As of late I have been awash in self-importance. It has cleansed me of visible self-doubt. It has carried with it droplets of detriment for my writing. Sober Sunday afternoons are as good a time as any to reassert my creativity and supposed musical pretensions.
Panic(!) At The Disco created a great distaste upon my palette for bands that include an exclamation mark in their name. Upon the release of their second album they dropped the punctuation from their name. A sigh of relief. I can now embrace another punctuated band: Los Campesinos! I find that bands often must come from isolated communities that are not exposed to wide-ranges of popular music in order to truly create a unique and untainted sound. The only example I can think of at the moment is Wintersleep, whose first two albums are quite difficult to pin down to a specific genre and sound unlike anything else mine ears have been graced with. However, as I mentioned about a year ago on this very blog, their third album Welcome to the Night Sky is a radio-friendly farce. Moreover, it has attracted fist-pumping, Edge 102-listening bros and their hos to the band as "fans." The Wintersleep show the other night was crammed with pot-smoking, quiksilver hoodie-wearing bro-dudes from God-awful places like Peterborough, each with boot-cut jeans wearing, Guess? purse-carrying hos in tow. Fuck that. (As a side note, I suppose it ultimately was my own fault for attending the show long after already declaring Wintersleep dead to me)
Back to the main point: Los Campesinos! They are another band from a fairly isolated community--that is, Cardiff, Wales (thanks Wikipedia!). Their style of "indie" post-punk is really unlike any other music that is classified as such. Each song is packed with enough ritalin-concentrated ADD energy to make parents consider a divorce simply to split custody. As well, LC! creates a frenetic he said/she said balance through the dual vocals of Gareth and Aleksandra (all bandmembers go by the last name Campesinos!--thanks again Wikipedia!). Listen. Listen now. Listen well.
