Wednesday, 1 July 2009
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.
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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.Labels: ANBAD Time Machine
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Monday, 29 June 2009
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!
Labels: Band Clear Out
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Friday, 26 June 2009
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.
Labels: ANBAD on tour, French
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Wednesday, 24 June 2009
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!
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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!
Labels: 80's/90's, Pick 'n' Mix, polarising
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Monday, 22 June 2009
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!
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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!
Labels: ANBAD Time Machine
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Thursday, 18 June 2009
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.
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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!
Labels: 80's, Creepy, relaxed muscle
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Monday, 15 June 2009
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!
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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!
Labels: ANBAD on tour, Band Clear Out
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Thursday, 11 June 2009
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!
Labels: simple sounds, wistful, your local band
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Tuesday, 9 June 2009
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.***
Labels: ANBAD on tour
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Friday, 5 June 2009
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
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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
Labels: creative overload, instruMENTAL, polarising
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Thursday, 4 June 2009
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!
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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!
Labels: Best whispering melodies, Creepy, French
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Wednesday, 3 June 2009
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!
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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!
Labels: "good indie", I love tinnitus, Jaunty
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Tuesday, 2 June 2009
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!
Labels: actual brilliance, creative overload, mind enema
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Monday, 1 June 2009
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!
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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!
Labels: Round Up
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