|
|
 |
 |
|
 |
| |
|
| |
Los Campesinos!
Hold On Now, Youngster...
Wichita Records
|
Article
written by Matti G
Mar 9, 2008.
|
When Los Campesinos! circulated their demo disc in 2006 there was, by all accounts, a right old scrap between half the labels in Britain to snap them up. Now happily signed to Wichita it’s just possible that a few more sales-oriented labels will be breathing a slight sigh of relief because LC! have so far not managed to acquire the sort of fan base that most pundits predicted and, on the basis of this, their debut album, mainstream success still seems unlikely to happen any time soon. This is a collection of eleven clamorous and wordy songs which don’t sound at all likely to find their way on to the Radio 2 playlists any time soon – you can hardly imagine the general public’s tastes will extend to buying an album with a song called ‘This Is How You Spell “Hahaha, We Destroyed The Hopes And Dreams Of A Generation Of Faux-Romantics”’ can you now? So if the Cardiff-based (but actually entirely non-Welsh) indie-poppers had dollar signs glinting in their eyes when they put pen to paper on their contract, they may have to go back to the drawing board. But if their sole intention was to create a raucous and exciting album with two fingers pointed firmly at the mainstream, then LC! have succeeded admirably.
For those who don’t yet know, this is, apparently, “tweecore”, and the name seems to suit – the band might be happy to have videos involving balloons, kittens and animated robots (with tongue entirely in cheek, by the way) and lyrics which will strike a chord with would-be romantic stay-at-home indie kids the world over, but the songs are loud and frenetic – there would be nothing twee about the thundering guitars of ‘Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks’ in the hands of most other bands, but then most other bands don’t incorporate violins, out-of-time xylophones and high-pitched group vocals singing about the architectural merits of an unspecified building. Whether the idea of playing rather fey songs at a thousand bpm and with amps up at eleven ever catches on is debatable to say the least but this is a tremendously fun record to listen to, the kind that has you desperate to start dancing in the street while you’re listening to it or air guitaring around the bedroom, because what the producer David Newfeld has succeeded admirably in doing is capturing the chaotic and exciting sound of the bands’ live performances on record. The songs have avoided any sterilisation whatsoever and retain the clamour and naivety of the on stage sound, which has been a very significant part of the bands’ appeal to fans – all the tracks on the record sound like they were recorded in one live take and it works all the better for that.
If there is one criticism that can be levelled at Hold On Now, Youngster… it’s that there is very little variation in the songs – indeed the opening two tracks, ‘Death To Los Campesinos!’ and ‘Broken Heartbeats Sound Like Breakbeats’ share a lead guitar line so similar as to be almost identical. Fortunately both the tracks have the same exhilarating make-up and so this Castor and Pollax of indie-pop manage to provide a suitably blistering opening rather than start raising question marks over the bands’ imagination. Whether this album does herald the start of a glittering career or not, one guarantee is that indie kids the world over will find much to be seduced by. Endearing and exciting in equal measure, LC! have proved that whether or not they’re worth the hype in record execs’ eyes, they certainly will be to the fans.
Untitled Document
What
people are wittering about on the SoundsXP forums right now...
Spread the word: Email this article
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
RSS | MESSAGE
BOARDS | SEARCH
Calling
all music fans based in the UK... Do you want your views to be read
by 5000 people a day? Contact 
