+ Sky Larkin +

o!

Holy Moly, today’s the day! Our debut album The Golden Spike was released into the wild after being hand-reared in captivity. If you see it wandering around your local record store or digital music outlet, we would appreciate it if you would give it a good home as we are rather attached to the little blighter. (Look, here it is hanging out with Van Morrison)

There are about 7 million people we have to thank for this occurance, we are tallying up the list at the moment but (as well-documented cheese-brains) we will inevitably forget someone essential so THANK YOU ALL for helping us make a freakin record, its been a long journey on our dreamboat.
On Wednesday we are doing a free instore at Rough Trade East at 7pm on London’s Brick Lane, see thee thurr?

After that, I’m jumping on the train to fair Cardiff to go be a guest on the lovely Bethan Elfyn’s Radio One Introducing show (I am told you can listen online if you aren’t in Wales)

Then on Thursday I am DJing at two different places with Jen of’off’Kruger Magazine under the guise of our new DJ duo Midwife Crisis. It will be probable carnage and I’ll probably get tipsy and play French Kissing In the USA so don’t say I didn’t warn you. My phone has just died so I can’t actually tell you where (the ramshackle nature of Midwife Crisis is difficult to hide) but I think one of them was Buffalo Bar. Is that a place in Cardiff? I shall go ask Jen…

aaaaaand if you want to read the Sky Larkin UK tour diary for Clash Magazine click right on this here sentence.
phew!
night night
k x

Sky Larkin are well-travelled sorts, accustomed to taking their effortlessly breezy indie-rock on the road. And right they are to do so, for it’s a treat for the ears and no mistake.

The Leeds-based trio’s debut album, ‘The Golden Spike’, is out this week on Wichita – look for a review of it on ClashMusic.com soon. The band’s Katie Harkin – lead singer and guitarist – very kindly kept an account of the group’s January 2009 UK jaunt, published below as one of our semi-regular Tour Diary features.

The tour finds Sky Larkin playing alongside the similarly excellent Pulled Apart By Horses, a domestic act you’re sure to be reading more about on these pages over the coming year. Read, listen, learn, enjoy… go see ‘em, yeah?

Read more….

By the satisfying thud of a weighty item dropping through the letterbox. I live in a flat however, but I imagine if you do sleep within earshot of your front door then it’s even better.

If you’ve ordered something off ebay then it’s pretty good. But what if you haven’t ordered anything at all? Most of the time it’ll be something shit like that pair of socks you left at your dad’s at christmas, but verrrry occasionally it’ll blow your tiny, half awake mind.

Like this morning, when I woke up to this

… and nearly shit myself.

How nice is that ey? It looks better here

What I’m trying to say is – Go out and buy it now, because then you get the digipak version. It has GOLD on it. The writing is in GOLD. that’s GOLD people.

It’s not on the Jewel case or even the vinyl.

It’s a thing of beauty people, get down your local record store and get it.

or…

Puregroove / Rough Trade / Coalition / Wichita. Support your local record store and order it from one of those or, go BIG and use Amazon and HMV

There’s also iTunes, and other digital stores.
Oh, and look at the itunes store on Monday.
Something wicked this way comes
D $TORM

Hello fellows,

Still enjoying the snow? I don’t know about you but I think I might actually be getting a little sick of sledging… A terrifying thought I know, I’m sorry.

Anyway, I just thought I’d pop in from the cold and say hello (again) and thanks to everyone that came to the our shows on the Huw Steven Presents Tour along with Pulled Apart By Horses. It was chuffing brilliant, every single night. Check out these awesome snaps of us playing at the awesome ICA in London by the awesome Anika, here. Awesome.

We’re this very moment finalizing all the plans for our next great adventure around Europe with our old pals Johnny Foreigner. I believe we’ll be calling at:

Paradiso, Amsterdam – 22 Feb

Fleche D’or, Paris – 23 Feb

Witloof Bar, Botanique, Brussels – 24 Feb

Gebaude 9, Cologne – 25 Feb

Molotow, Hamburg – 27 Feb

Manufaktur, Schorndorf – 28 Feb

Ampere, Munich – 1 Mar

Mascotte, Zurich – 2 Mar

Magnet, Berlin – 3 Mar

Rust, Copenhagen – 5 Mar

Garage, Oslo – 6 Mar

Debaser, Stockholm – 7 Mar

I cannot wait. Seriously. Usually its nice to have a few days of nothingness after a spurt of shows (particularly shows as mental as the Brudenell Social Club on the last night!) but within 24 hours I was raring to go again, I’m getting all fidgety just typing about it.

But there’s more! After that we wing it over to Texas for a week of beautiful sunshine and beautiful barbeque, oh and amazing shows by amazing bands from all over the world at SxSW 2009! Expect blogs galore gushing about every band we see and hear…

Anyway, we’ve got even more things to look forward to. I have it from reliable sources that our copies of The Golden Spike are in the post at this very moment! I managed to snatch a quick glance at one in Jumbo the other day but fought the urge to buy our own record because I reckon the world might have imploded or something like that, plus I’d possibly look like a bit of a tit.

Righto, I’ve got hot chocolate to drink and a fire to sit beside. Oh yes.

Stay warm and see you soon,

Nest x

Holy Moly!

My legs are more bruise than skin, my mind is blown and my brain cannot yet compute, but I know that if the Huw Stephens Presents Sky Larkin and Pulled apart By Horses tour was a muffin, it’d be as awesome as this one

(from itsnicethat.com)

tour diary, photos and a rockumentary shot by my own shaky hand (with far too many X-treme close-ups) shall surface soon. We larks shall hibernate for a wee while and surface with trinkets to say THANK YOU for making our hearts a-glow.

katie
xxxx

Johnny Foreigner are coming to Europe with us. It’s going to be fantastically sweaty. well one-third fantastically sweaty. Everyone else is quite normal as far as I know.

Jesus Christ.
I can’t wait.

Douglas

I have been informed that these little beauts have sold out on pre-order (thank you!) but a small herd (50 I think) will be released into the wild (selected UK indie record shops) on Monday (26th) and another little flock will be accompanying us on our Huw Stephens Presents later this month.

If you do give one of these pretties a home, I implore you to send us a picture of what you can see through it (perhaps the very thing you wish to Beeline towards). Then we can collect them together and have glimpse at each other’s lives.
For example, through mine I can see a grey day in the north of England with a tiny slice of blue sky trying to break through.
They don’t have to be as emo as that though.

Always a pleasure and never a chore,
Katie “I was a Mid-Morning Hand Model” Harkin
xxx

If you want to be the envy of friends, co-workers and flat mates then you need to print out this tour poster drawn by Tom from Pulled Apart by Horses.

Print it, cut it out, stick it anywhere you like, but particularly somewhere where people might see it and think “oh, I didn’t know either of those bands were playing at [a venue], I’ll DEFINITELY go to that” or “oh, i like those colours, whatever that gig is, COUNT ME IN”.

It’s guerilla marketing or something, so do it. You can just stick it in your house if you like, perhaps in a ground floor window, or just make a pillow case out of it.  Go on.

Download Big file / little file

Yeah, biggggggggg news, you can pre order our album on CD or Vi-motherfucking-nyl from
the wichita shop and in reward for this you’ll get the full album in MP3 played live at our beloved Brudenell social club in Leeds.
And to follow that… Videos of these sessions from the thegoldenspike.co.uk (RSS Feed) to come in the weeks leading up to the album release (February 9th).

If I were you I’d go and do this right now, it’s only £8 for CD, or £12 for Vinyl (limited run) and I would. The artwork is mint, check it below, and click on it to go to the artists’ site (they are mintER).

So enough of all this linkage anyway, it’s dinner time. Thanks for making this year so much fun, hopefully next year will be even better.

Oh, one more thing. Happy new year…

Love from Doug
x

Also known as Anika In London must be one of the busiest gigoers in London town. Anika popped along to see Sky Larkin at PureGroove back in October and wrote a review on her blog (and took some ace photos). She posed some questions to the band and here’s the response….

5 things you’re excited about in 2009?

KATIE:
1. Roaming over more of the world to see new and familiar faces and pastures.
2. The release of The Golden Spike so we finally have a document to share
3. Moving to the seaside (I’m moving house)
4. Reading and writing as much as possible
5. Root Beer

A ‘challenge’! Can you think of two sentences that rhyme to describe your band?

KATIE: We make noise. A girl and two boys.

You have a new record coming out in 2009, which you recorded in Seattle with John Goodmanson, what was the recording process like?

KATIE: We spent a week at Death Cab for Cutie’s studio (they kindly lent us drums and amps as we came over with just our baggage allowance of guitars) and a week at John’s place. The recording process involved lots of ice coffee (katie), Red Mountain Dew (Nestor) root beer (katie), PBR (Doug) and 35 cent ramen noodles.

….continue reading here….

OMG. do we hav a treet 4 u guys.
two things,
1) we’re not doing any vinyl for the bee line single (that’s the 26th of January, fact fans). I KNOW. it made me feel a bit ill as well, but we’re actually doing something even better. maybe.
WATCHES. yeah, really sexy swatch style watches. with lyrics on. and clear straps. when we get one ourselves we’ll stick a photo up.

If you go here then you can pre order the watch and get a couple of mp3s sent to you right now. snazzy huh?
I’d honestly recommend getting one quick because it’s the only physical release we’re doing of the single (you will be able to get the mp3s in January mind..)

2) so, on the 26th of January (when the single comes out) we’ll be in Glasgow as part of our Huw Stephens sponsored headline tour, with Pulled Apart by Horsesand local supports to be announced.
Here are the dates;
22 Bristol, Louisiana (tickets) / 08713 100 000
23 Cardiff, Barfly (tickets) / 0844 847 2424
24 Nottingham, The Bodega (tickets) / 08713 100 000
26 Glasgow, King Tuts (tickets) /  0844 999 990
27 Manchester, Night & Day (tickets) 0161 236 1822
28 Oxford, The Bullingdon (tickets) / 0844 477 2000
29 London, ICA (tickets) / 020 7930 3647
30 Brighton, Audio (tickets) / 01273 606 312
31 Leeds, Brudenell Social Club (tickets) / 0113 245 5570
Hopefully see you at a couple, we’ll hopefully have new shirts and stuff to sell as well.

I think that’s all for now.

Thanks ants, Thants.

Doug
x

Hello!

We are in belgium and we played at the botanique tonight with los campesinos and lovvers, it was the first night of this tour of europe we have embarked on.
The botanique is a beautiful and unique venue, as the name suggests its an old botanical gardens and is real perdy.

As we are sharing a van with lovvers (who are truly loveable rogues) there’s a 8:me dude:me ratio in the van. So I decided to go for a walk round the botanical gardens to let the smell of stale boy farts air from my clothing. As I walked around a small lake outside I spotted a nest with GIANT eggs in which looked like somerhing out of the jurassic park incubator scene. Isn’t it a bit chilly to be laying eggs? Is there some belgian megaswan I am unaware of? my mind was blown, now its time for sleep, see you soon amsterdam, germany and italy!
Kxx
Katie x

Hello everyone,

just a note to send some halloween tricks and treats, yum. We’ve just got home from our trip to CMJ which was superfly. We venutured further north for some top secret fun but snowstorms meant our internal flight was cancelled and it was dramarama in order to get back to JFK in time! We made it to our flight home thanks to the wonderful Jill who drove us through the night over ice and snow, what a lady!

have a great evening, we hope its spooktacular!

love Douglas Obama, Nestor McCain and the ghost of Katie Harkin

x

and here’s something truly terrifying….

Sky Larkin at the British Museum from Sky Larkin on Vimeo.

sadface.

we’re getting a flat bed lorry back to Leeds from up here in Glasgow so we’ll still be able to play Brainwash festival tomorrow, thanks Barry the AA man!

Horse the Van is dead, long live Horse the Van.

k xx

…like this!

It was great to have a few days in Berlin to soak up the city, on our last visit with Mr O we only spent a few hours there before we had to haul ass to Calais to get our ferry.

Popkomm was great fun and it was a pleasure to be able to meet up with Wichita/City Slang/Co-op friends new and old.
In other news, thanks to everyone who sent me well wishes, a day of sitting in the dark in my PJs helped my eyes get back to near normality, though I still look like a Panda-Vole.

also , have you seen THIS? schwing!

love and understanding
KEH x

Apologies to everybody in York, we had to cancel the gig last night because of an unscheduled trip to A&E.

We were standing at a pedestrian crossing on our way back from dinner and were squirted with what was either screenwash or some kind of bright blue detergent from the back window of a passing car. This would have been just annoying and not hospital-worthy if I hadn’t caught it with my eyes.
Needless to say it hurt, and five eye baths later I was back in the van with two swollen eyes, a rash down my face from whatever it was and NHS paracetamol as souvenirs. Many thanks to the bouncer at fibbers for his kind assistance and to York A&E for their swift care.
Apparently there is CCTV on the junction where it happened so the police will inform us if they get a number plate from the tape. Apologies also to the hot club boys, what a way to start a tour!
York, I never knew you had it in you.

katie ‘ crusty eyes ‘ harkin

x

Dear Diary,

we made it home from London safe and sound, despite cold so sharp that my toes left my body consciousness and my feet felt like hooves on the van pedals.
Tomorrow we head east to Berlin for Popkomm to play with Port O’Brien, Get Well Soon, O’Death, Those Dancing Days and future/past/near-present tour chums Los Campesinos. Sounds like a recipe for a tasty evening, I hope we get to once again sample the miracles of german brewing. I wonder if Nestor still has my passport, I hope so… Eastward ho!

katie x

Dear kind souls, what a feast concrete and glass festival was! We didn’t expect to see so many of you so thanks to those that chose larkin.

We are currently driving home in our steed Horse the Van. The heater in Horse is broken and there isn’t a cloud in the sky tonight,it seems winter has descended and we are not suitably atired. we have charged ourselves up by hugging the radiators in donnington services,hopefully we will make it back to homefires before we turn into sky larkcicles

Goodnight all, k x x

greetings and salutations,

I write this from the city of my birth, we larks are back from our tour with with Mr O and the mighty Mystic Valley Band. There was an 11.5hr drive from Berlin to Calais that threatened to unpin the laws of space and time and my brain was an unfortunate casualty, it is only now after a few days of motionless recouperation that I have been able to assemble my thoughts. Here’s some snaps from our time in Europe to get things started….more prose when i regain full composure, thanks for stopping by! katie xxxxxxxx

PS we owe The Driving King (aka musical mastermind Mechanical Owl) a solemn eternal debt of gratitude for helping to steer Horse the Van across lands and through mountains. All Hail The Driving King!

back from playing friday’s leg of concrete & glass festival at 93 feet east, curated by our sister and brothers from respective other mothers at Wichita Records. Big up!

Hello fellows,