charity’s ambassador, Jo Whiley, may be on maternity leave from her job at Radio 1, but she’s managed to get an incredible lineup to play. She commented: “Mencap’s Little Noise Sessions are a great opportunity to see big name bands play an acoustic gig in an intimate setting, whilst raising money for a really worthwhile cause.”

Fans wanting to buy tickets need to register on Mencapmusic.org.uk between October 1 and 16. All proceeds from ticket sales go to Mencap.

Saturday 8th November – Glasvegas, Cage the Elephant
Sunday 9th November – Razorlight, Florence and the Machine, Esser
Monday 10th November – Stereophonics, Seasick Steve
Tuesday 11th November – Adele, Angus And Julia Stone
Wednesday 12th November – Biffy Clyro, Friendly Fires, Frank Turner
Thursday 13th November – James Morrison, Katy Perry, Sam Beeton
Friday 14th November – Kasabian, Reverend and the Makers, The Hours, Fight Like Apes
Saturday 15th November – Keane, The Script, Bryn Christopher, Red Light Company
Tuesday 18th November – The Fratellis

As much as I love to hate Johnny Borrell, Razorlight’s new single is pretty darned good. And to celebrate the release of their shiny new album in November they’re back on the road.

Johnny reportedly said that “we’re playing the best venues in the country, a proper rock and roll tour. We’re going to give it everything”. So expect a reasonable show that inflates his ego to epic proportions! Let’s just hope it means he can buy some more clothes instead of his usual white babygrow.

Tickets go on sale on Thursday (2nd November) at 9am for the below dates:

Monday 10th November – Exeter University
Tuesday 11th November – Bristol Academy
Thursday 13th November – London Brixton Academy
Friday 14th November – Portsmouth Guildhall
Sunday 16th November – Edinburgh Corn Exchange
Monday 17th November – Leeds Academy
Tuesday 18th November – Glasgow Barrowlands
Thursday 20th November – Manchester Apollo
Friday 21st November – Cambridge Corn Exchange
Sunday 23rd November – Lincoln Engine Shed
Monday 24th November – Wolverhampton Civic

Massive “event” gigs currently seem to be in favour at the moment, with Live8, Live Earth, Princess Diana’s concert, and last night saw one of the biggest to date, and most worthy: 46664, to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s 90th Birthday and also to raise awareness of his AIDS charity’s work.

You’ve probably heard about it in the press – the whole Amy Winehouse will she turn up / won’t she turn up situation, the issue over whether Nelson Mandela was even going to go himself. Then there was the impressively long list of stars attending: Gordon Brown (seen chatting to Nelson Mandela through Simple Minds’ frankly tedious performance – we would have done too, if we could have without shouting at each other), Will Smith, Quincy Jones and Lewis Hamilton actually turned up, whilst others could only be bothered to send a video (including Victoria Beckham, who got one of the most savage boo-ings known to man-kind).

In amongst the notable guests was some of today’s (and yesterday’s) best (and worst) performers, culminating in a show-stopping five song set from Queen that showed they still have what it takes to wow a huge audience. We also saw amazing performances from Amy Winehouse (who still has the power to wow with her voice after all she’s been through recently), Will Smith and Zucchero. A lot of artists were ones that we weren’t familiar with, however certainly opened our eyes up and featured a lot more variety musically than the rather biased Live8 and Live Earth events.

After the jump: a blow by blow account of the evening

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