Hello there. You look well – have you lost weight? Yes, I am looking a bit bronzed, now you mention it. Why so? Well I recently came back from South Africa: returning to my native land for the first time in two and a half years. It was great. My mum and dad killed a fatted calf. I got to mock the English to a wide and receptive audience. Good times.

I wrote about my time there on the Convoy To Cape Town tour in this week's NME, but space and focus meant the piece was more of an historical account of the evolution of their modern music scene. This, on the other hand, is the bit where I embrace the infinite space the internet brings and bang-on in more detail about the best local bands you could look up on the web.

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Oasis' seventh album 'Dig Out Your Soul' is in stores today, and it's highly likely you've already heard it, given that the record has racked up almost eighteen million plays at www.myspace.com/oasis.

The reviews have been mostly positive – although none of them quite as wildly enthusiastic as Alan McGee's assertion that 'DOYS' is as good as The Beatles' 'Revolver' - but if there's a broad critical consensus, it's that the album starts off more strongly than it finishes.

Our own 8/10 review, while mindful of a "handful of duds" such as 'The Nature Of Reality', concluded that 'Dig Out Your Soul' represented the "strongest start to an Oasis album in years".

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Greetings from the Foggy City, San Francisco.

Actually so far we’ve avoided any of the real pea-soupers that this area has become infamous for, although as I look out the Bay Bridge – a silver-looking crossing not too dissimilar to its better known cousin on the other side of town, the Golden Gate Bridge – the clouds are starting to look more like grey London-esque rain clouds rather than the fluffy cotton buds you’d expect of California.

So what is NME’s News Editor doing in San Francisco? Nope, Didz hasn’t gone to ground here in the wake of Dirty Pretty Things split, but I am unexpectedly here with some of their British contemporaries.

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The overwhelming response to yesterday's blog on the bands you'd most like to bring back from the dead got us pondering the flip-side: which acts should never reform?

A quick straw-poll of the office just threw up Echobelly, Sleeper and - surely the runaway winner - Gay Dad.

Watching the video to 'Oh Jim' makes me feel acute pity for the 17-year-old me who actually bought and sat through 'Leisurenoise'.

OK so it's hardly The Smiths splitting up, but news that Junior Senior are calling it a day caused a twinge of low-key regret amongst anyone who'd ever spent a drunken evening shaking their coconuts to the Danish duo's guileless, ultra-camp pop.

Like a panting dog with its head stuck out the window of a speeding car, Junior Senior's puppy-dog enthusiasm was infectious. Their child-like excitement even extended to their official valediction on Myspace, which listed all the "crazy highlights" from their brief time in the sun, from "dancing with Bobby Gillespie's mum" to "walking the beautiful streets of Nashville".

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Razorlight have just made their new single 'Wire To Wire' available to download from www.myspace.com/razorlight.

It's a pretty radical departure for the band, since the song features practically no guitars. More gospel ballad than indie anthem, it's certainly a brave choice of comeback single. You can listen to it here (although bear in mind this is a reduced-quality radio rip):

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