With such a crowded gig calendar, it can be hard choosing which live acts to spend you money on. Maybe you've never heard of the bands playing; maybe you've heard their name, but haven't listened to any songs yet; conversely, maybe their back catalogue is so large you don't know where to start. Luckily for you, Time Out is on the case: what follows are the five best songs from the five best artists gigging in Edinburgh this month. Use it to jog your memory, or to get introduced to something completely unfamiliar – you might just find your new favourite band.
Simple Minds – Usher Hall, Tue 7 Apr
We’re all familiar with the arena-straddling, politics-getting-involved-in, Breakfast Club-soundtracking behemoth Glasgow’s Simple Minds became, and the best of their last three decades will be heard here. Let’s also remember, though, the 30-month period between 1979 and 1981 when they released their first five achingly essential and punishingly New Wave albums. This is the only track from that time on their official channel.
James Bay – Queen’s Hall, Wed 15 Apr
Freshly installed as the UK’s number one album artist as we roll into April, Hertfordshire troubadour James Bay – he of the Guy Fawkes by way of V For Vendetta hat ‘n’ hair, pictured above – is clearly bound for big things. If earnest white guy soul with a catchy chorus and an undoubted ability to carry a tune nicely is your bag, then this could be your last chance to see him in this size of venue. For those all too familiar with ‘Hold Back the River’ this live version of an album track offers a little more of the versatility his style can handle.
James Yorkston – Summerhall, Thu 23 Apr
Playing the latest night in Summerhall’s new series of gigs Nothing Ever Happens Here (a tongue in cheek comment on Edinburgh’s supposedly inert music scene), Fife troubadour Yorkston will appear here as part of a quality three-band bill also featuring Pip Dylan and Matt Norris. Recorded last year with producer Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip and guests KT Tunstall and Pictish Trail, ‘The Cellardyke Recording and Wassailing Society’ is his seventh album of chiming contemporary folk for Domino, and this is the opening track.
Marc Almond – Queen’s Hall, Mon 27 Apr
He’s had more careers than most artists would know what to do with, has Marc Almond, from early synth-pop success with Soft Cell to reinvention in the early 1990s as a hit-making torch singer and through the 2000s as an interpreter of everyone from Sinatra to Russian folk (he also performs high-end music theatre productions like his one-man ‘Ten Plagues’). Despite intending his previous self-penned album, 2010’s ‘Verite’, to be the last he would write, this year has seen producer and songwriter Chris Braide (Britney Spears, Beyonce, Sia, Lana Del Rey) persuade him to return with the nostalgic ‘The Velvet Trail’. The following is the best evocation of the album heard so far.
Nick Cave – Playhouse, Tue 28 Apr
Craggy-voiced Australian visionary Nick Cave’s getting busier as time goes on, following up last year’s tremendous ‘Push the Sky Away’ album (the best thing he’s released this century?) with a book of poems written on sick bags - as you do – and the soundtrack for new Viggo Mortensen-starrer ‘Loin des homes / Far From Men’ alongside long-time collaborator Warren Ellis, both new for 2015. Here’s ‘Higgs Boson Blues’, a highlight of ‘Push the Sky Away.
