Welcome to ANBAD, which celebrated ten years online in April 2018, and is now “resting.” (I’m still jabbering on about music on my radio show and discussing new bands like, oh, I dunno, The Chats, on Twitter.)
However, ANBAD also has over 1200 posts featuring about 1500 artists. Most are buried deeeeep in the blog, rarely seen by human eyes. This seemed a bit unfair, so I randomised the posts and the ones you see below are yanked arbitrarily from the archive for you to explore.
As with anything this old on the internet, some music plugins, hyperlinks, images, formatting – and, frankly, the writing itself – is broken. But even I will begrudgingly admit that randomly looking at ten years of once-new bands is a fascinating glimpse into a very specific time capsule.
I’m as surprised as anyone that this ridiculous and utterly niche music blog has stumbled around online for a decade, surviving all of my attempts to break it, render it defunct, or let it wither on the vine. So scroll down and read on – and maybe you’ll find some long-forgotten band from 2009 that you’ll love.
>Is there anything wrong with simplicity? For anyone who considers Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band‘s complicated time signatures, endless multi-tracking and finger-wrecking chord changes as the pinnacle of human musical achievement, the answer would probably be ‘yes’.
The others who thing that The Stooges‘ Raw Power is dumb fun done right would probably disagree, but they’d be too busy pogoing to even think about such complications. Today’s New Band are Dirtblonde, and they know the truth in unassailable Rock ‘N’ Roll Fact #1: a loud guitar is better than a quiet one.
The Hangman whistles and howls into your personal space, roughs you up and saunters off. “Yeah, I’m so wasted, and I’m sorry I ruined your life,” they offer by way of explanation, in the song of a similar name.
Listening to Call It Art, it occurred to me that I could barely remember the last time I heard a song where a chunky guitar and vocals were the only sounds to trouble the listener. No synth washes, drum machines or bleeps to fill the space, no lush engineering tricks, nothing other than tape hiss and a song. In a time when even the newest, greenest bands equate good ‘production values’ with success, this is welcome respite indeed.
They’ve just played the South By South West Festival (sorry, ‘SXSW‘, for you super-cool types), if that matters to you. It shouldn’t, really. They have no Myspace page. I like that. Their songs can be downloaded – for free! – at their website here. I like that too. Listen to Dirtblonde and revel in simplicity itself.
> There’s a club in Manchester that I keep getting drawn too, despite myself. I’ve never actually noticed its name, such is my rush to get inside, but I call it Nerd Bar, due to the overwhelming concentration of computer science and IT students that patronise it.
The music is a complex blend of the great (the ubiquitous Smiths) and the deeply abject (decade-old Fatboy Slim songs), which is tailored to the specific needs of the nerds: good enough songs to keep the party going, and songs dreadful enough to appeal to Jamiroquai fans.
Laugh at the sweaty, strangely-haired and weirdly dressed crowd trying to ape Jay Kay’s dancing if you like, but be sure that they’re thinking exactly the same about you when they visit your club.
Lights Out Zoltar! sounds like one of the so-bad-it’s-bad 70’s sci-fi movies that are projected onto the walls of the club, but it’s actually the new album from Today’s New Band, Gemma Ray.She’s no geek, but the macabre feel sloshing around her music similarly alienates her from the bulk of society. It also separates her from the hoards of Kate Bush-a-like female singers shrieking in the charts now.
(You Got Me In A) Death Roll, seductive, eerie and slinky, will have you under its spell, helpless and rapt. It’s a woozy, libertine and defiant; Gemma Ray is a woman who wants it her way, and will get it too. 100 MPH (In 2nd Gear) is a beautifully overblown, string-driven ballad and Dry River is just unusual enough to elevate the song into a newer territory.
Gemma Ray could hit the big time quite easily, which is an unusual occurrence for a band featured on ANBAD. It’s not that she’s commercial-sounding, but that she’s intriguing and better than her contemporaries. She’d deserve it too, for all the right reasons. Listen here!
The news that Myspace has added a million users in a month is a statistic to be taken with a pinch of salt (how many of those are people who have forgotten their old log-in details, I wonder?), but there’s no denying that Myspace is not the hell-hole it once was.
If, like me, you haven’t visited Myspace for a clear 12-month period, it’s worth logging in again, if only to see how things have changed, and to smirk at the memory of everyone’s favourite grumpy media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, selling Myspace for less than 10% of the $600M he paid for it.
Alex James, no stranger to blowing money on ludicrous purchases, pours schadenfreude-flavoured cheese.
MIXTAPE:
FIRST! Side projects abound in today’s fractured musical world, and, lo, Chiapais the mind-bogglingly lo-fi offshoot from one half of ANBAD favourites Youthless. Singer Alex has abandoned his usual gonzo noizenik clatter for an ultra-slender, minimalist ethic. Sounds, words and melody all tumble into white, lowest-of-the-lo-fi noise, and meld into one heartfelt fuzz.
SECOND! Cave Birds are all doom and gloom until they drop an enormous, pummelling chorus into Some Lightening, and suddenly, all is well once more: an overblown, glam-grunge meisterwerk.
THIRD! Alvin and Lyle have, in The Good Feeling, made a song that is slotted in a deep groove that is either entirely sleazy, or entirely innocent, depending on your point of view.
FOURTH! Natasha Haws makes stripped-down yet endlessly epic songs that are as close and breathy as they are widescreen and distant. Big/small. Clever.
Dutch Uncles, like Egyptian Hip Hop, are another exciting new Manchester-based band that has chosen a name which guarantees career-long facile questions: whether any band member is Dutch, or is an uncle, or indeed has an uncle from the Netherlands. Maybe it’s why Wu Lyf keep such a low profile.
Either way, these universally strange monikers do highlight the skewed thinking and deliberately obtuse nature of Manchester’s newest crop of bands. Hiding complex musical arrangements behind breathless pop songs and charity shop shirts, Dutch Uncles are more obtuse than most, and all the better for it.
I grappled manfully with lead singer Duncan Wallis on a day off from the Duncles’ support slot on the Futureheads tour. Their new single, The Ink, is out on Monday. It’s quite clearly brilliant to me – but what have the band’s peers thought?
Duncan, cagily: “We actually gathered all of our friends round the house on Sunday and played them the song on repeat. It was unanimously agreed that people like music.”
So how does a song like this emerge? The balance between melody and yet retaining the winsome off-kilter quality must be akin to spinning musical plates. Or maybe old 12″ records…
“The piano riff came first and pretty much told us what to do. We’re quite separate in our writing, so our influences between music and words are never the same. The words come last so its more about relating it all together at that point, but we never give ourselves much time on it because the idea can lose its popularity very quickly with us… unless its a stonker like The Ink.”
Despite having chosen to take a more singular route through rock, Dutch Uncles‘ pace is quickening. They’re still, Duncan says, taking it one single at a time, but more than a hint of pride and urgency lingers:
“Recording an album within the first 4 months of being Dutch Uncles was quite a feat at the time. However, putting all of our cards on the table so soon without a proper “campaign” has probably delayed our progress longer than we’d like to think.”
Having splurged forth from the unexpectedly potent rock gene pool of Marple along with contemporaries Egyptian Hip Hop, Delphic and Maple State, they’ve managed to retain a unique sound. These bands are notably very different to one another, and yet an element of cohesion remains.
Do they influence each other in any way? The idea of the bands meeting up once a week for tea, cakes and a chat about time signatures appeals.
“I don’t think we influence each other much, but we certainly inspire one another. Its all just a contest to be the best band at ‘Winter Wonderland’ [a possibly imaginary gig] at the Royal Scot [their local pub]. That said, the ‘Myspace plays’ competition has been a depressing game of late…”
If the confidence and clamour around the band keeps building, how ‘big’ would they like to become? Does this even cross a young band’s mind? Is the band’s size and status even an ambition at all, or a happy side-product?
“If it wasn’t a career prospect then we wouldn’t do it is the truth. But we don’t plan on getting elevators in our house from it…do we? Apart from ‘Winter Wonderland’ we can only work towards getting more of our music released.”
And like that – poof – he was gone. I didn’t even get time to ask the questions about Holland and the band members’ familial roles.
I’ve long postulated that songs will become shorter, and more spazmodic as time increases.
The rush and buzz of modern technology practically demands it: we all multi-task to the tune dictated by our smartphones and browsers – I imagine you have half a dozen tabs open right now and are only lingering on this one until another takes your fancy.
This behaviour is probably ruinous for our collective sanity. Such is life.
Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view), Left Channel supplies the time-bereft with schizophrenic musical niblets to match the behaviour of scattergun minds.
In some ways, My Cathode Spike simply doesn’t work; this is also the song’s greatest strength.
No single beat gets going for more than a bar or two; listening is both dazzling and exhausting.
Our attention bounces as freely as the beat, and listeners will be left either impressed by Left Channel‘s dedication to chaos of concerned for their mental well-being. Like simultaneously watching 15 TV channels whilst grinding your teeth.
NB: People of an anxious disposition ought to prepare some whale music to listen to afterwards.
>Last night, I saw Pete And The Pirates* at Moho Live in Manchester. Since I first saw them two years ago, and then again six months ago, they’ve steadily got better – more charming, more interesting, more likely to become the huge success they deserve to be. If their fabulous new songs are anything to go by, their next album will be a corker.
We took a decidedly old-school approach to the gig – blagging our way in for free (“But the band promised we’d be on the guest list”), and smuggling in a hip flask o’ booze for surreptitious topping-up of cola. As we persuasively nudged our way to the front of the crowd (sharp elbows), the difference between a support band and the headliners became a little clearer than before.
Where the support band that we saw (I forget their name, but imagine a swing and a miss at Stone Roses-style Über-confidence and you’re there) tried to fill every moment with noise, P&TP had the confidence to allow ebb and flow, quiet and loud. It lulls the audience in as opposed to battering them with a wall of fudgy noise.
Today’s New Band also have this skill – and it is a skill – so be thankful for Mancunians Everything Everything, whose songs are cute, sharp and unusual.
Suffragette Suffragette is a clicking, polyrhythmic example of their finely-honed approach to songwriting. It weaves and bobs, dashing from choral, harmonising vocal over-indulgence to pared-down calm – which serve to push their superb weirdness to the fore.
Single Photoshop Handsome grabs a wild chorus by the ears and rides it hopefully, wrestling it to fit into their idiosyncratically off-the-wall framework. It yelps, shouts and chirps – but not for the sake of it – and then slips confidently into a huge, pounding, synth finale.
Everything Everything are now getting the radio play they’ve deserved for a while, and this is purely because they’re punchy, innovative and crafty. Lovely. Listen here.
*My amigo Martin said that they sounded like the Strokes had collaborated with 90’s pop-nobodies Eternal, which wins my vote for most ludicrous description of any band, ever.
Then, just before their name would have been a perfect tie-in with the movie of the same name, they split up. To get over the trauma, James writes an article painting a rosy picture of the music scene in one of the UK’s traditionally most exciting musical cities...
Glasgow as a city speaks pretty loudly for Scotland, and it seems that a few bands seem to speak for the city but with an accent heavily on the morose.
However you don’t have to look very far to see that there are as many bands that add colour and vibrancy to the city as there are new venues opening to accommodate them. In the past year Glasgow has also seen two new festivals in Hinterland and the Stag and Dagger taking over venues such as The Arches, Admiral bar, Classic Grand, and the newly refurbished Captains Rest.
Crowds in Glasgow tend to differ a little depending on the venue, Mono and Stereo very much cater for the cool Indie types and often have classic performers from all over the world who its hip to like that may not be so well known in less well informed venues. The Captains Rest and Admiral are both relatively new as venues (in their current guises) but are both positioning themselves as serious stop offs for touring Indie bands. Recent years have seen the Cribs and Crystal Castles playing there before they went overground.
Pin Ups night at the Flying Duck club is a very interesting club because it is a mixture of local Indie bands and celebrity Dj’s. Aside from the promoters being very friendly the range of DJ’s has been remarkable including hosting NME aftershows and luminaries such as Alex James, Brett Anderson, Friendly Fires in the past couple of years. The nights tend to be great fun and often themed with a fancy dress angle.
Given also that this year also marked King Tuts 20th Birthday celebrations this seems an ideal time to focus on a couple of the new bands that have been making a name for themselves playing at some of these venues:
Futuristic Retro Champs
With virtually every reviewer who sees this band falling over themself to find new ways of describing just how shiny, fizzy and exciting their brand of synthpop is it is difficult to add much that hasn’t already been said. Formed as an art school project to soundtrack a film this band has already supported Kate Nash, Ladyhawke and Glasvegas.
March saw the release of their vinyl-esque ep and there are rumours of collaboration with a well-known Glasgow pop legend in the summer. If you ever find yourself in Glasgow make this band one to catch, I guarantee you will come out smiling.
Sonny Marvello first made a name for themselves by putting on secret shows where audiences were blindfolded and taken to mystery venues for nights of debauchery and musical performances.
The band went on to win best international band at the renowned New York City Meany Festival and haven’t looked back since. With an accent heavily on the theatrical they know how to work a crowd nearly as well as they know how to write a catchy pop song. Leaning on the jaunty side of The Kinks they are purveyors of witty and infectious hooks and not afraid to dress up if the occasion warrants!
Now this band possibly doesn’t fit the bill for appearing in my catalogue of cheer, as they are entirely instrumental. However their energetic and intense live performances have to be seen to be believed. Combining multiple effects pedals, violin bows and cheeky guitar riffs against an atmospheric backdrop they somehow make their guitars sound like they are speaking to you. I have absolutely no idea how they manage this, some folk just have all the talent!
>This morning I rang my best friend, who lives in New Zealand. Like passenger jets, inter-continental telecommunication is one of those astonishing human achievements that we all use and all take for granted. Years of human endeavour and ingenuity, from the discovery of electricity until the launch of Sputnik, made it possible for me to yap inanely to the other side of the globe.
And how did my friend and I use this mind-boggling facility, this symbol of the capabilities of the mind at its most creatively brilliant? We talked about women and football, just like we did when we played darts in the pub a decade ago.
But executing well-aimed slaps to the face of towering scientific achievement is an everyday activity to the Me-Generation. Just think, this computer could be being used to find a cure for cancer, but instead you’re using it to read the ramblings of a demented idiot.
Wait! Come back! Because Today’s New Band, Micachu and The Shapes , similarly mock the establishment by whittling creatively unusual songs out of all the instruments they can get their sweaty hands on. There are great tunes to be found here, and then tunes on top of tunes, which fold in on themselves and unfurl to reveal something entirely different but equally brilliant.
Song Just In Case veers all over the place, and you, the shocked listener, will have to concentrate hard to hold on for dear life because you’ll be too busy grinning with happiness at its daring, derring-do and dazzle. Golden Phone isn’t quite as twistingly peculiar, but is a ton more sweet, full of invention and still bizarre enough to scare your grandma.
If Coldplay are as prosaic and dull as stubbing your toe on a lump of rock when digging the garden, then Micachu and The Shapes are the joy experienced when you crack it open and find a huge, multicoloured crystalline arrangement inside. Micachuand The Shapes are a musical middle finger to the safe and the average. You can’t fail to feel the need to clasp them tight to your chest. Listen here!
The spoken word teamed with music connects with the listener in a different way. I don’t know why. I’m not even really sure what that difference is.
But anyone who has listened to Dead Flag Blues by Godspeed You! Black Emperor will have a remote and lonely part of their mind forever altered in testimony to the song’s agonising strength.
Matt Finney has been on ANBAD before, as part of the now-defunct Finneyerkes. He’s a musician and poet, and somehow, by sinister means unknown, met a Ukranian musical polymath called Heinali and began collaborating. Heinali makes the music, Matt speaks. Simple.
The words phases in/out, snippets of an intimate phone call from the apocalypse; all picked up via some huge, unwieldy Soviet-era radio transmitter. The sounds in Lemonade necessarily drone, wane and pulse; the song reeks of a crumbled world, ruined promises and failed attempts.
Upbeat it is not, but there are flickering vestiges of warmth and humanity – perhaps that’s all that’s left when everything else is pared back – and the song certainly possesses its own peculiar beauty.
The Ukraine is, sadly, immediately, connected in the minds of many with Chernobyl. And now the radiation has subsided a little, the bold tourist can now tentatively creep around the abandoned towns in the immediate vicinity. They witness a world suddenly fled: tables overturned, textbooks left opened, church doors flung wide.
This is the music that they will hear playing from the radios left on.
So this weekly bunch of new bands post is officially A Feature now. Under the guise of ‘a new band clear-out’, it actually serves a number of purposes – chiefly allowing twice as many bands to feature per week – though if truth be told, it’s mainly existing as an excuse to keep re-running the accompanying photo.
The title’s changed, you’ll notice. A New Band Clear Out kind of undersold it a bit. Midweek Mixtape is nicer – it’s not only an alliteration, which always looks clever, but it also implies that coherent thinking was involved in its construction. This is, of course, a fallacy, but the illusion is comforting.
Thus: this week’s mixtape! Take in the slack with a biro, blow the dust off the tape-head, perform other reminiscently generic C90-cassette tasks, and press play…
First!Razmataz Lorry Excitement – You’re expected to fall into the trap of wondering under what circumstances ‘Razmataz Lorry Excitement’became this band’s first-choice pick for their name.
This would be a mistake, because you might be distracted from cowbell-infused bass-groove-laden songs like Trial And Errors. Imagine a super-luxuriant Mr. Oizo, and you’re halfway there. Excellent.
Second!The Half Rabbits – In Spain, I once ate paella from a pan the size of one of those satellite dishes you see on the top of TV broadcast vans at sporting events. In the paella was an entire rabbit, cruelly chopped into six pieces. Thus The Half Rabbits have an advantage of sorts over the one I greedily devoured. These rabbits make the type of cut-and-thrust tinny rock that you though wasn’t made any more. Excellent QUIET-loud straight-laced razor-rock.
Third!Bark Bark Disco – Apparently Song For Lovers is a tribute to 70’s French ‘porn star legend’ Brigitte Lahaie. I’ve never heard of her *cough*. The song, fittingly, is cheap ‘n’ cheerful, pretty and surprisingly tender. Just like porn. Right?
Last!Jonathan Sakashas one hell of a fringe. Seriously, just look at the damn thing on his Myspace page. It’s like a huge comma on his forehead. A delightful sight to behold. His music is like a pop version of the Blade Runner soundtrack, and so is as synth-drenched, overblown and borderline ridiculous as that sounds. But all good music teeters on the brink of mockery, and so his songs are part of a grand tradition of tip-toeing along the tightrope of failure and surviving – smiling, resplendent and triumphant.
Another mixtape will be furtively passed to you, under the table during French double class, next week. Naturellement.
