Music to drink tea by
Posts tagged Los Campesinos
Brontosaurus Chorus create a well-crafted pop monster
23 years ago
in MP3s
If I was ever going to fall in love with a band based on a name alone, this would be it.
Brontosaurus Chorus are a band made up of a few boys, a few girls, various instrumentation and a love of all things indie pop. We have a slow build that suddenly launches into a big pop record. Vocal duties flit back and forth between male and female voices. Yes, my Los Campesinos! sense is tingling too. Which regulars readers will know is always something that will get me excited.
Not that Brontosaurus Chorus are exactly the same. They are from London for a start. Seriously though, their songs seemingly have more work put in to them, resulting in a sound that is rather more polished. One gets a sense that each moment of these songs have been carefully thought out, down to the tiny little flourishes. Somehow we end up with a sound even bigger than the eight person lineup the band already carries.
You’ve Created A Monster is out now on Pop Art.
Website / Myspace
Great British Hopes: Dananananaykroyd
03 years ago
Talk about your unwieldy band names. Getting the right amount of anananana is bad enough, but then there’s the double header of Aykroyd not being the simplest name to spell either. The funny thing is that the music fits the name. If you’d asked me beforehand what I’d think a band called Dananananaykroyd would sound like, I’d go with loud and fast. And that’s exactly what we have.
The thing that takes one aback about Glasgow’s Dananananaykroyd is just how loud and fast it is. The vocals jump straight in, not sung, but fucking shouted. A dual assault of two drummers quickly follows. None of this is an opening gambit, nor is it limited to the song. This is the sound of desperate for you to hear them. This is the sound of a band that makes even labelmates Johnny Foreigner sound relaxed.
The risk with music like this is whether or not it can work in a full album setting. It’s easy to run dry when you use up this much fuel in just three minutes. A bunch of singles and an EP show they are on the right track. We’ll find out in a month if their ability matches their ambition, but they certainly seem willing to try.
Hey Everyone! will be released on April 8 by Best Before. The band is also participating in new WTFblog Awesome Pals, alongside Los Campesinos!, Sky Larkin, Johnny Foreigner, Favours for Sailors and a bunch of others. In other words, the entire good end of the British music scene.
Johnny Foreigner sum up the festival experience with riots, tents, free drinks, mud and panic attacks
03 years ago
in MP3s
Oh Johnny Foreigner, the only band to put out a record last year that I enjoyed more than either of the Los Campesinos! records. Quite an impressive feat given there is only three of them when the other lot have seven. Even more impressive given their album, Waited Up Til It Was Late was largely made up of older, re-recorded songs. Nearly two and a half years down the line though, they still sound as fresh as they ever did.
Of course, it’s still lovely to hear some new material, so it was a nice surprise last week when the band threw up a zip file on their Myspace page containing two new songs: Ghost the Festivals and Ohai, Sentinels. The first has been around for a while now, both in live sets and a couple of videos out there in Youtubeland, but it’s nice to have proper recordings. The production may be a little rough around the edges, but I’d expect nothing less.
Ghost the Festivals manages to sum up my own experiences at Reading last year, but I imagine the language is pretty universal. From escaping the site before the riots on the final night to the endless sea of tents to hanging out in the VIP area with free drinks. Although I must have been doing something wrong as my drinks certainly weren’t free. £2.50 for a tiny glass of Coke? Jesus.
There isn’t anything particularly new in these songs. When you hit the perfect formula with your first album, I suppose it makes sense to keep it up. Which is fine with me. So long as the next record is even half as good as the first, it’ll still probably be the best thing released this year.
Johnny Foreigner Is Aces (containing both Ghost the Festivals and Ohai, Sentinels) is available to download from the band’s Myspace page for the next ten days or so. Both songs are also on an exclusive tour EP that the band will be touting during their European tour with the mighty Sky Larkin.
Website / Myspace
The obligatory Los Campesinos! post
03 years ago
in MP3s
I know that I write about Los Campesinos! a lot. So I apologise if you don’t really like them. In my defence, I haven’t had much of a chance to write about their latest album. Once I do though, we can all move on for a while. At least until they put something new out anyway. Which at their current rate will probably be next week.
We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed seemed to be an apt title for a second album following less than a year after their debut. It seemed unlikely that much would be as enjoyable as Hold On Now, Youngster…, and let’s face it, the band always had the feel of having one superb in them before disappearing again.
Despite everything against it though, somehow WABWAD (the best acronym ever) manages to be a superior work, demonstrating far more range. Walls of sound are introduced, abstract instrumentals and Casiotone inspired short, sharp shocks rumble through the record. Thirty minutes later, we’ve covered more musical ground than a lot of bands would in a decade.
That isn’t to the say the pop songs that symbolised the original album are gone. They’ve just evolved. The title track offers exactly what the it promises. Racing through lines about breaking people’s teeth, decaying organs and stale relationships with such exuberance you can’t help but wonder if the master track got mixed up somewhere down the line. It doesn’t matter though. By the time Gareth spits out his ultimate condemnation of society with “we kid ourselves there’s future in the fucking, but there is no fucking future”, you just want to shout it out and roll your eyes in unison.
We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed was released back in October. Even though only 5,000 copies have been put out, with no more to follow, it still seems to be available. What the hell is wrong with you people?
Internet Forever – Break Bones
03 years ago
in MP3s
A band without any pictures at all. Not the greatest of starts when you want to blog about them.
That said, it’s hard not to take notice when you get an email claiming “equal love for Times New Viking, The Unicorns, Los Campesinos! and Casiotone For the Painfully Alone.” Seeing as I love three and a half of those, I’m inclined to have a listen.
This is the kind of music that makes the likes of Casiotone sound overproduced, which is no mean feat. Everything is incredibly rudimentary, and covered in distortion, yet it’s ultimately adorable for the two minutes that it lasts. Despite the limitations, boy-girl vocals, handclaps and glockenspiels all manage to put in an appearance, giving us a sense of what Los Campesinos! perhaps would have sounded like with only two people.
The ethos of the band seems to be built around the idea of making music in the now rather than thinking it over too much. The band’s first gig will is coming up in a couple of months. Hopefully they won’t rehearse too much.
Internet Forever will play their first gig on December 11 at the The Lexington in Angel. Which is in London.
Website / Myspace
No Age – Eraser
1
A few years ago, if Pitchfork had given an album a 9.2 rating, I’d be all over it in no time. I wouldn’t necessarily like it, but a high score at least meant it was worth trying. Now I drop in on Pitchfork about once a week, skim read the reviews of bands I already know, and leave it at that. Which meant that No Age slipped entirely under my radar. That is until they were announced as part as Los Campesino’s Shred Yr Face tour.
For some reason, I expected No Age to sound like The Thermals. I have no logical reason to think that, given I had never heard them, or even read anything about them until a couple of weeks ago. Maybe their name suggests a certain urgency or something. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t really prepared for the wall of noise I was hit by. During the first minute of Eraser, it sounds as if it is something big. By the second minute, you start to wonder if it’s little more than an interesting instrumental piece. When the vocals finally kick in, we’re already in the final moments of the song, making us desperate to hear some more. Which I suppose is what makes it so perfect as a promo mp3.
MP3 No Age – Eraser
Times New Viking – Call & Respond
03 years ago
in MP3s
I’ve always thought that I should like Times New Viking. People whom I trust to have good taste seem to rave about them. They get compared to bands like Pavement all the time. Their songs come across as something akin to a lo-fi mess. The only thing is that I always found them to be too much of a mess. Ramshackle is one thing. Ramshackle to the point of having nothing to grab onto is quite another.
As such, I almost consigned this song straight to the bin when it arrived in my inbox. Lucky for me it had a title that made me press play though, as it’s really rather wonderful. I can’t tell what about is different from the previous TNV songs I heard, but for some reason this one clicked for me. The sound is still utterly shambolic, but it certainly has some charm, in the same way those early records from Malkmus & co. did way back when.
Times New Viking will release a new EP on 7″ and download only (boo!) on October 22. In the days leading up to that, they will be touring the UK and Ireland with Los Campesinos! and No Age as part of the Shred Yr Face tour:
14-Oct – Komedia, Brighton (£12/14 – 14+)
15-Oct – Carling Academy 2, LIverpool (£12/14 – All ages)
16-Oct – Irish Centre, Leeds (£10/12)
17-Oct – Whelans, Dublin (€13 – 18+)
18-Oct – School Of Arts, Glasgow (£10/12)
20-Oct – Electric Ballroom, London (£10 – All ages)
21-Oct – Fleece, Bristol (£10 – 18+)
22-Oct – Academy 3, Manchester (£10 – 14+)
Website / Myspace
Video: Los Campesinos! – Reading 2008
23 years ago
in Live Reports, Videos
After scouring Youtube for a while and not finding anything, eventually I stumbled across this delightful little video of part of Los Campesinos! set at Reading. While the quality is kind of crappy, you get to experience the joy of the “fuck you Ting Tings” chant that Gareth accidentally started, a brief cover of Pavement’s Frontwards* before the almighty sing-along that was You! Me! Dancing!. I was located somewhere down at the front, somehow taken aback by just how boisterous it all got.
* Correction: I’m a dumbass, it’s actually Box Elder.
Los Campesinos! – How I Taught Myself To Scream
13 years ago
in MP3s
We get by on four hours of sleep at night
And we never get tired, only tired of you
The day after I talk about Cardiff being the music capital of the country these days, Los Campesinos! seem to want to cement that fact by throwing out a brand new recording. To be precise, it isn’t exactly new, but it’s the first time we’ve heard it. How I Taught Myself To Scream was recorded for their first album but didn’t make the cut. So with a new album on the horizon, what better time to offer it up?
It’s not that hard to see why it didn’t make the album. There is nothing wrong with it by any means, but it does sound rather similar to a few of the songs that did make it. Had it been chosen over any of those though, it would have felt right at home, and we could be having this conversation about Drop It Doe Eyes or We Are All Accelerated Readers right now.
The second album from Los Campesinos! is called ‘We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed’ and will be released on October 13. They will spend part of October touring the UK with No Age and Times New Viking as part of the ‘Shred Yr Face’ tour.
Video: Los Campesinos! – My Year in Lists
03 years ago
in Videos
Here is something I said less than a week ago:
Los Campesinos! will go down as the one of the greatest bands that only made one album.
Here is what the Los Campesinos! newsletter says today:
We at Los Campesinos! are very happy to announce the release of a new record. Coming on October 13th is ‘We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed‘: ten brand new tracks…
Shows what I know, doesn’t it? I don’t even know what really spawned the original comment, but I’ve thought that for a while. They just seemed like the band destined to not last, and every interview I read with them seems to add to that suspicion. There’s no one specific reason for this, I just have a sense that it’ll all fall apart sooner rather than later. Which to be perfectly honest, that title isn’t really helping with.
Seeing as Hold On Now, Youngster… is my second favourite album of the year (you can guess the first), I’m delighted to be getting new material so quickly. I’ve no idea what to expect from it coming only a few months after the first record, but if there’s anything on it that sounds like My Year in Lists, I’ll be happy enough. Their best song and fifth single (which didn’t chart in the top 200!) with an absurdly simplistic yet brilliant video. How many other bands could get away with an opening line of “send me stationary to make me horny” and still seem so gleefully innocent?
