Review: Los Campesinos!

Every bit as hyperactive as their fondness
for shouting and glockenspiel-bashing would suggest, the Cardiff septet lash back with a second LP a mere eight months after their debut. But if Hold On Now, Youngster… was all Enid Blyton-y frolics (‘Seven Get Overexcited
In The Studio’), then this one is more like ‘Seven Ease to Lead Singer’s Love-Related Lamentations’. If that was all there was to it, though, Gareth Los Campesinos! might just be a better-fringed Brian Molko. A first glance seems to bear that out: songs have titles like ‘Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown #1’, and the album’s opening
couplet runs ‘I think it’s fair to say I chose hopelessness/And inflicted it on the rest of us’. But in fact, he has become an altogether more Hamlety and interesting character over the last few months. In place of tales of mischief is a disturbing fixation on blood, vomit and the revolting bodiliness of being. Musically, too, things have gotten far more compelling. They’ve developed a new love of rupturing the sort of smooth, bright textures they were so fond of on their debut. ‘Ways To Make It Through The Wall’ opens with a crash-bang-wallop of brutalised bass and guitar. It’s about as far a cry from ‘Death To Los Campesinos!’ as you can get, a song whose excessive chirpiness made me concur oh so loudly with its title. They don’t sacrifice melody entirely, though. ‘Heart Swells/Pacific Daylight Time’ is all sumptuous drifts of strings, ambient effects and perfectly-chosen piano notes. It’s a moment so grown-up musically that you could be listening to Sparklehorse. But the shrill, the manic and the chaotic is what Los Campesinos! are all about on this LP. Time-signatures fight amongst themselves,
harmonies jabber like seagulls, and the lyrical punchline (‘Your parents/Your disgusting parents’) are all worthy of The Young Knives at their most acerbic. Closer ‘All Your Kayfabe Friends’ disrupts the tone of the album by trying to revisit the happier territory of their debut, but We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed is too assured a follow-up for this to ruin proceedings. Given that the sessions that spawned this LP were meant to be for B-sides, album number three should be a real killer. And, at the rate they’re going, it’ll probably come out next week.

Tim Smyth