Cardiff-based septet Los Campesinos! return this week to placate the baying hordes of fifteen year old faux-hipster fangirls with their latest offering Hello Sadness, ten songs designed to document "breaking up and trying not to break up in the process". The band's third album (discounting sensational bumper EP We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed) is LC!'s chance to show us how far they’ve come since we first heard their triumphant fountain-dancing debut Hold On Now, Youngster in 2008, and expectations are universally high.
Opening with the already well-known By Your Hand, we're instantly hit with the signature moves of early LC! - quirky lyrics, quick tempo and gang vocals. It's a Stone Cold Stunner that’s catchy, fun and, ultimately, deceptive - even after the first track, we're still expecting a You! Me! Dancing! or a Straight in at 101 to come next. Songs About Your Girlfriend isn't exactly that - the opening riff isn't traditional LC!, and Gareth's lyrics are even more overtly sexual and even confrontational than ever before. Grown up? In a way. Luckily, irony prevails, as does the glockenspiel (yes!), and the guitars in the chorus take us back to the fresh-faced glory of WABWAD. Feeling optimistic? Good. Next up - Hello Sadness. Chorus refrain 'this dripping from my broken heart is never running dry' brings us back down to earth with a melancholy thud - we're now into the meat of the album and the emotion we were promised, but it just doesn't hit… perhaps it's due to the gallons of almost ironic melodrama we're drowned in thanks to songs like Life is a Long Time. Every Defeat A Divorce (Three Lions) ticks the obligatory 'football song' box - as if to let us guys share in the emotion, 'cause we don't get love without a quarter final exit, amirite lads? - and never really goes anywhere - the line 'if he hasn't blown the whistle then it isn't quite the end' is poignant, however, and rescues the weakest track on the album.
Hate for the Island, the shortest song on Hello Sadness, feels almost like an interlude, the two minutes of calm and quiet before the shouty but forgettable The Black Bird, The Dark Slope and album highlight To Tundra, a sonically huge song which fuses the electronic titterings we associate with LC! with that criminally underrated violin. The first three minutes build up to a crashing climax - Gareth's delivery here is as good as on any Los Campesinos! song, and the minute or so of genuinely heartwrenching vocals finally finds that direct line to our hearts, and not a minute too soon. Baby I've Got The Death Rattle doesn't let up - a song which combines lyrics which effortlessly intertwine morbidity and sexuality - 'not headstone but headboard is where I want to be mourned' - with an unrelenting, anthemic soundtrack to create arguably their best track since The Sea is a Good Place to Think of the Future. The coda, as in Romance is Boring, ends the album on a sombre note – refrain 'when the light leaves, the dark sees' is heartbreaking on so many levels. While Light Leaves, Dark Sees pt.II isn't the strongest song on the album, it's a poignant ending to an album that deserves one.
Hello Sadness is a strong album – not spectacular, but strong. I'm not sure this is the fully-grown form of the kids we know and love - they've stopped carving poetry into your door with a Stanley knife and are now stealing your girlfriend instead. Hello Sadness isn’t the epic emotional rollercoaster we were taken on in Romance is Boring - it's more of a slow, heartbroken drive down the coast at midnight, more realisation and chronic anguish than the teenage loop of euphoria and melancholy we’re used to with LC!. They're not fully grown yet – Gareth’s still 'drawing a dick in the snow for every girl who wouldn't fuck me' - and this alone makes the future of Los Campesinos! that bit more exciting.
8.3/10
Listen: http://www.npr.org/2011/11/06/141912014/first-listen-los-campesinos-hello-sadness?ps=mh_frhdl2
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