You could say that they've been caught Between An Exploding Earth And An Erupting Sky. In a way. But Los Campesinos! and a few other British bands of our taste have been forced to cancel shows thanks to the air travel restrictions in place caused by the presence of volcanic ash in the very high sky.
The seven-slash-eight piece Cardiff-based funsters were due to fly out to the States today, and in turn were to play at the Culture Shock Festival in New York tomorrow, but the debris from that unpronounceable Icelandic volcano has ended any plans of actually being in the US any time soon.
They wrote on their Twitter account:
We are very sad to announce we will be unable to appear at Culture Shock Festival, Purchase NY, tomorrow. No flights out the UK.
Really, really disappointed and I hope we can make it up to the promoters and attendees sometime, but this is totally out of our hands :(
But every cloud of volcanic ash has a silver lining, it seems, as it gave them some quality listening time:
Good things to come out of the flight cancellation: listening to No Age's 'Nouns' for the first time in about a year. Still amazing.
Here's what was in Gareth's case, though, if you're interested:
Other bands to be affected by this include The Cribs, who were scheduled to fly out late this morning, and were hoping to play Coachella. NME.com reports that the group boarded the plane, chose their meals, and had prepped their in-flight movie choices but that's about as far as they got.
Gary Jarman told the BBC's Newsbeat:
“I’d decided which films I was going to see, chosen my meal and was just falling asleep then I got told we had to get off the plane,”
“It’s a force of nature, you can’t really argue with that. I know there are a lot of British bands playing. I kind of hope a few other bands are having problems so we can steal their set time – I know that sounds selfish.”
It sounds selfish because it probably is. But we can understand his frustration. But every clou...A spokesman for the band said this evening that they were unsure whether they'd be able to make it to the festival on time. I think the chances are slim. Frightened Rabbit were also due to depart today to perform at Coachella, but, again, were unable to for obvious reasons.