a restlessness and also a curiosity (andrew)
The muffled sound of RAM’S Pocket Radio comes from inside Met Leeds. I snuck off into the Elephant Riders van to write you all this note.
It’s a thrill to be playing shows again with RAM’S, our wonderful new friends from Belfast. Their band is crammed into a tiny vehicle, the way that all bands (certainly including the Deez) start out. On account of this, we were happy to give their drummer, Rick, a ride down from Glasgow this afternoon. He experienced a full dosage of Darwin Deez glee as we immersed our van in Everything Everything’s brilliant Man Alive album.
Greg and I went out jogging with Louise from TEED (Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs). We bobbed and weaved through hills and courtyards and fountains as the sun set and the glowing windows of Leeds came alive. Louise said that she is going to bike the 55 miles from London to Brighton on the day of that show. Such adventure. I am tempted to tag along… I wonder if Darwin would be okay with that… We are lucky to have such cool bands on the road with us. Zara and Nina, the TEED dancers, played Mafia with us after the show in Edinburgh, and kindly braided our driver Seb’s hair. I had an interesting conversation this afternoon with Orlando, TEED mastermind, about how he has to scurry off to Oxford tomorrow, our day off, so that he can finish his next single, which his label is going to release immediately. He still needs to write another verse, with only a day to go!
We are tinkering a lot with the set these days. Darwin plays his Toby Goodshank cover solo on guitar. Last night we introduced a quiet cover by the Weepies. Darwin and I have reworked and started performing a song of mine, Beth and Oliver. Today we did a hilarious and epic 12 bar blues instrumental jam during the lengthy sound check. We experimented with transitioning from Bed Space into You Can Call Me Al by Paul Simon. It’s a lot of covers, at the moment, but I feel it’s a good sign. I see it as an indicator of a restlessness and also a curiosity within Darwin. I can tell that this same energy that’s driving Darwin to try out these sometimes-silly, sometimes-out-of-character modifications will soon transform into the inspiration that will become his next album.