Since we missed several festivities since we last wrote it seems appropriate to say happy new year and happy easter, we hope you got as many Lindt bunnies/giant kinder eggs as your heart desired. My parents buggered off to Russia for the week...so I got NOTHING. I'm still angry. And I hate all of you smug chocolate-d to the brim bastards.

OK I think I've recovered now so we can actually get on with filling you in on some of the Los Camp shenanigans of late. Since we last rambled several important events have occurred in the lives of Los Campesinos!

In no particular order

o We released our debut album "Hold on Now Youngster" to critical acclaim from Glamour Magazine. Sadly they did not throw a free suscription into there 4 out of 5 star review.

o We released "Death to Los Campesinos!," our first "proper" single and it got to number 490 or sumin like that

o We got unsuitable prefix's before our names in a article in NME. For anyone that's confused by that - Ellen no longer has pink hair...I still have flame hair though, so I'm not bothered.

o We met Louis Walsh and Sonia off Eastenders

o We made a fanzine and it was pretty.

o We went to SXSW and had the best time ever. Officially.

o This blog got published in NME again, so therefore Aleks and myself are published journalists. That's sooo going on the CV.

But to start with we began the year with a jaunt around the UK, Ireland and Europe with our lovely friends the supremely talented Johnny Foreigner (for the first leg anyway) We also got supported by a cast of sometimes younger, more sprightly and infinitely more talented troupes of musicians e.g ultcult and sparky deathcap who made us in awe of them/jealous of there skillz and slightly aroused.

We also did our first live TV performance and got to hang out in a green room, the drinks AND biscuits were free and Louis Walsh told me (Ellen) I looked like Dido. He also kept making reference to me being a Russian hippie. And so far more suitable adjectives are born: "Dido lookalike Ellen and Russian hippie Aleks".

We started out the tour of course with the Bath Moles type gig which involved some Panther Girl moonlighting from Aleks and our first experience of people knowing the words to the album before it was released (you cheeky people.) Yes, I can now tick 'being a Panther girl for the night' off my list of things to do before I die, a lifelong ambition of many I'm sure. Oh and we were gifted our second cherry pie of our band career...keep 'em coming...please.

We sold out King Tut's in Glasgow meaning we were given a free bottle of whisky, enough to motivate anyone! This was despite copies of the Stool Pigeon being readily available in the venue - the album got 1/5 (or maybe it was 2, I can't quite remember but something tells me 2 is a bit too optimistic.) The rest of the tour seemed to also go rather swimmingly with a gig in a rehearsal room/aircraft hanger in Reading, some self indulgent drunken performing in Portsmouth which lead to some livejournal slash fan fiction about Neil and Gareth's onstage antics.

If we were going to write some fan fiction about these two it would go something like this:

"Neil shredded out a fat solo on his guitar whilst making eyes at Gareth who so totally wanted to do him, and they lolled about it before they made out on stage and it was the sexiest thing ever OMG!."

We may release a book.

During the first half of the tour, we had the best tour manager ever. And thinking of his moustache and hat still makes our little hearts swell with love...Dan WE LOVE YOU. We also gained a new merch guy who got more phone numbers from potential lovers on this tour then any of us have ever got in our tiny little lives, so if you think being a rock star gets you the bitches and the ho's, think again. Merch guy.

We then moseyed on over to Europe where we celebrated the album release day in Amsterdam. We performed a gig (you can watch it somewhere on the www but finishing reading this blog will prob be more satisfying), and were given a bag of easter eggs which has 400 different flavours, see if you can name that many flavours of chocolate....or anything. Go on, I dare you. Which reminds me, over Easter in the paradise that is Birmingham I saw a giant bull made entirely of jelly beans. It's like the Bullring bull only better coz it's like edible and colourful and stuff.

Back to business though...We went to Europe and it was chic and europey, and one venue had a large "DO LOS CAMPESINOS!" sign, so obviously our band sluttiness is infamous. That was also the same gig where free condoms where handed out, so we are also some form of aphrodisiac! We played with Kula Shaker in Halden which was nostalgic, and did the Black Sessions in Paris which was a bit of a honour. Tom managed to accidentally offend Antwerp by speaking in French instead of Flemish but we also managed to offend them by being generally rubbish. We saw the beauty of the eiffel tower on a chilly day filled with the colours of the autumn leaves, we slumped against the soft cushions of the back lounge of the bus whilst watching the wonder that is the back to the future trilogy (I can't believe you just off-handedly mentioned the back to the future thing. That fact does not deserve to be reduced to just part of a sentence, it needs it's own paragraph or blog. It was one of the biggest achievements of tour for me...) and Aleks, Tom and myself went on Italian MTV and got asked about the music scene in Glasgow.

We also went to SXSW and drank margaritas and sold our souls for various free sunglasses and hair products (well we did) and saw Why? and Fight Like Apes and Times New Viking and they were all amazing, and we once again felt a little bit humbled. I also got to wear my straw hat which was obviously very exciting (and no it doesn't make me look like a ginger version of Kooky Kooks Luke) and visited the Mecca of Wholefoods coz apparently the chain was established in Austin.

Sadly there wasnt much in the way of celeb spotting, except did see a man who looked like Bill Bailey. Aleks saw the NERD and Harriet saw Robyn! Also I tried playing the fun game of how many people were wearing there sunglasses in a inappropriate context, I think it rounded up to 40,000.

Me, Ellen and Harriet did an interview where the idea for our side project 'Periods and Make-up' was born. Watch. This. Space.

I also celebrated my birthday there in a lovely bar called Coyote Ugly (LIKE THE FILM) where I had to order a drink between two dancing ladies pretending to lez up. Best Birthday Eva! Also I saw bats fly out of a bat cave whilst on a dawsons creek style jetty and I think they were trying to spell out Happy birthday. But I also saw a duck being raped....I dont think that was for my birthday.

This is how excited she got. The duck rape is taking place just out of shot.

We leave you with one of the best comments we've eavesdropped this year so far:

"I can't tell if that person's a tramp or trendy"

Aleks and Ellen x.o.x.o