its been a while...
tomorrow we take Paris, France..
OUR NEW SINGLE!!!!!!! hello everyone
our next single is available on october 12. digital only, i'm afraid (of the future)
criminals is taken from our new album. you can hear it on our myspace. it is recorded by a man from fudgetunnel and mixed by a man from kenickie. that is how we operate.
the bsides are super new notheardbefore songs recorded in our practice room and at kel and juns house by dom james. there's also a lovely desktop wallpaper thing and a whole bag of love that isn't exactly tangible, it just pours out of your screen and bathes you.
we hope you like (buy) it.
in other news
- the arts for the album are all done. omgodsssssss its perfect. EVERYONE LOVES LEWES! i wish we could show some off but you'll all have to wait.
- we have plane tickets booked for south africa and you don't ahahahahahahahahaaaaa
- my teeth are all better now, thanks for asking
xlex
that i have wanted for AGESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.
k more news soon! bye!
xlex
cosytour, mind, its like were on two mini backseats welded together. in fact, you can see the join. we can't complain too much tho, our beloved maddie went to van-heaven last month, we're grateful for anything that doesn't involve walking. spirit lasts about an hour then the van dies on the m25 and we're stranded. hour and a half in the freezing evening hard shoulder and the van is bundled onto a tow lorry. we're shuttled to the next safe place down the road, which turns out to be the carpark for a long abandoned creepy restaurant. us bands wander round taking photos of ghosts and scattered chairs, whilst lea and pete (our tm/soundguy) and the AA men try and recalibrate the flux capacitor. 
they get bored way before us, the dilithium crystals in the van can only be accessed by a mercedes specialist. so pretty much everyone and the van get a lift to tonight's travel tavern while me and nestor and lea wait for a taxi. wait like, 2 hours. get to travelodge, finish our weed in the carpark, and go to sleep superexcited to see our replacement van.
our excitement is totally justified when we load up in the morning. the only spare van the company had is like, King Of Splitters. airplane seats! hard drive full of films! curtain dividers! magazine racks! seriously, it breaks our heart to get out when we drive onto the ferry. me and jun and lea pay €10 for a superbreakfast. thats like, £10. its a bit rubbish.... we drop our bags in the hotel in antwerp and get to the paradiso in perfect time. the show is waaaaaay fun, we remember where the nearest cafe is, and people totally remember us (as the idiot english band who lost their passports, but still) and we're treated so well. 
there's gin in the fridge and the now traditional film crew who drop an amazing hifi dvd of the show to our dressing room after. i demolish the stage slightly by accident at the end, i try to apologise to the crew but they just laugh at me. amsterdamn = awesome. its a total shame we have to leave before we sleep. everyone asks if we'll be back for london calling, i hope we are..
there are rails embedded in the floor and a madmax style train built above the bar. the staff cook food for us, and make sure we all have wine with the meal. this is totally normal in europe. in england you have to bargain with the promotor for mcdonald's money..
everyone's supernice to us. weirdly we're on last at stupido'clock, its pretty flattering people stick around. especially since the two support bands are terrible awful rubbish that makes the 8 of us want to apologise to everyone who has come out. they were english so we're allowed to say that. we have a bit of a lamed gig, stuff keeps breaking and the monitors are made of cheese. but we're pro enough to laugh in the face of electrical connections. there's enough people who know our songs to make it feel like home, even if they speak english betterer than us. and they all seem to love us. 
ahhhhhhhhdontworrrrrry says random beautiful french person, tis alll punkrockkkkk. we do superwell on merch, we were kinda worried, what with not having a record deal here and all. were staying in an etap tonight. but french etaps replace the rape hole with a bath. an actual bath. heaven. this isn't exactly how we imagined paris, apparently we're in the ghetto corner. but it still looks pretty from the 30th floor..
im half asleep in the van and i think i hear katie talking of how tonight's gig is in an aquarium. and then i wake up, and we load into an aquarium. serious. tis a wierd art/nature centre, there are venues and gardens and a cafe, all in this beautiful old museum building.
the venue crew are warm and witty people (total recurring theme alert). this gig's cooked meal and wine takes place an hour before we go on, so we're kinda unprepared. but nothing breaks and we're slipping into tour-smoothness. people are dead silent between songs, half thru politness and half thru translating what we're saying. i feel kinda patronising-tourist dumbing stuff down, but people understand us and dance about accordingly. aces fun. we don't get the lavish rider of sky larkin so we rob off their's. 
between us we have enough gin to get a whole battleship drunk. we swap an imaginary bag of diamonds for a block of hash with the lighting man, and at the end the bouncer asks us not not smoke it indoors. then he explains it's just because he quit so we should too.
loads of buildings have amazing lights on the side, it puts the empire state colouring to shame. let alone birmingham's random cubes. its fucking beautiful, these amazing modern skyscrapers with moving blocks of colour and all these ornate cathederalesque buildings. one of them is missing a roof, so amid all this we can see into a small hall where a couple are sharing a bottle of wine looking at us drunken tourist wankers.
mushroom dip say wha? the gig goes dead smooth, the new songs feel like old friends and the crowd feels like new friends. we play super well (we heart loud stages) and the room fills up and bounces around. the soundman keeps giving us joints, we get educated on birmingham bands we've never heard of, seemingly everyone wants to talk to us and have us sign stuff, its acessss egotrip. only it's not cos they 
speak perfect english, and we barely know the difference between "ladies toilet" and "sausage based curry thing". we stay over the river in a beautiful hostel, its called the black sheep, and is, to all intents and purposes, a free house to stay in. our bedroom is the circus room, theres a tent drawn on the walls and various circus flyers pinned to the walls. we wish we had the dragon room tho..
find katie in a tiny record store buying an ancient sonic youth vhs i so would have got if id have got there first. instead i get a wierdy live casiotone single and an approving nod from the owner.
we sell a ton of shirts, probably mostly down to my "NEU!" sign. there's this weird avantgarde US band on between us, a blatent double booking. i sit on merch and talk to this young couple, soaking up their subtlety free english ; "this band, they are ruining everyone's smiles, by the way is that a girl's hoodie you are wearing?" a lovely guy called phil manages to deliver us some weed. katie's kinda scared by him cos he takes her guitar away and returns it with all the strings tuned to A. at one point, phil asks me to tell the matronly woman on the door how we've invited him into our dressing room. i do so for the sake of drunken bonhomie and receive clearly disapproving nods from matron and mr matron pssssh ..stand outside smoking joints with the natives, pile in to van and drive to munich. being on tour messes up yr bodyclock. we've had about 3 hours sleep, driven all over the place, played a gig, got stoned and we're still not tired. so we walk into town to the burgerking in munich station, and sit watching the 3am gothics mingle around. i stay up too late delving into nestors ds collection, get forced to stop when my sd card dies. byebye every game ive saved in the last month..
not much to do on a sunday apart from take photos of ornate buildings and not get 
runover by trams. gamble not eating breakfast against the chances of a filling rider, gamble pays off superwell. 4 different plates of meats and cheeses and fruits and salads and ting, and, right, gin, yeh, thas 47%. thats like, 11% more powerful gin. halfway through our set these 3 crazy guys appear and start airguitaring and dancing and stuff, they
totally make the night for us. after the set they tell us how they drove from austria to see us and how we were advertised to be on later. thanks promotorzzzzzzz! apart from that, the whole night is aces. the merch desk is next to the stage and we sit on the side and get drunk and sign things and watch les alloutes. after, we go back to the hotel and sort of slightly trespass in a railway yard to get some photos of TGVs at night. then we get chased out and i make jun take photos of me doing illegal and dangerous things i wont mention (but the pictures are fucking rad).
8 hour drive epic! we're up at 6, then fall asleep again in the van only to be woken up in a service station at 9 for feeding. we're machines, we need to be kept well. get hideous toothache, fall asleep on the front seat, megalegroom yay. arrive in berlin and step into most surreal 
day of tour so far. get out the van to get closer look at skylarkin superrfan autograph hunters, only to be presented with superglossy prints of us to be signed as well. tis a good start. wander to chemists - "me, english, tooth kaput", get given "germany's strongest painkillers". is a general sign of decent nights when the staff buy tshirts from you before you even play. berlin has a proper party vibe, and there are people here who're proper into us. like, they have records we made even i dont own. epic fail again with stage times, meaning today's Gutted hat is worn by anita from dresden who drove 2 hours on her own for 3 songs. watching her dance to us is kinda intimidating, she knows the words better than i do. nexttime next time next time.. painkillers and gin = winning combination, i have one drink and feel pleasantly toasted all evening. backstage is upstairs in a big hall with a snes and a giant buffet. me and nestor throw 70c polystrene planes at everyone then we have to say goodbye venue hello hostel. 
8 beds in a room but we're all so tired no one even notices who snores most. sleep aided by amazing "kebap", easily the healthiest and tastiest kebabs we'll ever eat, ever..
today we've been touristy. well, i mostly slept in the van and scavved internet in a 
carpark and accidently smashed a bottle of gin. but 
everyone else went touristing (and bought me a proper soviet hat from checkpoint charlie) and then we watched the police corden off a massive road for a motorcade and then we drink in the street for a bit before we go to white trash, which is like the acest burger restaurant in the world. we eat the same burger that elvis used to eat when he was in berlin. allegedly... feel about as bloated too. drive to rostock in preparation for ferry tomorrow. we're staying in an automated etap. tis kind of eerie, the grass is all overgrown and you get codes for yr room from a desk computer. how future is that? goodnight worlds!
higher power than mere hells angels and
turkish ultraviolence and culture clashes. (and we really need to get paid), so we check our 6s, move and fire, watch the shadows and unload into the venue in a slightly hysterical paranoid manner.
who never agrees with satnav thus surrealling up my day even more. buy a sandwhich on green bread with christmas coin money, have half a cigarette in a smoking pod and get bundled back into van and drive thru more postrock landscape beauty. stop for meatballs in ikea. lovely.
gig has shonky sound but is quite fun, we have a few dedicated followers here, and some total mentals. one girl grabs my ass and starts talking superfast to her boyfriend, i ask her what she's doing and she tells me she's helping sell our cds. someone asks nestor if he can watch him pee. someone takes a shit next to the van whilst were loading out. all this whilst the rest of the totally stunningly good looking population wanders round the pub fighting and kissing each other. this is the maddest country in the world but no ones out to shoot us so we sleep pretty good. we dont want this tour to end.
y at some kind of pixies themed venue, so here we are. not before another trip to ikea where we find you can get FREE SALAD with the meatballs. we get even more lost getting out, it takes half an hour of simsville. anyway, debaser, yeh, there's a range of pixies song themed cocktails, but our van is creaking and weighed down with booze. and we can't take it with us. and leaving all the drink with the crew after a tour is really bad form. i got really drunk and don't remember much of this night. we played ok. kelly's best friend told us a hella embarrassing childhood memory about her. there was a pavement ist rad shirt. the toilets weren't unisex. our friend v from paris lost her job and decided to fly out to see us. that's pretty punk rock. the stage had curtains, i had two unimpressed hardcore girls standing infront of me thru our whole set, and we ended the night as ever, by packing away things into boxes, turning down offers to go to nightclubs we'd hate, and driving to traveltavern for sobering sleep.
or being impeccably cool and foreign, is more financially and 
emotionally stable than we'll ever be, lest we write a christmas song (retirement plan 1) or get a super-profitable sync (hello top gear!!!!!) and because we're of the righteously naive indie rock demographic (we've got surbUrbia here. on video. pirate video) who judge by music taste and converse choice it's slightly tragic that, the more people who like our band = the more awesome people we meet and more amazing cities we see = the less time we have to meet people or hang out in said amazing cities. it's like, showing you all these alternate worlds you could live in if you got a real job, and at the same time reminding you what yr missing back "home". this is still The Best Job In The World, tho, we're just mardy from jetlag..
