It’s been tricky for aughts-era acts to come back after COVID. They’re not the hot young thing anymore, haven’t been for years, yet they don’t have the pre-internet record sales to fall back on like 20th century artists. Their Gen Y/geriatric millennial fans are getting squeezed between Boomer wealth hoarding and Gen Z wealth splurging. They need to tour to stay viable, let alone relevant, but traveling costs are up and COVID still looms. But if they preserver, they’ll have a good night like Los Campesinos! did at Elsewhere in Brooklyn on Wednesday, August 24th.
The British band only plays The States sparingly, and this was their first since everything shut down then slowly opened up again. But the demand for the band is still there, with a packed & sweaty Elsewhere (QRO venue review), including a major line for merch before LC! started. And, as singer Gareth Campesinos noted, there were a number of people at their first LC! show, indeed some “younger than our band, which is awesome…” And this was hump night, way out in Brooklyn, at a nice place whose drink prices are too high for that far out on the L train (and now one has to put money on their 21+ wristband, can’t use a credit card direct – but can use cash direct, and it’s cheaper…).
Los Campesinos!’s last full-length was 2017’s Sick Scenes (QRO review), though last year they did put out the Whole Damn Body EP, an EP of remastered tracks from the Hello Sadness (QRO review) 2011 period. Both Sick & Whole got featured, but the set list was more one that ranged over the band’s whole career, rather than focus on the new (or the old). And the band has by now had a long career, reaching back to 2006 debut EP Sticking Fingers Into Sockets (QRO review). Maybe you discovered them then and wanted to hear all the songs from when you (and they) were young, or maybe you’re young now and want to hear the more recent material. Whatever the case, while there were obviously songs you love of them that they didn’t play, they were also obviously songs of theirs that you love that did get played, that you’ve waited a long time to hear live & go wild.
And the crowd did go wild. LC! have never been one for shy audiences, but one might have thought that the fans getting older, COVID having happened, could have tamped things down. Instead, the audience was a big, sweaty mess (some did wear masks, but you had to kind of accept the risks when you walked into the place…) from Sick opener “Sad Suppers” on. The set had sure-fire singles that you already knew you loved such as “Romance Is Boring” (from the 2010 album of the same name – QRO review), “We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed” (from the 2008 album of the same name – QRO review), into-the-encore break shout-along “Avocado, Baby” (from 2013’s No Blues – QRO review), and more. But there were also tracks you didn’t know you loved live, such as “Suppers”, Blues’ “For Flotsam”, or “Hello Sadness” & evening closer “Baby I Got the Death Rattle” (both from Sadness).
And yes, there were old songs from when the oldsters fell in love with Los Campesinos!. After asking who was seeing LC! for the first time, even if there were any “chaperones at the back,” Gareth noted that they had to play some old hits, like the “feel-good song of 2006,” “Knee Deep at the ATP”, a number so old (off of 2008 debut full-length Hold On Now, Youngster… – QRO review) that it’s out-lived the late All Tomorrow’s Parties festival. That was followed by Hold’s “My Year In the Lists”, the crowd enthusiastically joining in on the counting (and seemingly no fan messed up the pause between “Three!” and “Four!”). And before finishing the night with “The Death Rattle”, there was Youngster/Sockets’ “You! Me! Dancing!”, starting with the whole band around the drum kit (it was supposed to move seamlessly into “Rattle”, but Matt Campesinos broke a bass string, something Gareth marveled at, said they’d be going from the end of “Dancing!” into “Rattle”, only for him to mess it up this time…).
Gareth’s wry humor was on form at the show, though took a while to come out, seven songs before noting that they would go through the first part quick, “In the hope that I will be drunk enough to speak…” In addition to joking about youngsters & oldsters in the crowd, newbies & vets, after one girl crowd-surfed for a second time, he noted that, for that ancient art, “No dudes…” He then moved to, “The boring part, thanking people you’ve never heard of. And you still, naturally, because you’re all good people – despite what I’ve seen – you’ll clap for all of them…”
Maybe it’s not 2006 anymore, and maybe the world’s only gotten worse since then (and not just in America – these States-side fans knew to sing along to “The Sea Is a Good Place To Think About the Future” lyric, “Never kiss a Tory boy / Without wanting to cut off your tongue again”). Or maybe you were born in 2007 and this was your first chance to see Los Campesinos! [note: the weekend before, your correspondent discovered that his fifteen-year-old nephew is an LC! fan, though the teen was not impressed when told that his uncle saw the band’s second-ever American show – QRO live review – in the same year he came into this world…]. Whatever your age, whatever the case, it was great to have a great band back again, playing a great show.
