our US tour is over and I'm waiting to get a flight from Newark airport in NY back to London. some storm warnings just came in, so we're wondering if we will be delayed, but hopefully not. we didn't sleep much after the gig last night in Washington D.C. and now I'm just trying to stay awake for a bit longer until we can get on the plane. Anyway, I have time on my hands, and I'm feeling a bit dazed at being finally and suddenly at the end of the tour, after heading slowly towards it for the past month, so this blog might be a long one. The tour was a really good time for us - we got to play with some great bands...my favourites were Tender Forever, Anni Rossi and The Arcade Fire, and we drove all over the country to play 20 gigs - the first one in Bard College, NY seems like a very long time ago now. touring has a really strange effect on your perception of time. everything seems stretched out and intense in a nostalgic way, sometimes while it's still happening because you know it can't last, like late nights on the bus with Tender Forever and Heather who became our good friends over the last few weeks, standing on stage in the soundchecks at the Arcade Fire gigs looking out at these huge empty theatres and getting shivers, all the expectation for the gigs, the hauling of our equipment in and out of venues every night, the longing for food and showers and sleep and quiet and then a nice crowd to come to the gig, the excitement of a new town, the failed attempts to make contact with home, the everyday annoyances that come from spending a month in close quarters with a small group of people...but in the end there is everything you share that makes this bubble of time, and there are nights when the gigs feel like they mean something to the audience and we remember why we came here. my favourite gigs, outside the AF gigs which were a totally different experience to our headline shows, were NY, LA, St Louis, Philadelphia, and Sasquatch Festival for the shere joy of looking out at one of the most beautiful landscapes I've ever seen, while singing - it was an amazing experience. The AF gigs...I really love that band so it was a pleasure to see them play every night - their gigs blew me away, and for us opening up for them it felt like a challenge to try to win over the audience - or a part of it at least - as most of the people there probably hadn't heard of us before, and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't, but when people did know us or got to like us and shouted out - we heard it and it was great, like running into an old friend in a foreign town surrounded by strangers. The venues we played with AF were huge and stunning, often quite overwhelming, and it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance for us to play them: I felt that and it made it special, but there is something so intimate and electrifying about playing in a small place that when we played our own gigs it meant so much more. I'm looking forward to the festivals in the summer, being outside in the sun and seeing loads of bands. But right now all I can think about is coming home. Ja ochen ochen ochen skuchaju moi muzh!