Euro Tour Recap

Archive on the site, Parker journal, US/CAN/AUS dates.

We begin the North American tour tomorrow but still wanted to gather a recap for posterity. We archived a collection of content from all over on our website. Feel free to reach out on instagram if you have anything you think would make a good contribution.

But in the spirit of substack, and warming up to the blog revival it’s spawned, here is a light tour journal from me (Parker). Please note this was all written after the fact, any errors or omissions are faults of memory.

By Storm in the Miami airport on the way home.

Day 1 - Dublin - Watched J. Edgar on the plane. Twitter gave me the impression it had homoerotic undertones so I was shocked to find the entire thing is the story of his gay relationship with Armie Hammer, mixed with a surveillance innovator biopic. Kept pausing to update Mando on each escalation between Leo and Armie. Cried towards the end. Him and I flew in earlier than Nate and Nick so we had the night to ourselves. We went to Mulligan’s because I saw it was mentioned in Dubliners (the only Joyce I’ve liked). Great pints, like nitro cold brew. Mando split the G on his second try. We also discovered the spice bag at Xi’an.

Day 2 - Dublin - Nick and Nate were still getting over jetlag so Mando and I continued our separate Irish adventures in the morning: coffee then The Portal then a different dish at Xi’an then Irish coffee. I wanted to visit the mummies at St. Michan’s Church because I had just read about it in an MR James story on the flight over, but their weird opening hours conflicted with soundcheck so I wasn’t able to. These missed pilgrimages are a large part of touring. The show went well, a little rusty. It was a new setlist altogether (MGGG w some BTTIGTP) so we had to get used to the ups and downs. Could’ve been louder too.

Day 3 - Dublin to London to Edinburgh - flew into London City airport just to drive an hour.5 to Heathrow, pick up the rental van then head to Edinburgh. Started reading The Maltese Falcon. Fell asleep and woke up to Ash Riser (RIP) singing “we’re far from good not good from far, 100mph down Compton Boulevard” as Nick was driving like his usual self—no distance between him and the car ahead no matter the speed, weather or road conditions—down the small 2 lane road that finishes the last hour or so to Edinburgh. Him and Nate were halfway through a full listen of Section.80 which sounded like it’s just entering its fine wine nostalgia stage at 15. We got to the hotel to find that our room was only booked for the next night and was fully occupied so we had to find another hotel. Nate and I got terribly overpriced and bland Indian food before bed.

Day 4 - Edinburgh - Woke up early again, spent the morning taking photos for the show promo post. Being the second day I made the most serious go of it but ended up just using a photo from the night before because the logo was being washed out by the sky. The tour exclusive vinyl arrived at the venue but it was too dark to get good photos of them for promo. Our first show with Tommy Barlow.

Day 5 - Leeds - Started The Man Without Qualities by Musil, what an opening. The functionaries smoothing over the accident, then zooming in on Ulrich’s aesthetic little enclave, a trad-poster’s dream home but for 1913’s modern man. Was able to get good enough photos of the tour vinyl on the street outside the venue.

Day 8 - Bristol - Only show to provide the preferred whiskey option on the rider: Mellow Corn. Didn’t know it was an exotic import out there until the show rep referred to it as “expensive whiskey.” I forgot the push stand after the show in a rush to leave. Maybe I’m just getting older and crankier but I don’t remember being rushed out of venues after the show happening as often as it did on this tour.

Day 10 - Brighton to London - Alhaji Suya, 10/10.

Day 11 - London - ICA was the platonic ideal venue. Empty black box where all the money was spent on nondescript stage infrastructure. They had cheap strobe lights small enough to fit in a suit case so we ordered some after tour for the US run. The venue itself was amongst old government buildings in a part of London I had never been to. Our van had to park in a lot with Bentleys and black SUVs because the rest of the building was old money apartments rented out by billionaires. When we were leaving to get food one of the billionaire’s kids was kicking a soccer ball with the security guard like on Succession.

Day 12 - Paris - Nick left us. We picked up the new van in Paris, a major upgrade. Mando and Nate returned to the hotel after the show but I went out with some new friends from instagram. They took me to a bar, then a different bar with a great burger, then a club playing American disco music making the most French selections possible. Hearing how much they paid for rent made me want to move to Paris. Got to the ibis around 5 and the guy at the front desk was incredibly hostile.

Days 13/14/15 - Antwerp - we had 3 days off so we stayed in Antwerp because it was so much cheaper than Amsterdam. Tried local beers and have been desperately trying to find anywhere in the US that serves Seef since getting home. We tried a place called Taqueria Rico and it was good enough to hit the craving for Mexican (a first for Europe). It was €25 for 3 tacos but we came back the next day. Played basketball at a court in the city center. I hadn’t packed any shorts or sports shoes so I was wearing jeans and Mephisto’s. After a few games I thought I had a rock in my shoe so I took it off only to find a quarter sized blister on my foot where all the skin had come off. Nate and Mando got me bandages that were like giant pimple patches with a blister healing gel inside. Finished The Man Without Qualities vol. 1 and ordered the second volume on ebay. Enjoyed it a lot, kinda like Proust for men.

Day 16 - Amsterdam - Specific stories would take up too much space here but just noting that Dutch people make me incredibly violent.

Day 17 - Brussels - Mando and I were complaining about the entire drive from the hotel to the venue. Found out it’s a thing on tiktok how bad drivers are in Brussels. Then Nah explained to us that right hand turns always have the right of way.

Day 18 - The Hague - Rewire Festival. Met a band from Venezuela called Weed420 in the lobby while checking in so we went to see their set. Incredible. We ended up hanging out with them the rest of the night after our set. Tried going to the 0PN show but artist wristbands were not powerful enough to get in. I was rude with the festival staff, asking if they had the term “fucked up” out there. Bad hangxiety over it the next morning but I always take solace in remembering Karl Ove’s hangxiety in My Struggle, makes it feel more universal.

Day 19 - The Hague to Copenhagen - 12 hour drive so we split it into three shifts. I went last and had to drive over this at night. The wind pushing up against the van would shift dramatically every time I passed one of the columns so I was white knuckling it.

Day 20 - Copenhagen - Did a solo hifi coffee crawl in the morning (La Cabra and April). Met up with Mando and Nate at a food hall for mediocre butter chicken. After soundcheck we spent at least half an hour looking for parking. We thought we had found one when a guy with a dog appeared telling us it was 95% likely not ok. When we finally squeezed into another spot 20 minutes later he reappeared like an NPC and congratulated us.

Day 22 - Warsaw - Had wanted to visit Gombrowicz’s apartment just to get a picture with a small plaque on the building but after sound check I was too hungry. I regret not going now. We all set alarms for 4am and convened in Mando’s hotel room to watch the Suns play-in game. Not only did we give up a late lead to lose and effectively damn the entire season (best case Thunder first round, which turned into a sweep ofc) but it all happened at the hands of a forty ball from the IDF soldier. A truly awful thing to wake up at 4am for. I was too angry to go back to sleep before call time.

Day 25 - Budapest to Vienna to Belgrade to Lisbon - Our flight from Budapest to Lisbon was cancelled last minute so now we had to drive to Vienna to fly to Lisbon with a connecting flight in Belgrade. Our second flight had a bachelor’s party type group of Serbian men who started a group facetime during the flight attendant safety stuff so it was feeding back. Once we got to Lisbon we were excited to once again play the greatest 150 cap venue in the world: ZDB.

Day 26 - Barcelona - Last show of the tour. Was coasting on fumes at this point physically after all the back to back shows + extra flights. The venue rolled off everything below 40hz so it was a pretty underwhelming finale tbh. Great charcuterie in the green room though.

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Again the North American run with Lerado Khalil (!) and Corridos Ketamina (#) starts tomorrow May 7 in Austin, Texas. We will also be playing in Australia in August. The full list of dates is below. All tickets can be found here.

USA/CAN:

AUSTIN - May 7^!

HOUSTON - May 8^!

DALLAS - May 9^!

ORLANDO - May 12^!

ATLANTA - May 13^!

CARRBORO - May 15^! (low)

PHILADELPHIA - May 16^!

DC - May 17^!

NEW YORK - May 19^! (sold out)

PROVIDENCE - May 20^!

MONTREAL - May 22^!

TORONTO - May 23^! (sold out)

BOSTON - May 26^!

COLUMBUS - May 29^!

MILWAUKEE - May 30^!

CHICAGO - May 31^! (low)

MINNEAPOLIS - June 2^!

KANSAS CITY - June 3^!

DENVER - June 5^!

SALT LAKE CITY - June 6^!

VANCOUVER - June 8^#

SEATTLE - June 9^#

PORTLAND - June 10^#

SAN FRANCISCO - June 12^#

LOS ANGELES - June 19^# (sold out)

PHOENIX - June 20^#

AUSTRALIA:

PERTH - August 21

MELBOURNE - August 22

BRISBANE - August 23

SYDNEY - August 25