So the reason there was no review last night was because I had a marathon session of Super Smash Brawl with Ben and Rebecca, my first time playing that game, and it is a quantum leap from the first two incarnations, but some of the levels are really annoying and distracting, but that’s really my only gripe with the game.
…and THAT WAS THE FIRST AND LAST VIDEO GAME REVIEW BY IAMDC!!!!! CONFETTI!!!!!!
Okay.
Los Campesinos! is the name of an enthusiastic young Welsh(!) band – so enthusiastic that they put an exclamation point in their band name, which is also each member’s stage name; hence, Gareth Campesinos! is the lead singer, Aleksandra Campesinos! plays keyboards and also sings, and so forth. There are seven Campesinos!’s, meaning seven very young, very active Welsh kids jumping around and playing through popbescence, a term I just coined for music centered around youth and coming-of-age. Man, that would have been useful for the intro to my Walkmen review. Oh, well.
Los Campesinos!’ debut full-length, Hold On Now, Youngster… is what I imagine high school emo poets are really trying to say when they make poems about dead leaves and shit. Los Campesinos! sing about sexual frustration, trying desperately to impress the opposite sex, and just…fucking growing up, dude, you know? I’ve never heard music outside of Weird Al that relied so much on the lyrics to be appreciated fully. When I hear lyrics like “You should have built a statue, and so I did of you/And you were ungrateful, and slightly offended at the dimensions of it/You said you looked less like the Venus de Milo, and more like your mother in a straitjacket” in the song “We Are All Accelerated Readers”, that makes me sit up and take notice, and google song lyrics like they want me to. The main tragedy of this album for American listeners is Gareth’s intense Welsh accent which makes the lyrics kind of hard to understand if you a) aren’t watching him sing them (music videos help), or b) don’t look up the lyrics. By the by, I found lyrics for it here.
This album fascinates me, to be honest. I do sincerely regret not having listened to it a week earlier, so it could further put The Walkmen in perspective, but it mainly fascinates me because it seems so in the moment, so contemporary (two songs are titled “Knee Deep at ATP”, which is a series of music festivals, and “2007: The Year Punk Broke (My Heart)”), but feels like something that people are going to love for a long time, one of those albums that will be rediscovered and rediscovered with new mini-generations of young, awkward indie kids who can really connect with these lyrics on a visceral and intellectual level. I guess I get a feeling of importance from this record.
That being said, I don’t think it’s one of my top albums of the year so far, because of the paradox of necessary-to-the-music words that are hard to understand, as well as an abrasiveness that goes beyond intended levels because let’s be honest, these guys can’t sing very well. So that’s that for the review, but I want to post a few more snippets of song lyrics, because they’re really fun to read.
From “Knee Deep At ATP”
And though underexposed, i could see from the quality, his K Records t-shirt and you holding his hand
And I know he took you to the beach, I can tell from how you bite on your cheek, every time the sand falls from your insoles
And when our eyes meet, all that I can read, is “you’re the b-side”.
From “My Year In Lists”
You said “send me stationary to make me horny”
So I always write you letters in multicolours
Decorating envelopes for foreplay
Damn extended metaphors, I get carried away
From “This Is How You Spell ‘HAHAHA, I’ve Destroyed The Hopes And Dreams Of A Generation Of Faux-romantics'”
The trails on your skin spoke more to me than the reams and reams of half finished novels you’d leave lying all over the place
And every quotation that’d dribble from your mouth like a final, fatal livejournal entry
I know
I am wrong
I am sorry
I Ate My DVD Collection 
Helena Thompson said
Aww, I love Los Campesinos! I can’t wait for We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed…hopefully it’s going to live up to the high standards LC set with their first two releases.