=AND() not working as expected. Two true functions don't give true result

I have this function for conditional formatting and it works and colors my cells depending on of the blank state of the cell in the first row relative to my current column:

=ISBLANK( INDIRECT( ADDRESS( ROW(), 1, 1, FALSE ), FALSE ) )

If I try to do this exact test twice and use the AND function, the result is FALSE:

=AND( ISBLANK( INDIRECT( ADDRESS( ROW(), 1, 1, FALSE ), FALSE ) ), ISBLANK( INDIRECT( ADDRESS( ROW(), 1, 1, FALSE ), FALSE ) ) )

The AND() function should be getting a TRUE result from the ISBLANK function returning TRUE in both cases (they are the identical test that worked alone above).

What am I missing? I have not used excel much but this seems really strange to me.

BTW, I have my cell references configured for RC notation (row, column).

I stuck the second formula into a cell in a new blank worksheet and the cell shows "TRUE" so it is just a problem with conditional formatting. How strange.