The Boy Least Likely To

so. in july of last year sara schaefer at best week ever compiled a list of the thirty most adorable covers of all time and our album cover for the best party ever came second, beaten only by the cover for the john denver and the muppets album, which i didn't mind losing to because i love that record, and any cover featuring a country music legend and the muppets is going to be difficult to top. although amanda applewood would probably think it should be top of the list of the most frightening album covers of all time, because the muppets genuinely scare her.

and if it wasn't exciting enough coming second last summer, imagine how happy we were when we appeared on the best week ever website again with the artwork for our new album the law of the playground, along with suggestions that we battle it out with john denver now to decide who is the ultimate champion. 

anyway, it's all very nice and makes all the hours we spent spray painting shoe boxes and pineapple tins seem worth it. two of the top thirty covers are in my top ten favourite albums of all time so i guess i must be drawn to albums with adorable covers, and here are two adorable album covers that didn't make the list that i'd include on mine. iced to mode by misty dixon and unreleased cutz and live jamz by the moldy peaches.

as the gauntlet has been thrown down, and as i'm working on the artwork for the best b sides ever compilation over the weekend with my brother, who does all our drawings, we're going to have to see if we can't do a third "adorable" album cover now that beats them all.

x

"when i saw you driving under the window with your head held high, with that terrible stiff necked pride of the defeated which i know so well; i knew that your comeback had been a failure like mine. and i felt in my heart for you. that's a miracle. that's the wonderful thing that happened to me. i felt something for someone besides myself. that means my heart's still alive, at least some part of it is, not all of my heart is dead yet."

- tennessee williams

we filmed the video for our new single yesterday. well, actually we filmed the second video for our new single, because it's a double a side so it has to have two videos. we've already made the video for 'a balloon on a broken string' which is on one side and then yesterday we were making a video for 'every goliath has its david' which is on the other side, and which johnny and andy from razorlight gave an unexpected world exclusive of when they played it for the first time anywhere on the radio on tuesday night when they were standing in for zane lowe. which was very nice of them.

i think the filming of the video went well anyway. you never really know how it went til afterwards when you watch all the footage back, and then you realise you looked like a complete idiot but it's too late by then. it wasn't until afterwards when i was watching back everything we'd filmed for the 'a balloon on a broken string' video that i realised i didn't have a beard in it. i don't remember not having one. i usually have a beard but i must have shaved it off. so now we have two new videos. one which i don't have a beard in and one which i do. in as much as my beard can be considered a beard. pitchfork did once refer to me as a "mustachioed lead singer" not a bearded one, and that made me wonder if perhaps i'm delusional and consider my beard to be more substantial than it actually is.

apart from worrying about facial hair, we've been rehearsing for the concerts we've got coming up. most of them aren't until march so we wouldn't usually bother rehearsing so far in advance, but then we're playing a little warm up show in a couple of weeks in london so we had to start a bit earlier than we usually would. if anyone wants to come to the warm up show then there should still be some tickets for it. we're onstage quite early, at about half past eight, so you'll even have time to go to the pub afterwards. which is nice.

these are the tour dates

thursday 5th february - london's soho revue bar warm up show

monday 16th march – leeds, the cockpit
tuesday 17th march – manchester, night and day cafe
wednesday 18th march – glasgow, king tuts
thursday 19th march – newcastle, the cluny
friday 20th march – nottingham, the bodega social club
monday 23rd march – brighton, audio
tuesday 24th march – bristol, louisiana
wednesday 25th march – southampton, the joiners
thursday 26th march – london, cargo

x

i got an ipod nano for christmas and i'm very excited about it. my old 32gb ipod is almost full and it was beginning to present me with some problems. basically i could never put it on shuffle and just leave it because it had too many complete albums on it and there were certain artists that dominated the pod. so if i put it on shuffle it would, within one or two songs pick an album track by either felt, the tindersticks or lee hazelwood or by all three of them in any order, or it would pick a demo version of one of our songs, because i use my ipod to check mixes and write words to, and that isn't going to get any party started.

but all that is going to be different with my new ipod nano. there'll be no complete albums on it, just individual songs. so that when i put it on shuffle it always hits a song i recognise and want to hear. so far i've put 157 songs on it, which means there's still space for about 1843 more songs. i had originally intended on calling it 'the party pod', but after i tried it out at the weekend in a party situation i think perhaps it would be more appropriate to call it 'the shuffle pod', just because i'm not sure how many other people would want to go to a party where my ipod nano was providing the music. and that's probably fair enough. 'no distance left to run' by blur isn't suitable for any sort of celebratory moment.

now, i just need to think of another 1843 songs that would get a party started before my birthday comes around.

x

it was like christmas morning all over again this morning. i got a big parcel through the post from maria at fuzzy logic and matt from the bicycles. it's a very exciting thing. it had five copies of the new bicycles album in, a copy of the bicycles dvd board game, a copy of the prairie cat album and an album by peter project, a merry christmas to me mix cd from matt and maria and a fuzzy logic recordings compilation. i'm just listening to the bicycles album now and it sounds amazing. i'll have to stay in all day now.

seeing as i'm staying in all day i might as well do something productive, and pete sent me an email yesterday with his top nine albums of last year so i thought it would be nice to share it with someone. i don't think he could think of a tenth album.

this is pete's top nine. two albums share the number one spot and he's used capital letters for the second year running.

1. Bon Iver – For Emma, forever Ago

    Beck – Modern Guilt

3. She and Him – Volume 1

3. Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Lie Down In The Light

4. Kanye West – 808s and Heartbreak

5. Monkey – Journey To The West

6. Peter Broderick - Home

7. David Holmes – The Holy Pictures

8. The John Baker Tapes Vol 1: BBC Radiophonics 1963-1974

and this is my top nine. the bicycles album is at number nine because i love it already, but i think it would be wrong to put it any higher after only two listens. by next week it could be higher up. it was difficult to decide the order between the top three. i loved the css album. it reminded me of waking up hungover, covered in bruises with sick in my hair. it's number three on my list of 'all time favourite albums about what happens when the party's over and it's all breaking up', after 'this is hardcore' by pulp and 'get in' by kenickie. i kind of expected to like the css album because i liked the first one so much, but the hold steady album was a complete surprise. i guess from now on it'll always be just one of those records that i fell in love with one summer. in the end though, i played the top three albums one after another and the vivian girls album won. there isn't a prize or anything though.

1. vivian girls – vivian girls

2. cansei de ser sexy - donkey

3. hold steady – stay positive

4. los campesinos! – hold on now, youngster

5. neon neon – stainless style

6. minisnap – bounce around

7. headless heroes – silence of love

8. deerhoof - offend maggie

9. the bicycles – oh no, it's love

at number ten i did have the manhattan love suicides album, 'burnt out landscapes', but as pete only sent me a list of nine albums i thought i'd only do a list of nine, and then because it was a compilation of singles and rarities i thought perhaps it didn't really count anyway. i do love it though. 

and my favourite song of the year was 'let's wrestle' by let's wrestle.

i haven't made any new years resolutions. all i want to try and do is release some records. i think we'll begin with a single in february... and then an album in march... and then perhaps a tour in march too. i think that'd be nice.

happy new year.