all good action movies get a sequel./..

23.7.2008

...and seen as though our last tour was about as blockbusting as anything sir arnold of schwarzenneger ever put his inconsiderately long name to, we felt it needed a bastard offspring with a bigger budget, an all star ensemble cast and more explosions. the sequel is upon us.

so fearne, the lovely fearne, did unleash the exclusive news of our second headline tour of the year and it's going to be bloody smashing. we're playing the fucking astoria, man. shit's a dream come true. also, much to our sex peeing, we're finally playing cardiff. officially and properly. not a secret show in le pub that you couldn't have gotten into with a police warrant. not our drunken friends, irresponsible drunken house party, which you could only get out of in police custody. a real show. in a real venue. in the ACTUAL cardiff.

thanks to all of you for voting for us over at kerrang. we're in the running for best single for 'give me what i want' so get on your digital space-hopper and bounce your little ass on over to www.kerrangawards.com so that we can be forever immortalised in kerrang history and take home a glorious metal K. if we win awards from magazines starting with I, G and H, our mantlepieces could be a talking point at our opulent, celebratory dinner parties. we'll all laugh heartily and slap our knees as i carve up a nice slab of bambi or babe, whilst i bathe my tired, gong accepting feet in a vibrating bowl of £100-a-jar caviar.

we're also playing a show for kerrang in camden barfly and tickets are on sale so go hunt them fuckers down like rabid dogs.

today i visited a sunny london town to iron out the last of my paperwork for our first overseas jaunt to japan. i got a glimpse at our flight details and got giddy at the thought of flying because i'm totally obsessed with it. what's more, we're flying with BA (yeah, this is the part where i shamelessly laud these capitalist, eco-ignorant pigs, maaan) which means free drinks for all 11 and a half hours of the journey. 2 beers at 35,000 feet and you're pretty much rocking it like ronnie wood with a 19 year old soviet cocktease (oh!) waitress. i actually love everything about flying. airports. paying over the odds for stuff in the airport that i wouldn't buy anywhere under normal circumstances... a prime example would be toblerone or fruit pastilles... IN A BOX! all very exciting to me and well worth paying £38 for.

aeroplane food. winner.
compartmentalised trays. winner.
duty free magazine. winner.
pissing off the person behind you by reclining to a trigonometerrific 160 degrees, just as they try to pull the foil lid off their orange juice. winner.
movies on a plane. winner.
snakes on a plane being played on the plane when you're scared of snakes. fail.

so yeah, you could say i'm looking forward to that. japan is going to maybe be the best time ever. i never even thought i'd visit it. here's hoping bill murray and scarlett johansson are in our hotel.

in recent weeks, we've had some pretty killer things happen. we played t in the park, which was nothing short of a bloody revelation. a million people came. that's right. one million people came to see us. it was bloody fantastic and it was a travesty having to leave the stage. thanks for everyone who turned out for us instead of watching scouting for girls who, to be fair, got a bit of an ear-bashing from my loose lipped onstage excitement. i'm sure they're bothered with their gold discs and impotency inducing pop-schlock and illogical lyrics that give further optimism to the tragic belief that elvis's fat ass isn't dead. i got to live a childhood dream and watch stereophonics from the wings. got a free haircut and discovered that alphabeat are some seriously awesome dudes and dudette. as well as playing, i got to see justice! they blew my fragile little mind. despite watching them on my own in a tent brimming with 15,000 revellers who, it became abundantly clear, were off their merry chops on the good-time-tic-tacs. either way, i danced a little bit and generally be'd in awe of them being much good n stuff. also saw band of horses, the hold steady, my morning jacket, lightspeed champion, fucked up, vampire weekend, mgmt and, of course, rage against the machine. all of which were american (or british or canadian) dreams. good times. discovered that if you drink enough cans of the juice based relentless drink, you can urinate glowing toxic waste with its own electrical current and provide yourself with artificial light in times of poorly-lit portaloo need.lesson learnt.

also, andy of atticus was kind enough to let us borrow his auto assembling tent. fantastic piece of kit. innovative design. throw tent in the air, tent is erected. bosh. done. end. however, what the baffling instructions don't explain to any semblance of clarity, is how to put the little fucker down, and by god, we tried. battling through the comedown of 3 days and nights wired like a commodore 64 on relentless., we tried for an hour to follow the diagrams and instruction, which were about as much use as the tent was when it decided to rain... i.e. none. at one point the diagram seems to show the tent turning into a 4 foot peach. with this in mind, we drove the 8 hours home with a half erected tent laying precariously between driver and backseat passenger. good effing times.

our video for saturday is doing well on the tv and i think it's topped a chart or two, which is always nice. do continue to vote for it so it stays there for a whitney houston/bryan adams length of time. it's out on august the 11th and it has a NEW SONG as a b-side. it's called 'satan's cellar' to me, but a printing error has put it down as 'no better'. both kinda work and i'm sure you don't need any more trackname based confusion, but i just can't resist. but yeah, please go pick it up and spin it all the time. day and night.

had a bit of a cgi orgy over at cineworld this week. saw kung fu panda (skadoosh) and wall-e. the former is a hoot and reinvigorated my love for monsieurs hoffman and black. the latter was nigh short of a fricking masterpiece. i'll definitely be going to see it again. in a feat of complete wrongness, i found myself oddly attracted to a largely featureless, floating robot with LCD renderings for eyes. her name is EVE.

this is no ordinary disney crush. this is not ariel the smoking hot, redhead mermaid or belle and her meandering curiosity and dalliance in bestiality. this is a floating white robot who speaks like a daft punk record. i don't know how they did it, but she really got me in the end.

what else is there? GO BUY TICKETS TO OUR TOUR AS OF 9AM!!!!!! WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

we played itunes fest. it was h'amazing. the fruits of our labour are for sale on the itunes store. they took 6 songs, including good boys, easy tiger, give me what i want. they're live from our set. i chat shit and sound like i'm singing on a treadmill as i carry a backpack full of bricks and brass ornaments, but it's all good. it gives it character. so you get songs and character all for the princely some of £3.49. character usually costs a shit load and there's never any guarantees. also, as if all my christmases came at once, fred perry decided to offload some of their beautiful garments onto us (thanks, you fucking lovely people) and itunes were nice enough to give us a very, very neat ipod touch each. some days, the perks are a real kicker.

i think i'm going to wrap this up like a cheap burrito. thanks for all coming out to the shows. please, please, please go pick up a ticket to the tour tomorrow. we'll be announcing supports very soon and we have some frankly KILLER shit going on for this next tour. it's going to be non-stop from doors to death.

oh yeah, check us out in this month's rock sound! funny pictues. the fro was unwisely embraced and there is now damning photographic evidence of it. meh.

some people have mentioned hearing us on an advert for callum best's new mtv show. this is true. they'll be using girls for the shows theme song and credits and so and so forth!

sorry we're not playing newcastle, your town or barnstaple. unfortunately, them's the breaks for now. we're trying our best to get around everywhere but joel's only allowed out of his oxygen tank for a limited period of time, so we have to use this precious commodity wisely, fairly and economically. you just can't win them all. i know. i tried.

ok. i'm going to bed because this is absolutely ridiculous and the longest thing i've written since i left school.

niiiiiiight lovers

xxxxx
aled