>Change. Mmmm, threatening the status quo. Except the change that took place in the USA yesterday is almost universally seen as A Good Thing. Actually, if the band Status Quo had been threatened, my opinion on Obama would have worsened considerably. Listen, Barack, put the economy right, chit-chat with Iran and save the ozone layer all you like, but don’t mess around with Britain’s greatest two-chord, crank-em-out, denim-clad, pub-rock merchants.

Wait, i got sidetracked there a bit. But the point about change being good yesterday still stands (and so does the one about Francis Rossi et al). Usually, people get a bit edgy when it’s mentioned. Just look what happened when Kiss took off their make-up. Their most knuckle-dragging fans got all uppity, as if the face paint shtick wasn’t, you know, getting a bit old by then.

So change in rock ‘n’ roll is bad – except of course it isn’t. After all, who wouldn’t rejoice if Oasis decided to try something new for once, rather than twist the dial on the Noel-O-Tronic computer (which I suspect replaced the real thing ages ago) to the “Generic sing-along melodic rock” setting?

You get the feeling that Today’s New Band, The Ribbon, won’t ever get stuck in a rut. Their brilliant ephemeral songs are too light, too deft and too pure to ever get dull. Sometimes you can catch glimpses of the home-spun qualities of The Knife in The Ribbon, which is as good a start as you could hope for really.

Songs like Clikclikclik start small, a cluster of clicky loops, and then build and build until a whole song has appeared piece by tiny, twitching piece. Angels Elders Animals hovers so lightly and temptingly in your ears that it leaves you flustered. Attaching tiny bells to a hummingbird’s wings might replicate the sound.

Displaying a delicacy, sureness and sense of fragile grandeur that a hundred two-bit ‘electronic’ bands would kill for, The Ribbon are several agile, artful and well-placed steps ahead so many others, it’s silly.

They’re also the second wildly inventive band this week, after Monday’s Here We Go Magic. As such, they are recommended so wholeheartedly that we at ANBAD feel appropriately smug. Escape to The Ribbon‘s music quick, before we get depressingly obstreperous*!

*Thank you, Thesaurus.com