A New Band A Day

ANBAD on Euro-Tour: My Bloody Vigo-Time

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 08:00:00 +0000

We drove to Vigo in search of two very specific things: Pulpo de Gallega, the classic local dish of boiled octopus 'n' potato, and our friend Sara, a Vigo native, who we knew from Manchester. What we got was light drizzle, just like in Manchester. Tiresome Mancunian Stone Roses singer Ian Brown said that his town had everything except a beach - well, someone tell Ian that Vigo has both the rain and the sand, so he can stop looking now.

Vigo also has nightlife to frazzle synapses to a petrified crisp. I left my tent by the beach at 8pm on Friday night with the intention of meeting Sara, and fell face-first back onto the inflatable mattress at 12 noon the following day.

We went to club after club, had drink after drink, and met some of the most unusual people, including a Russian pimp, eagerly persuading me to hire a woman that may well have been his mother.

I was always a bit nervous of the prospect of a Spanish-style all-nighter, but it turned out to be a lot easier than expected, due to the sheer amount of chatting, laughing, and moving-on-to-the-next-bar-ing that is required. Time flies, and all of a sudden you walk out of the final club, gasping, into dazzling sunlight.

And the music? Well from what I can remember, in the club that was a local landmark - an artistic/musical enclave after Franco finally goosestepped his last - there was fairly generic and slightly quiet house music, and a moderately enthusiastic dancefloor. In a bar owned by a slinkily sexy singer from a local Riot Grrrl-type band, there was a bright and varied selection of low-profile indie, as spun by the patron herself, and drunk, sharp-dressed locals lurching about.

In the last bar - well, I'm not totally sure. I remember Common People by Pulp, and swinging a plastic flower along to This Charming Man, but I think I spent a lot of the time talking to a Portuguese doctor, avoiding revellers who were repeatedly stumbling out of the toilet, rubbing their nostrils, and trying to find out what day it was.

In short: Vigo likes good music, good times and is good value if you want to destroy your perception of time. Highly recommended.

Today's New Band - Felix Wickman

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 08:00:00 +0000

Most of these current posts were written over a month ago, while I was still entrenched, for better or for worse, in city life; the rain, the buzz, the estate agents with £100 haircuts. Right now I'm on a train, zipping through wet green fields towards Manchester, but in real terms, I'm actually somewhere on Mainland Europe, struggling to erect a recalcitrant tent.

This whole exercises has proven the folly of trying to plan too far ahead, or worrying about what might happen. I'd like to think that a scantly-planned low-budget European jaunt will open my eyes and communicate with my soul, maaan - but who knows. I might hate the Euroeality of good bread, great wine and fabulous weather, though that seems like a long shot.

As such, these posts are time capsules, and are from a time when my situation was very different. It's probably only of real interest to me, but if you can't indulge in cod-self-psychoanalysis on a blog, where can you?

Take Today's New Artist - Felix Wickman. Songs like The Stage would suggest a maudlin soul, but perhaps he was merely experiencing a little light glumness on the day he wrote it? It's certainly a delicate and sweet 'n' sad ballad; bleakness is the one note played loudest here. Impressively, even the use of what sounds like a saxophone can't damage the song's downright wallowing nature.

If Mauro The Clown is about a real clown, cower with fear if he's booked for your child's birthday party. Clowns often have sad face-paint, but from the sounds of it, Mauro's face would be 90% bright red frown.

Fabulously, Felix Wickman is signed to the brilliantly named Waggle-Daggle Records. Maybe the man is a knock-about laugh-riot after all. Or not. But do listen here and mourn, baby, mourn!

Great Scott Marty! The ANBAD Time Machine Is Here Again!

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 08:00:00 +0000

Our intrepid trip through space and time - actually, just time - continues with a revisiting of the best bands from July 2008 - a month with, it turned out, some of the best bands we've ever had, including the now-monster Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, the beautiful Candythief and a band called AIDS Wolf, for Christ's sake.

So get your talons into a fabulous month of tunes right here, right now. Or is that 'right then'?

Today's New Band - March On Moscow

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 08:00:00 +0000

One of the real joys of running A New Band A Day is finding a band or artist right at the embryonic stage, where the qualities that seep out of their songs are nothing more compolicated than raw talent, hope and amateurism. Those three attributes are, together, a thrilling proposition - and just as likely to result in disapppointment as much as novel pleasure.

Today's New Band , March on Moscow, is 'boxfresh', as a sneaker-fetishist might say, but has a spark, a barb - something indescribable, triggering the desire to listen again, more intently. At the time of review, MoM has one song to be heard - Several Times - and it's a wild, intense, multiple-identity song that revels in instrumental dabbling, driving onwards into the self-made darkness. It's an inventive past/future/present melding of sounds.

So March on Moscow can be a case study of newness - a young man throwing caution to the wind, doing something that he loves, and praying that it works for others too. It does. Good luck, March on Moscow. Listen here!

Today's New Band - The Humms

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:00:00 +0000

Do you wish you'd formed a band? Do you regret that you didn't? I sometimes wonder, and run through all the excuses - I didn't know anyone to club together with, I didn't play the guitar well enough, I was too shy. The truth is more prosaic: the desire just wasn't there enough.

There's always been a nagging suspicion that, while being a rock star probably has its perks, an element of boredom might set at some point. You're midway through a tour, and you're playing that drab B-side that's in the set as filler, or because the drummer really wanted to play it, or because the bassist wrote it and wants a slice of the action - and all you really want to do is be in the half-empty audience yourself, watching, admiring. I don't know - performing is nearly always better than spectating, isn't it?

Isn't it? By the sounds of Today's New Band, The Humms, it's about a million times better than anything, ever. They're in thrall to the blitz-to-the-senses that is performing songs like LSD Is Evil, a juddering, quivering mass of foot-stomping excess. Vocals wrench, howl and crackle; guitars strangle nuance and delicacy and replace them with a straight-to-the-point BZZZZZ.

Brown Haired Devil takes a starting point you've heard before - and a similar end point too - but winsomely wanders it's own route in between, all the time assaulting your ears with tinny treble and distortion.

The Humms punch and brawl and get physically violent with Rock 'n' Roll. They might win. Listen here!

The ANBAD Time Machine - June 08!

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:00:00 +0000

Whirring into action again, the ANBAD Time Machine has stopped today in June 2008, and now we're going to hop out and mess up the future by drugging and beating up with our past selves, a bit like in the brilliant Primer.

Before all those butterfly-effect shenanigans take place, enjoy these great bands, some of which were discovered on a Roadtrip-style gimmick.

FACT: One of the bands, Paul Hawkins and Thee Awkward Silences has written of the best songs we've ever heard, ever ever. So what are you waiting for? Get stuck into the best bands from June 08!

ANBAD on Euro-Tour: Euro-Pop vs The World

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:00:00 +0000

A POST THAT IS PART TRAVELOGUE, PART EURO MUSIC NEWS:

Right now, as I write this, I'm sitting in a tent. Right now I'm somewhere on the Northern coast of Spain. Right now, the thick fog has lolloped in off the Atlantic and licked everything with sticky warmth. And right now, the couple in the tent next to me are playing, on their stereo, a variety of songs of their choosing.

This is one of the many dangers of camping, of course - the cobweb-thin tent walls leave you compellingly at the mercy of your neighbours' noisy wills and this, otherwise likable couple, is their music. I have never been a fan of The Killers, and have studiously, obsessively avoided hearing their music, but now I'm trapped in a hellish mock-rock cell of my own making.

At least, having now been force-fed all their albums, I can truly say that I have a new all-time least favourite song. I don't know what it's called, but the chorus drones the same woeful flash of enlightenment over and over - 'It's Indie Rock 'n' Roll for me'. As a sentiment, this is so incredibly trite and banal all at once that perhaps Brandon Flowers deserves a medal of sorts.

I can think of nothing less 'Indie Rock 'n' Roll' than exactly and specifically that line - and I speak as someone who once saw Travis live in concert (by mistake - long story). How anyone could maintain any musical credibility after penning a line like that is beyond me, but such is the will-sapping nature of mainstream rock sometimes.

I used to think that music tastes on the continent were a bit safe - and it's true that U2 (or Ooh-Dos as they're called here) are horribly omnipotent - but actually I think they're as bland as they are back home. Music here is just bone-headedly dull in a whole new way. Aside from vast swathes of generic rock, which could simply be foreign language versions of any Kooks B-side, is the wonderful, stupidly-skewed Euro-pop, which continues to delight and madden just as much as ever.

The songs literally all sound the same, and the only distinguishing features are slight variations between the deceptively complex hi-hat/kick-drum/bouncy-bassline slurry, are the manically stupid vocals. I heard two - two - separate groups of teenage schoolgirls singing the hook of one offender - "I wanna take you dance, dance, dance in the disco/Oh aye-aye, oh aye-aye/ I wanna take you from Paris to San Francisco/ Oh Aye-aye, oh aye-aye" - the other day.

This song, which I subsequently heard on Crud FM, and is now welded to my brain, is only beaten in the banality stakes by another, which repeats, monstrously, "I wanna take a ride in your discotheque", until you start weeping blood. (Please note that it is not the Lady Gaga song about disco sticks, but is it's very own awful, altered beast.) They may have both been written by the same evil genius for all I know.

And the point is? Well, the point is that I'd crawl over hot, Swine-flu-infected shards of glass to listen to those songs back to back for a day - hell, two day - than ever hear that Killers song ever, ever again. Until then, here's that Euro-disco song, by someone called, unbelievably, Arsenium, to drive you mad, too. And I insist you do listen. Your life will be the better for it.

Today's New Band - Vuk

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:00:00 +0000

Women in pop 'n' rock: are they as pigeonholed as in 'normal' life? Well, duh. Female pop stars have a choice, of course: either tempting, teen-moppets/quasi-sluts (hi, Britney) or Professionally Kooky Kate Bush-a-likes (Hi, Bat For Lashes). On rare occasions they're allowed to be non-glam, songs-first-looks-last actual singers (hi, PJ Harvey).

Sadly, the true individuals - the Bjorks - of this world are few and far between. And when was the last time you saw women rock stars behaving with equality to their male counterparts - trashing hotel rooms and seducing teenage boys?

Perhaps the last bit is just wishful thinking. Today's New Band, Vuk, regardless of predilection for hormonal 17-year-old youths, certainly is her own woman, which elevates her above many of her peers immediately.

Vuk has scope beyond her contemporaries and her years. The Arms of Spirits is a vast, brilliant song full of clicking blocks, thrusting organ, and lovely words, whereas Flint In The Pines begins with woody, creepy menace but blossoms into a tender, rich, byzantine sprawl.

Her songs summon up the choral and the ancient, funnelled through a modern mind. Gramophone And Periscope is almost too sweetly warm and touching to be true.

Vuk's music is mysterious, deeply fascinating and fabulously original. You must listen here!

Photo: Jussi Puikkonen

The ANBAD Time Machine!

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:00:00 +0000

Lurking today in the ANBAD Time Machine is a frenzy of dinosaur-themed bands, some cracking Welsh-language hip-hop and some music so deranged your mind will melt - all from back in May 2008.

Two of these superb bands have since become bone-fide indie darlings: Dinosaur Pile-Up and Picture Books in Winter, which just goes to show that, despite the obsession with puns, clunky metaphors and the occasional 'WTF?' band, ANBAD is tip-top when it comes to unearthing bright young things. So come on in - the water's lovely. And full of dinosaurs, apparently.

It's Another Great ANBAD New Bands Round-Up!

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:00:00 +0000

So, after that dreadfully contorted headline, and after wrestling for control over Band Knowledge Distribution with the all-seeing, all-knowing sentient ANBAD Benevolent Overlord Robot, it's time to clear the backlog and blow out three more bands from the ANBAD Bilge Pump:

Look - here's Fran O'Hanlan, his lovely voice, his lovely gentle guitar, and his lovely, rugged, yet boyish, good looks. Wait. I got sidetracked there. But his songs, like House Of Books, are impassioned, grand and acousto-syrupy. Listen here!

If you like beards, you'll love Jam On Bread. Even if you're not fond of facial fungus, you'll not fail to raise at least an eyebrow, or even a smile, at his simple ukulele pluckings and off-beat songs. Floaty-light fun. Listen here!

I was hoping that Down The Lees was a protest group targeting people called Lee, but my early optimism was misplaced. Happily, it was replaced with jangly heartfelt indie - songs like Talk Is Not Cheap, which scrabbles and scratches and finds itself standing amid nice chorus-verse-choruses. Listen here!

ANBAD on Euro-Tour: Cahors Fete de Musique

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:00:00 +0000

About this time of year, I keep getting twinges of regret that I'm not at Glastonbury Festival. I'm being stubborn and keep telling myself that I won't return until the disappearance of the youths who spend hours on their hair and makeup in their tents and then updating their Facebook status to let everyone else know what an AMAZING TIME they're having, instead of just getting muddy and sweaty and having a good time like the rest of us.

I know I'll return eventually, but not until the memory of watching a never-ending queue of teenage Peaches Geldofs washing the mud off their designer Wellington Boots under a running tap - and then stepping right back into knee-deep mud, presumably with a view of joining the back of the queue again - has faded.

Still, I managed to find my first festival of then year, in France, and all by mistake, too. I stumbled into Cahors on the Sunday night, expecting little. Most French towns die down to Marie Celeste-type emptiness after 8pm, but on the previous night I'd seen a band playing in the street and wondered if something of interest might be going on.

I was right, and then some: it was the Cahors Fete de Musique - the annual music festival. Somehow, on the previous day's wander, I'd missed all the huge, yellow, five-foot-high posters advertising the event. ANBAD has its ears to the ground, oh yes.

The old town of Cahors is a beautiful medieval, labyrinthine city, with most buildings older than, say, the whole of the USA. On every tiny street corner there was a band. There was a band in every square, too. And outside the market hall; inside and outside of bars; in the middle of wide roads, shoulder-width narrow passageways - everywhere. And almost all, without exception, were exactly what you'd expect of French rock bands - blander and more inoffensive than, I don't know, Deep Blue Something.

In fact, if I have brought myself to have hung around to hear the band that was covering Two Princes by The Spin Doctors, I'd have gambled my last centime that Breakfast At Tiffany's was coming up next. There were so many 'blands' it made my head spin - garbled covers of the Rolling Stones ("Street flyin' man"), A DJ that was playing DJ Otzi megamixes (I never knew there were enough DJ Otzi songs to warrant a megamix), and the main event - a band that sounded like the French Levellers.

I continued walking. The fact that there was a band everywhere meant that quantity was high, even if quality was low; eventually, I wandered down an alleyway, and found a French hip-hop/punk/ska hybrid band that were, in the context of things, pretty good.

The narrow street fairly had sweat running off the narrow, high walls as teens pogoed to the yelpy 'n' angry sounds from the MCs, but I stood a little way back, so that they wouldn't knock my glass of local vin rouge, which in retrospect is awfully middle age/class.

They reaffirmed my faith in live music after the numbness of earlier. French is one of the few languages that suits being rapped perfectly - Welsh is another surprising candidate - and they hauled the crowd into the air again and again, through the strength of their lyricism.

It was a great way to end the night, and try and remember which way out of the maze of streets led back to my tent. So: this band would have been New Band Of The Day, but I'm not brave enough to strike up a conversation with some angry French Hip-hoppers with my basic schoolboy French, so we'll never know. Instead, here's some classic-ish French-hop from IAM.

Today's New Band - Crashing Humous

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:00:00 +0000

I watched 20 minutes of The Da Vinci Code movie. The book was stupefyingly bad and guess what - a clunker of a book became a clunker of a movie, too. It seems commendably perverse when you consider how many good books are butchered into poor movies.

Anyway, I watched it all the same, knowing I'd hate it. Experiencing something in the knowledge that it will be unpleasant in order to see just how bad it is must be a trait unique to humans. It would certainly explain Phil Collins' career.

I didn't think I'd like Today's New Band, Crashing Humous. The jokey name, the seemingly-ironic synths, the semi-serious rapping all pointed towards a student time-filling joke band. Inevitably, I liked them.

Bus Dance Feat. Dave and In Town flit with in-jokes, stabs at humour and musical parody. That these attempts didn't always work doesn't matter - their songs are a swift glimpse into the lives of a bunch of mates who want to have a band, and have made one. It's their angle, their song, their lives - warts and all.

Songs pass in tight bleeps, washes of sound and whispers, and in Uphill Mountain, Crashing Humous have a song that nearly exceeds the tight boundaries imposed on it. Listen here!

Great Scott, Marty! It's The ANBAD Time Machine!

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:00:00 +0000

Living the life of Riley/a wandering star/the tented semi-homeless somewhere in Europe has given me plenty of time for reflection. One of the nice, yet nasty, facets of A New Band A Day is, well, just that - every day brings a new, mewling and puking bunch of songs from another ace new band.

This, of course, is the point, but it does also mean that some great bands are hidden away in the past, buried too far beneath all the other hundred of bands that have flirted with you each day to be dug out and appreciated.

Thus: Here's the ANBAD Time Machine, accelerating up to 88MPH and taking you back in tiiiiiime - just like a dreadful DJ at a village hall disco. Except with great bands you may have missed, plucked from the ANBAD archives.

Today, we're going ALL THE WAY BACK - to April 2008 when ANBAD was a clumsy, wobbling newborn; a time when pictures in posts were scarce, and there was a crappily drawn picture of a robot at the top of the page for some reason, instead of things to do with music.

Still, there were some really ace bands that month, including the brilliant LA Preist, PixelH8 and the first appearance of our old ANBAD pals The Alibies. So go on, get retro and indulge in nostalgic discovery here!

Today's New Band - She's Hit

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:00:00 +0000

One of the most important, and thus one of the most difficult and enigmatic, jobs of any band is to grab the attention of everyone else. For 'everyone else', read 'record buying public'. For 'record buying public', read 'our tickets out of these drab desk jobs and into rock fantasy land'.

Anyway - Today's New Band, She's Hit, achieved this feat through the most unlikely of sources - a comically mis-read URL. Their Myspace address is www.myspace.com/sheshitglasgow - and if you can't spot the bowel-movement-from-hell gag in that, the you, sir, are the sort of person who sat at the front of class and tutted loudly to please the teacher when someone farted in class.

So, attention duly grabbed, She's Hit quickly dispel any Glaswegian scat fetishism worries with their louche, relaxed and dirty sound.

Part One begins with a trapped-CD buzz, slouches into a lo-fi, lo-down, tinny rock slumber, and then drifts into a lovely noise-fuzz-screech. Black Transistor Nightmares is close to being Jesus-and-Mary-Chain-meets-Dick-Dale surf rock, but studded with sinister and creepy noise.

She's Hit: the sound guitars would make if they could shrug their shoulders and sigh loudly. Listen here!

The ANBAD New Band Clearing House Opens Its Doors

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 08:00:00 +0000

Anyone who's ever been in the unfortunate position to have had some oik in a shiny suit bombarding them with Management-Speak will know that 'added value' is where it's at right now in the lexicon of Management Bullshit.

Make the customer pay more by giving them even more than they bargained for and everyone's happy, right? Except of course, the customer, who's been diddled out of more cash than they wanted.

At ANBAD, our idea of added value is to throw more bands at you and to make them stick - for free! So here's another Great ANBAD Band Clear Out - where three great new bands are pumped into your open, willing gullets, all for the price of one! Open wide...

Airport City Express are another Belgian band who continue to prove that their country isn't just the butt of 'name three famous Belgians' jokes and Tintin, and instead produce the sort of easy-going rock that Soulwax and Phoenix used to. Smooth and fuzzy. Listen here!

The Little Philistines: Zipping between the good UK indie of the 90s and deceptive tunefulness with cunning aplomb, The Little Philistines have, in Another Song, a signature tune with a chorus that goes on for miles. Listen here!

Guess what? Slow Drum Hum are another of our most Aptly Named Bands...Ever! Creeping, slow and ready to pounce, with thoughtful menace, their songs hum, drone and click like evil radio static from outer space. Cower here!

Today's New Band - The White Noise Supremacists

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:00:00 +0000

Unable to resist taking a trip for the umpteenth time to the Fountains Of Pun, we valiantly returned with Today's New Band, The White Noise Supremacists. Like me, you're probably unable to shake the image of skinhead thrash metal from your minds. Good - their music will do that for you.

So, the unexpected: These Walls Will Burn and Splinter, sweeter and softer than marshmallow, is a bit tender, a bit gentle and a bit lovely. Meant To Be is similarly sad, drowsy and raw, coasting easily along a line that is often abused too create bland rock, and instead making something pure and good. She's Soft Inside is tough and brittle and rounded.

The White Noise Supremacist's name is part funny-ha-ha, part stroke of genius; jilting your expectations so hard that when you actually hear their songs, it's with the freshest of ears. Clever devils. Listen to them here!

Unwise and Unaware: ANBAD Goes A-Wandering

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 13:14:00 +0000

A (MODERATELY) IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT:

As a valued ANBAD reader/subscriber/twitterer/etc, you'll be all too painfully aware of the dubious joys of doing things the hard way. We've brought you all sorts of bands over the last 18 months or so - some of which have been wonderful, some of which have vigorously divided opinion and some of which have just been plain awkward.

But the beauty of these huge discrepancies in quality is that occasionally a band sneaks through that shouldn't really have, catching me and you, the listeners, off guard - revealing a new exciting paths to wander down. Removing consistency of thought seems to have some advantages after all.

So: I've decided to apply this unwise approach to a wider remit. Having, erm, ditched my job, home and life in Manchester and thrown a sleeping bag, a rucksack and my hopes and dreams (yuk) into a car, I'm off to travel around Europe for ooh, until the money runs out.

Hopefully, along the way, I'll drop into gigs, Euro-music festivals and the like and, via the magic of wi-fi, be able to let you know whether France really is all about Jonny Halliday or Justice.

Don't be alarmed though - ANBAD will continue (almost) as normal - there will inevitably be fewer posts per week, so the A New Band A Day moniker, which has always been a bit shaky, won't totally apply, but there will be new bands and features as always, throughout the week.

If there's no new band today - why not have an explore through the exciting, bulging and overwhelming ANBAD Archive (just situated to your right)? There are so many bands in there, it'll keep you busy until the cows have come home, gone to bed and have woken up again the next day.

So: Happy Holidays to all, and here's to the exciting prospect of writing to you all from the Continent.

Take it sleazy,

Joe Sparrow, ANBAD

***If you're a new band, please still get in touch as per usual, but please be aware that the regularity of which I can check my email is dependant on free wi-fi in bars, and whether I'm then too busy drinking the local beer to check.***

Today's New Band - Agaskodo Teliverek

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 10:14:00 +0000

My hangover has finally abated, but the mental wooliness still remains. What I need is a jolt of life to shake me from my self-inflicted stupor. And as if by magic...

Today's New Band are Agaskodo Teliverek. They are a rare example of a band trying to find their own, genuinely new sound. Everything is thrown into the mix in order to see what works, keeping what does, and disposing of what doesn't. As such, there's no set guidelines for their songs, which zip around with gleeful abandon.

The Gay Hussar is a dive into mentalist bizarro-pop, a song that's alive with manic bursts of energised, sampled/shredded vocals to accompany the sound - a fairground organ played at double speed. It thrashes, jerks and wanders with crazed imprecision.

The Beautiful Bread Man oscillates wildly, and, on their own, the surf guitars, hi-hat spasms and noodling would sound odd, but together they clash beautifully, creating exciting webs of sound.

Agaskodo Teliverek are one-offs, and because of this will leave as many people wide-eyed with pleasure as there will be those scratching their heads, which, in my mind is the sign of a good band. Listen here!

Photograph by Krisztian Zana

Today's New Band - Ödland

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:11:00 +0000

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear. Today I feel very hungover. There's a big part of last night that is a blank, and this time I think I really mean it when I say I'm never drinking again. Every time I type a letter, the noise makes me feel violently sick. I'm never drinking again. Never. My friend Steve - it's his fault. He shouldn't have bought me all those drinks. I'm never drinking with Steve again, at least.

That's my excuse for the tardiness of today's post out of the way, at least. Today's New Band - now that's a different, more problematic issue. If the music is too fast, too weird or too noisy, chunder make occur. On the other hand, those parameters could narrow the options down into James Blunt territory. We must tread carefully.

Perfect for my fragile state is Ödland, a French band who make gentle, lovely music that sometimes whirls off to less gentle, but equally lovely places. Using a piano and a sole , lovely, french voice, Ödland tell tales, sweetly, and simply.

This might be the time to point out that my working knowledge of French is minuscule, and so the stories could be about anything at all to be honest - love, loss or even - ooh, I dont know - bird's eyes.

But listen to Les Yeux de l'Oiseau and tell me that you don't hear the sound of mourning - a sad, crooked lament. The language barrier is never a problem: the voice tells the story as much as the words would. Even songs sung in English, like The Caterpillar are drenched in alien charm.

Sur Les Murs de Ma Chambre is a similarly weird, bare and intimate song - delicate, pure and, at times, cute as hell.

So Ödland give us two presents: beautiful songs and a lesson for life - that a language barrier only exists if you want it to. Listen here!

Today's New Band - Frantic Clam

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:12:00 +0000

A band's name doesn't really makes a huge difference to how you perceive them. This isn't the same as liking a band's name, which is an arbitrary personal choice - and in the case of heavy metal bands, whether you like the indiscriminate scattering of umlauts or not - but if you think about it, U2 would still be as will-sappingly dreadful even if they were called Bono's Big-Top Dancing Monkey Troupe.

So: Today's New Band. Their name is Frantic Clam. Some of you will like the name, some will think it stinks and most will hopefully be too busy listening to their great, driving, songs to care.

Fort Worthless hammers a steady beat - the kind where our human, subconscious need for steering-wheel-drumming bubbles to the surface - and the band carefully construct a web of choppy guitars, chipper lyrics and handclaps-a-plenty around it. It's a pop song of sorts, subscribing to the age old pop values - use a good tune, a catchy chorus, and loads of hooks. It works, and it's the kind of song that will make a difference to the band's life.

Korean Beauty Queen is another chugging, sparse-then-noisy-then-sparse-again angular art-rock jab to the ribs, arriving quickly in a screech of its own importance and disappearing just as rapidly.

Frantic Clam say that they 'sound like tinnitus'. I think any sufferers would be happy to swap that internal broken radio buzz for Frantic Clam's off-kilter swagger. Listen here!

Today's New Band - Radiant Dragon

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:22:00 +0000

My attitude towards the proliferation of Guitar Hero-esque games has been to wonder why you'd bother spending all that money on a game, some plastic guitar-shaped controllers and an Xbox when you can buy the real instruments for about the same price and have, you know, a real band. And I'm not sure I buy the assertions of Metallica's James Hatfield that the plastic Gibson Explorer of Guitar Hero: Metallica is a 'gateway drug' to playing an actual guitar.

But here's something to change all those snobby opinions: it's The Beatles Rock Band and it looks like it might be actual fun. It's almost as if some bright spark recognised that the Beatles videogame ought to have a bit of effort put into it; accordingly, you can now live out all your Beatles fantasies - albeit in your living room along with some hideously expensive imitation instruments. But just think: you can now be Ringo warbling Yellow Submarine, all whilst racking up "Double Fab Bonuses", whatever they are.

I don't know whether Today's New Band, Radiant Dragon, harbour latent wanna-Beatles ambition, but they sure know how to make ace pop tunes.

Oysters is a brilliant, swirling, psychedelic jab of pop, filled to the brim with skittering drum loops, weird sounds and melodies more catchy than Swine Flu. Taman is ear-deep in polyrythms, and refuses to buckle as layer after layer of chewy, enticing sound gets piled on top of one another.

Radiant Dragon lubricate songs like Cold Ghost - that could have been clumsy and obtuse - and make them bristle with life. Instruments squelch, shimmer and punch, and the listener can only marvel at the pleasantries of it all.

Some bands pop up unexpectedly and make songs that twist and turn exactly as you'd want them to, just as you'd like them to. Radiant Dragon do this, blithely and simply, with oodles of good-time swagger. A treat. Listen here!

May's Top Five New Bands!

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:10:00 +0000

In a month where the world has apparently readjusted it's collective taste-barometer to read 'Crazy' and decided that SuBo is actually Elvis, Billie Holliday and Jesus all rolled into one big, hairy, overwhelmed package, perhaps listing May's Top Five Bands is a moot point. Listing Susan Boyle in places 1-5 would not be the most inexplicable thing to do right now.

However, it's been a corker of a month on ANBAD, with as dizzying and bewildering an array of great new bands as there's ever been. So we're bravely going to avoid placing any frumpy Scottish singers and list the Top 5, in no particular order:

Everything Everything - We said: "Everything Everything are now getting the radio play they've deserved for a while, and this is purely because they're punchy, innovative and crafty. Lovely."

Apple Eyes - We said: "Their song Wild Beasts stands out by a country mile; a song of rare invention, an evolution of ideas and a candyfloss chorus on top...it's an example of making a song that is more than the sum of its parts."

Pouff - We said: "Happier than Happy Hardcore, dumber than a bus-full of Premiership footballers and as springy as a pile of mattresses. Deliriously daft FUN."

5 Turns 25 - We said: "They make music that is almost beyond ambient - only one step beyond the sound of a band warming up, and one step behind true coherency. Yum yum yum."

And a huge, hairy, SuBo-scented congratulations to May's Best New Artist, who was:

Beth Jeans Houghton - We said: "Her songs are what synesthesiacs hear when they are bathed in glorious orange sunlight - unnervingly warm, bright and cosy. Taking sweet and gentle folk music and skewering it with shards of crackling weirdness, her songs clasp you softly, albeit with a worryingly firm grip. A wonderful discovery."

See? A great month of new bands. And not even a hint of Oh-Look-The-Fat-Ugly-Lady-Can-Sing-Like-A-Normal-Person condescension. Vote BethHo, not SuBo!

Today's New Band - The Black and White Years

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Fri, 29 May 2009 09:49:00 +0000

Just like any other teenager, my bedroom walls were purely a space demanding to be filled with posters. And amongst the Britpop fare that adorned the area next to my bed was a page torn from Select magazine, featuring Donna Matthews from Elastica.

I can't find the exact image on the internet, which pains me a little, because, for my teenage, hormone-riddled self, she was achingly cute, and more sexy and down-right exciting than all the girls I knew at school. She looked like the kind of girl who'd let you buy her a drink and then tell you to fuck off, just to be contrary. I'd have given anything for that to happen.

Now imagine the surprise when, in the process of trying to find that picture and relive the surge of teenage lust, I found this article on, er, www.discover-jesus.co.uk. Donna Matthews, the gorgeous hellraising indie bleached-hair bleached-mind beached-morals rock 'n' roll Donna Matthews, has got God.

Now, I'm not belittling Christians, or people who find peace in religion. But this is Donna Matthews, for crap's sake. My latent teenage rock 'n' roll fantasies wilted with bewilderment at this theological U-turn.

Funnily enough, Today's New Band, The Black and White Years, have a song called Power To Change. It's a lithe, thudding song that twists, turns and jabs a finger at believers and non-believers. "Terrified and strange...Still I believe in the power of change," they sing, winningly. This song alone contains enough tasty hooks to snare anybody into signing up for any type of change you like.

Other songs, like Broken Hand, will leave you swooning at the deft lyricism, sweet intent and sashaying tunes, even before it bursts into skittering life, bounding with enthusiasm and intent.

Donna says: "I love music because it has the capacity to bring me into God’s presence." Well, good. But I love music like The Black and White Years' specifically because it shoves me further away from ever understanding the complexities of human creative brilliance. I don't want connection with a greater force than that. Sorry, Donna. Listen here.

Photograph by Cory Ryan

Today's New Band - Sleepy Sun

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Thu, 28 May 2009 09:45:00 +0000

I woke up this morning with a sore head and a note with a code-number on it, written in my handwriting. I was in a room I didn't recognise and, looking out of the window, in a part of town I didn't know.

As the memories of the previous night's celebration with some Spanish Barcelona-supporting friends slowly returned, I pulled on my clothes, realised the code was needed to get through the security gate out of the apartment block, and tried to figure out how to reach ANBAD Towers.

Taking a wild directional gamble, I travelled across the city on a completely alien route. I passed legions of grey-suited officinistas clutching onto cardboard cups of sweet coffee for dear life; young lawyers wearing double-breasted suits, desperate to disappear amongst anonymous legal peers; nervous men in their best clothes queueing outside the army recruiting centre.

My decision to sleep on the floor of friends (Gracias Alex, Diego and Victor) allowed me to see Manchester with new, if bleary, eyes. Bleary, you say? How about Today's New Band, Sleepy Sun, who are the aural equivalent of a slow, hungover morning in bed.

Song Sleepy Son lurks, the guitar leering and growling. The songs lurches, creeps and surges with the fuzzy confidence drawn from that morning-after-a-successful-night-before feeling. New Age is 50% feedback-shriek and 50% feline prowl.

Sleepy Sun are appropriate for hungover times, come-down times and dreamtimes. Cosy, awkward, glancing backwards, forwards and drifting with considered aimlessness, if they don't slide slowly into your day, nothing will. Listen here!

Photograph by Brett Wilde

Today's New Band - Disco Nasties

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Wed, 27 May 2009 09:05:00 +0000

At the end of the Pete and the Pirates gig I went to a few weeks ago, I was lingering on the dancefloor, looking for money dropped during the jumping around (old teenage habits die hard). A girl approached me who was either drunk, or high on life. She excitedly thrust a CD into my hand, told me that, "this band are amazing!" and stumbled away.

The band was called Disco Nasties, a name that is satisfying in a Bis kind of way, and they'd supported P&TP that night, though I'd missed them.

Inevitably, I lost the CD immediately, but my friend Mort found it again at his house the other day. I dutifully listened to it, liked it, and - guess what? - Disco Nasties are Today's New Band.

Little Bit Sorry pings with jittering guitar, youthful exuberance, a cracked structure and a chorus that puts an arm tightly around you and pulls you into the mosh pit. Textual Deviance is even better, in turns falling apart and putting itself back together again - all the while jamming in as much choppy jangling as is reasonable. O2 Molecules grabs an 'oh-oh-oh' chant and won't let it go, but will let you join in.

After looking at their Myspace page now, I think the drunk girl may have been the drummer, but I'm not sure. Either way: thank you, wandering drunkard. Disco Nasties are the zippy funsters you'd expect them to be, and more. Listen here!