“We’re aware that we’re a very unfashionable band” states main songwriter Tom Campesinos! with a glint of pride. “We’re not making music that is particularly trendy”.
Whatever their music is, who better to describe it than Tom and lyricist Gareth, who are helpfully on hand to tell Clash what to expect from new album ‘Romance is Boring’ – their third record in under two years! I’m impressed already (Listen to the album before release on ClashMusic.com HERE).
The album was recorded in America in two separate sessions. Tom tells us how the staggered creation process influenced the overall sound because “…we always seem to fall in the same traps, when after you’ve been recording for a while you lose perspective. It’s good to be able to step back and think about where you want the overall album to go. It was the first time we were able to do that”.
Where did you want the album to go? “I’ve no idea! We always just let things unfold in a fairly organic way. The way we’ve wanted things to go has just been implicit, almost from the mistakes we’ve made in previous albums. It’s a case of correcting those”. “We wanted the record to be more patient and to work as an album” continues Gareth. “With ‘Hold On Now Youngster’ that was essentially every song we’d written up to that point and then ‘We Are Beautiful We Are Doomed’ was intended to be an EP but we ended up recording more songs, so this was the first time we actually went in the studio knowing we’re making an album that has to make sense from beginning to end and has to be something that somebody wants to listen to in one go”.
“It’s really easy these days to do a very neat iTunes album package, like quite short and very digestible”, adds Tom. “With this, there’s a lot of information to take in so some elements become apparent over time. That was the intention”.
They seem to have nailed it with ‘Romance is Boring’, an unpredictable yet balanced frenzy of jangly hooks, soaring strings, yelps, brass, fuzz and clapping that beguiles and befuddles you from slow-building opener ‘In Medias Res’ to the closing refrain “I can’t believe I chose the mountains every time you chose the sea”, which somehow manages to sum up all that is beautiful and sad about relationships.
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Does Gareth feel any need to explain the meanings behind the songs to the other band members? “I’m really reluctant to share lyrical ideas with the rest of the group until I’m certain of them myself”. If he isn’t certain, he’ll ask for advice, like whether to include the word ‘cock’ in ‘Straight In At 101’. “I was worried that it was a bit macho and rude, and then the producer John Goodmanson who’s worked with all these seminal riot core bands was like ‘man you’ve got to say cock! That will be so much better’. As soon as he gave his permission, cock was in”.
The lyrics jump deftly from the seemingly frivolous to the evocative, and a particular favourite is the girl in ‘The Sea is A Good Place to Think of the Future’ who, when translating French into English, ‘I get the feeling she makes the meaning more significant / she was always far too pretty to believe a single word she said’. What do you think of bands who write really simplistic lyrics that can be recited after one listen? “I think it’s amazing to be able to do that. The most basic example is something like Kings of Leon’s ‘Sex on Fire’. I have no idea what it means, it’s just incredible that somebody could take that which means nothing – it’s just buzzwords!”
‘The Sea…’ was the first track from the record to be released online, and the positive response is a welcome affirmation to Los Campesinos! because “it’s totally different from anything else we’d done and it’s given us a lot more confidence to try new things”, smiles Tom. The song definitely has a feeling of melancholy that isn’t prevalent in your earlier material. “It’s been fun to play with, to indulge in the ‘woe is us’. We’ve tended to move towards upbeat things, so to do that and be really happy with the outcome and for people as well to like it too was encouraging”.
So despite the positive feedback, and a strong relationship with their fanbase thanks to their personal, thoughtful and unaffected blog, Tom describes the band as unfashionable, explaining that because they formed in Cardiff and picked management “that was strongly and proudly based in Wales, you feel proud of the fact you’re outside of England and outside of London especially. You’re almost forced into doing your own thing and not caring what’s going on, self-indulgently getting on with your own thing, which in a sense promotes individuality”.
But surely ‘unfashionable’ isn’t necessarily a negative term, especially in the transitory music world of next big things? “Exactly. People would never name drop Los Campesinos! as a band to make them sound cool, and I’m sort of proud of that. I suppose we have to be proud of that because we’ve got no choice. We could never be a cool band, and maybe that is part of the appeal for whoever does like us, the fact that we are just getting on with our own thing and are hopelessly uncool.”
Words by Jenny Nelson
