This week the greatest band in the world ever is...: Down I Go

I have been accused from time to time of being a "hipster".

I am of course far too cool to know exactly what this means, but from what I understand "hipsters" are the modern equivalent of what in my day were known as "arseholes". A key trait of the hipster - and the reason why such outrageous and baseless accusations of arseholery are levelled at me - is a love of bands that no-one else has ever heard of.

Exhibit A: Down I Go.

But listen. If I was actually a proper hipster/arsehole, I would have been into these guys from day one. I would then have loudly proclaimed them to be sell-outs as soon as they released a record, and banged on about how I liked them back before they started writing and playing songs, when they were just some sort of amorphous concept with a cool beard but you could tell they weren't trying to be cool and that's why it wasn't cool. Which is cool.

Instead, I am only just discovering their abrasive brand of educational hardcore at pretty much the precise moment that they go kaput. Which is a shame, because they're ace. They leave behind them a smattering of recorded material, which generally walks a very narrow line between intellectual and batshit mental.

Mostly I'm enjoying learning about Greek mythology, the world's most horrifying tyrants and history's greatest disasters (including the Great Boston Molasses Tragedy) through the medium of some bloke screaming over the noise made by a hardcore band falling down a very long and steep flight of stairs.