Hello Sadness
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Few bands evolve as quickly as Los Campesinos!. In 2008 they released their debut album, Hold on Now, Youngster, a unanimous critical success but one that could hardly be talked about for three sentences without being described as 'twee'. It was all teenage crushes and 'emo' melodrama, with some doubting if the band could attain longevity with the same formula for more than a single record. We shall never know, due to the fact that the band have grown so fast with each new release. Last year's Romance is Boring, whilst maintaining the energy of its HON,Y, was free of any of the 'cute' traits of its predecessor, replaced by cynical reflections on failed relationships and dark humour. The transformation is best demonstrated on the stunning The Sea is a Good Place to Think About the Future, which tells the story of a young girl considering drowning herself over the top of LC!'s most 'epic' instrumentation to date.
Of the band's previous work, The Sea... is the closest song to the material on Hello Sadness. The title kinda gives it away, this is an album packed with morbid lyrics and minor chords. Sonically, the band have further moved further away from their once trademark glockenspiel, filling the gap with more prominent guitars and pounding drums. The strings are no longer used to contribute to a cacophony of high-pitched, youthful vigour, instead being deployed for the more traditional purpose of evoking sympathy. There isn't much room for subtlety, with a standard 'quiet verse, loud chorus' structure to most tracks. This can hardly be seen as a flaw, however, as each track is so well executed and each chorus so cathartic that there is very rarely a sense of excess. There are occasional restrained moments, with the relatively minimalistic Hate For the Island, which are connected to the rest of the album by some of Gareth Campesinos' most dramatic lyrics to date.
It would be ludicrous to write a review of a LC! Album without spending a significant amount of time on their singer. He very easily divides opinion; some see his vocals as a major weak point in the band's otherwise tight sound, some see his lyrics as self-indulgent and ridiculous. To some extent, these views are justified, his voice is not as easy on the ears as someone like Matt Beringer and his lyrics on this album have not lost any of their melodrama. While on And We Exhale and Roll our Eyes in Unison he sang 'Woe is me, and woe is you, and woe is us...together', here the angst can not even be shared, as he cries on The Black Bird, The Dark Slope 'so sad to be me'. Now if the album was full of lines of this extremity it would perhaps be overbearing, but these exclamations of self-pity are interspersed with more defiant, humorous ones. Take for example Songs About Your Girlfriend, where the frontman is in a more playful, confident mood, boasting of an anonymous boy's 'soft spot for me'. The fact is that Gareth specialises in a certain brand of melodrama that has not been executed so well since a certain Mancunian penned There is a Light that Never Goes Out.
The vocal delivery is also undoubtedly stronger here than on previous work, with Gareth's limitations not exposed in the more anthemic musical accompaniment, but rising to the challenge. This is most apparent on the title track, where he sings at the top of his voice the brilliantly tragic refrain of 'It's hope that springs eternal, that's the reason why, this dripping from my broken heart, is never running dry'. His voice is not perfect, it's positively human, but that is genuinely one of the most appealing things about Los Campesinos!, they peerlessly connect with people.
Hello Sadness is not easy to listen to at times, with some of the lyrics somewhat ridiculous when taken out of the context of the album as a whole. However, as a record it is hard to think of anything else released this year that is so rewarding on repeated listens. Los Campesinos! are one of the most idiosyncratic bands around and as such will never headline Glastonbury or even an NME Awards Tour, no matter how many beer adverts their songs are featured on. It's that cult status that makes them so appealing to their fans. Hello Sadness is a perfect documentation of their evolution as a band, and I personally can not wait to see where they go next. (Also, follow @grthdvd on Twitter, he's very entertaining!)
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