Right now – right now – my favourite band ever is The Fall. I just can’t stop playing The Classical and its lyrics (“Hey there fuckface! Hey there fuckface!”) are rattling around my brain like loose bolts in a grumpy, sweary machine.

Last week, my favourite band ever was The Pixies. Two weeks before that, it was The Smiths. And so on. People who have an all-time favourite band that never changes aren’t to be trusted, or are Oasis fans.

Who, then, is Today’s New Band’s favourite of all time? Polychromatic‘s songs don’t really give …

I often wonder how songwriters start. To clarify: where does the aimless strumming of a guitar end and the song begin to form? Perhaps the act of thinking about it negates the ability to understand. I don’t know.

I don’t know where Today’s New Band, Akira, start, either. But I do know that it’s not from the aimless strumming of anything. Their songs are cut from a different cloth, to a rhythm from a different drum. Actually, no – they wouldn’t beat something as prosaic as a drum.

Akira’s songs sound like remixes of other songs they’ve …

I have a theory about modern art, which has come from studying art myself. No, wait! Come back! There’s a New Band angle on this, I promise. My theory is cynical, and born of frustration, but I think I’m onto something.

Here it is: the complex, philosophical meanings attached to modern art are just tacked on at the end after coming up with the idea of image/object, to justify cutting a sheep in half and submerging it in formaldehyde.

When Rachel Whiteread filled a house with plaster and then removed the bricks and mortar, in effect making a giant, house-shaped …

When is a new band not a new band? Occasionally people post irate comments on A New Band A Day complaining that “Band X aren’t new, they’ve been around for ages, and I’ve got all their white label 7″ discs blah blah blah.”

Well, when anyone slavishly follows a band, they become a little belligerent and outlandish. “They’ve been around for ages” often actually means “since June 2007″ in our confusingly short-termed mindset.

In some ways I understand these complaints – new means new, right? Well, yes and no. Those who complained have forgotten the basic rule of ANBAD: Consistency …

Genres. Bands hate them. You can bet your bottom dollar Muse hate being bracketed as Prog Rock, but ask someone on the street what kind of music they play and if they don’t begin with the words, “A sort of Proggy…”, then they’re just trying too hard to be best friends with the band.

Labels like Prog, Deep Bolivian House and Grindcore are all useful for us mere mortals who just listen to the music as opposed to being tortured artists, offended by all and sundry.

This means that when your auntie asks you what sort of music you listen …

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 …

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 …

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…

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

…

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, …