The stage lights were spare but effective, illuminating the three musicians as needed and putting the focus squarely on the music. And what music! The concert was awash in gorgeous three-part harmonies, acoustic guitars and piano. Gert Bettens proved a multi-tasker on ukulele and harmonica while simultaneously providing a foot-stompin' rhythm on the country-tinged I Wanna Get Lost, one of two new songs showcased during the concert. The band also unveiled a track that will be used for a polar expedition documentary, the music effortlessly evoking the desolate icy landscapes.

Songs from their last album Echo Mountain prevailed, with Come Live The Life a particular highlight. They didn’t shy away from their past, either, revisiting a sprinkling of tracks from sophomore album Paradise In Me as well as the poignant My Heart from their debut The Great Subconscious Club.

Sarah Bettens’ multilayered, husky voice astonished in this acoustic setting, with outstanding support from Gert Bettens and Reinout Swinnen. The standout moments were without a doubt the three of them singing in flawless harmony, a complete hush falling over the room. Superb.

The Rapture’s breakout album Echoes was met with critical acclaim in 2003 and hailed as part of the post-punk wave coming out of the USA in the early noughties. Their sophomore effort Pieces Of The People We Love three years later was underappreciated, and there followed a period of changes within and outside the band that halted their creative output. Now they’re back with new album In The Grace Of Your Love, an altogether more melodious slice of funk-punk than their previous offerings.

Starting with the eponymous new title track, The Rapture’s live set is shot through with electronic bleeps, droning bass and the same funky grooves that marked James Murphy’s band LCD Soundsystem. The similarity isn’t surprising, given that The Rapture released two of their albums on James Murphy’s DFA label.

And therein lies the crux of the matter: those funk-punk rhythms, they can become very monotonous, very fast. Never Die Again, Get Myself Into It and The Devil repeat the same groove and chorus throughout their four-minutes-plus duration, punctuated by the honk of a saxophone and the clang of a cow-bell. Their best-known track House Of Jealous Lovers delivers more of the same, underscored by Jenner’s high-pitched yelp.

It’s not until Whoo! Alright-Yeah... Uh Huh half-way through the set that the momentum picks up. As soon as their songs incorporate a hint of a melody and some syncopation, the music becomes far more interesting. Their best moments are on the piano-driven How Deep Is Your Love and on Sail Away with its layers of synthesizers and glissando vocals. That these are both from the new album is testament to their development from shouty punk to a more differentiated sound that bodes well for their future releases.

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Incidentally, the intimate Stall 6 venue in Zurich is a lovely converted stable replete with wooden beams and a spinning disco ball. You can go there for a drink or to listen to music - check out their programme here.

This is how Jane Birkin entered the limelight, but it is not how she will leave. Her show at the Beyeler portrayed her youthful side, but also revealed the sophisticated and serious nature. She is 62 now, after all. 

The venue suited her perfectly. Outside the close proximity of many Basel museums, the Beyeler is beautifully built. Strong architectural lines are softened by the surrounding landscape, its premises well suited for relaxing and allowing one’s self to be inspired by the rotating exhibitions. The show was downstairs in a smallish room, seating no more than 250 people. An intimate gathering, in a special place. A woman with a Hermes handbag named after her deserves no less. 

There was no diva air about her. Dressed in a loose sweater cardigan and trousers, with cropped hair that is messed about in the relaxed, morning-after hair kind of way. Before the songbird utters a word, the amiable audience was won over. Her whispery, floating voice dips and glides, mostly in French, whimsical as a little girl with a grown, natural confidence. 

Backed by a 4 piece ensemble, it was more of an orchestra than a band: grand piano, trumpet, drummer and a violinist whom Birkin introduced as her “good luck”. The symphonic sound fit her serious ballads and air of complexity. When she switched the pace her eternal child came out to play, sparking smiles all over the audience as everybody felt the fun. She put on a show, at one point kneeling down dramatically on the stage and at another walking through the seated rows of people. And it was eaten up, a longstem rose and a mysteriously wrapped gift were handed up to her on stage from the audience. Enchanting and a gracious performer, she came back for a beautiful encore, thanking everybody profusely. 

It is obvious why she was a muse in the past, and it seems she will go on for many more. Closed with a standing ovation, it is clear Jane Birkin will remain in the hearts of many in the Basel region.

Those are just two of the things you learn at a James Blunt concert – and there’s more. One, he’s a first-rate live vocalist. Two, his backing band is superb. And three, he is very much aware of his image as a soft-rock crooner with a predominantly female fan base – at one point he dedicates his next song to "all the boyfriends and husbands who were dragged here by their partners". He combines this self-deprecation with a gauche sincerity that is as attractive to some as it is irritating to others. It has always been easy to mock Blunt for being totally uncool, but he can clearly deliver a show that is straightforward and engaging.

Blunt is touring his third album Some Kind Of Trouble, released almost a year ago. More upbeat and rocking than his two previous efforts, he plays eight tracks from the new album among a 19-song set, and the difference in instrumentation and tempo shows. Concert-opener So Far Gone sets the pace, followed by a sonic trip back to the 80s with Dangerous. Lovely renditions of the popular Wisemen and Carry You Home have the audience singing along in harmony.

I’ll Take Everything is a surprising highlight with its main chord progression pounded out on the piano, Blunt in fine vocal fettle, and the band providing a beefy wall of sound.

There are a few missteps: If Time Is All I Have is overly maudlin, while Turn Me On and Superstar are rock tunes that don’t feel like they’re a natural fit for the singer.

Blunt’s break-out hit You’re Beautiful has been so played to death that it’s difficult to appreciate it afresh, and indeed, six years after its release, it doesn’t hold up. Goodbye My Lover is similarly ubiquitous, but its melody is far more captivating – you’d have to have a heart of stone not to be affected by the song, and the audience gives it an ecstatic reception.

I’ll Be Your Man is the singer’s moment to crowdsurf, a move that wins over even the most reluctant of concert-goers. The jubilant Stay The Night and 1973 close the show – by this time, the 4300 spectators are all on their feet, dancing and cheering.

The final thing you learn at a James Blunt concert? It’s ok to be uncool.

And so we dived right in, starting with Scottish indie rockers Glasvegas on Friday. Plaintive gems like It's My Own Cheating Heart That Makes Me Cry and Geraldine aside, they lacked that certain spark and connection with the audience. This could have something to do with the fact that singer James Allan routinely likes to insult the crowd – not the most endearing of traits.

A far zanier proposition were The Rambling Wheels, a quartet of musicians from Neuchâtel wearing matching pink shirts who delivered an energetic live set complete with bonkers solos, drum sticks flying everywhere. Huge fun. 77 Bombay Street were similarly cheerful; the band’s folk-rock spread instant feel-good vibes and their infectious hit Up In the Sky resulted in an outburst of arm-waving.

Friday headliners Kasabian have disappointed us in the past, but this time round we were delightfully bowled over by their electronica-meets-rock bombast. Basel’s The Bianca Story were up next with meticulous art rock – a sound that works brilliantly on their recordings, but comes across as slightly uninvolving in a live open air setting, despite the two singers’ excellent vocals. And finally, electro gods Underworld delivered the post-midnight magic, demonstrating that they could still whip an audience into a frenzy, complete with dance moves not seen since the 90s. The highlight of their set – and possibly of the festival – was the peerless Born Slippy, a classic electronic stomper that turned us into gibbering masses of giddiness.

Since we weren’t brave enough to camp, we had to head back down into town and commendably decided to walk the way. Mistake. Ah, the pain of walking steeply downhill for half an age after you’ve been on your feet for fourteen hours. However – and this is where the cows come in – we did enjoy the sight of bewildered herds of cattle lying in the fields, roused from their sleep by departing festival-goers.

Saturday kicked off with Jamie Cullum leaping around the stage and getting the early-afternoon crowd hopping. Swiss singer-songwriter Pamela Mendez played a low-key set on the Waldbühne, a stage at the bottom of the steepest slope you’ve ever seen, and her expressive voice carried all the way up the hill as she sang about everyday life and the mysteries of the Swiss mentality. Next up, a change of pace with Kaiser Chiefs, whose I Predict A Riot set the tone for a rousing punk rock show, with the mass sing-along during Ruby a fitting highpoint. Singer Ricky Wilson’s favourite pastime is climbing the nearest scaffolding during a gig – so off he went, to the delight of the audience and the dismay of security, who scrambled to keep up with him as he ran through the crowd.

Pendulum’s drum’n’metal extravaganza after midnight had the fans going bananas, beginning with the berserk Salt In The Wounds, right through the reggae-drenched Set Me On Fire to the more conventional Watercolour. MC Ben Mount bounced all over the stage like a mad dervish as he conducted the audience to jump at his command. The last slot went to Bubble Beatz, drummers Kay Rauber und Christian Gschwend surrounded by their trash machine made out of plastic barrels, pots, pans, steel pipes – in fact, anything you can find in a junk yard. They played electro-infused beats with such enthusiasm that they induced a complete power blackout at one point. Kudos!

Sunday introduced a proper festival atmosphere with lashings of rain and gusts of mountain mist, so we strapped on our wellies and braved the elements. Gustav & Les Black Poets came, saw and conquered: all thoughts of the dismal noon weather were dispelled by their lively onslaught of rock-brass-folk-pop melodies, sung in German, French and English by a merry band of nine.

Calle 13 steamed up the main tent with Puerto Rican rap and rhythm, while outside, Ohio’s The National made their unhurried way through a mellow rock set. Singer Matt Berninger is a welcome change from the usual crop of high-pitched vocalists: bearded and nattily dressed, he takes the occasional sip from his customary glass of red wine as he sings in his deep baritone about being carried through the skies in a swarm of bees (Bloodbuzz Ohio) and walking with spiders (Terrible Love). Resourceful members of the audience had managed to track down an Ohio state flag and were waving it about in the rain, prompting Berninger to walk out into the crowd and bestow his bottle of wine on them. Now that’s class.

The Gurten Festival of 2011 boasted a splendid line-up, mostly sunny weather, hilariously overpriced drinks, amazingly sanitary loos, mad headgear, and a wonderfully amicable atmosphere. I think we may be back.

Now they’re back in Switzerland, playing to a loyal following of fans in still-tiny venues. The Galery in Pratteln near Basel was one such venue – the band were amused by the oddity of the place, noting that they’d never played in a bar inside a shopping centre.

Drummer Morten Thorhauge mentioned to The English Show in an interview that “when you’re touring as the supporting act, you become the underdog – and it’s always fun to be the underdog because you can only impress people. People don’t expect anything from the supporting act.” Now that they’re headlining their own tour, can they impress just as much?

The appreciative audience gathered at the Galery seems to think so. Carpark North mix guitar-based rock with electronica and have a startling knack for catchy hooks and huge choruses – ingredients that are just begging for crowd sing-alongs in massive arenas. Just Human provides the rock-meets-rave anthem, Transparent has the kind of yearning quality that inevitably leads to mass arm-waving, and Leave My Place delivers the goods in the ballad stakes.

It’s a shame that singer and guitarist Lau Højen’s voice can be off-key in a live setting, detracting from the bombast of some of the songs. There’s also a danger of the instantly memorable tunes sounding too polished, too easy on the ear, without the necessary depth to sustain them over the long haul. Good thing they throw in the occasional unusual sample to keep things interesting. More starts off with a series of bleeps that sound like they’re from an 80s video arcade game, then moves into a hefty hair metal beat.

There’s no denying that Carpark North’s shows are hugely entertaining affairs: the musicians are a bundle of energy and joy on stage, enthusiasm dripping from every pore. Højen is visibly having a blast throughout the set, while keyboarder and bassist Søren Balsner bounces all over the tiny stage so energetically it’s a wonder the whole thing doesn’t come crashing down. They’re poised on the brink of bigger things – here’s hoping that their sound develops even further to match it.

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Listen to Carpark North drummer Morten Thorhauge talk about being the underdog, playing in Switzerland, and conquering the world.

Risky? You bet. The festival crowd won’t know most of the songs and the die-hard Muse fans are a notoriously critical lot. Will the band disappoint? The answer is no. Will there be spaceships, robots, and fire? Not surprisingly for the barkingly over-the-top Muse, the answer here is a hearty yes. The spaceships and the robots are admittedly only seen as projections on screen, but the fire is real.

Reading Festival has been crucial in Muse’s career. It’s where they first proved that they could grab an audience’s attention in 2000, where they solidified their status in 2006, and where they are now coming back to play an anniversary tribute to their album Origin of Symmetry. Always a fan favorite and considered to be one of their strongest releases, some of the album’s songs haven’t been aired on stage in a decade. Time, then, to welcome them back.

Muse launch into New Born and the curtain goes up to reveal a stage set inspired by Origin of Symmetry’s cover with its weirdly shaped tuning forks. Predictably, some of the album tracks get a more muted response from the festival crowd, but to the long-standing fans, this is a dream come true. Standout tunes Bliss and Citizen Erased merge dreamy keyboard passages with thrashing guitar riffs and distorted basslines. Micro Cuts proves that singer Matt Bellamy can still hit high notes normally only perceptible to dogs, while Hyper Music and Darkshines hark back to the raw sound of their early work. Muse wouldn’t be Muse without at least one bonkers display of pyromania, so they unleash jets of fire during Megalomania that singe the eyebrows off the front ten rows and end the first part of the set with a bombastic, organ-pipe-blaring bang.

The second half of the set finds Muse and the general audience back on more familiar ground. The greatest hits are all present and correct. Uprising: check. Supermassive Black Hole: check. Starlight: check. Weaker live tracks from their last album – Resistance, Undisclosed Desires – cause a sag in the proceedings, but headbangers Stockholm Syndrome and Hysteria follow on their heels to revive the flagging momentum. Muse the musicians are outstanding in a live setting: operatic vocals, guitar and piano flourishes, intricate bass and drum passages are weaved together to create an eccentric whole.

Some of the most entertaining moments occur on the periphery of the shows: their between-song riffs; drummer Dom Howard and bassist Chris Wolstenholme in an instrumental jam; and Bellamy flinging his guitar into the drum set while Howard gamely continues to play with what remains standing.

Set-closer Knights of Cydonia is a madhouse of a song, the most demented compilation of Sergio Leone western themes, prog rock riffs and anthemic choruses imaginable, and it provides a fabulously satisfying conclusion to both their festival sets, the huge crowd chanting and dancing as one. How can a band possibly go any bigger? Muse, I am sure, will find a way.

Its the last big show of the season, and well, if you haven't taken our advice to check out Parterre yet, there's no better time... get off work, stroll down to kaserne, have a drink on the lawn, meander into the Parterre for the concert. What a nice way to start the work week.

To reserve tickets, write parterre at their website: http://www.parterre.net/?navid=A3W8MF or purchase on line at ticketino.ch

Dan sings with the intensity of Glen Hansard and Damien Rice, writes with the lyrical prowess of Gysbert zu Knyphausen, and yet has a sound entirely of his own. Listen/watch below.

Taste-tips:
Listen & watch Dan's epic song Road Regrets
Listen to Dan's inexplicably lovely song You Silly Git (We don't know what makes it so good...but it's just so good).
Dan sings "Basket" live here
A track off Dan's first more gentle album here

The English Show was there.  We were  treated to the spectacle of a young orange-bearded man from Manchester surrounded by electronic instrumentation, cables, foot pedals and other paraphrenalia   As the audience filed into a a somewhat cool but dark room, they were greeted  by a computer generated mood scene, that one would expect in an ambient bar. Denis Jones introduced himself and proceeded to spend the next five minutes setting up his loops and mikes and then he launched into his first track, Conception, Consumption and Radiation.  The loops swirled and bent around the room and built up into an fabulous sound landscape, constructed upon a base of electronica,  mixing  of blues, jazz, and folk influences. There was  tremendous rythym and an extraordinary sensiblity that shook the speakers.

Unlike other performers who draw on prerecorded and arranged material, Denis Jones  was building sequences before our eyes, driven by the nature and character of the sound he was creating in real time. Half-way through the performance, the audienced witnessed the ramifications of that complex choice: a jammed foot pedal provided a brief interlude while Denis struggled to synchronize a sample.

Such a performance could have been a bit distanced in lesser hands. His voice transcended the hubub and at points was reminiscient of Peter Gabriel's early Genesis period.  Mr. Jones counts among his influences his parents musical choices, from which he selected the more experimental pieces from an early age.  The result many years later: we and the audience were witness to the future of music at Parterre in Basel.

Denis will be playing in Switzerland again this summer at the open air at  Hohen Rätien in early August (5-7th).

 Denis playing his song "Elvis"  and "Clap Hands"

Hannah Peel is an Irish alternative / folk-pop singer-songwriter currently living in London. Her debut album The Broken Wave was released in January of this year.

Parterre stage is located behind the restuarant Parterre at Kaserne. Doors at 7:30, show starts at 8pm; best to reserve tickets on the parterre website or purchase ahead on ticketino.