Every morning I walk through Manchester city centre. And every morning I listen to my iPod on the way. So far, so mundane. Like everyone, sometimes I find it tough to match the music with my mood. This morning, though, there was a pleasing moment where I found myself to be in the crossover area of a music/life Venn Diagram.

Perched on a traffic island, between two lanes of thundering, aggro-pumped office-drone drivers, Orbital's The Box pinged into life, and suddenly, there was a real-time musical soundtrack seemingly reacting to the furious ebb and flow of the whooshing city life. Feeling detached from the real world, I fairly skipped on through the streets.

It's amazing that music can tally so closely with what you are doing. I imagine that if i was wandering through the mean streets of Bournemouth - a town memorably described by Bill Bryson as "God's waiting room" - and Cliff Richard's Millennium Prayer popped onto the radio, the world might end in a vortex of synchronicity.

If I found myself in the place where the sounds of Today's New Band fitted perfectly, I'd probably head for the hills sharpish. Owl Brain Atlas (Yes!!!) make sound that would fit in your most lucid nightmares, or most confusing dreams. Also, let's just dwell on Owl Brain Atlas' name for a second. Barking mad, and yet fittingly weird for the sound-poems of J. D. Nelson, the brains behind the, er, Brain.

He says his music is, "spoken noise, ambient word, lo-fi noise poems, electroacoustic sound art," and this description is a good example of the nail/head interface being struck cleanly. His music/sound/wordless poetry might sound like a pretentious idea, but it's executed in a pared-down yet dense manner; substance clearly triumphing over style. Like bad dreams, the 'songs' are short, direct and terrifyingly evocative of the clammy panic of a turbulent night's sleep.

There are separate tracks, with titles like Doktor Tongues, 1 and Music For Zilbread, but listen to them altogether for the full dosage. It's a heady, dizzy experience that'll leave you even more thankful for the upcoming comfort of Christmas with your loved ones. Listen here!

Labels: confusion, SATAN, satisfyingly short

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The clocks going back a single measly hour confused me almost completely this weekend. On the night itself, I woke up repeatedly, churning over the bowel-loosening possibility that I might be waking up a WHOLE HOUR earlier or later than I thought. This, apparently, is of great importance to my subconscious self, much to my sleepy frustration.

If my mind boggled so pathetically at the prospect of gaining an extra hour in bed, imagine what turning back the clock 20 years or so might do. Bands manage to do this all of the time, endlessly recycling, rejuvenating and scrabbling for new scraps of interest to find new sounds and new directions, without spending all night thrashing around with worry. Perhaps it's another sign that I would have been a hopeless rock star.

Conversely, Today's New Band, Cut Cut Copy, have all the signs of making a very good rock band. It's hard to tell whether Heart For You is an of-the-moment rock song, with its angular, choppy guitars and urgent drumbeat, or a song which shows a band deliberately not courting Cool. Cut Cut Shape find themselves looking back to when big echoey guitars were de rigeur and even bigger, croony vocals weren't something to be embarrassed about. Swirling and cavernous, but without any bloat or pretence, Heart For You is a neat calling card for their sound.

There's something incredibly satisfying about the manner in how whichever Cut Cut Shaper it is that delivers the vocals (it might be one or more from: Tom, Joe, Jake, Josh or George - which sounds a bit like the line-up from a crime-solving gang in an Enid Blyton book). It's a voice that's heartfelt, unconcerned with artifice and not at all worried about trying to force an awful faux-Estuary Accent down our throats like The Kooks, Scouting For Girls et al. Crossing The Line is a good song made better as the vocals' directness engages with you, lapel-grabbing and alive.

There's something indefinable about Cut Cut Shape that, I dunno, sounds old and yet new. A hopeless description, yes, but that's about as fully formed an opinion as I feel capable of. This is hopefully due to their unusually dynamic and powerful sound, and not my unreasonable confusion that has arisen since the clocks went back, but who can know for sure? Well, you can, young 'un, by visiting their Myspace page, right here.

Labels: confusion, nostalgia, Pick 'n' Mix

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Life is constantly full of surprises, which is what makes the whole 'being alive' thing so much fun. Here are just two surprise discoveries I have made in the last few days:

1. That Schindler's List actually has funny bits. Not just ones that make you smile wryly, and then get back to sobbing uncontrollably, either; but big, guffaw-inducing parts. Not many, granted, but they are there, if look (or drink) hard enough.
2. Dogs look like deflated dog-shaped balloons if you turn them upside down.

The nicest surprise of all though was to find out that old A.N.B.A.D. favourites Heartbeeps have teamed up with Laura Wolf and spawned a whole new muso-being. Even more happily, both of their respective traits of loopy pop and twinkly lo-fi seem to have melded perfectly into a whole new pop/lo-fi (po-fi?) BEAST.

Warm to the lupine howls of Internet Forever, and find yourself involuntarily thrusting towards the saccharine-sweet buzzy drone of Break Bones. It's like discovering an old unlabelled TDK C90 and finding a whistling, two-tone indie pop classic amongst the static. 3D nearly reaches Jesus and Mary Chain heights of ear-bothering fuzz and crunch, furnishing itself with a chorus that is both sturdy and chirpy.

So, a happy and disorientating end to a happy and disorientating week on A New Band A Day. Perfect. Listen to the dream-buzz of Internet Forever, and wait for the weekend's loving embrace.

Labels: confusion, drifting, fuzzbox frenzy

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Oasis are in the process of releasing their new album, Dig Out Your Soul, at the moment. This is still Big News in the UK, and especially so here in Manchester, their home town. Seizing on the fact that this new-fangled 'internet' thing might be a good promotional tool, they have used a little-known website, MySpace.com, to allow YOU, the public at large, to listen to the whole album in it's entirety before it's released, you know, in shops.

So, here's the brief A New Band A Day review:

1. It's a clunker
2. Noel isn't even the best songwriter in Oasis any more.
   

I don't enjoy criticising Oasis, though it's fashionable to do so. I was 14 when they released Definitely Maybe, and it was one of those fabulous defining moments that you get now and then in your teenage years.

Oasis list The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Sex Pistols among their influences. Today's New Band, David Cronenberg's Wife, list the Germs, Swans and The Birthday Party in the same section. One band is producing interesting and inventive music, and the other the same old cobblers. You guess which one is which.

Runaway Pram is a swirling, organ 'n' guitar-led, echoing stomper of a song that seems to have been recorded to deliberately disorientate the listener. At times, it's so heavily soaked in reverb that I wondered if it had been accidentally remixed by Lee Perry in one of his more bloody-minded moods. It's equal parts mid 60's Psych and Garage, Goth and 96 Tears by ? and The Mysterians. Their music swirls around you, teasing and taunting you into having a good, weird, time.

David Cronenberg's Wife - blurring the line between so many genres you'll experience the pleasant feeling of been punched in the head with the contents of a Virgin Records bargain bin. Listen to them here!

Labels: confusion, deranged, nostalgia

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I like surprises. Well, to a point - those, "darling, I'm pregnant," shocks don't get easier even the 14th time around - but as a rule, happy accidents and unexpected pleasures are the best bits of life.

Bands that spring a tasty surprise make me want to hunt them down and smother them to death with hugs, such is the prevalence of charmless, bland bands. So, usher in quietly Today's New Band, Ten Tigers from Southend, whose songs veer from spazzy-punk to contemplative-campfire singing, and don't give a monkey's what you think.

For example: their song Superlucky is a simple, crunchy, yelpy, sharply-female buzzfest that sounds like it'd be a great song to open a gig with. It'd set out the stall, to use football manager's parlance, and everyone would know exactly what to expect. Except their other songs aren't even like it at all, or even like each other. Possessing the shortest attention span in pop, song '82 has a verse that's a bold attempt to rescue the Wah-Wah pedal from Blaxploitatio-clichés, before strolling into a lovely, heavy, yomping chorus of "Everyone was gay in 1982". It goes without saying that Runaway and Sunny Shades are altogether different again (a summertime lilt and the aforementioned campfire sunset sing-song respectively).

They're hit-and-miss, but that's a given - it seems an ingrained part of Ten Tigers' nature. So what if you only like half of their songs? It's better than having middling feelings towards a band that treads a carefully safe route. A sensation of swinging between love and hate makes you feel alive, dagnammit, so ponder their songs here!

Labels: confusion, female, Pick 'n' Mix

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Bands, generally, sound like other bands. The Kooks sound like Libertines Lite, Oasis sounded like Slade having noisy drunken sex with Status Quo, and Elastica sounded so much like Wire and the Stranglers that they got sued. But there's nothing really wrong with that - there's only so many chord sequences and topics to sing about. Unless you're Natasha Bedingfield, in which the only topic you ever sing about is how unutterably gut-emptyingly awful you are (listen closely to her lyrics).

Sometimes when you listen to a band for the first time, there's something unmistakable that leaps out and reminds you of another band. The vocals, the rhythm, or even the vibe, maaaan. This happened today when I was listening to Today's New Band, Sky Larkin. The funny thing is that I just can't place exactly who they remind me of. Sure, Summit sounds a bit Yeah Yeah Yeahs-y, but that's just a lazy comparison, primarily because I have a thing for Karen O. But it was mainly their great song Somersault Notes that got stuck, nagging away at me in my head.

The song itself is lovely, swooping and grand, but slender - not stumbling into dreaded 'overblown epic' mode. I was positive that it reminded me of another song by another band. I spent a weekend trying to think, but had to give up. It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps it wasn't reminiscent of anything else, but one of those instances when you hear a great song and it sounds familiar, but is actually brand new. Fingers crossed. The other great songs they have on their MySpace site includes a super-duper cover of QOTSA's I Was A Teenage Hand Model. Listen to them all here! If you know what that song sounds like, please let me know....

Labels: confusion, cover, unsigned

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