Well. It’s taken me a week to pull my brain out of a jet-lag fug, but finally I’ve managed to find a Brooklyn-based band, and semi-justify my presence in New York.

OK, so Happy Lives were pretty much the very first local band I stumbled upon, but I’m going to chalk this one up to serendipity.

That’s because Happy Lives are a great band (aren’t they all?), replete with songs filled with the kind of sounds that reach out of the speaker and shake you warmly by the throat.

Slacks and Slippers is crunchier than a fresh tower of …

It’s my birthday today, and I’m going to have to dream up a whole new excuse to explain away my age.

Though, as Einstein would tell you, having recently completed a trans-Atlantic flight, I am, in effect, slightly younger than I would have been if I’d stayed in the UK.

This may be a hard concept to fully grasp, so Blur’s Alex James demonstrates the molten fluidity of time in the only way he knows.

MIXTAPE:

FIRST! Le Parody is at pains to explain that her music is not a parody, it just looks that way because of the …

Not to harp on about band names again or anything, but hasn’t Olly Gale done himself a favour by releasing music under the moniker Blue Boats as opposed to the name on his driver’s license?

I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with the name his parents chose, but – and I don’t wish to be mean, Olly – it’s more befitting of someone doing something more normal with their life than recording songs drenched in echo, lust and wonder.

A song like The Fear has all these characteristics, and more: it is the sound of a long, slow, calming sigh …

Over the past couple of days, ANBAD has thrown all its possessions, including the incredibly weighty and seemingly less-important-with-each-passing-day CD collection, into a garage and headed over to New York for a few months.

This in itself is exciting for all sorts of reasons; but will chiefly allow plenty of opportunities to fully take advantage of NYC’s thriving, bustling new band scene and showcase plenty of New Yorkian talent.

(We could call it A New (York) Band A Day, or something. I’ll get back to you on that one.)

Anyway, having presented myself with such a unique cultural opportunity, …

Oh Alex James from Blur. Alex, Alex James. From Blur.

You once blew a  million pounds on Champagne. You were once the bassist in the brightest, breeziest Britpop band of all.

Then you made cheese. This is fine. I like cheese. My sister met you, and said you “smelt of cheese from three feet away,” which just enamoured you to her even more.

Now you hang with right-wing dolts at dull music festivals, make processed cheese for a KMART-owned company and write articles praising McDonalds for a Murdoch-owned right-wing tabloid.

Alex James. Pour your cheese. Pour your …

Once again, a mere band name influences ANBAD’s choice of featured artist.

And once again, this ludicrous intuition serves ANBAD well: welcome Wet Nuns, a band whose very nature makes the niggling question, “I wonder if I’ve featured these guys before?” entirely superfluous – as if a name like that would be quickly forgotten.

The one element of Wet Nun‘s persona I couldn’t grasp from their name alone was the type of music they made.

And then I listened, and slapped my forehead: of course they make trashy, gut-busting, lead-heavy grind-blue-rock. It was almost too simple.

 …

Sometimes people ask me “where music is going next.”

These are people labouring under the misapprehension that I, as a music blogger, have my “finger” on the “pulse”, when actually, nothing could be much further from the truth.

Regular readers know that ANBAD is not good at predicting and riding new waves of genrefied interest.

Today’s new band, The Drum, are probably hoisted high on a wave of their own creation however, and so for once maybe ANBAD is near the front of the curve. Or not. You choose.

What is fairly clear to these ears is that …