There's something to be said for shy and fey voices in pop. Whilst Axl Rose et al growl, howl and grunt into the microphone, spraying the front row with saliva that is composed of 40% ALL MAN, 40% TESTOSTERONE and 20% COME BACKSTAGE AND BLOW ME, BABY, not everybody's songs benefit from such overt, Jack-Daniels-and-cigarettes, oversize-codpieced masculinity. Anything that goes some way to redressing the balance is welcome.

So, yup, Today's New Band, the lovely Bumblebees, are about as thrusting and masculine as Brian Sewell nibbling on cucumber sandwiches. This is A Very Good Thing, as evidenced by their Über-cute and happy songs that litter their Myspace page.

My Kaleidoscope starts and ends with the sugariest, yummiest, bloopy organ-line for, like, ages. This is the song that you'll play in your head this autumn when you look back fondly to summer and whizz through the memories of playing in the sea on holiday.

Fluffy Clouds Of Joy is a jerky, gentle and twee treat which metamorphoses into a children's TV show theme tune. It's also possibly begging for a post-post-post-ironic 'mash-up' with the Orb's Fluffy Little Clouds, which might cause the twin internet moron tribes of the Tweecore-ers and the Ironic Haircut-ers to either implode with rage (bad) or become best friends, ever (worse).

The Bumblebees are tons of fun in the same way that making your own Lemonade is, and with the similar qualities of sweetness masking sharpness. Great! Listen here, now, youngster!

Labels: jangle, lo-fi, tinkling

Know a great band that should be on A.N.B.A.D? Email us or visit our MySpace page and tell us MORE!
Too busy/lazy/forgetful to visit A.N.B.A.D.? Subscribe to A.N.B.A.D. by Email and receive it in your inbox every day!

One of the really hard things to resist when reviewing bands is to draw comparisons between them and other, more established, bands. On one hand, it gives the reader an instant point of reference, but on the other, it does neither party any favours. No band sounds exactly like another (apart from Razorlight, who seem to have cribbed the Boomtown Rats' sound wholesale). But when a band comes along that sounds like a combination of three great bands - let's say, The Fall, Pavement and The Pixies - wouldn't it just be more stupid not to mention the fact?

Thought so. Thus, let's start by stating right now that Today's New Band, Monster Island, sounds like a ragged combination of The Fall, Pavement and The Pixies. This sounds like a grand boast, but it's true. To mention The Fall is a bit of a given - Monster Island are an off-beat indie band from Manchester, and therefore it's virtually a legal obligation to mention Mark E. Smith's grumpy lot. But it's fair, this time, as in songs like Hothouse, there's the same sparse, threatening griminess that pervades the best Fall records. See Twin Towns too for a Pavement-y lollop and and the Pixies' patented loud 'n' quiet dynamics are oozing out all over too.

Beyond glib comparisons, there was one moment when listening to Monster Island's songs that actually delighted me. Yup, actual, tangible delight, bordering on glee, a feeling which made my wizened, blackened heart start to flutter. Throughout their chuntering (and free-to-download) song They Never Sleep, the music is occasionally interpolated with screeching sounds of tapes rewinding, bleeping and electronic interference. Deliberate or not, it's a fabulous, pointless detail which screams of lethargic, understated, inventiveness. Brilliant.

So that's my justification for taking the easy comparative route to describing them. Listen for yourself here, on their Myspace page.

Labels: 90's, lo-fi, wandering minds

Know a great band that should be on A.N.B.A.D? Email us or visit our MySpace page and tell us MORE!
Too busy/lazy/forgetful to visit A.N.B.A.D.? Subscribe to A.N.B.A.D. by Email and receive it in your inbox every day!

Sometimes, overblown rock is just what you need. I rediscovered a huge bundle of CDs the other day, and amongst them was the Manic Street Preachers' half-good, half-poodle-rock debut LP, Generation Terrorists, an album I hadn't listened to for years. It's a pleasant Über-slick chug through a weird combo of late-80's RAWK and the punky aesthetic that they later became better known for. That said, super-smooth rock grates after a while, and unless you own a pickup and live in Arkensas or Texas, I imagine that the slick radio-friendly stylings of Nickelback at al are as far away from your stereo as is humanly possible too.

An antidote to slick RAWK is Today's New Band, Computerization, fresh from a bedroom in New York. Cobbled together from synths and bleeps, his songs are cheap 'n' cheerful - literally, in fact. He has a brilliant service where for a meagre $9 you can order your own song, to your specifications - subject matter, tempo, instruments etc - and he'll make it and mail it to you. The songs that he makes for himself, like Go Back, with its lovely chorus, and 1Point14Me, a slow, scattered pop song, are the sound of an abandoned computer singing to you from a skip - vocodered, slight and a bit world-weary.

It's all very simple, basic and rough and ready, and like his super-slick antipodal counterpart Generation Terrorists, you might not want to hear a whole album of it. But so what? Pop music is about short, creative bursts of happiness and with Computerization's songs, that's just what you get. Listen to his songs here, and apply for your own custom song here!

Labels: human-computer hybrid, lo-fi, slightly mournful

Know a great band that should be on A.N.B.A.D? Email us or visit our MySpace page and tell us MORE!
Too busy/lazy/forgetful to visit A.N.B.A.D.? Subscribe to A.N.B.A.D. by Email and receive it in your inbox every day!

A New Band A Day is a fairly broad church with regards to our personal philosophy on what we like bands to sound like, but if we were to nail our colours to one mast, the 'made-in-our-bedroom' sound would probably be it. While some bands pride themselves on sounding slicker than a seagull the day after Exxon-Valdez decided to pop a rivet, others shun 'production values' and just get on with making great songs. Rough-and-ready bands sound like they could be playing on your sofa next to you, and usually are all the better for it.

So, with that in mind, here's Today's New Band, Magpied, a band who relish the challenges put to them by Bontempi Keyboards and £69.99 guitar & amp deals from Argos. And meet those challenges they did, by cobbling together a bunch of songs which leap uncontrollably between "slightly bonkers" and "deliriously happy". Downloadable-for-free song SCRAPS nightstatcher REMIXXX is a lost 1970's kid's TV show theme tune, tinkling, bouncing and vaguely promising edu-tainment; whilst It Hibernated sounds like one of the instrumental tracks off David Bowie's Low played as a demo function on a child's keyboard, crunchy drums and all. There's also a super cover of Los Campesinos' You Me Dancing, as if you needed another reason to listen.

Magpied are small, in gestation and from Norwich. All of these are good things. They say they are 'wanting gigs', and frankly they deserve them. A duo this crazily delightful deserve a wider audience. Go nuts, and get your ears around their ace tunes here.

Labels: Jaunty, lo-fi, toy instruments

Know a great band that should be on A.N.B.A.D? Email us or visit our MySpace page and tell us MORE!
Too busy/lazy/forgetful to visit A.N.B.A.D.? Subscribe to A.N.B.A.D. by Email and receive it in your inbox every day!

Life is cyclical. Just as day follows night, high tide follows low tide and a spell in jail follows Pete Docherty's latest proclamations of sobriety, after yesterday's Tinnitus-induced/-replicating NOISE-fest from Kayaka, it was inevitable that Today's New Band would be a less thrash-tastic affair all round. As my Public Enemy-based tinnitus fades slowly into the background and telephones become helpfully audible again, the choice of music that my throbbing ears can cope with is still severely limited.

However, choosing non-ear-threatening music is to wander through a minefield of awful sounds. Soft 'n' smooth jazz-moron Kenny G would be sonically inoffensive, yet could cause Death By Bland. So what is needed is a band that is exciting enough to be enjoyable but one that doesn't utilise powertools as their main instruments.

Step forward Today's New Band, Heartbeeps. Perhaps the best description for their sound would be 'Not-Quite-Noise-Rock' - there is a lovely drone-iness to their music, which is a happy marriage of super lo-fi and super-melodic. Glacial Valleys is probably their best song, clunkily lo-fi, vaguely Beta Band-ish, whilst Tramwajs is a symphony on toy instruments, nicely strained vocals and a male voice choir singing through paper cups. Heartbeeps sound homemade and unfocused, but in the very best kind of way, like a child's telescope made out of toilet rolls.

Listen to their songs at their MySpace page here!

Labels: lo-fi, not-quite-NOISE, toy instruments

Know a great band that should be on A.N.B.A.D? Email us or visit our MySpace page and tell us MORE!
Too busy/lazy/forgetful to visit A.N.B.A.D.? Subscribe to A.N.B.A.D. by Email and receive it in your inbox every day!