THIS TOUR

Hey wow, we are going on tour AGAIN. It's like all we every do. That's not true of course, because you know that we are almost done recording our new album, which we wrote during the world cup and recorded during the start of the prem this year. But like the last two times we tried to record albums in one go, it keeps getting interupted by playing concerts. I can tell you now that we all feel like we "dodged a bullet" by not having to go on the tour with Against Me in October. It was too much, no one really likes them anyhow, and we'd been to England to many times on this record. We're excited to be here now tho, on our own (literally - I"m the only person in the Air Canada arrivals lounge in Heathrow right now as I dictate this to my assistant). Recording albums is really fun, so it's almost like you don't want to have too much fun all at once. You want to spread it out. Doing chemcom was like a lavish 18 course meal spread over 9 months. If there was another metaphor involving "9 months" I would have, I just couldn't think of anything. With that one we recorded a bit, went on tour, came back to record a bit more, went on a huge tour, recorded some more. At this point it was mostly just 2 or 3 people in the studio tops so it was like working because you had to be there and actually do stuff everyday and produce something at the end, but not like band work because it wasnt 6 people crammed in a tiny room for 2 weeks straight. We switched studios a bunch of times and kept things fresh and just added and added over half a year. And then went on tour when we needed more money.

This time is mostly going to be the same. Me and Jonah got dropped off in NY (well dropped off in DC, where we got a bus to NY) after a tour to Florida, and we tracked 27 songs on our own with this guy Shane Stonebeck who is the chillest engineer there is. Jonah left after doing drum takes for all 27 songs in like 3 days because he had to go get married or something, and I stayed and did all my guitar beds and some leads over the next 4 days. It was a very intense schedule of starting to track at around 2pm, after I'd got a big bag of groceries, and then we'd just track straight until like midnight if I had to go out the party that night, or some nights we'd just push until 4am and track until I feel asleep. My bed was a pullout couch in the front lobby of the studio, so my head was about 2 feet from 25th street, which woke me up every morning as it got busy. Shane usually ordered his dinner after retired, and the day would start all over again at 2 when I finally got the courage to "wake me up at 11" as he would tell me the night before.

So we did that for a while and then went on some other tour. The stuff we'd done in New York was mailed to my parents house in the suburbs while we were away for the weekend in Vegas. If agoraphobia was setting in inside our Vegas adventure, it was in full fledge now - they pulled us screaming out of our Vegas rooms, dragged us down the leather elevators to the lounge and stuffed us into waiting taxis to bring us to the airport, the glitter and fresh air of Las Vegas never actually touching us. We got into our planes, and Josh picked us up from the airport and drove us straight to another studio when we started working on the next part of the album. We did that for the next 2 weeks until we're basically read to go to the next stage, which is vocals. Josh, Damian and I met several times at Dufferin Mall to hash out the structure and narrative of the David Comes To Life story. So the last few weeks have just been writing lyrics and working on the story. That's coming along very nicely, so we thought it was the right time to go on tour again:

NOV 18 LISBON Portugal @ ZDB
We've never played in Portugal and have always wanted to. A few of us have been on vacation. Sandy is Portoguese, so she knows lots of German guys who live here. I came here on a road trip last summer to Lisbon and Porto. I told some guys I met at a soccer bar on my street this weekend that I was going to Portugal to play music and they were impressed, especially with the band name. Maybe the dude from Animal Collective will come hang out with Sandy?

NOV 19 PORTO Portugal @ Plan B
Porto is a nice funny little town. Everything kind of on a slant, not sure how we are gonna be able to get our gear into the club without using a funicular. Which Jonah would be really into.
anyhow.

NOV 20 MADRID Spain @ Palacio De Deportes
You might remember us playing here a few times but at way smaller venues. We thought the way things where going we'd be playing bathrooms and laundry mats in Madrid before long. This is the first Arcade Fire tour show we're playing, so no one really knows what to expect. We've played in front of really big crowds before, but mostly at the tail end of massive festivals where there's already been lots of cider imbibbed. These shows we figure will just be 11,000 very polite upstanding indie rock adults waiting for us to be finished playing, rather than rip stuff off the walls or throw their shows at us, like we're used to. The fact that shows this big can even have walls is a foriegn concept. Seeing this band play in SNL this weekend made it just that much more surreal.

NOV 21 BARCELONA Spain @ Palau Sant Jordi
Pretty big place in the haunted olympic cat village. I hung out at the Espanyol stadium that's right next door a few years ago to catch my breath, and it was full of cats. The cemetary on the south side of this hill...it's full of haunted cats. Will probably end up pulling a "vegas" here. We have the next day to hang out so if you know if Feran Aldria is in town or can take us to a bullfight or whatever, get in touch.

NOV 23 BORDEAUX France @ Heretic
Somewhere I don't really know anything about. I think garage music is popular here? And wine or something? The team used to be good, and then they traded that guy Chamahk who looks like a dinosaur, to the wrong team. We usually have a great time in the tiny French cities we play.

NOV 24 MARSEILLE France @ Le Dome
This place looks really cool, I just googled it (the Dome, not the town). All I know about this place is it's meant to be seedy in the way stop-over towns on the water are. I stopped over here on a train ride from Paris to Barcelona, got off the train to go outside, took one long look at the place and got back on the train, to have dreams of the first round of the Champions League where we would beat Marseille for ever and ever after.

NOV 26 LYON France @ Halle Tony Garnier
The vibe I get from Lyon, having never been there, is from Haneke movies - fast past, ultra modern, small town vibes and secrets and then something creepy happens and you never figure out why. Second city vibes for sure, OL are perrennial also-rans.

NOV 27 Schio (Vicenza)
Very excited for this. Have no idea where it is, what the town is called, anything. Probably a dark exciting northern Italian shithole.

NOV 28 MUNICH Germany @ Zenith
Really disappointed we aren't playing where Bayern plays, a giant stadium that lights up on the outside depending on what team is inside. Really cool. We played Munich before. We took a tour of the hip part of town and found a skate shoe store called "Ughhhhhh".

NOV 29 DUSSELDORF Germany @ Philipshalle
I think we may have flown out of here a few times. Can't remember ever stopping to hang tho. Anyone who could name their city that sounds chill enough to have a good time with though?

NOV 30 BRISTOL England @ Fleece
We played here a loooong time ago, like the first time we ever toured England in like 2004. You can bet that someone told us that a guy from the Varukers or the Exploited or some shit was at the show. Mostly we just played Euchre for ours with Bickle until the show started. We have never been back for a show, but stay in Bristol several times a trip because Ben has a very sweet Aunt who puts us up in her home whenever we show up at all hours of the morning. Plus there is a massive Tesco.

DEC 1 LIVERPOOL England @ Kazimir
Not sure what I can say about this place. Our first ever UK show was in Liverpool.

DEC 2 NOTTINGHAM England @ Rescue Rooms
There is an ice skating rink here. I don't think we've been back since we were DIY. We almost booked a day off on the 1st. THE SHOW BETTER RULE.

DEC 3 LEEDS @ Vice Warehouse Party
It's for Doc Martins.