All of that seems so far away now, even though it s only been three days. We re now in our rock and roll travel vehicle of choice, a van, traveling on my stomach s surface of choice, dry ground. It s one of those new-ish things that look like a big block of cheese with an angled front end.

In the US we lustfully call them Sprinters or Freightliners. Over here, they have many different manufacturers, all with a similar body style. This one is a VW, and it belongs to our new German friend / tour manager Sascha.

He owns three of them, and he makes a living driving American bands with lofty aspirations of becoming the next Dandy Warhols (without forsaking their hometown American audiences, of course) across Europe. Menomena is currently one of these bands, and we are currently sprawled out across this heavenly vehicle s two spacious bench seats (Brent and I) and comfy loft (Justin). Up front is Sascha, along with our European sound engineer Jonas, who has already sung a certain Weezer anthem twice to let us know what his name is.

Except he pronounces it yo-nas , which is far sexier. He s not carrying the wheel (that s Sascha s job, remember?), but he IS carrying his iPod, and he just rocked us with a new album by a funky duo named Justice.

It was really good. It s something my wife would like even more than me though. And and ah, she s still in Portland (brief pause for tearful reflection).

We re driving away from Stockholm, Sweden at the moment. We were only there for a day, but it was a great one. Several hours ago, we played the Accelerator Festival, and I had my mind blown by a band from Portland.

Unfortunately, it wasn t by my own band. The sound onstage was horrendous. Yeah, that s a cop-out, but it really was awful—completely beyond our (or Jonas s) control.

We re doing our best to get used to playing on rented equipment for the first time in our lives, and it hasn t been easy. The two different drum sets I ve played so far are polar opposites from my trusty kit back home. I could go on with excuses for days, but the fact remains that we just traveled over 5,000 miles to play a crappy set to people who have never seen us before, and the truth hurts.

Back to that Portland band though. They re called The Gossip, and you ve probably already heard of them. If you live in Europe, you ve definitely heard of them.

They re one of those bands that tends to do exponentially better on this side of the pond, for some unknown reason. Up until today, all I knew about these folks was that they re fronted by a large woman who has no problem calling herself fat and queer in the press. Hardly solid ground to judge a band on, I know, so I checked out their performance an hour or so after finishing ours.

I don t know if it was the fact that I ve never read anything about this band where the singer s weight wasn t mentioned OR if it was the fact that she was wearing a skin-tight aqua blue body suit onstage today, but the generous element of gyrating, jiggling body mass is definitely the first thing I noticed. It made me think; have I ever seen an overweight woman rocking the mic before? Maybe Missy Elliot (circa 1997)?

Or Aretha Franklin? Or Ann Wilson? Yeah, maybe.

But I m pretty sure none of these female icons have ever intentionally threw down the camel toe for an entire concert. That spandex body suit! That wouldn t be flattering on any body type!

And yet, this woman is still totally wearing it. Totally going for it, sans reservation. No apparent worry or fear of what any ignorant idiot like myself is thinking, judging, wondering.

Am I really this sheltered, or is this nothing short of revolutionary, especially in the self-conscious cesspool that is modern indie rock? Whatever the case, she certainly created a unique visual experience up there. I walked back to the van after the second song, car-crash intrigued but not moved.

As I sat there in our VW waiting for my bandmates, my back to the stage, I started finding myself focusing on the audio portion of the concert. I started noticing how beautiful this singer s voice was. And how she was singing with the same unabashed rawness that she dedicated to her appearance.

Then I started noticing the sparse guitar lines expertly weaving around those pitch-perfect vocals, through the clock-like drum patterns, entering the spotlight briefly but never stealing the show from that unearthly angel voice. Then a brief pause between songs, then a quiet, this is for Aaliyah, before an acapella intro into a cover of Are You That Somebody? , one of my top-10 favorite songs of all time.

I feel embarrassed admitting this, but there I was, alone in the van, choking back tears while the frontwoman nailed that first chorus, Sometimes I m goody-goody, right now I m naughty-naughty! As soon as she flawlessly rapped Timbaland s part, complete with whispered baby girl s and uh huh s, I was completely wrecked. I got out of the van with Brent and Jonas and we rushed back to the stage in time to see them close with the clincher single, Standing in the Way of Control.

I felt like a giddy teenage music fan again, long before all this ridiculous I m in a band bravado started. Portland is lucky to have you, whether we all realize it or not. Backtracking here, the London show was remarkably better than the Swedish show.

For starters, it wasn t a festival, meaning we had more than 45 minutes to load in, sound check, and play our set. The people at the Barfly were amazing, too. We ve heard a lot of stories about American bands being greeted by less-than-enthusiastic English crowds, but these awesome folks disproved all of the rumors.

None of our music has ever been officially released anywhere in Europe. Yet, there were still people shouting out requests for obscure b-sides including The Sista Social Theme Song (?), all with thick British accents.

It was very flattering. Now it s Sunday night and we re in a hotel in Holland after a long string of driving days. Sweden was three days ago, and we ve been driving and playing one show here since then.

The one show was at a festival called Metropolis, and it was the worst yet on this tour. Again, I can t overstate how awful it feels to make a first impression in a foreign country by sucking butt onstage. At least with in-stores, there s a good chance that you re the only band that people (however few) are there to see, and you can take your time setting up onstage (however small) without feeling like you re holding up a gigantic audience that isn t really there to see you in the first place.

Well anyway, there we were in Rotterdam on a giant stage that was divided in half with the sides labeled either Workers or Thinkers. We were on the Workers side. Both sides of the stage alternated directly after each other, so that the Thinkers were thinking about how to get all of their gear set up and soundchecked while the Workers were working at making the most destructive racket ever.

I hadn t heard of any of the bands on the entire festival bill, which probably speaks more of my cultural ignorance than of the popularity of the bands (or maybe not). It was our turn to start our set immediately after a loud rock band called The Mighty Roars finished Thinking. Did I already mention how much I hate festivals?

Well, add playing rented drum sets to that hate list as well. I m not even going to bother with going through every detail of what made our set awful. It s over, and I m just happy to be sitting here in this comfy bed.

We went out to a cannabis bar (legally! wow!) and I watched Brent, Justin, Jonas, and Sascha duke it out over a foosball table.

The little white ball looked like it was flying at me in 3-D, and the spinning plastic men left neon trails behind their little spinning feet. Overhead, the smiling face of Bob Marley watched over us all from a tattered poster. I ate a Snickers, then four mini bags of Doritos.

Man, that was awesome. We left and went to a rock club called Rotown for the Official Metropolis Afterparty. A band called The Noisettes was playing.

It was my first time ever hearing them, and I was rocked to the core. Each of the three members were astoundingly talented, and the singer s voice was powerful and perfectly on key. Thank you Holland, but we need to leave.

All of that seems so far away now, even though it s only been three days.