Tuesday 5.12.06 - 6pm: "Mince Lies"

I don't know why this blog is called "mince lies". It's neither funny nor relevant. Or clever. Also, if World Wars were started when people were slow at posting what-are-supposed-to-be-regular-blogs, Colin Roberts from Drowned in Sound could rightfully have started a World War by now. But I hear he's a pacifist.

Anyhow - we've been on tour - did you know?.. and now we've pretty much finished. . .and everyone is happy about this. At last some time to rest, and begin the slow winding-down process of living normally again. But the last few weeks have had some wonderful moments. The principal one of these was probably playing a night as part of Jo Whiley's "Little Noise" series. A wonderful series of concerts in aid of Mencap, held in the Union Chapel in Islington (a gorgeous venue..well, it's a chapel .. as you can probably tell by the name). Jo had put us on with Mystery Jets and Jamie T, which we were really chuffed about, and it was such a great night.

The way that Jamie can capture an audience with just his voice and an acoustic bass guitar is pretty mesmerising to witness, and as long as you weren't sitting in the balcony at the chapel, where you couldn't really hear a single word (I did for the first song but then moved down), his songs really came across well in the church, which is hardly the most obvious place to hear lyrics about Stella and suchlike.. he went down a storm and deservedly so... I can't wait to hear his album. And then the Mystery Jets, who were equally wonderful - I really really loved hearing them playing acoustically. I've always liked their music but I'd only really seen them live at festivals before, where the sound is never that great for anybody. But suddenly sitting in the front pew at a church, right up in front of them, I heard so many layers in their music I'd never noticed before. And they play like a gang too - you can tell they're all great friends. I bought "Making Dens" later that week and it's a great record. The music might be eclectic but it's definitely rock'n'roll in spirit. Also, the new songs they played in the chapel were maybe the highlights of the set . . which can only be a good sign of things to come. We're both in similar positions at the moment, with work on second albums only a few months away... so it was good to have a chance to compare experiences with them.

Blaine also paid tribute during the gig to our giant clothes peg, which I was highly honoured by! Yes, finally, the legendary 8-foot clothes peg, which Magrao had managed to persuade a record company to fly over while we were unsigned, made an appearance, though the wood's decaying a bit so it was more as an ornamental table than a musical instrument. It does look very cool, I have to say. Anyway, it was so exciting for us playing with people we really respect, and it was brilliant for us to have a chance to play acoustically too. We're definitely planning to do an acoustic tour next year after playing that gig. It's so nice to do something more stripped down, using more raw sounds - Magrao was amazing that night; playing accordion, glockenspiel, mandolin and saw - in fact he hardly played guitar at all. And losing all his guitar effects and my keyboard noises totally changes the way things sound - it's just simpler I guess, which after months of touring and playing very loud is a welcome change. Emmy the Great came on and sang beautifully on our song "Redwings".. the only annoying thing was everything was over-running, so we didn't get to do this version of one of our b-sides, "My Chosen One', which was going to be vocals, piano, double bass and 4 wine glasses, all sounding at different notes... . it sounded great in the soundcheck. Save that one for the acoustic tour then. Everyone also came on at the end of Sao Paulo for a mass percussion carnival / stage invasion - Jeremy Warmsley and Mr Hudson were in there somewhere too, and from what I could see, Kapil from the Mysteries actually climbed into Greig's new percussion instrument, a shopping trolley, and rode himself around. Great night.

Talking of acoustic things, I ought to mention that I'm doing two solo acoustic shows this Christmas, at Birmingham Glee Club on the 17th and London Bush Hall on the 18th. If anyone's bored for the night... looking forward to them, actually, though I suspect they'll be terrifying when they come up. Just playing songs, maybe some solo piano stuff - not quite sure yet. Richard Burke is playing in Birmingham too, Emmy the Great in London, and Godfrey Salter and his Invisible Ducks - a man who may actually know the meaning of life, is appearing both nights. It's something I've wanted to do for a while and Christmas seems an apt time for it...so come along if you can.

Beyond that, we finished our Scissors tour and played a few gigs in Holland and Scandinavia. Peep Show has become my new "Curb Your Enthusiasm" (I DON'T WANT TO GO TO WAITROSE. I WANT A FUCK BUDDY) . . our tour manager Neil has gradually been hypnotising everyone into believing that, if you're living on a sleeper bus, having countless series of 24 to watch is sweet heaven.. and slightly disturbingly, we've been watching Alex J Ward, Guillemots saxophonist (and a man who once vowed never to even have a mobile phone) turn into a man who plays chess on a daily basis - with the opponent being his Mac PowerBook. Playing chess with a COMPUTER. That is wrong. And Christopher Cundy, our other horn man, who managed to hold out on the mobile phone thing even longer, until our manager actually threatened him with assassination, has managed to buy a phone which - well, I don't know, I've never seen anything like it. It doesn't appear to work properly - although that's the case with many things - but it has writing so big on it when you text, that you can literally only fit about 6 words onto the screen at any given time. It's quite something. It's like a toddler's mobile phone. All this talk is perhaps making me sound like the kind of guy who upgrades his mobile every 6 months - I'm not: I see it as a purely functional thing and, when in an especially angry mood, have been known to throw one into the middle of a busy road and smash it in half, only to then scurry into the road between cars to try retrieving the SIM card. I am not a phone snob. But Chris's phone is one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

One question - why don't sandwiches have top halves in Scandinavia? Surely that's just turning the cosy world of a sandwich into, essentially, a cold pizza substitute that's impossible to eat without looking wrong in every sense of the word. Played an interesting gig in Copenhagen, in this place called Christiana, a sort of pocket in the middle of the town that's self-governed and essentially a sort of hippy commune. Quite cool. There was a very strange man hanging around afterwards on a bicycle, though, who kept saying "You're weird! But you're a good boy!" at me over and over again. Not sure what he meant exactly.

I also had the bizarre experience of waking up on the bus at the ungodly-ly early hour of 11am, for a phone interview, and having been commanded to do it in the downstairs lounge (the day before I'd done one in my bunk - I honestly thought I was talking quietly but I think everyone else on the entire bus was woken up by me blathering on "YEAH, WE'RE JUST TRYING TO POP MUSIC A BIT DIFFERENTLY, LIKE") - stumbled down there bleary-eyed to see that we were travelling over water. And still were 5 minutes later. And still were 10 minutes later. It transpired we were crossing, I think, from Denmark to Sweden - and the bridge literally just goes over the sea for miles. An oddly tranquil experience. Flying in a bus.

Anyway, I think that's about it. I really need to tidy this flat but I can't bring myself to leave bed. This is what touring does to you. Turns a decent man into a layabout. Anyhow.. . should recommend a good gig, the Drowned in Sound Christmas Party this year, on the 13th December at Kings College. It's a really good line-up of bands - I see Jeremy Warmsley, GoodBooks, Laura Groves, The Bellagios and The Courtesy Group are all confirmed so far. It's almost like the sort of line-up we'd put together ourselves if we were asked to curate a Drowned in Sound Christmas Party on the 13th December at Kings College. I guess if we WERE to do that we'd maybe play a brief set too, seeing as we were going to be there watching all the other bands anyway. But, hell, I have to stop dealing with hypothetical situations....

Alors... until the next time....

Fyfe Antony Dangerfield Hutchins