Los Campesinos

what, I'm not allowed to listen to new albums now?

That feeling of hearing "By Your Hand" again for the first time in five or six weeks... pretty great.

i love it when morbs turns up talking about bands i love (he was p vocal too when i started a thread for that last disappointing magnetic fields record iirc). i also find american politics p lame, so if only i had more knowledge of olde timee movies, i feel like we could be ilx bros.

what, I'm not allowed to listen to new albums now?

― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, November 8, 2011 4:22 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest

no it's awesome, i just didn't know that you had any idea who LC! are

I haven't even heard that last disappointing magnetic fields record

lol it was v forgettable whether you heard it or not. but you talk about tmf and discuss their tour dates within that thread.

(memories of one of the first threads i started not about football)

After exhausting the first three albums on a ravenous kick this week I returned to Hello Sadness, wondering if I might appreciate it some more with distance. I didn't. What a flat, disappointing album. "Every Defeat a Divorce (Three Lions)" has got to be the worst song they've ever written. Like, I get that you like soccer, but why put a very literal song about that fandom in the middle of an album? Do you have any sense of what it is you do anymore?

ha i like that song a lot. soccer is pretty central to the LC! experience & idk... i think the way gareth writes about romance applies well to sports too

i'm split on which of the last two albums i like better. the first two are clear standouts to me.

"to tundra" is one of the best songs they've ever written tho. & "by your hand" was a great single.

EDAD is barely about football dude.

in fact the whole album he seems to have turned down the footer references. or sport in general. edad is about his parents divorce, it is just half framed around watching football. songs about yr girlfriend has a reference to kit. by yr hand has a snooker reference.

it is less great than the other 3 but it has by yr hand, hello sadness, edad, life is a long time and baby i got the death rattle which may be my favourite lc! song so...

its like they made a 7.5/10 record instead of the 9s and 10s the others were. not a huge deal.

Soccer has always been background coloring on LC!'s albums (as, to a greater extent, has music fandom and scenesterism), fun details that fleshed out the songs and gave a sense of Gareth's greater tastes and interests and made him seem like more than the sum of his orneriness and heartbreak. And I get that in some of Gareth's most wry lyrics all of those concerns have exaggerated, world-ending significance, but to actually dedicate a whole song to soccer just confuses everything thematically. I mean, this is a breakup album. Imagine if, like, Marvin Gaye had sandwiched a song about how the Tigers were having a crappy season into Here My Dear, putting that disappointment on the same plane as his withering love.

"By Your Hand" is a classic LC single, and "To Tundra" is really graceful, so Hello Sadness closes with some dignity, but the middle section is so soggy and uninspired. Romance is Boring is by far the better album; the prose and storytelling on the record are so much more biting and effusive. For all its sprawl, everything on that album is so alive.

This one family photograph
Always floats to the top
Like a beaming, bloated corpse
Though having been made up
My memories are sepia
But the photograph is not
An historian is fucking with them
As deadly as garrotte

Where they're standing in the kitchen
With his arms around her waist
With no idea of what's to come
And a smile across your face
And all the fittings are the same
But every other thing has changed
Must forget everything you know
As though your mouth and tongue estranged
Small comforts found in ABBA Gold
And electronic chess
When West Clewes was my Waterloo
My most dramatic test
Now I've been walking down the shortcuts
And the alleys in the dark
Because I'm not scared of the shadows
They're no blacker than my heart

These things rattle round my head
If he hasn't blown the whistle
Then it isn't quite the end.

---

How is this not about his parents divorce and instead "about how the Tigers were having a crappy season"?

Seems to me like he's using the divorce as a metaphor for soccer, not the other way around, right? Because a soccer defeat is a very inadequate metaphor for your parents' crushing divorce; when you reverse that equation you a least get some absurd humor from the asymmetry of the comparison

Nah it is about him remembering a time when they were getting divorced as he also goes to watch England get beat with his dad. Also THAT game* (which half the first verse eludes to) was pretty crushing on a lot of people, and to use it as what should have been a distraction and instead was a punch in the nuts just adds to the weight imo. idk i guess i find it easier relating considering i would have been the same age, with the same england football enthusiasm, going through a parents divorce.

*Argentina 2 - 2 England with Argentina winning on penalties, obv. It is about a legendary a game of sport gets. It made a national hero (Michael Owen). It made an international villain (David Beckham). Two penalties within the first 15 minutes. It had beautiful bits of skill and two especially great goals, one which was a true sucker punch free kick routine by Argentina. It had England (Sol Campbell iirc?) seemingly score the winning goal and have it disallowed. And then of course penalties.

Honestly I think that game was a big turning point in how the country viewed a ton of things, sport and celebrity and national support etc. There hasn't really been national support of a sporting figure like Owen got that night since Farah/Ennis last month, we kinda just took 14 years off.

Also didn't help that we'd been to war with them a decade ago.

Basically go watch that game. It used to be on youtube.

I tip my hat and walk back some of my criticisms; that's a really solid read of the song. (I still hate this song, to be sure, but I'll blame that more on the UK/USA culture gap than any songwriting shortcomings.)

every time i listen to the latest album, i'm surprised by how solid it is and how much i like it, but i don't feel compelled to put it on the way i did romance is boring and certainly don't adore it the way i did wab/wad

i never picked up on the divorce part

its in the name

that is certainly true.....

task force https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L41wqBPc1_g&feature=youtu.be

thanks for posting! is this a new album? must investigate this. whatever it is, i'm digign it.

yeah upcoming

ASSEMBLE

https://soundcloud.com/los-campesinos/what-death-leaves-behind/s-jDNo5

this song is GREAT

WE WILL FLOWER AGAIN

holy fuck. What a song. John Goodmanson's production on this is just incredible.

Why must I lie awake, from dusk until the morning, through fear of bein' impaled upon errant mattress spring?
Within a waking dream I finally made my heel turn, lived life as Super 8 when you were promised Hilton
Propose me as a pardon for sins, led on barbecue I'm burnt offerings
I proof-read the Book of Job for the Lord: edit one, League Cup 2004
We, delicate as a filigree, cleared a place for us in the chicory
Colosseum blood will dry in the sun (is it true...?)

GOAT

Why must I lie awake, from dusk until the morning, through fear of bein' impaled upon errant mattress spring?

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

Why yes I will post the tracklist

1. For Flotsam
2. What Death Leaves Behind
3. A Portrait Of The Trequartista As A Young Man
4. Cemetary Gaits
5. Glue Me
6. As Lucerne/The Low
7. Avocado, Baby
8. Let It Spill
9. The Time Before The Last Time
10. Selling Rope (Swan Dive To Estuary)

Avocado, Baby > Picasso, Baby

is this their optimistic album?

those big thwacking snares on this are so good

i already like this better than anything on the previous record

nah, by your hand still holds up really well

3. A Portrait Of The Trequartista As A Young Man

this is like the ur-campesinos song title right here

all goosebumps-ed out from this song. Love love love.

this fucking band is going to make me reopen my Livejournal account

this song is really, really good

"by your hand" is awesome though yeah. "to tundra" off the last joint is one of their best songs ever too.

Hello Sadness was good enough, only OK, but I'll forever love it for lowering my expectations enough that I could be surprised and delighted by this new one. I didn't think the band had the wow factor left in them anymore.

HOLY FUCK COLOUR ME EXCITED

all of the above especially the love for to tundra and the fact that most of hello sadness wasn't as mediocre as many of us older fans felt but that after some realllllly high quality heat rash singles and this i am v psyched for this record

Is there a way to hear those Heat Rash singles? I would happily shell out money for them; it was dumb of me not to subscribe.

not to my knowledge although if you email gareth at askheatrash or the official los camp account maybe he'd send you the mp3s for paypal?

if not (or if so?) send me an email

the heat rash singles were great, but so was the tiptoe through the true bits b side they released for free through the blog and the christmas single which i don't think was a heat rash exclusive last year? doe to a deer iirc.

Heat Rash / Non Album Stuff:

Kindle a Flame in Her Heart / The Holly and the Ivy (December 2010)
Heat Rash #1: Light Leaves, Dark Sees / Four Seasons
Heat Rash #2: Dreams Don't Become You / I Love You (But You're Boring)
A Doe to a Deer (December 2012)
Heat Rash #3: Allez Les Blues / Dumb Luck
Heat Rash #4: She Crows (Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown #4) / To the Boneyard
Tiptoe Through the True Bits

Heat Rash #2 is covers and they're ok but not vital. #1 was good but not mindblowing. #3 and #4 are some of my favourite songs from that era of LC! and Doe to a Deer / Tiptoe are A+ wonderful.

Super helpful! Thanks!