Los Campesinos! : We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

<img src="http://www.qromag.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/loscampesinoswearebeautiful.jpg" alt=" " />Less than a year after the release of <em>Hold On Now, Youngster</em>, the Welsh collective Los Campesinos! are out with a whole new record of...
8.0 Arts & Crafts
2008 

Los Campesinos! : We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

When a band puts out two full-length records in the same year, one can usually put safe money on at least one being a greatest hits, b-sides/rarities, or live recording – i.e., not original studio material.  But Cardiff, Wales’ excited collective Los Campesinos! break that mold as they follow-up the release earlier this year of Hold On Now, Youngster… (QRO review) with the all-original We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed only eight months later.  While not as stand out as the highly stand out Youngster, the new record is Beautiful, not Doomed, as the band feels more and more comfortable in their style.

Los Campesinos!’s exuberant collective sound, highlighted by a touch of sadness and the dueting vocals of Gareth & Alexandra Campesinos (everyone in the band claims ‘Campesinos’ as their last name), is practically well-established by this point, and from the Casio-press start to opener “Ways To Make It Through the Wall”, We Are Beautiful is most definitely a Los Campesinos! record.  But that tragic air to pieces like “Miserablia”, the title track, “You’ll Need Those Fingers For Crossing”, and “Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown #1” is more prominent than on previous releases, more directly juxtaposed with the fun group times.

While Youngster was introduced by 2007’s Sticking Fingers Into Sockets EP (QRO review) and a number of dates in Europe & America, We Are Beautiful comes as much more of a surprise.  However, Youngster did benefit from that pre-familiarity, as it turned the record into something of a ‘collection of singles’, with each catchy and memorable in their own right.  We Are Beautiful, on the other hand, is more rounded, fitting together better, but only a few pieces as ultra-hook-laden as Youngster’s “Death to Los Campesinos!” or “My Year In Lists” (or non-album single “The International Tweexcore Underground” – interestingly, the band has said that there will be no singles released off of We Are Beautiful).  While the wonderful chorus line of “Get drunk and call you at four in the morning” livens up the Los Campesinos! way on “It’s Never That Easy Though, Is It? (Song For The Other Kurt)”, the following “The End of the Asterisk” is hyped by not just its title line but also a stronger rhythm.

Unfortunately, after “The End of the Asterisk”, We Are Beautiful does start to slip a little.  “Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown #1” has some of the band’s best male/female vocals, but lingers a bit too long at its end, and that lingering continues throughout the slow, fuzzed-folk of “Heart Swells/Pacific Daylight Time”.  But Los Campesinos! return to form with finisher “All Your Keyfabe Friends”, in a peppy, overstuffed collective party.

Recorded in Seattle in the summer of 2008 on their American tour, and mixed right afterwards, back home in Wales (even though none of the four boys and three girls are actually Welsh…), the output was originally just supposed to be b-sides, but the ten tracks were judged capable of standing on their own.  And rightly so, as We Are Beautiful feels like its own boss, sadder than some other Campesinos! fare, but still definitely that singularly pretty bunch.

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