AFTER seeming to take last week off, Thursday returns to the role of original music bastion with two shows that offer very different, yet no less fantastic music.

At The Victoria, tonight, a swathe of local indie goodness takes the stage led by Misfires, a band that blend a rough backstreet swagger with infectious melodies and are in possession of more hooks than a Peter Pan convention.

Joining them are B.G.T.O who inject some punk-pop bounce into the indie template and who also seem to have slimmed down their moniker from Break Glass To Open, presumably to save merchandise printing costs. Reading’s Kevin and the Vandals get the night under way.

Ron Truman-Border returns to The Beehive with a bag of deft and delightful acoustic tunes, which roam pop, folk and roots traditions to combine vivid lyrical visions and wonderfully accessible melody.

Well, this is a pickle. Fans of rootsy, bluesy Americana type sounds are faced with some pretty tricky choices on Friday.

At The Queen’s Tap Ragged Union offer the heavier end of that menu with their wonderfully deep fried, southern rock and kicking alt-country grooves, whilst The Beehive is the place to be for a more traditional, East Nashville take on the American music experience as Open Secrets tip a hat to the likes of David Rawlings, The Band and Ryan Adams.

At The Victoria, The True Strays, Delta rock and roll revivalists and also the guys normally found in the Midnight Heist role of Sam Green and the Midnight Heist, sit somewhere between the previous two offerings.

These cosmic bandito-brethren deliver bar-brawling hoedowns and foot-stomping rhythm and blues that will both please traditionalists and take the genre to new audiences.

Support comes from The Dustbowl Children who possess some of the funkiest slide blues this side of The Music City.

For a more musically eclectic, genre-hopping party experience you can either head to The Rolleston for stalwarts of the covers circuit Vice Versa or The Groves Company Inn for Fizz, who I believe also fall into the same category but don’t hold me to that as they have an on-line presence whose anonymity is normally reserved only for winners of The Voice.

For a truly different musical option, drum ‘n’ bass at The Locomotive comes courtesy of house favourites No Motive D’n’B.

And if something with a dance groove is your cup of tea, then The Victoria on Saturday has an act that you really can’t afford to miss.

The Bongolian are a fantastic soul, funk and jazz inspired band lead by Big Boss Man’s multi-instrumental whizz kid Nasser Bouzida. Pop-soul melodies, Day-Glo dance vibes, Hammond organs and Bongo led percussion are the order of the day. Imagine Bentley Rhythm Ace on a cosmic road trip with Deee-lite, or better still, don’t imagine it just go along to this show.

Rock is on the cards in a big way, Rorke’s Drift can be found at The Rolleston playing a wide spectrum of rock and metal and Down and Dirty set out a similar stall at The Polish Community Centre and at The Queens’s Tap, The Worried Men deliver incendiary, original blues-rock reminiscent of ZZ Top or George Thorogood.

Dylan, Harrison, Orbison, Lynne and Petty, not only the winning five-a-side squad of 1988’s Newport Pagnell and District Under 21 Football League but also arguably the most super of all super-groups, The Travelling Wilburys. Five iconic songwriters applying themselves to a brilliant line of heartland Americana and country rock and leaving us with two fantastic albums of music. They may have moved on but The Unravelling Wilburys will be re-examining that illustrious back catalogue at Level 3.

Undaunted by the fact that only two thirds of the band are available, The Hyperbolics morph into the Parabolics for a night of rock, indie, glam and punk covers at The Tap and Barrel probably because No Middle Ground field a full squad for a night of rock and indie classics at The Groves Company Inn. The town’s drummer drought sees no sign of abating.

For my money, the appeal of a cover band is all to do with expert choices of material, which is why The Petty Thieves, who play The Duke of Edinburgh on Sunday afternoon, are an intriguing prospect.

They may have their set-list centred around the last two decades of the last century but don’t expect the usual diet of cheese and stodge, instead they will deliver the dark, moody and effortlessly cool; underground and obscure songs that come with built in swagger. And why not?