Editors Note: We enjoyed the tour diaries J. Tom Hnatow wrote for us as part of These United States’ last tour, so we asked him if he wouldn’t mind doing it again as the band embark on their first ever intercontinental tour of the UK and Europe. He graciously agreed. Look for his dispatches from the road abroad over the next few weeks. Tuesday, October 16, 2007 We walk (and walk and walk) from Baker…

It’s not every day that British bands come to D.C. in a red doubledecker bus. The BritBus tour stopped downtown yesterday, bringing three new groups — Jyrojets from Scotland, The Crave from Brighton, and Julia Jones from London via Wales — around the country at a top speed of 45 miles per hour. According to bassist Tom Swann from The Crave, it took four days to get from Denver to St. Louis, and although the…

By DCist Contributor Mehan Jayasuriya It’s about an hour before The Pipettes are set to take the stage at the Black Cat and by rights, the band should be exhausted. This is the second gig on their first major North American tour and having flown in from their hometown of Brighton, England only a few days prior, you’d think that the band would be succumbing to the effects of trans-Atlantic jetlag. Unlike the dozing…

Those who showed up at the 9:30 Club on Saturday night with any doubts about The Kooks’ talent were certainly persuaded, and maybe even wooed into super-fan territory. The four lads from Brighton played a pitch-perfect set that had all the classic elements of an epic rock show, including crowdsurfing and a young woman who threw her underwear up on stage. The Kooks have been on the fast track to superstardom since forming in 2004,…

(Review and photo by DCist guest reviewer Ryan Avent) Dostoyevsky once said, “The second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.” Devoted followers of British Sea Power no doubt expected the follow up to indie sleeper “The Decline of British Sea Power” to be as arrestingly unique as its predecessor, just as crowd after crowd on their more recent tours has…