PJ Harvey, London
Though at times she's had a strangely mid-Atlantic kind of persona (part queen of the Delta blues, part farmer's wife), recently Polly Harvey has focused her attention closer to home. Her 2007 album White Chalk found her haunting British downlands, while her new one explores the idea of England. As much as the excellent Let England Shake is a heavily wooded study of the mist-filled hollows of British topography, her rural idyll is juxtaposed with powerful images of foreign conflicts. What's stranger, perhaps, is the frail, eerie tone Harvey uses. The more ghostly her voice is, the more supernatural the disturbance she causes.
Troxy, E1, Sun, Mon
John Robinson
A Faust Symphony, Manchester
At the end of this season Gianandrea Noseda steps down as principal conductor of the BBC Philharmonic, to be succeeded by the Spaniard Juanjo Mena. Under Noseda the orchestra has gone from strength to strength, with its cycle of Beethoven symphonies and last season's Mahler celebration. Noseda's concerts with the BBC Phil this season have had a bit of a retrospective feel, revisiting composers he has made a speciality over the past nine years. Liszt has certainly been one of those specialisms, and in the composer's bicentenary year Noseda is conducting his most ambitious orchestral work, A Faust Symphony, alongside Liszt's fellow Hungarian Bart�k and his final, unfinished score, his Viola Concerto.
Bridgewater Hall, Sat
Andrew Clements
Led Bib, On tour
Led Bib, the 2009 Mercury Prize jazz nominee, never sound like a band with a seven-year history ? they still seem to play with too much manically eager, hell-driving recklessness. But the powerful, rock-steeped, two-sax group led by expatriate American drummer Mark Holub are currently celebrating their career with a new album, Bring Your Own, and UK tour. At the album's outset, Led Bib sound like a heavy-metal guitar group (Toby McLaren's keys mimicking the missing guitar), but there's plenty of free jazz edginess, with brusque improv horn motifs giving way to electronic hoots and some bluesy double-bass that recalls the gravitas of Charles Mingus. Led Bib often seem like a 21st-century edition of Frank Zappa's Mothers Of Invention with Ornette Coleman's quirkily soulful feel, and their live shows raise the roof.
Purcell Room, SE1, Mon; The Harley, Sheffield, Wed; The Spinoff, Bar Santiago, Leeds, Thu; The Kazimier, Liverpool, Fri
John Fordham
Aaron Parks, London
Like the jazz pianist and sometime mathematics major Vijay Iyer, Seattle-born Aaron Parks had a parallel student life ? he was a computer scientist, and sharp enough at that and music to enter the University of Washington to study both subjects at only 14. Music took over, though, and after early encouragement from faculty jazz teacher Marc Seales and a workshop encounter with piano free spirit Joanne Brackeen, Parks moved to the Manhattan School Of Music at 16 and was in trumpeter Terence Blanchard's band two years later. After the success of his Blue Note records debut, Invisible Cinema (a suitably named album for a mix of atmospheric music, albeit punctuated by hip-hop-tight groove-playing and funk), Parks's career has become a story to watch closely. He plays these shows with bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Ted Poor, who has appeared here with trumpeter Cuong Vu.
Ronnie Scott's, W1, Tue, Wed
JF
Beady Eye, Glasgow
Not that you could have told a member of Oasis this in 1994, but it's actually pretty difficult to be a rock'n'roll star. So much money, so many photographers to thump, on so many different continents. Come the band's demise, even Oasis seemed sick of what Oasis had become, their final album Dig Out Your Soul seeming to want to reconnect with the hunger of their earliest days. Of course, this is Liam Gallagher's new band, but Beady Eye still have much in common with that incarnation of Oasis, in its members and, particularly, a wish to keep the vibes up. Mad for it by name, mad for it by nature, the Different Gear, Still Speeding album finds the band plundering Lennon, the Who and (to be honest) Oasis, which gives the album a kind of puppy-like quality: bags of energy, but no sense at all. So: a good debut album with Liam Gallagher on it. Conservatives in power. How little times have changed.
Barrowland, Thu, Fri
JR
Glasvegas, On tour
You can take the band out of Glasgow, but evidently you can't take Glasgow out of the band. At least, that's what you'd think hearing the second Glasvegas album, Euphoric /// Heartbreak \\\. Although written far from Scotland (in Santa Monica, California) and expensively polished (the album was mixed by U2 collaborator Flood), James Allan's new songs still sound like the work of a very overwrought person in an indie band. With its echoing production, bell sounds and slurred words, it's as if U2 or Oasis had decided to suddenly paint their feelings by getting drunk and covering Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas?. For Allan, this is obviously therapy; for the listener, it's a kind of primal scream, too.
Liquid Room, Edinburgh, Tue; Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow, Wed; Heaven, WC2, Thu
JR
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