>Here’s food for thought. (By the way, that sentence will now reveal itself to be pun-tabulous.) So: the world record for eating cow brains is held by Takeru Kobayashi, who ate 57 – nearly 18lbs – in 15 minutes. Oleg Zhornitskiy ate 8lbs of mayonnaise in eight minutes. Don Lerman ate 7 quarter-pound sticks of salted butter in five minutes. There are other, equally heroic, food-shovelling records to be seen here.

Two thoughts immediately spring to mind. Firstly, that their mothers must be so proud. And secondly, I wonder if there is a point – say, after the fifth pound of mayo – where the sheer awfulness of spooning white fatty gloop into your mouth abates, and a strange zen-like bliss overcomes the participant, making every further spoon/cup/bowl-ful a serotonin-fuelled trip to the brain’s pleasure centre.

I assume this is what compels people to keep listening to U2 albums. The thought that doing so was to glimpse bland, ego-fuelled, MOR rock hell disappears, and been replaced by genuine desire to subject themselves to it.

Listening to Today’s New Band, Yucatan, will never be a trial or test. Songs like Un Cyfle are fine-spun cobwebs of gentle sound. Yucatan sing in Welsh, a language that has been long suited to dreamy, lilting melodies. No, most listeners won’t understand it, but that’s missing the point – regardless of your language, you’ll get lost in the soothing swoop of the songs and lyrics.

A Oes Ymateb builds from sparseness and reaches twinkling, shimmering heights. Dau is the beautiful music played at a dead miner’s wake. If Yucatan‘s songs were played at a Competitive Eating contest, all the participants would stop, mid-guzzle, to reflect on life, the universe, and their absurd role in it all. Then they’d carry on, because those hot dogs aren’t going to eat themselves. Listen to Yucatan here!