There's something odd about Today's New Band, Play People, that has proven difficult to quite pin down. They sound so surprisingly polished and confident for a virtually unknown band that I wondered initially if I'd missed a class in the Rock 'n' Pop 101 course that I took all those years ago, and they had just passed me by.

Their songs shine and glisten. Oh What A Life is weary and reflective, yet chimes and rings lushly throughout. Just Don't is punctuated with a Morse-code stab, and is a perfect example of how a good chord change can loosen the most knotted muscles in your neck as your brain is distracted by the sheer luxury of sound.

Something about Play People's songs remind me of The Boo Radleys' less frantic moments, which is high praise, I suppose. Delicate, coy and lovely, their songs are packed with naive charm. They're a bit like a quick glimpse inside a shy teenage boy's head, except without being bombarded with thousands of guiltily memorised images of Page 3 Lovely "Keeley, 22, from Bromley".

Even without her considerable charms (note to self - must stop using dreadful Sun-style puns right away) to tempt you, Play People are an understated example of lovely songcraft - as un-rock 'n' roll as that sounds - and as such should be heard by more people, so check out their tunes here!

P.S. - Happy 18th Birthday to ANBAD's now not-so-little sister Phoebe!

Labels: chiming, chord change SKILLZ, Jaunty

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Sometimes a band's influences are obvious - not necessarily in terms of sounding like other artists, but the ideas their brains keep returning to as a starting point when making music. Paul McCartney's songs always hark back to a music-hall rumbustiousness, The Clash's angry buzz, in keeping with punk's Year Zero ethic, is brimming with 50's rock 'n' roll tricks, and Johnny Borrell clearly grew up in a locked windowless room with only Boomhouse Rats LPs for company.

Other bands influences are not so clear. Today's New Band, Doctor My Eyes, are an unusual example of successfully combining studio electronics and the live band in a coherent, joyful jumble.

Lungs is evidence of a thorough nerd-like knowledge of electronic music and all its build-and-release foibles. A simple robo-riff provides the foundation for what turns into a tinny, crystalline pop record that, if played loud enough, could get the most reticent of dancefloors shuffling.

The same sense of a song's structure and progression are splattered throughout With An Alien Smile, but here the rough and ready electronics are dropped, instead deploying the standard four-square instruments in an equally minimal fashion.

Even in songs where the bleeping and blooping is absent, the feeling is that they are a band whose template is not from the usual off-the-peg rock mindset. Their songs are electronic in spirit, if not always in sound.

Doctor My Eyes are definitely worth a listen, and certainly worth keeping your eye on, you know, just in case. Listen, here, now!

Labels: human-computer hybrid, lo-fi, wandering minds

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Women often get left behind in rock 'n' roll bands. Usually relegated to the status of either doe-eyed 'n' slutty hanger-on or occasionally bunged the token role of bassist (because it's 'easy' and 'not as strenuous as drumming'), women are severely underrepresented, with only the fearsome Courtney Love a household name.

I suppose one of the joys of hearing a woman-centric band is that, at a very basic level, they are simply a break from the masculine norm. As a male listener, it's a happy change to hear women singing about the same things as men - sex, having a good time all the time, etc - but from a different perspective. I presume (but may be wrong) that women enjoy hearing the same things for the same reasons.

It's therefore always a bit of a thrill to hear an all-female band, and Today's New Band, Spazzys are that bit of a thrill - a triple-pronged Australian one at that. On their Myspace page, they list a bewildering assortment of female movie and TV characters as 'influences' - some are cutesy, and some are obscure, but all of them could kick your arse.

Spazzys are more than 'just a break from the masculine norm' though. They have sex, sazz and guile - "When the show is over, drive off down the street and when it gets dark, slip into the back seat," they sing on Zatopeks, a buzzy song full of hooks and big, dumb, satisfying chord changes. Like their other songs, it's a heady mix of 60's Shirelles pop and 80's girl-punk - a neat link between two different eras.

I Want a Divorce is a straight-up punk thrash, and while the title is a request, it's actually a statement of intent. "I'm taking everything you own", they yelp, and then have the temerity to nick Tammy Wynnette's D.I.V.O.R.C.E. refrain too. Great. Listen to Spazzys here!

Labels: 80's/90's, female, punky

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Cities shape bands. Listen to Manchester's Happy Mondays, and the influence of a city dragging itself up from dereliction on a cloud of E-fuelled excitement is clear. The La's jangly indie sea-shanties have Liverpool's mucky fingerprints all over them. The Clash were born from both the racial tension and collaboration of late 70's London.

Today's New Band are another child of their home city. The King Blues are a rare example of a band that aren't happy to grind out the same-old songs, but are actually trying to fuse their individual, disparate influences into something new. The mating of punk and reggae has happened before, of course, but that doesn't make The King Blues any less interesting.

On Let's Hang the Landlord they dream of a better life by considering the, er, tried and proven technique of lynching your landlord. "Let's have the landlord from the top of the stairs - we'll live like millionaires," they sing, whilst still celebrating having the time of their lives in their squalor.

The King Blues are an indication of what might have happened if Manchester's The Young Offender's Institute had kept building on their early promise - a mix of testosterone-fuelled boisterousness and a pile-up of sounds that could only really come from a large, multi-cultural city like London.

Aspirational and in tune with their audience, The King Blues are a band from right now, for right now. So listen to their songs here - right now!

Labels: chorus-mageddon, London, Pick 'n' Mix

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So, it's a Summer Bank Holiday today in the UK, and as such, we're once again spending the day inside, avoiding the rain, and watching The World at War to cheer us up. So, no new band today. But normal service will resume tomorrow, of course.

If you're desperate for a new band fix, try the ANBAD Archives, in case there's some you might have missed. There's bucket-loads of the damn things.

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Mixing things together is one of those childlike pleasures that never leaves us as we're drawn, inexorably, towards adulthood. Presented with a table of food, what child doesn't think, "I wonder what happens if I stir that gravy into that ketchup/mashed potatoes/custard and then taste it?" It seems like only a whole load of good can come from dedicated investigating like this. The truth is somewhat harder to swallow, literally and metophorically, and surely the real reason for the glut of knuckle-chewingly idiotic 'mash-ups' that polluted the internet a while ago.

In the non-gravy laden world of rock 'n' roll, what happens when two rock asteroids collide? Again, mixed results inevitably ensue. For every wonderful Fairytale of New York, there's a brain-auto-euthanasia-ing Ebony and Ivory. These collaborations should be approached with extreme caution, or dodged altogether, just in case.

Today's New Band, Glam Chops, is a meeting of, amongst others, Eddie Argos and David Devant from the lovely Art Brut and the delicious David Devant and His Spirit Wife. Surely nothing can go wrong?

Well, no, nothing can go wrong. Yes, it's Glam Rock, and no, it's not changed that much since the 70's - but that's only a good thing. Glam Chops lovingly revisit the past, but unlike Marty McFly, don't muck around with it. Don't Be Glum Be Glam is just pure, mindless fun - the best kind of all. HUGE guitars, HUGER choruses and chant-along verses VAST enough to climb on and lever the earth out of orbit.

In The Lord Is A Man of War, Glam Chops, frankly, push the basic tenets of glam to it's mentalist conclusions, with a monster reverb-spazzed guitar solo and guitars so crunchy that they've probably been constructed purely from Tortilla Chips.

More fun than hot oil wrestling, more catchy than the airborn Ebola virus from Outbreak and more out of sync with today's po-faced haircut-rock posturing than Kenny Rogers, Glam Chops are here to change the world. Imagine a platform boot stamping on a human face - forever. Then imagine the face is Johnny Borrell's. Or just listen to their brilliant songs here.

Labels: actual brilliance, art brut, chorus-mageddon

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There's a short documentary knocking about the internet about the making of Public Enemy's astonishing It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. In it, one of the Bomb Squad production team explains that when recording the album, they wanted to bring the noise to the fore, to disorientate and shock the audience. "The Noise", he explained, wasn't just some half hearted hip-hop shout-out to be "Brought", like the song Bring the Noise might suggest, but was a whole alluring entity to itself: every single noise coming at you all at once. It's an interesting concept that neatly sums up Public Enemy's uncompromising bombast.

The funny thing about noise is that what one person considers beautiful another will find execrable. This almost fully explains the bewildering nature of the enduring popularity of The Kooks, but not quite. Sometimes noise production doesn't connect on the usual musical level, but in a way that engages another part of the brain. Today's New Band, Kontakte, make music like this.
Two And A Half Thousand Miles is obscenely spacious, and is probably the music you'd hear if you lay dying in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Ghosts of Electricity drifts by calmly, interrupted now and then by a sinister hiss - punctuating the song with some sort of urgency. The remix, by Electric Loop Orchestra is as good, if not better, picking up the slack and bashing you about the head, phasing frantically and creating a song through a twin enjoyment of melody and mind-warping effects.

Disorientation then re-orientation. Familiarisation, then enforced bewilderment. This isn't always music, shifting from discernible melody to heaving fuzz with ease. It is, however, definitely worth a listen.

Labels: not-quite-NOISE, polarising, wandering minds

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Another Liverpool band? This is getting silly. A New Band A Day has been littered with them recently, with Indica Ritual and My Amiga most recently using all their Scouse powers of persuasion on us. And look, here comes another one, with stereotypically jaunty tunes, and melodies coming out of their eyeballs.

When will these bands learn that if you want to be a rock star these days, it's not about having good songs, but about being photographed falling out of nightclubs, getting shabby on crack and slinging out a half-hearted Boomtown Rats sound-a-like album every 18 months? Some people just don't get it.

So, Today's New Band, Voo, steadfastly refuse to go all New-Rave or New-Gaze or New-[insert most recently dug-up old genre here] on us. Instead, with songs like Favourite Films, they demonstrate a keen ear for chipper, slightly anthemic pop-rock. Schnik Schnak Schnuk is an ace, building crunchy song that has not one, but two! of everyone's favourite rock tricks - the false ending and a "na-na-na-naa" bit. Acoustic For Sake of Space is either a title or a disclaimer, I'm not sure, but it definitely is light, delicate and mournfully enticing.

I get the feeling that Voo would sound even better live. They're touring soon, so keep 'em peeled. Listen to their songs here!

Labels: jangle, Liverpool, wistful

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What room is there in today's ZAP-POW society for calmness? If you've not achieved exactly what you wanted by yesterday, you've failed. We rush forward frenetically, and the music we listen to while doing it reflects the ultra-economic, all-surface-no-feeling, instant-impact world around it. Stopping and reflecting is for WIMPS!

It turns out that this might not be so smart. Anxiety reigns supreme and worry is pushed at everyone, from everyone. Relaxing and observing might have benefits after all.

Today's New Band is the Danish septuplet Efterklang, and, if we're resorting to our old favourite, the Glib Comparison, they're somewhere between The Arcade Fire and Sigur Ros.

Towards the Bare Hill manages to blend choral voices, orchestral sounds and glitchy-clicking noises and make it work. It sounds like a male voice choir and a brass band let loose in a room full of hateful laptop "IDM" nerds and then setting about them, but recording the calming results. Step Aside takes a similar approach, squashing traditional, folk-y instruments into slightly warped shapes and scuffing in some non-intrusive electronic-y sounds. It's what standing on a hill in the middle of nowhere whilst watching the sunset and reflecting that, on balance, life is good would sound like.

Efterklang's music is all very serene, with the touch of the bizarre you'd expect from Northern European band, and also strangely, comfortingly, warm. Perhaps that's what's needed in a country as chilly as Denmark. Perhaps it's needed everywhere else too. Let their music envelop you here!

Labels: Danish, embarassingly pseud review, human-computer hybrid

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GIMMICKS! Here at A New Band A Day, we love them - to the point that we aren't afraid of using cheap, near-moronic devices ourselves in an attempt to crowbar some variety into our shallow lives. Anything like that in the world of rock 'n' pop is worth a go, I suppose, and if it works and raises the profile of a good band, all the better. So: Today's New Band, The Very Most, are giving away a free custom song with every purchase of their new album until the end of August. You tell them what you want the song to be about,and they'll write it.

This is a good deal, assuming you like their music. There's no point getting a song written about you and your life-long Roxette obsession if the band doing it is Extreme Noise Terror, for example. So here's the good news - The Very Most are a good band, with charm and panache to spare. Their songs are as sweet and carefully constructed as a child's model treehouse made of Lego. "Why don't you call the cops on me?" they sing, in the similarly-named song, which may or may not explore the banality of children's playground taunts.

Save the most or your reserves of pleasant surprise for their Custom Songs though - you might hook yourself a minor classic. MP3Hugger is quiet noise-rock, with a soft fuzz leeching through the indie-pop pleasantness just near the end. It's a delicate delight - a quick, gentle fog of guitar and slightly cryptic lyrics. It's on their MySpace page here. A whole album of songs written on the suggestions of fans and outsiders would be an interesting proposition. On the strength of MP3Hugger, I hope they consider it.

I suppose the only danger of a gimmick like that is that The Very Most might become 'that band that writes free songs about you' - but frankly, if it ropes in a few idiots who can't look past that and recognise a good band when one is poking them in the ear, then it's no loss. At very least, they'll sell more records and have more people hearing their lovely songs, and that's the most important thing. Good marketing is the new Rock 'n' Roll/Stand-Up Comedy/Black/Whatever. Hooray! Listen to their songs and getcha free song here!

Labels: Gimmicks, Indie, summer

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It's a truncated post today on A New Band A Day, due to the A.N.B.A.D. 'editorial team' travelling all over the place on a well-deserved* break, which will hopefully involve multiple BBQs on a beach. Though, as the aforementioned beach is on the north coast of Wales, it's more likely to be a weekend of staying inside to avoid the rain, drinking warm cans of lager whilst gazing longingly at the beach outside, and dying a bit inside.

So, cutting to the chase and letting the proverbial dog see the proverbial rabbit, perhaps Today's New Band, Eyes, are just the thing needed to have on in the background whilst all the raining and non-barbecuing is taking place. Well, no, they're not. Listening to Kim and Jessie by M83 over and over again would be the right thing to do. Eyes are far too fantastically sinister for that.

Whether lurching from sleaze-o-funk on The Time Between The Time, or making your skin crawl by sampling the sound of scissors snipping, or just recording a song as crazily-named as Tunnel of Hair, Eyes are uneasy, creepy but always fascinating. Listen to their troubled noise here!

A.N.B.A.D. will be back refreshed** as usual on Monday!

*but surprisingly exhausting
**hungover

Labels: human-computer hybrid, maggots, SATAN

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So after frothing at the mouth a bit yesterday over Band Of The Day Indica Ritual, here's hoping for something a little less mentalistic and more soothing today. And that's exactly what Today's New Band, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, are. In many ways, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin are perfect A New Band A Day fodder - in so much that they fulfil all these precise and extensive A.N.B.A.D. criteria:

a) The band has great tunes; and, for bonus marks,
b) The band has needlessly complicated/amusing/pun-laden name.

Obviously a) is the most important parameter, but SSLYBY (much easier to type) don't disappoint on either count. Oregon Girl is one of those Byrds-y, 80's-Indie-y, Teenage Fanclub-y songs that sounds like it's a breeze to write, but isn't. It's a fantastic, fleet-footed dash of a song that touches all four corners of Jangly Summer Rock, and then goes around again on an excited lap of honour.

In fact, SSLYBY are so relentlessly upbeat that they make a song titled Think I Wanna Die sound like exactly the sort of song you'd want to listen to whilst driving a convertible down Highway 1 to Big Sur. Best of all might be the soaring Glue Girls, which is a happy, swift spin of fun.

SSLYBY are from a town called Springfield. Insert your own half-hearted Simpsons reference here. Then when you're done, listen to their super summer songs, right here!

Labels: 80's/90's, Indie, jangle

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I had one of those iPod mental tics this morning. You'll recognise the problem - wandering along, scrolling through the albums, but none of them that scram up the screen seem to be the one that's just right for that exact moment in time. This morning I knew that I needed a sound that was just so, something that was fast, hard and upbeat but that wasn't gabba or screamcore. Something like a cross between early-90's period Prodigy and, I dunno, The Fall. One of those kind of moods.

Funnily enough, I couldn't find any songs that fitted hitherto-yet untested combination of cranky Mancunian miserablism and mentalist bonkers-core aggro-noise. In a fit of idiocy, I picked the full 10-minute mix of So Much Love To Give by Thomas Bangalter & DJ Falcon. After 8 minutes, I realised that my infatuation with Thomas Bangalter perhaps doesn't stretch to a full 10 minutes of the same loop over and over again, however LOL! AWESOME! it sounds to start with.

It later occurred to me that what I actually wanted to listen to was Today's New Band, Indica Ritual. Their song Top Forty is all of these things: 1) Bonkers, 2) Super-duper funky, and 3) Sounds like a test version of the 1973 Tomorrow's World TV theme tune that was rejected for being too 'out there'. Mostly, though, it's a superbly alert, twitchy song that sounds confident and cocky. It's modern without being arch or knowingly ironic, taking the path of least resistance to the parts of your brain marked 'fun' and 'quirky'. Dad's Wristband nicks the ace crunchy guitar sound off the first half of David Bowie's Low and moulds it into a tasty, inventive instrumental. And surely Num Lock sounds more creative, more wild and more new than is plausible.

Indica Ritual are quite possibly the band you have been looking for, like, ages. They are actually brilliant, in every sense of the word. You must listen to them now, or your life will be that much poorer. Drown yourself, laughing, in their songs right here!

P.S. This is the second Liverpool band in a row on A.N.B.A.D. Could another accidental trilogy be the making? Tune in tomorrow to find out!

Labels: actual brilliance, creative overload, ZX 48K Spectrum

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When I was a young 'un, before I bought a guitar and sat in my bedroom mangling Smiths songs and wondering if I could convince my parents to let me paint my bedroom walls black, i used to while hours away playing on my Sinclair ZX Spectrum. It had sticky rubber keys, 48k of memory and the games took five minutes to load off a C90 tape. It was my nerd-baby though, and I'm still proud that I completed Magicland Dizzy without losing a life. These halcyon days were tarnished a bit though, when my friend Dan got a Commodore Amiga for Christmas - a computer which made the Spectrum appear weak and feeble in comparison (which, of course, it was).

The Amiga was ace. I presume Today's New Band, My Amiga, harbour similarly nostalgic feelings about unwieldy, grey early-90's computers. They're from Liverpool and have that seemingly genetic Liverpudlian way with treble-tastic rock melodies. My Amiga are what the Famous Five would sound like if they formed a band on their days off from drinking lashings of Ginger Beer and solving suspiciously family-friendly crimes.

That is to say, My Amiga sound young and sprightly enough to make the inevitable A&R men at their gigs feel like fuddy-duddies with try-hard haircuts. Though to be fair, they're like that anyway. Thank Heavens for Little Victories is a surprisingly deft and floaty throwaway pop tinkle, with a shouty bit to prove that they're actually of drinking age. Untitled is a brisk and jangly pop fizz which explodes frenetically with youth, the sonic equivalent of a child trying to build the tallest lower of Lego possible, and then laughing manically when it falls over.

My Amiga are as fun as drawing the curtains on a sunny day and playing Sensible Soccer until teatime. Though you probably won't get wrist ache from the joystick. Unless you really like them. If you known what I mean. Listen to their songs here!

Labels: jangle, tinkling, yelping

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Posturing and rock go hand-in-hand. This self-awareness often results in musical bombast partnered with hollow and blustering lyrics. After a while, some bands only seek to consolidate their public image, their music becoming a tick-box exercises in retreading the inevitable. It's partly this laziness that gives new bands an allure - music made by people who don't have personal masseurs (yet).

Today's New Band are The Molotovs, and their songs are thick with weary recognition of life's frustrations. They don't pose or worry about their appearance as they're too busy turning an anglepoise lamp onto themselves and delving inside their own neuroses. Flowers is a decidedly jaunty romp, with fiddly guitars and sax, though the lyrics lament - "I bought you some flowers, was that not enough? Paperback novels taught you to bluff." This conflict between big, brash and uplifting tunes and the mournful lyrics reoccurs in One Up On Me, which, whilst sporting a sprightly melody, is drenched in a sombre listlessness.

None of this means that their music is a Radiohead-in-their-most-dour-moments drag - The Molotovs' songs are an upbeat treat in many ways. Their vocal acknowledgement is just that not everything is a bowl of cherries, a rare display of pragmatism in rock, I suppose. And anyway, any band that is happy to propel as un-rock 'n' roll an instrument as the accordion to the forefront of their songs is all right by me. Their songs are right here!

Labels: accordian, slightly mournful, wistful

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When I recently went to see My Bloody Valentine, the general consensus as we staggered out of the venue, wiping the blood from our ears, was that it was entirely unlike any other gig we'd ever been to. There was no moshing, no singing along and no middle-aged men standing near the back 'appreciating' the band, just a room full of shell-shocked gawpers struggling to comprehend the savage softness of the noise that was comically blowing their hair backwards and flapping their collars around.

The other universally agreed point was that the experience of having carefully constructed white noise smash your ears into submission was actually intensely calming, and we left in a strangely Zen-like state which was only later voided by cut-price rum at the Star and Garter. Still, we were left in no doubt of the powerful enjoyment to be had from ridiculous noise. Thus, push cotton wool into your ears now and prepare to be overwhelmed by Today's New Band, Insecticide Lobotomy.

The sounds Josh from Insecticide Lobotomy makes are, in effect, just noise - but put together with such care and precision that it's ridiculously enjoyable. Rotor Disc is the sound of you being locked inside a steel drum and then someone using a blunt circular saw to buzz you out. Toxic Waste Drum grinds, growls and hisses and Late Night Practice is deeply dark and intimidating.

The only realistic course of action you can take listening to the music is to just let go and allow it to wash all over you - a tsunami of spasmodically repetitive high- and low-end fuzz boring into your brain and removing all thoughts except acknowledgement of the noise itself. It's a great, cathartic sluicing-out of of all other music from your mind, and whilst it's a tough listen at times, you'll miss it the second the sounds stop. Lovely, soft/hard, confusing stuff. Listen to it all here!

Labels: mind enema, my brain hurts, NOISE

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I have a friend who runs a sweetshop, called Kandy Pop, in Manchester. She spends all day selling all the best sweets from your childhood - Dolly Mixtures, Fried Eggs, Flying Saucers - that kind of thing. It's the cutest, most sugary place on the planet, and to compound the outright sweetness of the experience, she plays cute punky music all day long. If you manage to leave the shop without looking or feeling like you've been dunked in sucrose, then you, sir, are a stronger man than I.

So then - what about cuteness in music: as yummy and sweet as the pinkest, softest frosting on the world's sugariest cupcake, or as cloying and syrupy as the pinkest, softest frosting frosting on the sugariest cupcake? Today's New Band will polarise your opinion, because, frankly, they are as cute as a box full of buttons.

Mammoth Life are from Kansas in the USA. Their music isn't cute in a Japanese J-Pop way, or in a Bis way, but in a wholesome, twinkling, harmonising way that's a bit of a delight. Their song To Suffer For Passion is terminally bright and happy, the vocals droning and intertwining around what sounds a bit like what would happen if mandolins and violins were birds courting in mating season. It's quite close to being a twee-er Shiny Happy People, with a driving twang, a snappy hook and a melody that bounces around like a child on a spacehopper.

Bicycle Rider is even more fun - honking horns and ringing bells, buzzing and flitting from here to there, enjoying the feeling of luxuriating in happiness. Mammoth Life aren't just sugar-fiends on a mission to uplift though - there's a hint of melancholy if you listen hard enough, but why would you want to do that? Just grab a toffee apple and remember how much fun it was to just have fun. Listen to their great songs here!

Labels: happy happy joy joy, jangle, sugar

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I sometimes feel sorry for bands. Not that sorry, what with all the booze, girls and urinating up against the Alamo that they manage to find time to do, but a bit sorry all the same. It must be tough to keep touring material that you love, only to find that either a) it doesn't fit in with the majority's taste; or b) they come under pressure to make it more in fitting with the mainstream. Some bands then choose the "We-do-what-we-do-and-if-anyone-else-likes-it-that's-a-bonus" route and plough on regardless, whilst others let their record company lead them around like little piggies.

Other bands find themselves in that happy spot which pleases both camps. I think today's new band, Stars And Sons, might have accidentally achieved that difficult blend of individuality and appealability, and their songs bristle with excitement as a result.

Fights Already Fought is a strangely subdued song that also manages to be uptempo at the same time. It rattles and shakes softly, as if waiting to be released for a big reprise that never arrives. It's lovely, and dissolves into a quick, quasi-Spiritualized fuzz at the end. In The Ocean is almost its exact opposite, a fun romp that bounds forwards with all the enthusiasm and wonder of a new puppy. A pop-rock puppy that plays the piano, but a puppy nonetheless.

The feeling is with Stars and Sons is one of trying to break away from the norm, whilst still holding with one hand onto their base sound. Calling it 'quirky power pop' is just too obvious, but songs like Out of View could be made to sound incredibly mundane very easily by other bands, and yet Stars and Sons keep yanking it over into the leftfield a little bit, keeping everyone on their toes and happy. Good work, Stars and Sons. Listen to them here!

Labels: chiming, jangle, tinkling

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A New Band A Day is, apparently, indulging in Americanophilia at the moment. Over half of last week's super-duper new bands were from the USA (scroll down for more, pop-pickers!), and guess what - today there's another one cluttering up your ears with sweet sounds. An astute reader can draw a few conclusions from this.

Firstly, that A.N.B.A.D. band choices are entirely arbitrary and dependant on the whim of an easily bored writer, desperately looking for new things to listen to, whilst quietly sobbing. Secondly, A.N.B.A.D.'s geographic knowledge is severely limited - last time a single continent was 'explored' for music, it became the needlessly localised and gimmick-y "Northern European Road Trip" , whereas I couldn't identify Cincinnati on a map if a gun was held to my head and/or groin.

Huge apologies, then, to Today's New Band, The Seedy Seeds, who, predictably, are from Cincinnati. They're not content with writing unusually catchy bites of poppy indie, but even have the brass neck to squeeze a Kazoo solo into the joyous The Little Patton. Its zappy keyboard riff is so charming that the big broad chorus that follows it is a huge, lovely surprise. Earned Average Dance America, proudly flaunting its obtuse name, is a great him-her lyric over the hybrid banjo/Bontempi keyboard/accordion melody you've always been waiting for.

The Seedy Seeds are a great band, make no mistake. Their songs are cuter than Brad 'n' Angelina's twins and similarly simple and compact. Listen to their super songs here!

Labels: banjo-kazooie, boy/girl duo, happy happy joy joy

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Ah, July. You just whoooooshed by again in a blur of ice cream vans, newly-released schoolkids scuffing knees and day after day of relentless staring at the cloudy sky, screaming profanities at Baby Jesus, whilst waiting for a ray - just one single ray - of sunshine. Fortunately for those of you who are trapped in a similar tupperware-skied hell, July was a BRILLIANT! month on A New Band A Day, positively overflowing with bands so good that the Vitamin B your should have got from the sun was absorbed through your earholes instead. This is a medical fact.

So, in bold capital letters to stress it's importance, here's the TOP FIVE BANDS FROM JULY, in no particular order:

1) THIS MONTH'S BEST NEW BAND: The Pains of Being Pure At Heart

We said (glibly, natch): "It would be glib to say that if you like My Bloody Valentine and Jesus And Mary Chain, 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."

2) Held By Hands

We said: " Porcelain-delicate songs, which build and build but still seem as light as air at the end, that are just perfect for easing gently into the coming week."
3) Candythief

We said: "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."

4) AIDS Wolf

We said: "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."

5) The Bumblebees

We said: "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!"

So there you go. Here comes another great month of new bands! Come on August, do your worst! By which I mean, 'best'.

Labels: Round Up

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Rock 'n' roll depends on surprises for its excitement. Just look at Coldplay and their plodding snooze-rock as an example of how predictability ruins any attempts of thrills. This is why Chris Martin, who is, remember, signed to a multi-million pound record deal with the multinational company EMI, writes Fair Trade slogans on his hand, and names his children after fruit. No-one seems to have pointed out to him that a simpler way of appearing 'edgy' would be to record some songs that don't sound as if they are explicitly written for car adverts.

Today's New Band, Transmittens, are all about surprises. Their name and music pops a big, happy, colourful clown's balloon in front of your face, and because of that it's easy to miss the glumly sung lyrics while you're happily running around in the subsequent glitterstorm. Transmittens are a little bit like a down-tempo Bis. Not only is their sound reminiscent of an acoustic, less Japan-o-frenzied approach, but their cuteness is similarly tweaked to a more introspective level. That's of course, assuming, that introspective cuteness is even possible.

Up All Night isn't a tale of rock 'n' roll excess at all, but a story of someone not being able to stay up, even thought they'd like to. In Our Dreams the nursery-school melody disguises lyrics as grim as "Why oh why did we come all this way to say goodbye? Because dreams don't come true - but we thought maybe they do," and Saturday Socks is so stupidly upbeat that the glum lyrics get missed because you'll be happily shaking your head like a 1960's Top of The Pops audience member.

So, as such, Transmittens are a lovely mind-melting band, coating gloomy lyrics with so much sugar, you'd be happy to gulp them down all day long. Listen to their great songs here!

Labels: boy/girl duo, slightly mournful, toy instruments

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