You can tell a lot from a name, rightly or wrongly. It’s a very human response – there’s a reason that the man who devastated half the world in the 1930s and 40s changed his name. Even desperately poor Germans couldn’t take Adolf Schicklgruber seriously.

And so what type of music do you think Thunder Buffalo make? Ten points for those of you who correctly guessed ‘grimy rock’, but minus ten points for those of you who thought that predictable song titles like Be-Bop Sing-A-Long means that their songs are dull good ol’ boy rawk.

Thunder Buffalo - Be-Bop Sing-A-Long…

Ow, this is hurting my head. Now, on one hand, I love novelty Christmas songs, especially camp, blatant, tinsel-strewn ones from the 70′s. On the other hand, the words ‘Julian Casablancas’ and ‘Christmas Song’ seem so oxymoronic that a pine-scented vortex might open up in space-time if they are sincerely placed next to each other.

And yet, here’s I Wish It Was Christmas Today, a fun seasonal romp, complete – nay, replete - with jingling bells, good old-fashioned excitement and cheerful brevity. Initially, I thought it was a Strokes parody song – here’s a serious band doing a fun …

Duzheknew? Thank you, Adam O’Reilly (for it is he) for creating the band name which writes it’s own headlines.

But past-tense befuddlement aside, Duzheknew seems to have a firm handle on what he’s doing. His songs are… well, just right. They are sharp and acidic and tart. They are focussed and have all the fat cut off. This bodes well.

It Came Out The Other Side, OK trembles with nervous ambition – a jittering, jerky song. It’s a bloodletting, an easing of tension, that shows Duzheknew to be an artist of some ability. The song shines and fades, …

This is getting silly. Half of the bands I review now are from Brooklyn. Perhaps it’s a lot bigger place than I thought – or maybe there really is a raft of great new bands all emerging at once. I hope it’s the latter.

Ribbons are the latest Brooklynites to emerge, panting, from the mad cluster of bands that presumably forms the social make-up there. They have a loud, simple stripped-down sound – rock cut to Ribbons, if you will.

No Clouds‘ guitars peal quasi-automatically, a half-mechanical, half-alive looping chime of hypnotic beauty. Drums plod perfunctorily, the guitar drones …

Now that the unholy trinity of The Laptop, The Internet and Garage Band allows every man and his dogged devotion to Dubstep to become a band, there’s an increasingly common problem.

Actually, there’s a whole raft of new problems, most of which stem from the astonishingly asinine nature of the majority of these half-hearted efforts which seem to be created purely to allow another sequin-T-shirted goon to boast to his ‘peeps’ in the pub that he’s, like, a musician, yeah?

But I digress. The main problems are the band names themselves. Even though English has over a million words to …

Right now, I’m a one-man phlegm-factory. Thick, evil wads of the stuff. My head feels like it’s in a vice, and not even in a moderately entertaining way like in Casino. I caught this cold from a baby. Babies always have the worst colds.

The only weapon against this kind of aggressively omnipotent mucus is – and this is true – very spicy food, black coffee, neat whisky and noisy music. If you’re unsure, follow this simple rule: all the things that sanctimonious 1950′s public service films warned you about are your go-to weapons of choice.

Today’s New Band, The …

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Music/Life Synchronicity Moment #24986 took place this morning, and this time it featured an early 90′s ambient classic and, er, a road sign.

It was one of those electronic roadsigns, intended to flash up “Sorry for the inconvenience”, and yet, ironically, was inconveniently performing its best impression of a ZX Spectrum loading screen.

The important thing was that the flickering, when not giving epileptic drivers a few anxious moments, seemed to harmonise beautifully with Little Fluffy Clouds by The Orb, a song, remember, that found meaning in clouds. I suppose it’s not too big a leap to then …

’This is it,’ he kept repeating in his child-like voice, ‘this is really it.’ And so with that, Michael Jackson resorted to the oldest trick in the rock book – the LAST EVER TOUR. He’s playing at the Millennium Dome in London for what seems like eternity, milking ever drop of cash from his demented devoted fans. Here’s a video of some of those fans, by the way. See if you can spot the chubby man nearly wetting himself on the front row.

Inevitably, he’ll then do the same thing in every big city worldwide, for …

After musing on Monday about the difficulties of finding band members with a similar musical outlook, here’s an example of a band who, I think, fell happily together in a flash. They’re Pop Fosters, they’re Today’s New Band, and their initial conversation went something like this:

Sara Pop Fosters: “Want to form a band in which thrashing sounds from the drums and guitar form the limits of our complications?”

Richie Pop Fosters: “Well… I can play the guitar REALLY LOUD and can YELP with the best of them…”

Sara Pop Fosters: “Let’s ROCK, sunshine”

And lo, the …