The Alex James Appreciat-o-meter lurches wildly into the red once again, with news filtering through that he’d been interviewed by the Sun’s eminently unlikeable Gordon Smart… in a toilet… Sponsored By Guinness™.

For those of a stronger disposition than I, here’s the link. Warning: this article features dreary Landfill Indie bands and ‘supporting media content’.

Oh, Alex. You were doing so well. Now I need to remove the poster I pinned up of you in my wardrobe again.

Here’s a slightly-shorter-than-usual Mixtape to put the colour back in your cheeks:

FIRST! Meet Me In Norway didn’t meet in Norway at all. Instead, they met via their church band. This is surely a first for ANBAD. God is, depending on your point of view, entirely missing from or entirely seeped throughout the quaintly childlike, singalong Ingrid and Jeff:

SECOND! Ajimal makes the kind of music that is usually wholly conspicuous by its absence on ANBAD, which is good a reason as any to feature him and his surprisingly likeable, wholesome acousto-epic-folk-rock:

THIRD! Joe Perkins is either an enigmatic genius or a Darkness-esque pun on humanity. Maybe he’s both. Either way, he’s made a whole bunch of throwback-y good-time RAWK songs that he writes, records and then gets gutsy vocalists to bellow over, presumably because he doesn’t like his own voice, which is sad, but possibly true. Whatever you think – you have to admire his scope and ambition: