Los Campesinos are all young, fresh faced and poppy and cause many music critics to go “awww!” – but I have to admit they make me go “eeerrrr?” Sound-wise, sometimes they sound like McFly with regional accents, college educations and rackety indie production values. Or, as kinder people might have it, post-Arcade Fire tweecore. Both these descriptions essentially mean this record has strongish melodies, augmented by synths, staccato guitars, unison backing vocals, violins and glockenspiel. There’s also a cosmic balance being struck in the vocal quality – the girl’s voice is getting blander while – what with all them deep morose spoken word bits – the boy sounds increasingly and intriguingly like a red wedge 1980s urban poet (but with social skills and a middle-class family life). And some heart and soul is creeping into the song-writing, although it still all sounds a bit too clever-clever to be truly genuine.
Generally, however, I’ve gone all existential and – frankly – I don’t have a clue whether I like this or not. There’s too much music out there that sounds a bit like this. How could we possibly get through it all? How could we possibly even know what we like anymore? Maybe we should all agree not to make or buy any more music until we’ve gotten through all the stuff currently clogging up iTunes? Could we? All agree? Only then would we truly know what we really liked and didn’t like. (Editors note: this would render Hot Press’s business model totally defunct and we couldn’t pay you). Ahem, let’s not do that then. What was I thinking? (slaps forehead)