“I AM A COP, SHUT UP!” So grunts The Knife‘s The Cop, a song which brutalises your ears with wonky noise and threats of violence. This is a not-too-unusual representation of our devoted lawmen and women in pop ‘n’ rock.

Cops tend to get a universally bad rap. Speaking of which, this negativity reached its most aggressive nadir with NWA’s Fuck Tha Police, which at the very least leaves no room for ambiguity in their philosophical standpoint.

Despite their name Today’s New Band, Cop On The Edge, don’t appear to have any particular beef with your local …

Hooray! U2 have got a new single out! It’s so great that I’m going to buy the album on the day it comes out! They totally rock, and Boneo is, like, a genuine rock star, yeah?

OK – that bit was for all the estate agents who were reading A New Band A Day by mistake. It’s safe to assume that they’ve jumped into their Audi TTs and are heading off to their local record store* to wait to buy a copy. Anyway, guess what? The new single sucks and blows at the same time. Steel yourself and listen to …

…

There’s something odd about Today’s New Band, Play People, that has proven difficult to quite pin down. They sound so surprisingly polished and confident for a virtually unknown band that I wondered initially if I’d missed a class in the Rock ‘n’ Pop 101 course that I took all those years ago, and they had just passed me by.

Their songs shine and glisten. Oh What A Life is weary and reflective, yet chimes and rings lushly throughout. Just Don’t is punctuated with a Morse-code stab, and is a perfect example of how a good chord change can loosen the …

It seems that we’re taking a virtual road trip around Northern Europe this week on A New Band A Day. A road trip, that is, without the casual sex, drunken debauchery and gradually itchier genitalia of a real one. Yesterday, we had Poland’s wonderfully er, beepy, MISTER BEEP, and prior to that it was the turn of Sweden’s brilliantly-chorussed Envelopes. So, taking a swift detour to Norway seems a perfectly reasonable turn of events, assuming you can afford to pay the exorbitant beer prices.

And, to continue a tortuous theoretical-journey-theme, joining us in Oslo is Today’s New …

Sometimes, it’s easy to dismiss bands for just sounding like…a band. You know – twangly guitars, drums and nice harmonies. Since the majority of bands are tyring to sound like they’ve just stepped out of the DeLorean from 1981, it’s easy to forget that not everyone wants to sound like Wire. Nothing’s wrong with that in itself, but there’s some sort of pure pleasure to be had from shunning your peers and going back to jangly basics.

Hence: Today’s New Band, Buen Chico. That kind-of means ‘good guy’ in Spanish – not that it’s particularly important – but we …

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 …

Some bands’ music are suited for particular situations. Planning on driving a very long journey across a featureless desert? Ry Cooder’s theme from Paris Texas. Drinking Whisky straight from the bottle with your buddies, playing pool and leering at women whilst wearing double denim? Back In Black by ACDC. Making your weekly wander down to the Job Centre? Back in the DHSS by Half-Man, Half-Biscuit, obviously.

So next time you’re heading, carefree, through town at sunset to meet some good friends at your favourite bar, listen to Mala Strana Strut by Today’s New Band, The Homophones. It’s the …