I’ve just written a guest article for the BBC about Scandinavian pop music and why those Scandinavians write such darn catchy tunes.

What I discovered was a little stunning (and will be revealed when the article is published – keep ‘em peeled, folks), but it at least partially dispelled any fanciful ideas that our Northern Euro-cousins have a special Pop Hook gene.

But it’s so easy to make these generalisations, isn’t it? You know, like how French-language pop is oh-so suave, jaunty and sophisticated.

Well, here’s Le Couleur to – well, prove exactly that.

OK, L’Amour de Jour…

Life is punctuated by choices as much as it is by events over which we have no control. Don’t fret – there are no real psychological depths behind that statement. This is ANBAD, not Umberto Eco’s Chat Shack (website coming soon).

Here’s a choice to ponder, though. You want to be in a band. You long to be in a  band. But you also want to be surrounded by your ten very best friends at all time. You have a decision to make.

Do you: a) start an 11-piece band and simply accept that there are too many members …

My online French teacher told me that it was OK, and that means it is true.

She said that learning a foreign language can take whatever form I like – and so, with a staggeringly unoriginal non-deviation from my usual routine, I used this as an opportunity to listen to lots of French language bands.

So imagine my slight disappointment when I later discovered that this is recognised as a great way to learn. That’s not fair! I’m trying to be different, OK, not one of the herd.

Still, before I abandoned this approach as - pah! – entirely…

You have to marvel at the chutzpah of some French bands. Either they have balls – or brains – the size of oranges.

The new Kavinsky record takes all the unwanted bits of dreadful 80′s synth-pop and – via alchemy, magic or satanic influence, I’m not sure – has produced a record of languid, neon-lit sexiness.

Embracing the drab and underwhelming past, as bands like Kavinsky have done, is so utterly daring because the margin of error is so va-a-a-a-a-ast.

And yet, listen – the resultant music is as new and beautifully brassy as, you’d like to believe, music could …

I once had an argument with a man in a pub about Jean Michel Jarre. Feel free to judge harshly on discovery of such fatuousness.

It all started, as most arguments in pubs do, with a flippant comment on an unimportant topic. The magnifying effects of booze did the rest.

I said that Jean Michel Jarre was the height of electronic music hopelessness – a vacuous whirlwind of 80′s Saturday-teatime TV show soundtracks  hidden behind a preposterous bank of keyboards, stageshows and lasers. To these ears, this still rings fairly true.

The Bar Stranger disagreed furiously, and cited his influence …

Comparing one band with another is a mindless, but pretty much necessary, evil.

As a hack keyboard-basher, I try to avoid it as much as I can, but sometimes you’re left with no other option: how else to describe bande du jour The XX as anything other than ‘drab Zero Seven copyists‘?*

So when I heard Evan Voytas described as ‘the American M83′ by both those who have read his PR company’s press release and those who haven’t, my interest was piqued and repulsed at the same time. This is usually a good sign.

The ingredients are there in …

ANBAD couldn’t exist without the help of YOU, the delightful, handsome and intelligent reader. And, if you’ve never done it, go crazy: join in and let me know of a great band that will enrichen all our lives (or, failing that, just send me a band with a ridiculous name. That usually does the trick).

Some of the emails are from bands themselves but are serpentine in their pretence that actually it’s a fan of the band that’s emailing and not the drummer’s attempts to drum up publicity for a change.

The difference between these emails and those from an …

…

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear. Today I feel very hungover. There’s a big part of last night that is a blank, and this time I think I really mean it when I say I’m never drinking again. Every time I type a letter, the noise makes me feel violently sick. I’m never drinking again. Never. My friend Steve – it’s his fault. He shouldn’t have bought me all those drinks. I’m never drinking with Steve again, at least.

That’s my excuse for the tardiness of today’s post out of the way, at least. Today’s New Band – now that’s …

A quick glance at the charts is enough to confirm the feeling that most pop music is awful. Over-hyped nonentity Lady Gaga is number one, with her entirely forgettable half-effort Poker Face. Here it is, if you can stand another lumpen slab of generic electro-pop sung by a Christina Aguilera tribute act.

25 years ago, Black Lace also hit number one with Agadoo, which is almost universally recognised as the worst song of all time. I simply insist that you listen to it if you’ve never heard it before. Here’s the interesting bit though: as will-sappingly dreadful as Agadoo…