Los Campesinos! – Romance Is Boring

by Paul on February 1st, 2010

Los Campesinos! – Romance Is Boring
February 1st, 2010
Wichita Recordings
Score: 7.3

“If you were given the option of dying painlessly in peace at 45, but with a lover at your side, after a long and happy life, is this something that would interest you?”

Quite a bit can be garnered from titles. We begin the latest outing from Welsh hyper-poppers Los Campesinos! with ‘In Medias Res’. This in itself says quite a bit about the album. Translating roughly as ‘in the middle of affairs’ from Latin, the title of the first track hints that the album has a cohesive theme. Also, since this phrase was used to introduce the Iliad and the Odyssey, we know that we are in for an epic. The overriding theme of the album can also can be found in its title, as the story relates a character’s romantic adventures along the various stages of relationships. For fans of the band’s previous work, the choice of theme is not particularly surprising as the band has dealt with adolescent sexual elation as well as frustration, but never quite on such a large scale as this. While some songwriters would lose their more mature audiences in the inevitable melodrama, frontman Gareth Campesinos! is more than convincing enough to ensnare his listeners.

That opening track closes with the line quoted above and, my answer notwithstanding, serves well as a question that hovers over the album. From that point on, though, my review could have just been two columns: in one, a list of the record’s bitingly clever non sequiturs and the other a list of cringe-inducing one-liners that would be just as long. The second track and first single ‘There Are Listed Buildings’ begins with the uncontrollable joy of new love in the form of “Bop baa”s, strings, and triumphant horns, and later on Gareth reminisces, “I remember being naked to my waist, though not in which direction.” On the very next track, though, both lovers are exasperated and “proving to each other that romance is boring”. ’We’ve Got Your Back’, from the girl’s perspective, is a veritable smorgasbord of high school quips, though surprisingly self-aware ones. After lines like “I’ve learned more from toilet walls than I’ve learned from these words of yours”, on the lead-in to the chorus Gareth growls “and so fucking on/and so fucking forth”, but just a little bit later there are a couple of gems. On the second chorus he asks, “If we didn’t know the shape was for functionality, what would we do?/I do not know”, and before the song fades out, he declares “Cementing old friends, dismissing old foes”/pulling punches and ducking blows, so la la la la la…”.

Sonically, this is a new more adventurous group of Campesinos! While Gareth’s voice has (thankfully) become less grating, there are time changes, the aforementioned horn and string arrangements, dissonant interval jumps in the riff that drives ‘Plan A’ and someone is absolutely murdering their guitar in the latter half of the title track. Most importantly, though, they manage to incorporate the irresistible aspects of their sound that won them so many fans in the first place. You can almost hear the couple arguing about their future in the battle between horns and guitars on ‘Plan A’, the sexual anticipation on ‘Straight In At 101′, and even the crushing defeat of illness on ‘The Sea Is A Good Place To Think Of The Future’. The last of these is the first attempt at a slow burner, but it’s just bouncy enough to belie a sense of optimism, no matter how deep it is buried.

However, their strength is still in turning out catchy-as-hell anthems, and this album certainly has its equivalents of Hold On Now, Youngster highlight ‘You! Me! Dancing!’, but now they have a lyrical edge that just adds another irresistible level. ‘Straight In At 101′ is as good a statement of purpose for a sexually frustrated teenage boy as I’ve ever seen. Gareth starts by declaring, “I think we need more post-coital, and less post-rock”, and the rest is a description of white knuckles and icy feet that can only result from being thwarted in the bedroom. It doesn’t help that our protagonist only has one thing on his mind as he turns on his lover, “And what exactly do you mean by, ‘What can you even eat?’/And how does that affect how I get off this evening?” He matures, though, and by the middle track ‘I Just Sighed. I Just Sighed. Just So You know’, he’s offering the most sensitive line on the album. Maybe it’s just in the way that Kim Campesinos! delivers it, or the way that it contrasts with his prior, more calloused lines, but in context “Just let me be the one that keeps track of the moles on your back” sounds like the most romantic thing anyone could possibly say.

These two tracks combined with ‘There Are Listed Buildings’ and ‘This Is A Flag. There Is No Wind’ will surely be fan favorites, but I’m not sure if some of the more adolescent lines will go over quite as well. However, I think that Gareth is consistent and believable enough in his delivery for anyone inclined to enjoy Los Campesinos! in the past to forgive him.

Paul Bulow

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