Of Steve Jobs’ many achievements, perhaps his most successful product, the iPod, also harboured his most unhelpful unhelpful: the driving-down of musical attention spans to a fraction of what they once were.

Why listen to a whole album when you can just skip to the single? And why listen to the verse when it’s simple to spool ahead to the chorus? It’s just to easy to skip from highlight to highlight; all peaks and no troughs.

So how would a teenager brought up on this tid-bit mentality cope with a song like Asahiyama by Menagerie - a song that never …

When was the last time you saw a band that you couldn’t quite bring yourself to love until they cast off the knowing self-referential nods that seem specifically designed to appease cool magazines, websites and TV channels?

Bands who do this are either idiots, or sane – but weak – people hedging their bets. Robyn G Sheils, however, hasn’t mucked about. There’s no layers of ironic  faux-nostalgia or self-conscious posturing draped over his songs.

Calling your début EP The Great Depression amounts to nailing your colours to the mast pretty comprehensively. So it’ll be a shock to learn that his …

You know that Spring is on it’s way when you get struck down by the same phlegmy cold as ever other poor so-and-so staggering around with a sheen of sweat and a wan complexion.

The imposing bulk of ANBAD Towers, it turns out, is no defence against the humble cold, and so your brave correspondent sits here, pallid and weak, hammering keys in a quasi-delirious state. At least today I have an excuse if the words that follow are faintly ludicrous.

Succumbing to illness is the perfect instance for a great band to leap out and poke one in the …

When I was sent a link to today’s new band, I thought, in my new-band haze, that I’d been sent a speckle of actual gold – the link to the fabled Islet Myspace page.

Islet, for all of you who are clearly uncool, are the ‘underground’ band de jour. So underground that until very recently they had no website, no digitised music, and indeed no online presence at all, leaving enthusiastic fans to do it for them.

It was either a lovely strategy, tilting in the face of convention, or a cynical attention-grabber that worked. I hope …

Last Saturday I watched Har Mar Superstar rub Vaseline into his face before having a large quantity of white goo applied to his features. I even took a photo and tweeted it.

Of course, such titillation can only result in disappointment – and in terms of half-hearted sexual connotations, you’d be right – but all these things did indeed take place at the wonderful Unconvention Factory, in Macclesfield.

As with all clever concepts, its brilliance is matched by its simplicity. Take a bundle of new music’s movers, shakers and hangers-on, put them in an old factory and make them talk. …

Spending a vast proportion of your time listening to new bands affects your behaviour in unexpected ways.

The ups I don’t need to tell you about – they are all documented here – and the downs I will spare you. The unforeseen result has been to spend the rest of the time scouring the albums of my past for safety and comfort.

Seeking solace in cherished and half-forgotten albums is clearly a reflex action to counteract all the newness – and a quick glance at the ‘Recently Played’ list on Spotify tells a story of mid-90s teen infatuation: It’s A …

Woodworm - as pop music subjects go, they’re one of nature’s more overlooked contributions. But Airship are, if nothing else, altruistic in their plotting to showcase the worth in the little larval critters.

And thus their song Woodworm is appropriately named. Tiny and innocuous, it initially seems harmless, but soon you’ll be aware that it has slyly burrowed its way into your affections. A song of slender beauty.

Airship – Woodworm

If Woodworm is almost quaint in its quiet nature, Kids is a voluted, urgent and clean pop shriek that peaks time and time again in a chorus of eyes-to-the-sky …

Today’s band is from the ‘Wait – Haven’t They Already Split Up?’ file, because, indeed, The Narrator have already split up. Months ago, in fact. So they’re not so much of a new band as a an ex-new band, which might indeed make them post-new. I don’t really know. Such are the perils of genre-defiance.

But old-new bands can still be new, even when they’re dead – ask any teenager who discovered their dad’s copy of The Stooges and inquisitively popped it into their CD player. I missed The Narrator the first time around, and so did you, probably. …

Norway: a country of intense natural beauty, endless sunshine and the highest standards of living in the world. No wonder that I Was A King make music that’s so happy the songs themselves are fit to burst, right?

Well, kind of. I get the feeling that I Was A King are a little… well, bored of all the good times, and are trying out this whole ‘miserable’ thing, you know – to see what it’s like. Naturally they partly fail, but that’s no bad thing, resulting, as it does, in songs that throb with bliss and only tinged with sadness.…

Looking for new bands by wading through Myspace – which sometimes can resemble an endless, IKEA ball-pit playroom populated only by ADHT snot-nosed kids with Swine Flu and soundtracked by a million Coldplay-a-likes – can be a genuinely despairing experience, especially when one drab band after another is whelped into your lap.

Today, it took an uncommon amount of time before the abrasive buzz of Clumsy by Coyote Eyes served as a very welcome reminder that it was all worth it. Like a disproportionate number of sharp new things at the moment, Coyote Eyes summon from Brooklyn and make rugged, …