On Hold on Now, Youngster … (Arts and Crafts), the first
2008 Los Campesinos! album, there are guitar and violin lines zipping
about wildly, handclaps and exuberant shouts (in unison or solitarily),
and pummeling instrumentation that can metastasize or collapse in on
itself.
On We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed (Arts and Crafts),
released later the same year, the party was over; collective singing
bellowed on about hopelessness; violins and guitars slinked around; and
the instrumental buildups led to hallucinatory valleys of
dissonance.
Now, as 2009 approaches its final months, this Welsh septet is
prepping the release of its third album, an as-of-yet untitled set of
16 or 17 tunes, clocking in around an hour. The group consists of Neil
(guitar), Ollie (drums), Ellen (bass), Tom (lead guitar), Gareth
(vocals, glockenspiel), Harriet (violin) and Aleks (vocals,
keyboards)—each taking “Campesinos!” for a last name. On paper,
it shouldn’t work (glockenspiel in a feature role?), yet the band’s
execution is a masterful blend of zeal and precision.
Set to embark on another globetrotting tour, Los Campesinos! barely
blinked while losing a member, endlessly recording and making
themselves available to fans. Speaking from a car in Britain (“I’m not
driving; that would be very dangerous”), Ellen Campesinos! spoke about
the group’s upcoming farewell tour for band member Aleks. She’s
returning to school.
“There are going to be a few moments of sadness over it, but we’re
going to try to give her the best farewell we can to make sure she goes
out with fond memories,” Ellen said. “I think we might have some
surprises for Aleks, but I can’t say much, because she might read this,
and then she’ll know.”
The tour looks to have something special, if logical, for fans, too.
“We’ve got a couple of new songs from the new album we’re going to
play, but as far as surprises, nothing like monkeys on bikes.”
Those used to the rave-ups of Los Campesinos!, like the clangorous
ping-pongs of “Death to Los Campesinos!,” the sparkling eruptions of
“My Year in Lists” or the swishing, driving “All Your Keyfabe Friends,”
may be surprised by the solemnity of parts of the new album. Musically,
the band’s hyperactive style remains intact (if more lush and
restrained). Bolstering the group’s already ample roster are Jamie
Stewart of Xiu Xiu and Eric Corson of the Long Winters (providing
backing vocals), and an assortment of schooled musicians playing
everything from trumpet and flugelhorn to flute and
saxophone.
“I think it’s kind of moving away from our original roots and
highlighting our musicianship,” Ellen said of the new album. “It’s got
some absolutely amazing violin lines on it, and some complicated
arrangements with trumpets and such. It’s pushing our sound in the
direction we’ve been going in a lot more. It’s definitely going to
surprise people; still, it’s what you kind of expect from us.”
Ellen continued: “There are some songs that could be called the epic
ones of the album, but it’s really very varied in style. There’s one
that you could almost call a waltzing ballad-y type one, and then
there’s one that’s a very crescendo-y epic one, and there are a few
which are very poppy. There’s a definite variation to it so that
listeners can’t get bored. I guess that’s the point to it: There are
all these variations of our style.”
As for the lyrical content, the downcast Doomed serves as a
preamble for the upcoming album.
“I think it’s probably an extension of Doomed. … Lyrically,
Gareth has kind of excelled himself in terms of the elements he’s
touched upon,” Ellen said. “There’s a lot more dark imagery, and he
touches on the subject of drowning. … He definitely touched on some
darker elements of his psyche as well. Even the songs you would
immediately think might be upbeat have lyrics that are approaching that
darker element.”
Ellen admits the forthcoming album benefited from increased band
maturation, confidence and experimentation.
“This time, it was very much a collaborative effort,” Ellen said.
“People came out of their shell maybe, or people got more comfortable
with being musicians; it definitely shows that we’ve grown up a little
bit.”
The forthcoming album gleefully rejoins the group with producer
John Goodmanson (Blood Brothers, Death Cab for Cutie), who also
produced Doomed.
“He works perfectly with us,” Ellen said. “He’s really brilliant in
all he does, and he’s a really chilled-out guy, and he’s really easy to
get along with, and makes us feel very comfortable in the studio. He
knows how to push us, and has really good ideas as well.”
Three albums in two years is the kind of pace that no one could be
expected to keep. Appropriately, the band’s upcoming album is “probably
it for a little bit,” which is suspect, given the band’s
prolificacy.
“You record the material when you have it, but then it’s like four
or five months before the album actually comes out,” Ellen said. “We
always said if you’ve got the material, there’s no point in really
holding on to it. It just kind of makes sense that when we have the
time to record, we record.”
Even if the band stops releasing music for a stretch, they are not
hard to track down. Thanks to their extensive group blog (loscampesinos.com)—where they
write about films, food, their lives and, of course, music—the
band members are able (and quite willing) to communicate with fans.
“It’s really great to find yourself communicating with fans based on
something you really like,” Ellen said. “With some bands, there’s the
whole, ‘We’re a band; you’re a fan,’ separation thing, but at the end
of the day, we feel very humbled by our ability to do this.”
This article appears in Aug 13-19, 2009.