Romance is Boring

Los Campesinos!’ new album, their third in just two years, is distinctly bigger than anything the Cardiff-based septet have done before. And not just because it’s longer and has more songs. Romance Is Boring has been padded out with brass, strings, drum machines and electronics. There are even (barely noticeable) guest appearances by Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu and Zac Pennington of Parenthetical Girls.

This incessant layering of sounds makes for one angry mess. The punky ‘We’ve Got Your Back’ is awash with distorted aggro, while ‘Romance Is Boring’ is hosed down with testosterone. Adding to the confusion are the irritatingly pretentious titles of tracks such as ‘I Just Sighed. I Just Sighed, Just So You Know’ and ‘There Is A Flag. There Is No Wind’.

But it’s not all bad, not by a long shot. Two interludes, ‘200-102’ and ‘Heart Swells/100-1’, give us a bit of breathing space from all that abrasive glockenspiel and filthy lyrics. Better still, the giddy rockers have cleverly sussed that romance is boring and so have opted to reference death, shagging and football instead.

I could base an entire review on the remarkable lyrics front man Gareth Campesino! is growling, from the vulgar (“Feels like the build up takes forever/ But you never touch my cock”) to the out-and-out brilliant (“Every girl I ever kissed/ I was thinking of a pro footballer”). Granted, all that energy can be a little headache-inducing but there’s a lot of pleasurable fury on the record too, not least the irresistible rhythms on ‘There Are Listed Buildings’. Yup, this is probably the least boring album you’ll ever hear.