>The National Winter Ales Festival rolled into town yesterday, and, being the troopers we are, your brave A New Band A Day correspondents did our duty and duly attended. If you want to see what the Internet looked like in 1997, go to the festival’s website here. Stepping into the Coliseum Of Ales, and being presented with a bewildering number of beers, ciders and perrys, we cast off the shackles of decent behaviour and got well and truly stuck in.

The beauty, and indeed, horror, of a beer festival, is that the words “So many beers, so little time” buzz urgently like a neon light in your head. Everyone at a beer festival knows that the temptation to try this, that, and the other will ultimately end in disaster, and yet plough on regardless. And lo, that is exactly what happened to us too.

So today my poor head is being nursed in a perhaps-too-touchy-feely, caring way by Today’s New Band, Miracle and The Soul Interpreter. Their songs linger between the shimmer of house music and the grind of R&B, and a step removed from either.

Whatafuckingfailure is a jazzy piano loop, aching vocals and a sense of emotional doom. It’s pared back and lean, leaving plenty of room for the lightly downbeat gloom.

Doideeboid is buzzy, hummy and similarly sparse; its clicking drums occasionally interrupted with punchy bursts from a gospel choir. Sleazy and slick, this is the song that man you shouldn’t be tempted by would whisper in your ear, as one hand rests on the small of your back.

That Miracle and The Soul Interpreter are bold/daft enough to pull off a cover of the Steve Miller Band‘s Abracadabra by turning it into a funky, dancefloor creeper is confirmation of their talent. They sound slick and confident. Get seduced, here!