As is customary, nay, legally required, of all music writers, after spending the whole year complaining of bands' artistic freedom being compromised by blithe pigeon-holing and categorisation, right at the end of it, they join in by listing, categorising and ordering then by rank. So, not wanting to miss out on this playground popularity contest, next week will feature the A New Band A Day Christmas List-stravaganza! Lists! Rankings! Hopeless Justification of both! Hooray!

Until then, have one more new band, before the maelstrom of Christmas/New Year takes over. Plastiq Passion are from New York, and just as Sweden is the Mothership of jangly guitar pop, so NYC is the epicentre of guitar bands with urgency and guile. Their songs are direct and slightly anarchic. You'd want to be best friends with them, whilst being careful never give them your address.

Taut, driving, passive-aggressive rock song I Can't Wait is waiting for you in a dark corner, fingering a pool ball in a sock - you know, just in case. It's the sound of a band who are just about to burst out in a shock of noise and light, but don't because they want to keep you on your toes.

I Said is pleading and almost gentle, though the edge of danger is still there. Plastiq Passion's songs are simple, thrusting and sexy, somehow. Plastiq Passion can join the list of bands that make their British counterparts feel a bit inadequate, because they can't carry off cool quite so effortlessly, and end up looking like try-hard crazies. (Hello, again, to Jonny Borrell from Razorlight). A nice, look-over-your-shoulder way to end the year. Listen to them here!

Oh, and a monster thanks to everyone who's emailed in wishing ANBAD and team a Happy Christmas! If you'd like to give us a Christmas present, why not recommend us to friends who'd like our unique combination of new bands and mangled metaphors? We'd be ever so grateful, and not the fake kind of grateful either, like when your crazy aunt gives you an awful item of clothing for the 15th year running.

PS - STILL not done your Christmas shopping? In a barely-suppressed frenzy of gift-less worry? Recession biting hard? Why not give the gift of shambolic writing, pun-obsession and ace new bands in the form of the ANBAD eBook? Perfect for whiling away those post-Christmas food-rammed days!

Labels: lithe, New York, punky

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Bands have perceived connections with the past whether you, or they, want them or not. If yesterday's new band, Saboteur, reminded us of the 90's - if not in sound, at least in spirit - then Today's New Band, Padre Pio, simply reek of the 70's and 80's, sonically and, quite possibly, intellectually.

And if that has conjured up images of 70's wank-rock or 80's poodle-hair-rock, then a) wash your mind with bleach; no-one deserves to inflict that kind of mental torture to themselves, and b) instead think of when rock was a bit luxuriant, asexual and gleaming. Think Bowie and Lou Reed. Think of druggy, sharp-suited excess and eyeshadow on men. Think of a time when rock wasn't scruffy, but glistening with confidence.

Padre Pio's songs caress your eardrums with all of those things. Colour is a synthy glammy pop breeze, and Common Day is the great late 70's New York song you've never heard. It also, against all odds, achieves rock's most risky, difficult feat: a great Sax solo. Their songs are slightly pompous, eccentric and lithely predatory - all missing in most music now, and extremely welcome.

Surely Padre Pio aren't going to be gazing at the stars forever, wondering when they can strut their stuff in, I like to imagine, delightfully-cut suits. A band this swooning and sexy has to, and deserves to, end up foppishly jostling with the big boys. Brill. Listen to them here!

P.S. As a side note, Padre Pio are, apparently, from Bushwick, in Brooklyn. This has no connection at all with rapper Bushwick Bill from the Geto Boys, but it's still an excuse to show the cover of their album We Can't Be Stopped, which features Bushwick Bill being rolled into hospital AFTER HE SHOT HIMSELF IN THE EYE. Now that's hardcore.

Labels: asexual, lithe, synth-o-tronic

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