Chancers or troubadours?

When Sergeant Buzfuz's album fell into my lap, I knew two things about them - they had a very silly name and were a part of Britain's burgeoning antifolk scene.

Now, musical sub-genres can be confusing - I myself was once an innocent bystander during the days of electroclash, one of the main tenets of which was dressing as a retro air hostess - but my grasp on antifolk had always been that it was to do with New York bands from a few years ago such as the Moldy Peaches. That is, based on dressing up in bunny suits, being lo-fi to the point of indolence and writing puerile but occasionally very funny songs about crack and poo.

My New York hipster contact agrees, saying "Moldy Peaches singer Kimya Dawson refuses to let go and, frankly, I'm considering unsubscribing from her email list. There's only so much you want to know about your favourite singers' bowel movements and uteri - the lengthy and detailed discussion of which are absolutely characteristic of the antifolk aesthetic."

And, of course, antifolk isn't really anti-folk. I mean, you have to feel very strongly about something to be anti-it, really. Don't you?

There are certain things that well-meaning, sensibly minded people are generally against - cancer, for example. Most people are anti-cancer. But anti-folk?

New York antifolk troubadour Jeffrey Lewis essentially agrees. "I think it's a cool title. The fact that no-one knows what it means, including me, makes it kind of mysterious and more interesting than saying that you're a singer-songwriter," he says.

Staggering around the internet like a punch-drunk boxer, I immerse myself in the British offshoot of this scene and its many talons and facets.

Filthy Pedro, who run the antifolk.co.uk website, come across like a more scuzzy Hefner, but with the foot fetishes replaced by a song explaining that throwing up on a girl is worth "ten rock and roll points."

Meanwhile, the oddly titled David Cronenberg's Wife are more like a budget basement Fall and write songs about masturbation, murder and Ukrainian girlfriends.

The feeling grows that the British scene is basically a bunch of ramshackle DIY oddballs who value storytelling and gross-out honesty over actually being about to play one's instruments, which is no bad thing.

Tom, the man behind David Cronenberg's Wife, says: "I may not be welcomed in some places for singing about some of these things. But antifolk embraces me with its dirty, deformed hands. Not having the full quota of fingers myself means that we're kind of like kindred spirits, though I don't really want to label what I do."

These kindred spirits are more punk-folk than antifolk and bound together - or at least, pritt-sticked together - by a certain ethos. But Brighton's The Bobby McGees, armed with nothing more than an out-of-tune ukulele, wilfully confuse matters by claiming to be "tweecore" and their most infamous song, I've Got no Friends, is sickly pathetic and hovers ominously between being so terrible that it's good and so terrible it's terrible.

And there is a lot of dross around. Spinmaster Plantpot is a fat man shout-singing: "If you show me how you vomit, then I'll show you how I poo" at you and Oil Rig Catering are little more than a good band name in search of an idea. Antifolk can sometimes come across as simply a label that allows a bunch of talentless chancers to justify their incompetence.

But there is hope. Yo Sushi is an infuriatingly talented young chap who possesses a rare alt-country soul, a Ray Davies-esque storytelling gene and a sweetly melodic voice. He will hopefully release an album once he finishes his dissertation.

And this brings us back to Sergeant Buzfuz. Buzfuz's main man Joe Murphy runs the leftfield Blang night at the 12 Bar Club and his band's new album The Jewelled Carriageway has a rich, warm, string-laden sound and luxuriates in the seedy underbelly of urban living.

Filth and violence are never too far away. "The city is trickling with blood," "bouncers with smiles like a crowbar," "the meat market lights are on red" and "turning the TV up again so we can't hear the screaming."

It's an album that most makes sense at 4am on a cold autumn night when the foxes are ransacking the bins outside.

Most memorable of all is the last song, which features bestiality, orgies, incest, putting corpses on trial and the seduction of nuns. All good traditional antifolk subjects, one could conclude. But it is, in fact, a history-narrative of the first 1,000 years of the papacy. It's perverse and memorable, modern-day folk music. There ain't nothing anti about it.