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Los Campesinos! - Romance Is Boring
There’s an awful lot to love about Los Campesinos! even before they play a note. A staggeringly youthful seven piece from Cardiff, all boasting the surname Campesinos!, they have built their short career on doing things very much on their own terms.
There’s an awful lot to love about Los Campesinos! even before they play a note. A staggeringly youthful seven piece from Cardiff, all boasting the surname Campesinos!, they have built their short career on doing things very much on their own terms. Not that it’s done them any harm – finding a home on the über cool Arts & Crafts label and even getting the gig soundtracking a beer ad.
After a slightly odd detour with the We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed album (limited release, no promotion), the follow up proper to debut Hold On Now, Youngster is upon us. Described as a set of songs about ‘death and football’, it sees the band once more teaming up with Fight Like Apes producer John Goodmanson. It’s a natural combination, although LC! Could learn a thing or two from the Dubliners when it comes to focussing an obviously hyper-active musical mind.
When it’s good, Romance Is Boring is fantastic. They’ve not changed much of their musical template, simply adding brass and the like to their already crowded sound, as well as introducing a more cynical outlook than in their early days. The spectre of doomed relationships dominates proceedings, seen from a youthful point of view that each one represents the end of the world. It’s a strange mixture of despair, anger and upbeat pop music that comes tearing out of the traps on the first few tracks – suggesting that this might be the release that sees them finally crystallise their often confused sound, demonstrated by uncharacteristically short song titles.
Having reached a peak with ‘Straight In At 101’, however, the old problems start to creep in. ‘I Warned You: Do Not Make an Enemy of Me’, ‘I Just Sighed. I Just Sighed, Just So You Know’ and ‘A Heat Rash in the Shape of the Show Me State; or, Letters from Me to Charlotte’ are as unwieldy as their titles suggest and the whole thing becomes hard going, the punk rock equivalent of a bunch of kids showing off on the top deck of a bus. Having seen what they are capable of when they are at their best it’s frustrating stuff, doubly so when they prove they can do subtle on the elegant closer ‘Coda: A Burn Scar in the Shape of the Sooner State’. Never boring it may be, but this is still another missed opportunity from Los Campesinos!
Release date: Jan 29th
Label: Witchita
Review by Phil Udell | OMG Entertainment | Leading Entertainment Website with Music, Fashion, Games, Films, Food, Drink, Reviews and Culture.
