this is an ode to cover bands, bad punk rock and all the things i can’t stand;

Once again, I find myself wondering if I was just born on the wrong continent. Last week, my good friend Jon Who Writes For The NME sent me this article, on the rise of what the writer deems America’s “literary” bands. It’s a good piece, if a little awkward in that it lumps together bands with not much in common bar their Pitchfork-style worthiness for the sake of the argument. While the British music scene lumbers under a surfeit of the “landfill indie” of the likes of Pigeon Detectives and Scouting For Girls, the writer says, the US is seeing a renaissance in a literate, challenging, alternative scene which includes the likes of Vampire Weekend, Silver Jews, Fleet Foxes and the Hold Steady.

Vampire Weekend’s performance might have felt then like a happy anomaly, a fleeting moment of midsummer madness before festival orthodoxy, in the form of hundreds of mediocre indie bands, reasserted itself. But scenes like this are becoming increasingly familiar…

The influx of intelligent American bands might be a welcome panacea to the mediocrity of most contemporary British guitar music, but you can’t help cringing when you imagine what the Hold Steady must make of warming up the stage at V festival for the Pigeon Detectives.

‘I am quite shocked by our lack of response to these American rock bands,’ says [Geoff] Travis [of Rough Trade]. ‘We are in a kind of post-Libertines slough of despondency that we need to pull ourselves out of. I think we’ve been represented by a whole host of terribly mediocre bands in the last five years and I’m praying for a sea change.’

None of this is news of course, as it’s pretty much what I’ve been saying for years. It’s easy to point the finger at the upper echelons of the charts and despair about the state of the UK music scene of course, but while I’d like to think I’m a little more in tune with what’s going on under the radar in this country (particularly here in Glasgow) than the average Guardian journalist I haven’t seen a British band worth getting excited about since, well, the Libertines! I’m less easily pleased than I used to be, but I think regular readers of this blog will testify that I haven’t lost my sense of childlike excitement and slavish enthusiasm when I do come across something that hits me in that musical G-spot somewhere between the ears, brain and heart. You can’t argue with the statistics: of my favourite albums over the past few years, since I started recording such things properly, the vast majority have originated somewhere on the North American/Canadian subcontinent.

High on Stress are the latest who can count themselves members of that roster. Sending me an email headed you like Jesse Malin, the Replacements and the Hold Steady… you are cool… officially is of course a tried and tested means of getting my attention; playing with Slim Dunlap and Romantica at your album release show isn’t going to hurt your case either. The music, however, has to pass muster but I’ll tell you this: despite my disdain for streaming audio, every time I’ve found myself on a computer this weekend I’ve had one window open on High on Stress’ MySpace page. I hear shades of all the things I like in here: the earnestness and honest-to-goodness upfront rock music of Jesse Malin, the propensity to drop in a perfect, quotable lyric that seems common to my Minneapolis bands. “Cop Light Parade”, the title track to next month’s new album, calls to mind Pneumonia-era Whiskeytown – more alt.rock than alt.country influenced Americana. It’s good, solid rock and roll and I’ll be first in line when they start taking international orders on the new record. I hope you like it too.

MP3: High on Stress – Cop Light Parade [YSI]

We’re through to Edinburgh this afternoon for X-Files Improv. As I remarked to my mum yesterday evening, after we unexpectedly laughed and cried our way through Mamma Mia!, I seem to be regressing into fifteen-year-old nerd these days. I might just let my eyebrows get bushy and stop wearing make-up.