I’m going to a music college today to talk to students about How To Promote Yourself To Music Blogs. No, I’m not sure why they didn’t ask someone more suitable either.
I was fairly certain that this talk was going to take up a lot less than its allotted time, as the advice could be boiled down to ‘make sure you have three great songs’, and then I realised I was simply kidding myself.
Because, as my regular reader will know (Hi, Dad!), if there’s one other thing that guarantees attention – on this blog at least – it’s a band name that is prickly enough to snag the attention of a jaded music reviewer.
Slotting neatly into this suspiciously weighty sub-category of Bands Whose Names Were Always Going To Ensure Them A Spot On ANBAD are Bastardgeist.
In truth, Bastardgeist would have clawed their way onto this website even if their name was something drippy and tedious – like, oh, I don’t know, ‘Coldplay’ – because their music is so deliriously beguiling.
Let me indulge in the act of rummaging around my foibles a little longer and let’s de-construct the idea that this band’s name could be a portmanteau of bastard and poltergeist: two terms which could easily describe the salty, ethereal quality of lovely songs like Cabbageheads.
Cabbageheads is so hypnotically coiling and entrancing, it might escape your notice exactly how delicate and careful the song is: constructed from scraps of thinly translucent sounds so that the sounds merge imperceptibly with the world around us – diffusing light, skewing perceptions.
Bastardgeist make wholly gorgeous music, looping gently, lilting persuasively and creeping suggestively. So that’s the secret. Pay attention, class.