Los Campesinos! are an indie rock band from Cardiff, Wales who sound like a less Fisher-Price-ified Architecture in Helsinki, with a male vocalist with one of those real flat, sour-milk regional accents, a yelpy female vocalist who occasionally interjects (you can picture her in day-glo Keds), and annoyingly lugubrious/precocious song titles like "This is How You Spell 'Ha Ha, We Destroyed the Hopes and Dreams of a Generation of Faux-Romantics'" and "....And We Exhale and Roll Our Eyes in Unison". There is much to despise about Los Campesinos!
So you may be surprised when I report to you that the debut LP, Hold On Now, Youngster..., is actually a fairly good record. Retained from last year's Sticking Fingers Into Sockets EP are centerpiece and 2007 highlight "You! Me! Dancing!" (my! teeth! are! clenched!) and "Don't Tell Me to Do the Math(s)'; the rest is new. Well, not new...scratch that, not original: the influences here are knee-deep from the twee-core boy-girl point-counterpoint of Beat Happening, the DIY shambolic-ness of fellow Cardiffers (?) Young Marble Giants, and the rhythmic lockstep of that effervescent lodestar of post-2000 UK rock, The Strokes. Hold On Now, Youngster... works like a steam engine held together with spit, bubblegum, and a wish - the minute it stops running, it falls apart. Luckily LC! keep it moving at max speed throughout; a good thing, as I imagine a ballad by these guys might border on intolerable. There are a few dud lyrics (uh, "It's you! It's me! And there's dancing!" springs to mind), do your best to ignore 'em. I might hate this record in a month.
