>The Top Five New Bands From January!

>It’s snowing here in the UK. Well, when I say ‘snowing’, I mean, ‘light smattering of quickly melting white sludge which is inevitably causing the country to grind to a pathetic halt’. So, seeing as the motorways have spontaneously reconstructed the scene out of Falling Down that causes Michael Douglas’ teeth to grind themselves into oblivion, let’s get zen and reflect on The Top Five Bands Of ANBAD In January!

It was a bumper month of great new bands, which started slowly, but quickly and suspiciously grew to something much more impressive than anticipated. Keep slanderous musings on any parallels with Michael Douglas’ wife’s career to yourself, and wrap your eyes around these five great bands:

The Ribbon – Who are so very good, they were very nearly Band of The Month. We said: “Displaying a delicacy, sureness and sense of fragile grandeur that a hundred two-bit ‘electronic’ bands would kill for, The Ribbon are several agile, artful and well-placed steps ahead so many others, it’s silly.”

The Unbearables – We said: “Their song Zombies Unite leaps out and gnaws you to a bloody pulp in the most cheerful way possible. Clunky guitars, and a gruesomely threatening choir meet to create a call-to-arms for good-natured undead fiends.“

Joe Gideon And The Shark – We said: “Grinding, raw, direct and shorn of rock pleasantries, Joe Gideon and the Shark are a fantastic grubby stab of clunky rock.”

Schande Boy! – We said, whilst putting a Donk on it: “Schande Boy is a real one-off – creative, unusual and left-field – all things we really love on ANBAD. If a Donk remix appears, it would only be the (deeply cretinous) icing on the cake.”

AND JANUARY’S NEW BAND OF THE MONTH IS…

Here We Go Magic – We said: “It’s hard to imagine who could be so cold hearted and lacking in heart to not love Here We Go Magic. Delicate, bold and inventive, the sounds they make will linger in your head long after you’ve heard them; if the melodies themselves don’t loop crazily in your memory, then the feeling they induced will.”

So, if you’re not still reeling from that collection of bands – possibly the best Top Five yet – then why not fill your boots with new bands instead of cold snow here, in the lovely, warm and inviting Best Of ANBAD Archive!

>ANBAD Twitter Feed-A-GoGo!

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TWITTER- FINALLY! In keeping with ANBAD‘s slavish devotion to using the latest technology from three years ago, we now have a sparklingly exciting Twitter feed! It’ll have all sorts of regular mindless extra ANBAD updates. Hook up to it for NEW BAND EXCELLENCE (in 140 characters or less).

Also, apparently, we’ve been picking up a few Diggs recently – so a huge thanks to those kind voting people, and if anyone fancies joining in with a Digg of their own and spreading the ANBAD word, we’d be so much more than grateful, and will shower you with hugs and kisses.

So, after all the endless Xmas/New Year listing, New Bands will appear as usual tomorrow!

>The Top Five Bands in November on A New Band A Day!

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November is the least fun month in many ways. With the crippling cold, the leaves falling dejectedly from the trees and the prospect of Christmas just too far away to be properly exciting, you can be left scrabbling around for any viable crumb of comfort.

Fortunately, on ANBAD, we’ve had a bumper month of excitement to compensate, what with all the fancy-pants website redesign, new writers, the thrilling ANBAD eBook and the emergence of My First Hate Email. And this is all before you consider all the great bands that have swilled around the place like drunken sailors on shore leave. No wonder I’ve hit the Meth even harder than usual these past four weeks.

So as usual, here’s the best of the new lot from November, in no particular order:

Death Of Concorde – We said: “shimmers, wanes and echoes like a tape recording of an orchestra put through a guitar chorus effect pedal, always just on the right side of becoming all-out white noise.”

Feral Children – We said: “Their songs shoot around wildly, inventively and boisterously whilst keeping their laser-guided focus on tightly-honed rock.“

Yes Please! – We said: ” about as growlingly hostile as Finnish guitar pop gets, big heaving songs that run and run and run and then collapse.”

Thomas Tantrum – We said: “Whether they’re veering here and there on Warm Horse, or making the most disorientating pop music of all time on What What What, Thomas Tantrum are a true treat. “

AND A BIG FROSTY ‘CONGRATULATIONS’ TO NOVEMBER’S BAND OF THE MONTH:

Ex Lovers – We said: “There’s something softly defiant about Ex Lovers – all the songs sound like they are just about to dissolve nihilistically into warm fuzz. Their songs are like soft electricity, a description which I freely accept is the most pretentious phrase I have ever typed. But it fits.”

Phew! A busy, fulfilling month indeedy. BUT WAIT! It’s December now, which can only mean one thing: rampant consumerism, over-consumption and shameless End-Of Year Best-Of Lists! Starting this week! Keep them peeled!

>WELCOME TO THE ALL-NEW A NEW BAND A DAY!

>THE EXCITING ALL-NEW A.N.B.A.D. RE-LAUNCH WEEK!

A New Band A Day has changed! Not by a huge, terrifying amount, but enough to make everything look and work better. It’s been a long time since our old friends, The Alibies, were the first band on A New Band A Day, and as the writing got better, the website was still its clunky old self. It was time for a clean broom, and everything (if you understand the word ‘everything’ to mean ‘a few bits and pieces here and there’) is sparkling and new!

The robot has been terminated, and been replaced by something that doesn’t look like it’s been drawn by a five year-old idiot. The migraine-inducing orange has gone too, and has been replaced by a migraine-inducing vomity-green-ish colour instead. Yum. The old cassettes have gone too, and have been by the higgledy-piggledy pile of tapes on the right, which now act as your links. Go on, click them and try them out!

On top of that, there’s a whole host of other new stuff, including a new fancy-pants Social Bookmarking feature at the bottom of each post that actually works properly this time (a big thanks to everyone who Diggs, Mixxes and Stumbles us, by the way). It includes two new buttons which will put ANBAD onto your iGoogle page as either an RSS feed or an exciting Google Gadget.

The one thing that hasn’t changed is the dedication to bringing you all the best new, unheard-of, unsigned or unusual bands every single day; which, along with the dedication to highlighting bands that use dreadful puns, or make a noise like a spacehopper filled with spanners, I hope will continue to form part of your daily routine.

HUGE thanks to all the surprising numbers of you who subscribe by email, rss, or just drop by the site every day – and an even bigger thanks, with big wet auntie-kisses, to all those of you who email us. It’s been a thrill-ride so far!

There’ll be a few more bowel-looseningly brilliant surprises throughout the week, so keep ’em peeled, space cadets! Oh, and if you know anyone who’d be interested in the all-new ANBAD, and you feel like sharing the love, we’d be thrilled if you let them know.

Love and MAN-HUGS from Joe – ANBAD

P.S. – If you’re reading this on the mail-out – click here to see the new site in all it’s glory!

>October’s Top Five Bands From A New Band a Day!

Perhaps music is a bit like TV, in that, as autumn slips by and winter looms large, the programmes shown get better and newer. This month has been the most varied, exciting and downright unusual on A New Band A Day – EVER!

So here’s the traditional look back at October’s five best bands, in no particular order (except for the month’s #1 band, obviously):

5) Keyboard Choir – We said, “plaintive electronic sounds – the noises glum, lonely astronauts would force out of their simple onboard computers in the 1970’s.”

4) The Furbelows – We said, “as simple, attractive and as much fun as a Playboy Playmate, and twice as pleasant to listen to.”

3) Internet Forever – We said, “it’s like discovering an old unlabelled TDK C90 and finding a whistling, two-tone indie pop classic amongst the static.”

2) Mirror Mirror – We said, “simple souls who use complex music and befuddled lyrics to do simple things.”

So, October’s BAND OF THE MONTH IS:

1) Awesome Wells – awesome name, awesome band. Puns galore in their name, which was almost enough to win that coveted #1 spot.

But what sealed the deal was that, “if you combined mid-90’s Tortoise with the entire BBC Sound Effects Library, you may come close to approximating Awesome Wells‘ sound. But you wouldn’t come anywhere near to his precise, caring control – the sounds ebb, flow and weave together to the point where any lingering doubts are assuaged by the gleefulness of the sonic journey you’ve just taken.”

Yum. More fantastic bands coming in November!

>August’s Top Five Bands on A New Band A Day!

It’s a sure sign of ever-increasing age when:

a) You start complaining that summers aren’t as sunny as they used to be;

b) Your little sister suddenly hits 18 and you wonder what happened to the 10-year-old version;

and c) Months start flying by faster than ever before.

All those things have happened to me recently, but the third one only registered in my fuddled brain when I looked at the calendar today and realised the non-summer was nearly over. That moment of minor terror was relieved by this list – the Five Best Bands From August that graced A.N.B.A.D! Hooray! This is good news, because it was probably the best month on A.N.B.A.D. ever. Feast on their collected glory! So, in no particular order:

1) BAND OF THE MONTH: Indica Ritual – Congratulations to the Liverpudlian crazies, who are August’s Band Of The Month, and for good flippin’ reason.

We said, breathlessly: “Their song ‘Top Forty’ is all of these things: 1) Bonkers, 2) Super-duper funky, and 3) Sounds like a test version of the 1973 Tomorrow’s World TV theme tune that was rejected for being too ‘out there’. Indica Ritual are quite possibly the band you have been looking for, like, ages. They are actually brilliant, in every sense of the word. You must listen to them now, or your life will be that much poorer.”

2) Glam Chops – Eddie Argos and David Devant’s Glam Experiment gone right!

We said: “HUGE guitars, HUGER choruses and chant-along verses VAST enough to climb on and lever the earth out of orbit.”

3) Insecticide Lobotomy – Mentalist Brain-Noise!

We said: “a tsunami of spasmodically repetitive high- and low-end fuzz boring into your brain and removing all thoughts except acknowledgement of the noise itself.”

4) Someone Still Loves you Boris Yeltsin – Non-Russian Über-upbeat songs!

We said: “so relentlessly upbeat that they make a song titled Think I Wanna Die sound like exactly the sort of song you’d want to listen to whilst driving a convertible down Highway 1 to Big Sur“

5) The Seedy Seeds – Kazoos, Bontempi Keyboards, Good Times

We said: “They’re not content with writing unusually catchy bites of poppy indie, but even have the brass neck to squeeze a Kazoo solo into the joyous ‘The Little Patton’.”

So HOORAY! again. The best Best Five Bands yet. Another month of super-songs and brilliant-bands are coming…now!

>The TOP FIVE BANDS on A New Band A Day in July!

>Ah, July. You just whoooooshed by again in a blur of ice cream vans, newly-released schoolkids scuffing knees and day after day of relentless staring at the cloudy sky, screaming profanities at Baby Jesus, whilst waiting for a ray – just one single ray – of sunshine. Fortunately for those of you who are trapped in a similar tupperware-skied hell, July was a BRILLIANT! month on A New Band A Day, positively overflowing with bands so good that the Vitamin B your should have got from the sun was absorbed through your earholes instead. This is a medical fact.

So, in bold capital letters to stress it’s importance, here’s the TOP FIVE BANDS FROM JULY, in no particular order:

1) THIS MONTH’S BEST NEW BAND: The Pains of Being Pure At Heart

We said (glibly, natch): “It would be glib to say that if you like My Bloody Valentine and Jesus And Mary Chain, you’ll love The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, but what the hell, it’s true. If you love songs that drive forward with breathless abandon, all fuzzy, warm and colourful as a novelty Christmas sweater, then let yourself swoop head first into their songs.”

2) Held By Hands

We said: ” Porcelain-delicate songs, which build and build but still seem as light as air at the end, that are just perfect for easing gently into the coming week.”
3) Candythief

We said: “Singer Diana’s voice is the kind that would make you mix your metaphors and make you happy to crawl over hot broken glass, just to ask her to sing you to sleep at night. It’s genuinely lovely – rich, dreamy and innocent enough to sound slightly dangerous.”

4) AIDS Wolf

We said: “AIDS Wolf. That’s right, AIDS Wolf. Just slosh it around your mouth slowly, then suck some bubbles of air through it and really savour the name. AIDS Wolf. AIDS Wolf.”

5) The Bumblebees

We said: “The Bumblebees are tons of fun in the same way that making your own Lemonade is, and with the similar qualities of sweetness masking sharpness. Great!”

So there you go. Here comes another great month of new bands! Come on August, do your worst! By which I mean, ‘best’.

>A New Band A Day is in a tent…Day 2

>So, by now, your intrepid* A New Band A Day campers will probably have caught dysentery, have woken up to find that their tent has floated off into a field of cows, and is now wondering how to calm that little voice that’s shouting MUST KILL NOW in our heads.

*idiotic

So whilst we’re busy trying to zen out in a field of mud/cow dung, here’s some other GREATEST HITS from the ANBAD Archives that you might have missed.

Sounds-like-an-electro-band-but-they’re-not band, Heartbeeps!

Worryingly crazy Eyes and Teeth!

The fabulous ANBAD Radio show!

And Finally: Ace Welsh Hip-Hoppers Genod Droog!

Share and Enjoy!

>A New Band A Day is in a tent… Day 1

>Ahhh, holidays. Sun, sea, sand and beautiful, cultured people. All of those things are going to be absent from ANBAD‘s holiday for the next two days, as we cower under canvas at the 2000Trees festival, where rain, rain and even more rain has been forecast. So, while you’re sitting in a warm room, reading this, spare a thought for those of us dumb enough to go to a music festival in the UK, even after years of bitter experience has proven it to be an almost guarenteed washout.

Anyway, while we’re off eating mud, here’s some great bands you might have missed from the ANBAD Archives!

Ace, German band Like A Stuntman!

Super electro-humanoid Finns the Alibies!

Friends of Steve Albini Record Hop!

And Finally: The most mentalist band ever – Coprophagia!

More New-Old-New Bands tomorrow!

>June New Bands Roundup!

>Frankly, it was a minor miracle that any new bands got written about during June. A New Band A Day towers was massively preoccupied with Euro 2008, and thus was very busy with the important tasks of watching football all day, drinking beer to accompany the football and filling in the wallchart so that we would know exactly how hard France were tanking.

Still, confounding expectations is always fun, and what actually happened was the most exciting month on A.N.B.A.D….. EVER! Great new bands slopped out of our bucket almost non-stop, and here’s a round up of the great and the good:

Q Without U were an early bright light, and we said this:

“Q Without U meld super-tuneful guitar rock with whizzy synths into punchy pop songs”

and we were right. Following soon after was the great ERRORS, and:

“ If we were mildly cretinous, we’d make a poor joke about how there is nothing erroneous about their music, because it’s fantastic.”

But we didn’t, ‘cos we’re dead clever, like. Then, during an ill-though-out “Roadtrip” gimmick, we got all excited about Envelopes, who are really, really ace, and from Sweden. Or Paris. we weren’t totally sure. But, we said that:

“Their fabulous song Sister In Love somehow straddles the late 80’s and early 90’s, whilst luckily missing Shoegaze altogether – no mean feat.”

And guess what, they almost were BAND OF THE MONTH, but were just pipped at the post by the mind-bogglingly good Paul Hawkins and Thee Awkward Silences. We raved like idiots at their song The Battle Is Over, gushing maniacally:

“Make no mistake, this is the best song you’ll have heard for a long, long time – since, frankly, All the Rage by the Royal We. If you only listen to one new song this week, it should be this one – it’s truly, brilliantly, wonderfully fantastic. Song of the year so far, easily.”

Mmmm, nice to see we kept our ‘calm-and-detached’ integrity there. So well done, Paul Hawkins et al, BAND OF THE MONTH. Anyway, check all of these bands out, because they’re the creme de la creme of a really good bunch. Bring on July!