Fanfarlo to headline Loop Festival in Granada :: news
March 09, 2010
Last Call with Carson Daly performance :: news
March 05, 2010
The owls are not what they seem. :: diary
March 05, 2010
Oh California. I’m never happier than when I get to wander around in sunglasses, surviving solely on avocado, surrounded by palm trees. Should I miss the British sea side towns, there’s always the beaches of San Diego, filled with the same tourist crap and arcades. Should I miss Sweden… well, there’s a lot of raw fish at least.
California – our name in the lights
San Diego: we seem to be going places – last time we played here, it was at the Casbah, a dive bar that is so close to the Lindbergh airport that the planes almost touch the roof of the venue when they’re landing. This time, we are playing at a luxury spa and golf hotel. Trying to leave after the show, we literally get lost in the maze of perfectly manicured shrubbery lining the endless, eerily quaint paths between the luxury chalets. Playing in a ballroom through a rehearsal space sized PA makes me feel I’m in something like a cross between Twin Peaks and the Shining.
We’re playing the next night at the same spa hotel, and again lost in the maze afterwards, we come across an outdoor jacuzzi overlooking the golf course. Naturally, we get in and end up hanging out the rest of the night there. I reiterate my wishes to move to California. Our manager is with us for this particular stretch of the tour, and wonders what all the fuss was about on the last tour – life on the road is easy!
Of course all this is about change. The night after our LA show I wake up sick as a dog, throwing up every half hour, cursing the fact that this is the first day of the tour we have a substantial drive to do. The drive to San Francisco is the journey from hell, and I spend it curled up in the back seat, like a vomiting clockwork promptly getting out my empty Amoeba Records plastic bag every half hour, while the rest of the band merrily spend the drive playing word games.
It luckily turns out to be a 24-hour stomach bug, and I’m fine in time for the next show. But over the next days the virus jumps first to Amos, then Cathy, who bookends our show in Seattle with a frantic dash to the bathroom. At this moment, we are still waiting to see where the killer will strike next, hoping we will somehow get through the rest of the shows without cancelling. Ride that luck dragon!
Us by the Twin Peaks falls
On the way out from Seattle we can’t resist stopping off for a visit to the Twin Peaks shooting location. It’s not the first visit for some of the others, but the falls are as mesmerising as ever. I’ve never seen waterfalls before, and could have happily spent a few hours just staring at them had we not had a soundcheck to go to in Spokane. At the diner, I sadly had to give the cherry pie a miss to give way for actual food, but that mushroom burger was damn fine. Unlike the coffee, which like at every American diner is just brown water. I think agent Cooper’s only flaw is possibly his taste in coffee.
Love,
Simon
By a highway in Montana
Five Dates and Valentine's Day :: diary
February 28, 2010
No doubt about it, we were thrilled to be returning home after our “character building” foray through Europe. Seizing the opportunity to spend a night in their own beds, Cathy and Simon jumped ship upon arrival at Heathrow airport, while the rest of us, including tour manager Nolly, flew to Manchester, where we were greeted with the news that Cathy and Simon’s instruments had been removed from the connecting flight since the owners weren’t travelling with them and that constituted a security risk. We got them back a day later in time for our first engagement: a live session for Marc Riley’s radio show on BBC 6 Music. After our last session in autumn, Marc had put us in touch with a lady called Bernie who offers bands playing in the area an affordable alternative to the ruthless cycle of hotel-venue-motorway. Add to that home cooked food, friendly conversation and her cat Sooty and you’ll understand why Bill Callahan, Women, Jens Lekman and Sufjan Stevens and countless other artists have all stopped by, and why, when Bernie and her family emigrate to Canada, Manchester will lose one of it’s unsung heroes.
Weekend at Bernie’s
Our five date mini-tour officially began onboard the Thekla, a fifty year old, permanently moored ship in Bristol’s Mud Dock. Here we met our touring buddies, Race Horses, who played a blinding show of fuzzy-pop-choral-noise-psych, while our performance was punctuated with technicals gremlins, but it did make for an odd, fun show.
The first time we played in Birmingham it was at the LG Arena. The second time a lot less people showed up, the third time we were in Alabama, so we had high hopes for a fourth Birmingham show, which, though midweek with the threat of snow, had a superb turnout. Thanks y’all…oh wait, wrong Birmingham.
Our last UK tour had concluded at the Brudenell Social Club. However, this return visit to our favourite venue in Leeds would be as a quintet. Our chosen set, which we’d been tweaking since Europe featured “Tuesday (You Come When We Call),” the b-side to our first single, which we’d only ever played once before in the UK in 2008 and even then that was acoustically.
Justin sucked in by Bejeweled’s tractor beam
And then, London, home! Time to offload the accumulated Euros, Swiss Francs, Danish and Swedish Kronas and pick up the boots I’d left by my front door, which I thought about every single day I was treading in snow. At ULU, we were reunited with friends, family and the Freelance Whales, the band we’d criss-crossed the States with last year. High spirits all round, almost celebratory in atmosphere tinged with nerves. The gig itself went without hitch, though I’m still unsure what people think of our Fleetwood Mac cover. It’s hardly an obscure choice since the album Tusk sold 300,000 copies in the UK (I looked that up) but unfortunately none of the people who had bought the album were at our show.
The following day, in the van enroute to Brighton, Leon enquired to what we’d eaten for breakfast. His response? “Tinned pineapple chunks. It was all I could find to eat in my kitchen.” At least the motorway service station food was of a palatable quality in the UK. The final gig was a suitably early one for a Saturday night by the seaside. It was the reverse of yesterday’s show – intimate and sweaty. Race Horses bid us farewell and wished us the best of luck for our next mission: an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman.
Photo finish with Race Horses in Brighton
Valentine’s Day was spent in an aeroplane. After my regular meeting with the US Customs and Border Police and JFK airport’s lost luggage counter (my snare drum, clothes bag and a miscellaneous ‘band’ bag full of essential eqpt decided not to travel to NYC with us), we had four hours of sleep before our load in to the Ed Sullivan Theater at 7am. Four hours later we were given a callback time for soundcheck and we jumped into a cab to get clothes shopping, since I was still wearing the same clothes I’d travelled to NYC in…
Wide awake at 6.59am, 219 West 53rd St, NYC.
…and that’s probably not the done thing when you’re about to appear on US telly for the first time.
Amos
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