Thought #1: Isn’t it funny how little Spanish music translates to the UK and beyond?

It’s not as if Spain doesn’t have lots of creative people (it has lots and lots and lots) or that its musical tastes are too esoteric for wider consumption (Enrique Iglesias, anyone?). I can’t fathom it, and even my attempts to redress the balance (Catalonian band Seward were ANBAD’s band of 2012) reflect my confusion.

Thought #2: “Ailment” is a remarkably good name for a garage rock band, isn’t it? **EDIT – I then realised their name is actually “Aliment” – which translates as …

2013 was supposed to be (a carefully co-ordinated) Year That Guitar Music Came Back. But clearly no-one really wanted that, and with surprise new material from Daft Punk, Bowie, Suede and Boards of Canada, it’s turning out to be The Year Of Enormous Comebacks instead.

Well, good. Guitar music never went away, at least not in the UK, where the guitar is still an assumed default.

As such, any pre-meditated comeback would have just ploughed a load of actual, hard-working bands who just happen to use guitars back into the rock ‘n’ roll hayfield.

Oh, hey there, Forest – …

NEWSFLASH FROM 2007: Gosh, isn’t Luke Haines’ book about Britpop really, really good?

The Auteurs frontman’s book is essential reading for anyone who loves pop music, or enjoys shaking their head at the demented stupidity of Britpop, or just anyone who loves luxuriously written, bilious memoirs.

Anyway, just buy it. There is no way any human being with a pulse and a set of pop-lovin’ ears could possibly regret it.

And the bonus is that, by the sheer persuasiveness of the author, you’ll believe that he really was a genius, and you’ll re-investigate The Auteurs’ LPs – and you’ll …

I’ve been idly working, like most idle people, on a theory.

It relates to the reemergence of sliiiiick 80s pop music. Go on and laugh, but it’s coming back, I tell you.

Now the ‘industry’ is on its knees and slowly picking itself up again, what better way to inject some much-needed moolah than via the methodology espoused by The KLF, Stock, Aitken & Waterman, et al?

I suppose we never really moved on from those enjoyably facile days, and pop music never will. And I can kind of live with that.

None of the above is …

I have a Spanish friend called Sara.

We once went out for a drink in her hometown of Vigo. It was 9pm when we went out. When I left the last nightclub that we went to, it was 10am. I stepped out, confused, into the dazzling Spanish morning sun.

This was only after spending the final few hours turning down the advances of a Portuguese doctor who wanted me to go and bump coke with him in the toilets along with a Russian prostitute he’d introduced me to.

The doctor left shortly after me, directly to the local hospital where …

Is Record Store Day about record shops or mainly an opportunity for a load of empty vessels to tell us all how much they love record shops?

My thoughts on Record Store Day are pretty much entirely recorded elsewhere on ANBAD; and as RSD sweeps around again, amongst a flurry of BBC 6 Music ads and a glut of PR emails, my position hasn’t changed too much from the fairly ruthless one I occupied in the above article.

I still don’t want record shops to disappear, but I sure as hell don’t want record shops to become shorthand for …

I’m not entirely sure that Capua Collective are actually a collective. I mean, there’s two of them, which only really makes them just about plural.

Still, being the big-hearted individual I am, I’m willing to let this slide, simply because Capua Collective are frighteningly young (19) considering the kind of nuanced music they’re making.

Might As Well takes all the elements that usually guarantee a song to be a snore-fest – soft, shuffly sounds all merging together, vaguely World-music polyrhythms, neo-2-step drums –  and defy the odds to produce something quite tasty indeed.

I love any song that only introduces …