Anyone fancy taking part in a small scientific experiment? Great. Follow these instructions to the letter, please. First, bash your head against the table in front of you. No, go on - it'll be fun, I promise. Assuming your initial attempt was slightly cautious, now do it again, but harder. And repeatedly. But not so much that you lose consciousness. That would be bad.

Finally, write down your findings. I'm guessing they might be along these lines: "Arrrrgh, confusion and pain." And this, of course, is the point of the experiment, as Today's New Band will have a similar, if less bloody effect. It's Pre, and they're the sound of a manic, sweaty moshpit storming the stage, hijacking the instruments and making NOISE. Listen to Dudefuk as an example: a sub-two minute guitar-spazz, replete with screamy yelping and thrashed instruments. The music screams, literally and otherwise, with a real base desire to go crazy, make a racket and get drunk, which, assuming I didn't miss any lyrics about them being Straight-Edge Christians, is probably true.

It's not tuneless wailing though - there's satisfying coherency to the distorted brain-drilling of And Prolapse, a song title that deserves to be elevated to the pantheon of greats that have previously featured on A.N.B.A.D. Ride Ride Ride, thankfully, is not a celebration of the eponymous Shoegaze bore-droners, but actually a 30-second buzz along the Autobahn to Hell.

So: Pre - like banging your head against a table, except enjoyable. Listen to their noize here!

Labels: a bazillion miles an hour, Boost Up Anal Vomit, my brain hurts

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Yesterday's yummy, super-twee (but not in an awful 'Tweecore' way) band, The Bumblebees, got me thinking. Actually, they got me a-hankerin' for some more jangly indie. This hankering intensified when I accidentally subjected myself to a video of the Ting Tings' awful song Shut Up and Let Me Go this morning. Its ultra-hip, consciously-ironic, sunglasses-indoor idiocy made me feel all hopeless. Where's the fun, or the the sense of reality in their super-slick, focus-group-defined sound?

So Today's New Band was always going to sound like their music was a) heartfelt, but not sincere; b) enjoyable, but nicely throwaway; and c) both happy and sad. So, say a big 'hello' to The Shot Heard Around the World, a band who fulfil those criteria and are as far removed from plastic generic stupidity as possible. They sound like people playing music for the fun of it. LOL!!!, as 'the kids' would say. They're also the second band from Brooklyn to feature on here in a week. Perhaps the A.N.B.A.D. staff are fishing for invites over there or something.

Make of that what you will, but one thing you will definitely recognise is a good indie tune when its tinny-guitar-twinkling winds its way into your brain, and the marvellous is, and does, just that. Rough, ready and engaging, its a song full of harmonies and a sprinking of the pleasantly inevitable glockenspiel that makes you feel happy to be alive. Evening Prayer is homely, warm and sorry - "I treated you less than right, girl that's true/But everything will turn out right... Nothing ever turns out right," lamenting and apologising.

Thinking about it, all of the bands this week so far have been very... human. Celebrate a theme as broad as humanity and listen to The Shot Heard Around the World's songs here!

Labels: chiming, folk you, slightly mournful

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There's something to be said for shy and fey voices in pop. Whilst Axl Rose et al growl, howl and grunt into the microphone, spraying the front row with saliva that is composed of 40% ALL MAN, 40% TESTOSTERONE and 20% COME BACKSTAGE AND BLOW ME, BABY, not everybody's songs benefit from such overt, Jack-Daniels-and-cigarettes, oversize-codpieced masculinity. Anything that goes some way to redressing the balance is welcome.

So, yup, Today's New Band, the lovely Bumblebees, are about as thrusting and masculine as Brian Sewell nibbling on cucumber sandwiches. This is A Very Good Thing, as evidenced by their Über-cute and happy songs that litter their Myspace page.

My Kaleidoscope starts and ends with the sugariest, yummiest, bloopy organ-line for, like, ages. This is the song that you'll play in your head this autumn when you look back fondly to summer and whizz through the memories of playing in the sea on holiday.

Fluffy Clouds Of Joy is a jerky, gentle and twee treat which metamorphoses into a children's TV show theme tune. It's also possibly begging for a post-post-post-ironic 'mash-up' with the Orb's Fluffy Little Clouds, which might cause the twin internet moron tribes of the Tweecore-ers and the Ironic Haircut-ers to either implode with rage (bad) or become best friends, ever (worse).

The Bumblebees are tons of fun in the same way that making your own Lemonade is, and with the similar qualities of sweetness masking sharpness. Great! Listen here, now, youngster!

Labels: jangle, lo-fi, tinkling

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Electronic music often sounds soulless. Even though bands like Orbital managed to infuse something nearing humanity or nature into their music, the methods for producing electronic music ensure that its very nature is that of robotic precision. This isn't to say humanity or soulfulness is necessary in music, just that, as music is an output for expression, it's often tough to convey the feeling that fingers, thumbs and emotion have been involved in its creation.

Today's New Band, rs-232, is ice-cold and precise. There doesn't seem to be room for emotion or feeling in the music, but that's a good thing, as it would seem wildly out of place in music this clean. This is what music made by robots would sound like. Precise, concise, calculated, metallic and shimmering. Song Ping manages to bounce, jitter and, yes, ping, but with a subtle funkiness, if that isn't oxymoron-tastic.

However, it's not funk that you'd want to leap up and frug to - this isn't dancing music. What it does do is drag your mind away from wherever you are - you'll soon be wandering around rigid and unknown corridors in your mind. Pending Authorisation is creepy, sparse and stark, with quiet clicks, pulse-like beats and chilly metallic sweeps.

rs-232 's tunes may well turn out to be a sonic computer experiment. I half hope so. Listen to it all here, and try not to picture T-1000 from Terminator creeping up behind you as you listen.

Labels: human-computer hybrid, I am calm, ROBOTS

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Bands have perceived connections with the past whether you, or they, want them or not. If yesterday's new band, Saboteur, reminded us of the 90's - if not in sound, at least in spirit - then Today's New Band, Padre Pio, simply reek of the 70's and 80's, sonically and, quite possibly, intellectually.

And if that has conjured up images of 70's wank-rock or 80's poodle-hair-rock, then a) wash your mind with bleach; no-one deserves to inflict that kind of mental torture to themselves, and b) instead think of when rock was a bit luxuriant, asexual and gleaming. Think Bowie and Lou Reed. Think of druggy, sharp-suited excess and eyeshadow on men. Think of a time when rock wasn't scruffy, but glistening with confidence.

Padre Pio's songs caress your eardrums with all of those things. Colour is a synthy glammy pop breeze, and Common Day is the great late 70's New York song you've never heard. It also, against all odds, achieves rock's most risky, difficult feat: a great Sax solo. Their songs are slightly pompous, eccentric and lithely predatory - all missing in most music now, and extremely welcome.

Surely Padre Pio aren't going to be gazing at the stars forever, wondering when they can strut their stuff in, I like to imagine, delightfully-cut suits. A band this swooning and sexy has to, and deserves to, end up foppishly jostling with the big boys. Brill. Listen to them here!

P.S. As a side note, Padre Pio are, apparently, from Bushwick, in Brooklyn. This has no connection at all with rapper Bushwick Bill from the Geto Boys, but it's still an excuse to show the cover of their album We Can't Be Stopped, which features Bushwick Bill being rolled into hospital AFTER HE SHOT HIMSELF IN THE EYE. Now that's hardcore.

Labels: asexual, lithe, synth-o-tronic

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When it was announced, I thought The Verve headlining Glastonbury Festival was a bit of a weak move - The Verve have been split and silent for years now; Richard Ashcroft's solo output has been the sub-MOR equivalent of dipping your head into a stagnant duck-pond; surely they're doing one more comeback for tax reasons, etc.

Watching their headline set on TV, I realised that, fortunately, I was super-wrong. Instead of the expected clunky phoning-in of their 90's hits, they were all the things they used to be, and more. Epic songs about love and loss from a band that has so much confidence in itself that they finished off not with their most famous song, but a brand new single, which - guess what - is ace. I was thrilled and a bit ashamed to have been so cynical.

It also struck me that what made them so great was simply that, while in the 90's they were, on the surface, just another rock band wearing cagoules, that exact quality was now what set them so far apart from their current peers. To differentiate yourself from the skinny jeans 'n' ties hoard is to be automatically ahead of the pack. So, Today's New Band are Saboteur. They don't sound like The Verve, but they do sound different to the Haircut-Indie bands. Their starting point and ethos isn't the usual Joy Division/Strokes/Boomtown Freaking Rats yadda-yadda. Oh and they're German, further compounding that niggling feeling I've been getting that German music is really good at the moment.

Song Love Spreader, whilst sounding slightly obscene, is a chiming treat, devoid of posing, archness or cynicism. It pulses with the simple delight of being in a band and making music. A Cabbage White is the same. Saboteur remind me a little bit of forgotten 80's band The Chills, who possibly because they were from New Zealand and thus were Not Cool, didn't become as big as they deserved. So listen and enjoy Saboteur right now, while you can.

Labels: 90's, chiming, German

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THE GREAT NEW BAND CULL CONTINUES!

What is it with bands splitting up so soon? It's painful to see them cut down before they've even had a chance to be in their prime. Look at the past examples on A..N.B.A.D. - the wonderful The Royal We recorded a lone, brilliant, EP and then got all grumpy and split up and then, on Monday, the super Held By Hands imploded, leaving us with just a few, lovely, sad tracks to remember them by.

So it appears that A New Band A Day has the reverse Midas touch - this is the second time this week that a band has split up just days before they are featured. And it's only Wednesday. Perhaps we should have Bon Jovi or The Kooks on here on Thursday and Friday, and see if they do the decent thing. Therefore, take this opportunity to have a peek into the coffin of Today's New (Dead) Band, Everything We Say Is Fact. They slipped into a musi-coma last week, and the machine was switched off shortly after. From the sounds of their FRANTIC, mentalist music though, they lived life to the full, and must have been dragged to Noise Rock Heaven kicking and screaming, because, well, that's pretty much how their breathless songs sound.

Of all the weather patterns that get me a bit grouchy, windy days are up there with fine drizzle, but on Ewsif Hates Blustery Weather, Everything We Say Is Fact demonstrate that they REALLY hate it. Guitars grind and howl whilst the drums get punctured from the ANIMAL! ANIMAL! ANIMAL!-style treatment they receive, and, just to makes sure everyone is aware of their message, there's about 3 or four false endings. Their other songs, like Noah Won't Let Me On The Ark, are all approached with the same forehead-stoving enthusiasm.

You could approximate Everything We Say Is Fact's sound and impact at home if you put all of your pots, pans and cutlery in a bin, then climbed in yourself and rolled it all down a hill. But much easier than that is to just listen to their songs, right here, right now.

Labels: kiss of death, my brain hurts, NOISE

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The only printed magazine I bother reading is Viz. It's a comic ostensibly aimed at adults featuring solely puerile humour. One of its characters, Ravey Davey Gravy, features it's 'hero' in all manner of mundane situations - testing doorbells, walking past bleeping burglar alarms - and finding enough Rinsin' Choonage in the sounds have Have It Large. If there is a point to all this idiocy (and this is stretching it) it is that humans love repetitive noise. It's been well documented in less toilet humour-inclined publications.

Today's New band, Gilda Bliss, is aware of the power of the same sounds coming at you again and again and again. The music isn't anything that would get Davey's motor running - their aren't anywhere near enough BPMs to encourage the breaking out of whistles and glo-sticks - but it is a powerful force used to create spookily evocative aural pleasure. Fnarrr, fnarrr. (Damn you, Viz.)

Dead Dog Dad has a similar Zen-by-noisy-repetition effect to My Bloody Valentine's infamous 'holocaust' ending to their live shows, except this time, you can simply turn it down when it gets too much, instead of holding your hands over your ears and weeping for 25 minutes. Dead Dog Dad phases in and out, over and over, like a sound-wave experiment you might have done in Physics at school. Like any repetitive noise, initial curiosity is followed by weariness, which is then followed by a zoned-out feeling of security.

It's this feeling that Gilda Bliss seems use his music to have a good rummage around in, with other sound-slabs, Small Imperfectly Formed and The Mistake also rolling out of the speakers like an audio fog. You won't be dancing, but you will be feeling overwhelming feelings of calm, or creeping horror., or both. Great. Listen to Gilda Bliss' repeato-noise here!

Labels: NOISE, repeat after me, SATAN

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Much like a good joke, the outcomes of life's intricacies depend on great, erm, you know.... timing. We've all thought of the right thing to do or say just 10 minutes later than would have been useful - the witty put-down to the brainless idiot who mocked you in a bar, or the slowly dawning realisation that maybe saying 'yes' to an asymmetrical mullet may not have been the right course of action.

The same is true with bands. So many bands have been in the right place at the wrong time that it's painful. It's a horrible truth is that if you are out of kilter with the majority, the chances of recognition are minimal - you could call it Van Gogh Syndrome. Fortunately most musicians don't follow his example to the letter, otherwise there would be severed ears scattered around guitar shops and recording studios all over the country.

Today's New Band, Held By Hands, were one that I had on my 'to do' list for a few months. As much of the decision-making process behind electing each day's new abnd is almost entirely arbitrary, today suddenly felt right to be a Held By Hands day. Their porcelain-delicate songs, which build and build but still seem as light as air at the end, were just perfect for easing gently into the coming week.

So how bowel-churningly typical that I revisited their Myspace page to find that Held By Hands split up about 3 weeks ago. This all leaves their beautiful song, Trading on Past Treasures, even more poignant, and definitely more fitting. It's a typically light, thoughtful and pretty swoop through introspectiveness, reaching a chorus of, "My God we were innocent/ My God, it was such a good time." Listen to their songs here, before they disappear, and mourn a bit for the passing of a lovely, unique band.

Labels: already split up, slightly mournful, wistful

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Jesus Christ Monkey Balls, the process of choosing Today's New Band was akin to pulling teeth. No, actually, it was worse - physical pain is only temporary, but the mental scars from today will never fade, and will lurk in the corner of my addled mind to taunt me again just when I least expect it. It was a classic example of one of those moments when you just can't decide what CD to put on, and end up spending half an hour staring mutely at your shelves of CDs, reading the names and mentally writing them off as 'not quite right for now', whilst a pool of dribble from your limp jaw starts to moisten your socks.

In the end, just when I was about to start knawing on my fists with frustration, I found the band I wanted, having skipped over any number of lovely Swedish jangly guitar bands and stereotypical French BANGIN' CHOON merchants.

On most days those bands would have had me farting with glee, but today, the desire for a deliberately obtuse, brain-spazz noise-spewer crept up my trouser leg and grabbed me by the balls. As such, after the painful ordeal of searching for the right noise to satiate this idiot desire, one band stood out like a WAG in Lidl.

Thus, Today's New Band is the wonderful Microwave Windows. They have no songs, as such. What they do have is mind-fisting noise that is possibly sucked from the skies of a planet in a different solar system at the precise moment that their local sun decides to explode. Microwave Windows say that they use, "the Multimode Delay Line Distribution System (MDLDS) to generate 600 MW pulses for the accelerator by storing RF power from multiple klystrons and switching that power to the appropriate accelerator sections". This may or may not be nonsense, but when you've heard the sounds on their Myspace page, it'll sound all too plausible. Or your thought processes will be too garbled to know if it is or not. Listen to their logic-destroying noise now, and then listen to a song you know and love. It'll sound sparkling, chiming and new. Microwave Windows are an enema for the mind. Awesome.

Labels: mind enema, my brain hurts, NOISE

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Short, sharp shocks. That's what you need sometimes. Not necessarily like receiving a one-inch punch to the throat from a previously hidden ninja when you pop out to the shop to buy the paper, mind. But an experience or - in particular - noise that shakes you from a slumber or from lethargy, is super-duper for all sorts of reasons. Laziness infects even the most thrusting young soul, and it'd be a huge LIE to say that we don't all need a wake-up call now and again.

Today's New Band, Copy Write This, is the aural equivalent of someone pinching your nose when you're asleep, except pleasurable. Dubiously pun-tastic name aside, and whilst their songs are thin on the ground, the ones they do have are mental smelling salts. Pulling a title from the School of Bleeding Obvious Song Names, Twitching and Salivating is as rabid and jumpy as suggested, using all the build-up-and-drop tricks in the book to create a rumbling face-smasher of a tune. Thumping crudely yet delicately along, it'd be a stone-hearted person who wouldn't get drawn in to it's bombastic thrills.

Copy Write This' other song, Brain Food, samples an oft-visited source of vocal idiocy, everyone's favourite brain-dead mouth-breather, George W. Bush. On paper, this seems like a cheap and easy target - who hasn't heard a million jibes at Dubya by now - but the song is actually a nicely abrupt stapling-together of his most cretinous moments, with an equally nice pulsating grumbly bass-heavy carpet beneath it.

So, a great chance to hear a really new work-in-progress musician, whose early stuff turns out to be a blustering rampage through a cauldron of clanking noise. Great. Listen here and wake yourself up!

Labels: chunky, deranged, PUNS

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I like surprises. Well, to a point - those, "darling, I'm pregnant," shocks don't get easier even the 14th time around - but as a rule, happy accidents and unexpected pleasures are the best bits of life.

Bands that spring a tasty surprise make me want to hunt them down and smother them to death with hugs, such is the prevalence of charmless, bland bands. So, usher in quietly Today's New Band, Ten Tigers from Southend, whose songs veer from spazzy-punk to contemplative-campfire singing, and don't give a monkey's what you think.

For example: their song Superlucky is a simple, crunchy, yelpy, sharply-female buzzfest that sounds like it'd be a great song to open a gig with. It'd set out the stall, to use football manager's parlance, and everyone would know exactly what to expect. Except their other songs aren't even like it at all, or even like each other. Possessing the shortest attention span in pop, song '82 has a verse that's a bold attempt to rescue the Wah-Wah pedal from Blaxploitatio-clichés, before strolling into a lovely, heavy, yomping chorus of "Everyone was gay in 1982". It goes without saying that Runaway and Sunny Shades are altogether different again (a summertime lilt and the aforementioned campfire sunset sing-song respectively).

They're hit-and-miss, but that's a given - it seems an ingrained part of Ten Tigers' nature. So what if you only like half of their songs? It's better than having middling feelings towards a band that treads a carefully safe route. A sensation of swinging between love and hate makes you feel alive, dagnammit, so ponder their songs here!

Labels: confusion, female, Pick 'n' Mix

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Possibly the most idiotic, frustrating thing about rock music right now is its tiresome and seemingly endless ability to create new 'scenes' out of old ones. Nostalgia has infected the one thing which, in the wake of punk, would supposedly tear up the past and focus solely on the future. Maybe bands or journalists or radio pluggers or whoever it is that actually makes things happen in the murky depths of rock have lost their nerve waiting for a new, exciting movement to begin and are happy to brand old ideas with the dumb, shiny sheen of a "New-" prefix. Take an undeserved bow, New Rave, New Rock, Nu-Metal and all of your unwanted friends.

Perhaps it's pop 'n' rock music's innate simplicity (See yesterday's New Band, The Gravity Crisis, for more guff on this topic) which means that old sounds are endlessly recycled, and really, it's one of it's most endearing qualities. Who hasn't ever thrilled at the moment when a new song you hear reminds you - for a split second - of one of your favourite bands? Well, this happened to me, today, as I was listening to Today's (superb) New Band, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart.

After only a millisecond of listening to the cracks and explosions of drums and guitar fuzz that is the wonderful Come Saturday, I suddenly had a brain-flash of being 16 again, when I first heard, in quick succession, My Bloody Valentine and Jesus and Mary Chain. This is good nostalgia, the type that leaves you a bit giddy and wide-eyed with joy, and not the sort that is dreamt up by someone with an ironic haircut who's, you know, getting into this Indie music stuff, yeah?

It would be glib to say that if you like MBV and JAMC, you'll love The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, but what the hell, it's true. If you love songs that drive forward with breathless abandon, all fuzzy, warm and colourful as a novelty Christmas sweater, then let yourself swoop head first into their songs. The fact that they have a song about Kurt Cobain's Cardigan is the cherry on the icing on the frosting on the cake.

The worrying element of The Pains of Being Pure At Heart's ace-ness is that they'll get lumped in with the dregs of the latest music revival - the return of the dreaded Shoegaze (though by now some smug idiot has already termed it "New-Gaze" as they were riding their micro-scooters to work). This would be a travesty and must not happen. Reclaim them as your own, right now, by listening to their fantastic songs on this Myspace page, here!

Labels: actual brilliance, fuzzbox frenzy, jangle

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If you were to draw up a list of all the necessary things to make an acers band, it'd probably be surprisingly light on ingredients. The list might read along the lines of: great choruses, satisfying chord changes, Keep-It-Simple,-Stupid Lyrics and a working knowledge of what makes the audience decide to get sweaty and excitable - a list that's temptingly short and sweet. It's probably this innate simplicity that is the reason for hairy teenagers everywhere to ask for a £69.99 Argos guitar for Christmas in the first place.

The truth is though, that, like unicycling whilst juggling flaming chainsaws, combining all of these things is a lot easier said than done. It's also why we have to settle for bands like the Kooks et al whilst we wait for the really good bands - who can alchemically squeeze all the simple stuff into their songs - to come along. So, tip your hat, then, to Today's New Band, The Gravity Crisis, who might just have got it all right.

What's most exciting about their un-self-consciously fun, catchy songs is that just when you think they might start to wander dangerously close to convention, or repetition, or conservativeness, they veer off in a burst of fuzzy guitar happiness, tails wagging and tongues lolling. Japan is HUGE and crunchy, Animator has all the whoa-oah choruses you'll ever need and Medicine has howly, simple guitar lines that you'll spontaneously hum when you're pouring your cereal next week. The Gravity Crisis are the indie dictionary definition of early promise. Fingers crossed!

Listen to their bounce-a-delic songs here - it's like the feeling of meeting an old friend you've not seen for ages.

And Finally...

A Brief Overview of 2000 Trees Festival -

1. Mud
2. Rain
3. Cider
4. Hayfever
5. "Gong Showers"
   
6. Lovely People
7. Sunshine that comes too late
   
8. Best band of the weekend - Art Brut. Like, durrrr.

Labels: camping, chorus-mageddon, singalong

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So, by now, your intrepid* A New Band A Day campers will probably have caught dysentery, have woken up to find that their tent has floated off into a field of cows, and is now wondering how to calm that little voice that's shouting MUST KILL NOW in our heads.

*idiotic

So whilst we're busy trying to zen out in a field of mud/cow dung, here's some other GREATEST HITS from the ANBAD Archives that you might have missed.

Sounds-like-an-electro-band-but-they're-not band, Heartbeeps!

Worryingly crazy Eyes and Teeth!

The fabulous ANBAD Radio show!

And Finally: Ace Welsh Hip-Hoppers Genod Droog!

Share and Enjoy!

Labels: Round Up

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Ahhh, holidays. Sun, sea, sand and beautiful, cultured people. All of those things are going to be absent from ANBAD's holiday for the next two days, as we cower under canvas at the 2000Trees festival, where rain, rain and even more rain has been forecast. So, while you're sitting in a warm room, reading this, spare a thought for those of us dumb enough to go to a music festival in the UK, even after years of bitter experience has proven it to be an almost guarenteed washout.

Anyway, while we're off eating mud, here's some great bands you might have missed from the ANBAD Archives!

Ace, German band Like A Stuntman!

Super electro-humanoid Finns the Alibies!

Friends of Steve Albini Record Hop!

And Finally: The most mentalist band ever - Coprophagia!

More New-Old-New Bands tomorrow!

Labels: Boost Up Anal Vomit, Round Up

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A New Band A Day is in a tent for the next few days, idiotically camping in a tent in deepest darkest Cheltenham to go to the lovely 2000Trees Festival. And guess what? It's going to rain non-flipping stop. I feel a small knot of dread building in my stomach. A knot which is accompanied by images of sitting in the ANBAD tent playing UNO for three days. Such feelings should probably be steeped in music that's a bit melancholy.

Today's New Band fit this bill perfectly. The Ondt and The Gracehopper are Danish, and make songs that are, believe it or not, upliftingly gloomy. Somehow they combine downtrodden hopelessness with big, fuzzy guitars and create a fantastic sound that's not sad enough to make you reach for the Valium, but not uplifting enough to warrant rubbing Vick's Vapo-rub on your chest and rush off to a Scooter concert. Perhaps they're Zen in band form.

Whatever they are, they're definitely ace - as songs Demon Drive and Year of the Dog testify. They can make a chorus soar beautifully for miles, whilst remaining determinedly glum - a feat in itself. Listen to their music at their Myspace page - www.myspace.com/theondtandthegracehoper - for a gulp of their relaxing despondency.

So, remember, we're under canvas, sobbing, hoping the rain will stop, for a couple of days now. BUT BUT BUT! There'll still be lots of lovely stuff happening on A New Band A Day, so tune in and think of us as we spend a weekend wallowing in grime.

Labels: chorus-mageddon, Danish, slightly mournful

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Remember how we went mental over the brilliant "The Battle Is Over" by Paul Hawkins and Thee Awkward Silences a few days back? Remember how we raved about the voice of the guest singer, Candythief? Well, with a shuddering inevitability, Candythief is today's New Band Of The Day!

There's a couple of 'truisms' when it comes to discussing vocalists. The first one is to point out that sometimes you hear a voice so beautifully penetrating that it speaks to you in a different way to most others. "That sounds wonderfully mindless," you're thinking, but it's true in the case of Candythief. Singer Diana's voice is the kind that would make you mix your metaphors and make you happy to crawl over hot broken glass, just to ask her to sing you to sleep at night. It's genuinely lovely - rich, dreamy and innocent enough to sound slightly dangerous.

The second 'truism' is to say that a good voice can hide a glut of crappiness, mainly the enriching of average songs. The happy news is that Candythief sing great songs, subtle and entrancing. A Good Day is one of these songs. It's as light as a feather and yet as powerful as a punch on the nose. "I feel like there's petrol in my veins, whilst fierce joy's bursting through my brain" she sings, while guitars and violins meld into a rolling accompaniment.

Junk is similarly ace, a wandering, violin-powered drift through a happy/gloomy folk nursery rhyme. The good news is that she's just got a record deal and so, hopefully, these fabulous songs can gently slide in to as many people's ears as possible. There's honestly no reason not to listen to Candythief's songs, so do it here! - http://www.myspace.com/candythief

Labels: actual brilliance, folk you, violin

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We fool ourselves into thinking that weekends are there for relaxation, but like most people, I just end up trying to fit way too much in two days. And so here we are again, straight back into another week, here at A New Band A Day. Mondays are usually characterised by that awful turbulence of re-entry back into reality, and this week, as always, is no different. Something soothing and trouble-free would sit quite nicely on top of my frame of mind right now, squashing down those troubling "Why aren't weekends five days long and a working week two?" thoughts.

So it was with minor joy when I played Today's New Band, Haruki's, music as I sat at my computer today. Haruki are Belgian, but don't fall into the trap of holding that against them - remember that, for all its dull-as-ditchwater stereotyping, Belgium is the home of the mighty Deus, Soulwax and 2ManyDJ's. Haruki sound like, well, Zen, maaaaan. Imagine if wind chimes were a pleasant wash of orchestrated noise, and not the sound of randomised hippy awfulness, and you'll have a rough idea of what to expect.

It's not all tinkly twee-ness though. Tiny Movements is just that - a series of lovely, minimal bleeps, as if water drops were falling onto a very tiny piano. And whilst In the Garden is the yummy, plucked, acoustic instrumental that you could happily snooze to, I Had it All Planned Out is almost Godspeed! You Black Emperor-like in its grumpy menace.

Haruki, then are most like the sound a lovely summery meadow would make if it learnt how to play happy instruments. Calmness will descend as soon as you listen. And if that isn't a good deal, I don't know what is. It's Monday, and you owe it to yourself to listen here, and adopt the lotus position, quick-quick.

Labels: Belgian, I am calm, tinkling

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***See below for the EXCITING CONCLUSION of GLIB COMPARISON WEEK - the gimmick that wouldn't die***

So, we're finally at the end of a great week on A New Band A Day, and to round it off, here's a band that will extinguish any lingering lethargy from your withered, useless bodies. That is unless you are a footballer's wife, in which case looking withered and being useless is all part of the job description, along with painting your skin with creosote and wearing the vilest, gaudiest clothes that frankly, have probably been invented as a joke by a blind tailor who lights his cigars with your £50 notes. Actually, if any footballer's wives are actually mentally capable of reading this, please let me know so I can contact the Guinness Book Of Records.

So, you've already probably noticed that Today's New Band is called AIDS Wolf. That's right, AIDS Wolf. Just slosh it around your mouth slowly, then suck some bubbles of air through it and really savour the name. AIDS Wolf. AIDS Wolf. I could just keep repeating the name over and over again for the rest of this post and, frankly, it would be enough. However, let's be fair - their music is ace. If you like fuzzing noises, half-terrified screaming and what may be the sound of a drummer being murdered as he's still playing, you'll love AIDS Wolf. If you're not sure whether you love those things or not, you must listen to their song Bethlehem Embargo Crystal immediately so that you can form a considered opinion. Then listen to Letter to Al Johnson, and wallow in the sound of the noise that The Terminator probably heard as he was lowered into the molten metal at the end of Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

Fry your brain, repeatedly, and listen to their noise-mentalism at their MySpace page!

TODAY'S (FINAL) GLIB COMPARISON: Bunnies playing in a field made of delicious soft fudge, cutely nudging bubbles of champagne to each other. Not really, they sound like a Wolf with freaking AIDS, for God's sake.

Labels: Glib comparisons week, NOISE, SATAN

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***GLIB COMPARISON WEEK CONTINUES BELOW, FACILE-FANS**

So again, after reeling from the glut of greatness in today's previous post, which rounds up the best bands this month on ANBAD, we again take a delve back into our pockets to see what new great bands lurk within. (And to make that mangled mixed-metaphor-analogy work, try imagining we're wearing big clown trousers, filled with every band in the world. I think I'm digging myself further in a hole here.) And today's New Band is yet another nail in the Johnny Halliday-shaped coffin for people who think that French music stinks.

It's been a bumper year for French music however you look at it - and I prefer to look mainly at Sebastian Tellier's brilliant entry to this year's Eurovision Song Contest, a song that shouldn't have only won, but was so universally wonderful that it should have been put into those birthday cards that play a song when they're opened. So, yes, today's New Band is French, and are called The Whiffs - a name which virtually guaranteed them a place on A New Band A Day the moment the words hit my retina.

The Whiffs write songs which are slight, gentle and snappy, and whilst they stick with the tried-and-tested format of guitars 'n' drums, there's a lovely Gallic, non-mainstream influence seeping through the verses. Conned in Adelade is catchy, simple and the sound of two people having fun. Fun is a quality all too sadly missing in a lot of music, and choose to follow the ironic 'FUN' (Hi, The Tings Tings) or determinedly sullen (Hi, every band wearing purple and black stripy cut-off socks on their arms) route instead. Let's face it, if you're called The Whiffs, you can't take yourself too seriously. Listen to their tunes here, and forget your troubles.

TODAY'S GLIB BAND-COMPARISON: Like if someone had stolen the early Dandy Warhol's fuzzboxes, Valium and skinny T-Shirts and enrolled them on a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Happiness Programme.

Labels: French, Glib comparisons week, simple sounds

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