Darkness - the right to choose

YOU'LL see a list of best ever albums, a list of best ever gigs, a list of best ever songs with the word elephant in the title even, but you'll never see a list of the best ever band names. This is a troubling oversight and has to be summarily corrected by awarding the honour (in perpetuity) to a four-piece band from Austin, Texas called I Love You But I Have Chosen Darkness.

In as much as names can tell you anything about a band's style of music, you would expect ILYBIHCD to be some godawful Scandinavian death metal band who sounded like a bad Black Sabbath covers band. Thankfully, the now officially best named band in the world are, at the very least, a very good band. Despite the Texas upbringing, they have a very novel take on that very specific doom'n'gloom music that emanated from the northwest of England during the early 1980s.

Their debut album, just released, is Fear Is On Our Side. I did try sending them an e-mail instructing them to call the album Whatever You Are Called, You Must Already Be. There's no reason for this title whatsoever (except that it's a quote from the Algerian born epistemologist, Althusser), but either way they didn't get the e-mail in time.

The vast majority of record labels out there - whether major or indie - would have forced ILYBIHCD to change their name before agreeing to sign them. There's plenty wrong with the name in record company speak: it's too long, it won't sit well on posters or album sleeves, some shops mightn't stock their product etc. However the label the band are signed to, Secretly Canadian, practically made it a condition of their contract that they keep their name.

There used to be a type of music fan who would buy something merely on the basis of which label released it. This practice dates back to the early days of the indies, but expired somewhat in the 1990s. The arrival of the Secretly Canadian label might change all that.

Labels such as Postcard, Kitchenware, Setanta, 4AD, Beggars Banquet, Rough Trade, Sub Pop and Creation used to have a coherent roster and certain quality control levels. It was usually a given that if you liked at least two of the acts on the label, you would probably like the majority of the rest of the bands on the label.

Because of the rise of Nirvana and Britpop and the increasing commercialisation of the music industry in the 1990s, though, ye olde indie label found itself to be an anachronism and they all fell like dominos as the Majors came shopping for instant cred. It's now the case that even the people who run what's left of the indie labels don't know who the real parent company is. Frequently it transpires that even the most indier-than-thou label is ultimately owned by Motorola . . . or Pizza Hut.

Which is why a genuinely innovative indie label such as Secretly Canadian is to be welcomed. Based out of Bloomington, Indiana, it's a small operation that carries a big kick. The success of their star signing to date, Antony and the Johnsons, has allowed them to pick up on a number of other atypical but fascinating musical acts. They are also home to the yet to be fully discovered Richard Swift. His Collected Works of Richard Swift Volume 1 double album of last year was an amazing piece of work. A big success at this year's SXSW, Richard Swift will be overground before you know it.

And there's plenty more hidden treasures on the Secretly Canadian label - there's the also brilliantly named Swearing at Motorists alongside Windsor for the Derby and the soon-to-be-big Danielson Famile, a gospel-indie band who count Sufjan Stevens as their full-time banjo player.

You're better off getting in now with this label and these bands, before they're plastered all over the music comics. And on a point of indie etiquette, if you do insist on abbreviating I Love You But I Have Chosen Darkness's name, the done thing here is to refer to them as "Chosen Darkness".