Guardian's New Band of the Day
What do you all make of this regular feature? Often the guy doing it just seems to use it as an excuse to slag something off, as the fact he has to do it every day just means he doesn't always care about what he picks. I've found some good stuff via it though, have you?
Let's Buy Happiness who're playing the show of new bands I like (next Weds at the re-launched Bull & Gate, which is celebrating its 30th Anniversary) just got featured on there: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/sep/22/lets-buy-happiness-new-band
- Relevant artist taggings:
- None
Thread not appearing correctly? Click here to rebuild | Report this
Twitter
Facebook
Last.fm
SoundCloud
MySpace
Friendster
RSS
also, are there any '...of the day' features you do like? i gave up on my track of the day thing as i wasn't near a computer enough everyday to keep it up. will start it up after DiS is 10 is a bit more done.
"thrilling"
Sean, are you just grumpy that this guy merked you over the use of the word "thrilling"?
indeed. it was more the thrill of seeing something great, rather than rollercoastery
Not exactly cutting edge is he lol
Pretty good as far as newspapers go and I'd certainly read it if I'd bought the paper. But I wouldn't bother checking the website.
'New band of the day: Darkstar'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/sep/08/new-band-darkstar
I'm sorry, what? New? Really?
'The buzz: "Forget trite 'nuum theorising, Darkstar feel a deep connection with the 80s synth pioneers" – The Stool Pigeon
The truth: If Thom Yorke made an album with John Carpenter
Most likely to: Win the 2011 Mercury prize.
Least likely to: Appeal to bassheads.'
Err, no.
New to you isn't new to your average Guardian reader, is it?
Also, the New Band of the Day tends to be that act's first coverage on the Guardian, so in that sense Darkstar are very much a new band. Besides, their album is nothing like what they've done previously - they are a 'new' band.
True, sorry, I was just being a bit barbed for no particular reason
It's actually a well written piece. There are some really good ones he's done, I'm just not a big fan of the concept, in the sense that I find it difficult to believe there are enough good new bands out there to dig out 5 a week. That said, more coverage for the likes of James Blake, Kimbie and Darkstar in the Graun can never be a bad thing.
(aware I'm backtracking, just realised I didn't intend the original post to sound anywhere near as dismissive as it did)
a friend of mine was on it a few days ago
Matt Henshaw, which was COMPLETELY out of the blue, didn't even know he'd been working on much new music after his last band split. sounds really good, his new stuff too.
obviously
http://www.anewbandaday.com is worth a minute or two of peoples' days, I prefer it over the guardian one to be honest, agree with the ranting and oh here's a band I heard about nature of it!
...but am probably a bit biased...
http://www.anewbandaday.com/2009/08/todays-new-band-amy-blue.html
I dunno why but when it comes to The Guardian
I never trust them with music. OMM was hideously up it's own arse and was written by people trying to show how much they know about music history, genres and trends. It made music BORING.
I get the impression the Guardian are trying to be the "music" newspaper but they can FUCK OFF as far as I'm concenred. And a band a DAY seems a bit silly.
OMM was the worst music magazine in the world ever and I'm glad it's dead
Some of the reviews are good though. Unless they're written by Caroline 'Worse music journalist than sean' Sullivan.
If I
bothered to go through all the artists that have one or two songs on my ipod one at a time each day I would have a couple of years' worth of bands to write about - I think it's great, completely endemic of how overpopulated the current band population is of course, but for all those people who moan that they never hear good new music it's a welcome taster.
I rarely use it as a port of first call,
but I think that by and large it serves a useful purpose - like it or not, The Guardian name has a certain amount of clout and, as has been said above, the column is more aimed at acts that haven't featured in the 'mainstream' media before.
My only beef with it is the same as with any website or column - if a band is pretty much completely unknown, why waste everyone's time by identifying them and slagging them off. "Here's a band you've never heard of...and they are shit!" seems a pointless exercise to me. "Here's a band that you've never heard of...and they are great!" is much more useful.
I bet they're not
anywhere near as good as 'Dark Star' though, are they? You know, that band that released the album 'Twenty Twenty Sound'...
true that
i got a little excited when this band started cropping up a lot thinking Dark Star were gunna give the second album a release but sadly not.
seems a bit excessive
a new band every day? it makes me highly suspicious - how can they have any quality control whatsoever with a new band a day. cut it back a bit - a new band a week? 5 hot bands this month? I might trust something along those lines slightly more.
then again, I haven't actually looked at it properly, so who can say.
Never really paid much attention to it, seems to ignore rock/punk/metal.
It's had some appalling bands up in the past, like air traffic.
Also, Guardian Music (oh, hideous cliche!) tends to be imo pretty average. They often feature 'cool new music' with no quality control- a feature in the paper last week starred Nicki Minaj and Stromae. I listened to Stromae and have rarely heard anything worse.
I don't mind that
they're not filtering, they're just commenting on hype. Both those acts are very very hyped.
Loads of people on my Twitter feed posted this as evidence of support for the band
which given it's essentially Lester being critical (via Sean's quote) is odd. But then a lot of the writeups in New Band Of The Day are awry - as I recall the Johnny Foreigner one essentially had 'Pixies' every third word.
I like it.
I've found the bands match up to the descriptions pretty well and you don't have to go through loads of text to know whether you'll like the band or not. Is there anything else like this?
Best band I've found on there: http://www.myspace.com/yourtwenties
i have a look at it every now and again
and its turned me onto to a few good artists, id never listened to Pariah til he was on it the other week. I agree the quality does vary quite a bit though, and it seems a bit stupid making it a daily thing when they could just have a new bands section rather than writing about someone new each day for the sake of it.
Guardian's Music website is a great mix of news/ discussion
The new band feature reflects a lot of new music in that it can be great and it can be a bit patchy. You can easily find 5 new bands week to write about, doesn't mean they'll all be good but then why should they? That particular feature seems to introduce Guardian readers to the latest buzz band and dissect them from there. It's rare that blog-born bands are taken to task for blatantly copying older influences and that seems something that NBOTD does on occasion.
I won't forgive them being mean about Veronica Falls though. :(
A band a day, eh? Sound like it might be worth a squez.
But what's that? No RSS feed (or, failing that, an email signup)? Fuck yers then.
I check it out every day just to see if it's anyone I've heard of
It's pisses me off when he's just slagging a band off though. There's too many artists in the world to give space to something that is shit. They should let more wrtiters contribute and just cover stuff they are enthusiastic about.
Always found Paul Lester to be a fairly reliable writer back from his Melody Maker days
He is a Beach Boys fan (like myself) and once wrote an excellent piece on Sean O'Hagan's (The High Llamas, Stereolab, etc) aborted attempt to produce a new Beach Boys album. For this he will always have my respect. Accidentally found out about a Swedish folk duo called the Polly Tones in his guardian column. Quite wonderfully, they have recorded an acoustic version of SMiLE. The first movement if anyone is interested:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXBGkzQ2S8c&feature=related
i'm not complaining as he really liked Trouble Books
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/feb/22/new-band-trouble-books
admittedly i haven't any others .