Los Campesinos! @ Electric Ballrooms, Camden
22 March 2012
Despite having existed for the best part of six years, Los Campesinos!
have become something of a rarity in these times. They were one of the
original ‘internet hype’ bands in 2006-07, back when online buzz around a
band really felt genuine – not now, when any old song can go viral in a
day via Facebook and YouTube – back when ‘You! Me! Dancing!’
on MySpace made you dizzy with the promise in its exuberant, bouncy pop
sound with fuzzy guitar scrawls all over it. They’re rare because if
they were unsigned now, you’d wager the chances of people caring in six months
would be slim, never mind six years. They’re rare because since they
formed they’ve amassed some 45+ songs across four brilliant albums*, yet
they’re still something of an insider band, a band you have to seek
out, rather than a band that come to you via seemingly omnipotent media
messages.
(*To me, We Are Beautiful We Are Doomed must be a second album, since it is 10 songs long and contains surely their best opening track to date).
They’re rare, too, because they realise this and appear to have wry
and pragmatic self-deprecation in spades: I can think of no other band
around today who, after writing four LPs in six years, would introduce
their breakthrough track from the previous decade by all cheerfully
clinking bottles of Budweiser – the beer ‘You! Me! Dancing!’
helped advertise in a commercial at the end of 2010 and into 2011. Yes,
of course that sort of deal is great news for a band that spent their
first years gigging in between writing dissertations and taking exams,
but there’s a certain irony in that their breakthrough song is only
recently standing up on its own merit, years later.
