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what the fuck

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soappppp

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i too, think it would be different if we were staring into our empty palms and not an incredibly complex device which gives us access to almost all of the information in the world and can be used to communicate with other people

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LOS CAMPESINOS! REVIEW/ANALYSIS: Sick Scenes

Note: I haven’t found a full album post video and some of the songs aren’t available on Youtube for me to cite like with my other reviews, sadly. Listen to it on Spotify or something lol

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So... that was a long time, wasn’t it? Not just the gap between my last review, but between albums. There was a four-year gap between “Sick Scenes” and the band’s last album, “No Blues,” a product that I could see some appeal in but was personally unsatisfied with, but I was still eager to hear another record from them. Unfortunately, we had to wait this long gap, since things have changed, and simply put: the band has grown up.

Not necessarily in just a literal or maturity-level sense, but the fact that the world we’ve been living in has kind of grown unkind to everyone in the last few years. Not only has the music scene the band was affiliated with been changing to something else that’s -- for the lack of better words -- kinda boring, and not only has it also become less profitable, with the band resigning to day jobs for a while (thank God for commemorative football jersey sales!), but this has been a long stretch of time where everyone’s gone much more weary, especially as the world starts bombarding you with crappiness.

Worrying about a quarter-life crisis, fighting physical and mental illnesses, watching all the things from your youth slowly crumble away while past generations trivialize and demean your current problems, watching all your current interests go to shit, and also becoming increasingly uneasy with how crappy and seemingly suicidal the world at large has become, especially with the US presidential election, the Brexit vote, and most importantly, Euro 2016 being largely terrible.

I bring this up because it finally seems to provide the backing for something I desperately missed from “No Blues”: Context. I’ve went over the musical issues I had with “No Blues” a bit more in-depth in my review of it, but lyrically and thematically, there was just a sort of vagueness and a lack of a definite focus that also really turned me off from liking it very much. “Sick Scenes,” however, feels like it’s much more of a return to form in that finally, we do have a more concrete approach to the album, in that we actually know what went behind its philosophy, and now there’s actually more to latch onto and relate to other than vaguely pretty, overly-precise and clean production.

ALL THESE / SICK SCENES PLAYED OUT IN MY MEMORY / WAKE UP / I'LL TELL YOU EVERYTHING HONESTLY /

The album has actually toned down a lot of that overly pristine mixing and production of “No Blues,” and there’s actually a lot more grit, texture as well as tightness to it. It’s not “Romance Is Boring”-levels noisy, but there is a certain rawness and thump to a lot of the instrumentation again; one standout thing is the snares and kicks like from the song “Sad Suppers,” which feel a bit more crackly, but also god-loads tighter, and in a way that actually has a sort of “dirty” quality to it that I’m a huge fan of for this type of music.

“Sick Scenes” has also been a step-up compositionally as well. The melodies feel a lot catchier, with many of the bangers feeling a lot faster and more driving than those in “No Blues,” and they tend to have a consistent or growing momentum to them that actually feel powerful. “Renato Dall’Ara (2008)” is an awesome opening track because of this, starting off with like these awesome “spiralling-down” backup vocals, a really catchy chorus and more definitive sonic evolution as it goes on, it’s just great (as of this writing, there’s now word this song’s getting a music video next week! Can’t wait!)

THEY WOULD PLAY MY REQUESTS AT THE GUESTLIST’S BEHEST / ANY DISCO ALL ACROSS TOWN / BUT THINGS CHANGE, NOW STELLA’S A LAGER / AND BOY SHE IS ALWAYS DOWNED /

Los Camp have even much improved most of their slower ballads, or at least their sort of “breather” tracks, which now actually have a lot more going for them musically and lyrically. “5 Flucloxacillin” and “The Fall of Home” are especially surprising since basically, praise heaven almighty, GARETH CAN ACTUALLY SING! Like I don’t know what the hell happened in these last 4 years, but holy god Gareth can actually pull of being gentle and melodic, and in a way that actually conveys a lot of emotion and isn’t boring, especially with the subject matter.

Like I said, “Sick Scenes” feels like much more of a step up from “No Blues” and even “Hello Sadness” in that it definitely feels more about actual definite things, but a lot of the mentalities that I did think could’ve made both of those two albums much more interesting than they ended up being are still present here. It took me a while to figure out what made it so different, but I think the early days of “Hold on Now, Youngster…” fell more along the lines of being more actively emotional and visceral, trying to thump these feelings of weirdly upbeat melancholia into your head, whereas things like “No Blues” and this album seem to want to treat it more playfully, look at it with contemplation and humility, trying to find a dryer sense of subtle wittiness to it.

In that sense, “Sick Scenes” feels like it’s sort of blending the best of both worlds by approaching the focused definition, viscerality and sound of the “Youngster” days, but mixing it with a much more self-reflective and mature philosophical method. It’s a reasonable approach for the album considering its subject matter and consistent sense of fond nostalgia, and while it does tread a bit more of older ground as a result, it feels a lot more comprehensive and less overly stuffed or boring, while giving a bit of a wink back to the days of old. Hell, “Renato Dall’Ara (2008)” seems to directly reference “Youngster,” not just with the general feel and attitude (and it’s snarky as hell and I love it), but also that title (hint hint, the “2008” in the title is NOT referencing the Renato Dall'Ara).

PICTURED READING KARL MARX BESIDE HIS PARENTS’ POOL / FACING RIDICULE HE BLEATED / “THAT DOESN’T MAKE ME RICH, NO WAY, / IT’S ONLY OUTDOOR AND IT ISN’T HEATED” /

Unfortunately, a bit of a strike against this more grown-up-approach is that it means some parts of the album fall into the same trap as with “No Blues,” in that sometimes the lyrics can get a little too witty for their own good, and can get a little too obsessed with esoteric referential wordplay rather than actual content or coherence. “For Whom the Belly Tolls” (couldn’t find a video for this) to me feels like one of the weaker links on the album, in that the music isn’t particularly dynamic nor all that catchy for me, and would be ultimately rather unremarkable if not for that spontaneous choral bridge at the halfway point... which to be honest, transitions AWESOMELY.

Also, there are just some occasionally “No Blues”-esque deadpan moments on this album, which again, I can totally find appreciation for, but for me tend to end up kind of samey-sounding and a little boring, especially later on the album with “A Litany/Heart Swells,” or “Got Stendhal’s.” I dunno what to really say about these tbh, not only do they just kinda get repetitive after a bit, but they also feel like retreads to stuff Los Camp’s already done before, like with the “Heart Swells/Pacific Daylight Time” from “Doomed” or “What Death Leaves Behind” from “No Blues.”

However, with all that said, just about every other song on the album has something to offer as I’d expect from Los Camp’s standards, in that the music and subject matters feel diverse and intricate, eliciting conflicting yet consistent feels, and I do mean “feels,” since while this album is mostly much more vibrant than these last few albums, it’s actually still very gloomy and impending at times. Honestly, while that cover art above is still that popular pastel-y pink color that I kinda hate, it actually does feel rather indicative of the album in a good way: This kind of vacant, slacking and tired, nearly zombie-like person that’s so utterly fed up with how life and the world is playing out that they just want to lay there in the middle of a supermarket like an idiot who’s been up all night thinking about how shitty the world is. It’s indicative, interesting, kinda bleak, but also really funny.

(IT SEEMS UNFAIR) TO BE A ROTTEN HORN OF PLENTY! / (IT SEEMS UNFAIR) TO BE CADAVER FOR A CURSE! / (IT SEEMS UNFAIR) TO BE AN OVERFLOW FOR EMPTY! / (IT SEEMS UNFAIR) TO TRY YOUR BEST BUT FEEL THE WORST! /

Tracks like “I Broke Up in Amarante” and “A Slow, Slow Death” manage to encapsulate a lot of complete and utter frustration in an incredibly bombastic and grand veneer. Even though they do feel like they’re about completely different EXACT subjects (which I’m pretty sure are the aforementioned Euro 2016 and Brexit, respectively), they manage to feel oddly cathartic, but in a weird, kind of restrained but still natural-feeling way. There are also a lot of references in the songs like with “No Blues,” but overall it doesn’t feel as overbearing with these tracks, since the lyrics feel like perfectly comprehensible metaphors as is, and I find them pretty charming and relatable, as well as accessible.

“Here’s to the Fourth Time” (couldn’t find a link for this one) is also pretty humorous but also kind of awesome, and it honestly feels like the closest the album gets to “Romance is Boring”’s sound. The melodies are pretty poppy and catchy and have like this sort of just “grooving” and textured flow and feel to them that I love, and the last third of this song goes onto like this really noisy but badass-sounding breakdown with looped drums, distorted guitars and vocals, but in addition to that, the lyrics manage to be probably the most charming on the record, in that obviously the situation is cringey as hell (it’s about sex, and sex in a Los Camp song can never end well) but also kind of awkwardly hilarious and sympathetic, especially given the context the bandmates, now being 30-something-year-olds contemplating their quarter-life crises.

“5 Flucloxacillin” and “The Fall of Home,” once again, do feel the most indicative of that mentality of “I’m so fucking done with this place”-ness, but they approach it in such unique ways to what you’d expect from typical Los Camp fare. “5 Flucloxacillin” is kind of like this livelier indie rock ballad, with again, Gareth’s great vocals, but it’s surprisingly more “mellow” than “gentle”: the vocals are smooth and lively, but there does sound like a bit of deep-seated resentment hidden as the lyrics go into the frustration and bitterness that one would have with taking a lot of medications for things like acne or depression, and growing up in a world of utter chaos while being shittalked to by the people who made it that way whilst undermining your problems, and how even though years have passed and you probably should’ve grown out of them… you still haven’t.

(Hint hint! This song is about baby-boomers being assholes! Do you like this song yet?)

AM I A PIGGY BANK OF OBSOLETE CURRENCY? / AN ORDER OF MERIT FROM COUNTRY KNOWN FOR TYRANNY? / ANOTHER BLISTER PACK POPS, BUT I STILL FEEL MUCH THE SAME / THIRTY-ONE AND DEPRESSION IS A YOUNG MAN'S GAME /

“The Fall of Home” takes a much more intimate approach to these subjects in a way that feels rather basic, but gut-wrenching. It’s a guitar ballad, and while this could’ve easily been boring, it just sounds so nice, with like these great piano and violin accompaniments, and Gareth’s gentle, almost kind of fragile-sounding but beautiful singing, basically listing all the miserable losses of everything you once loved, locally and nationally, going down to shit by simple virtue of time having passed by and the present not being kind to them. It manages to be the simplest, but most poignant track on the entire album, and is honestly probably one of Los Camp’s newest classics.

BATTERY DIES ON YOUR MONTHLY CALL / BUDGET CUT AT YOUR PRIMARY SCHOOL / ANOTHER FAMILY FRIEND FELL SICK / GAVE THE FASCISTS A THOUSAND TICKS /

The ending track, “Hung Empty,” is alright. It’s got some great flow to it and a very catchy chorus hook, and it ends in a way only Los Camp can really get away with, valiantly shouting “Feels like I've been waiting on it, nearly all my life, but what, if this is it now, what if this is how we die!?” in a way that almost feels defiant or daring. It’s a creditable finisher, but at the same time it kind of feels… expected, you know? It feels like a typical Los Camp finisher, but it’s also just kinda basic. It’s actually kind of a microcosm of the entire album for me: it’s good! But some parts of it feel like they’ve been done before.

Like I’ve said, this album does feel like a much more pleasing return to form for the band’s earlier works but approached with a more grown-up, more exposed-to-the-world and vaguely “doomed” mindset, and for the most part, it’s very compelling! It’s got some great songs, and its feel feels a lot more definite and impactful than their last albums, it’s just that there’s a bit of crows feet here and there, and it kinda feels like even with the new perspectives it explores, some of it feels a little by-the-numbers at this point.

Not in a ruinous way, but I hope that for next album they do go even more adventurous than they did here. Again, I do think they already made a good effort; I was going to give this more of a 3.5/5, but after being given more time to appreciate the little intricacies of this album and realizing where a lot of it is coming from, it’s grown on me pretty well, it’s just I kinda wanna see more in the future, y’know? Who knows? Maybe they actually will, and I’m kind of excited by that prospect. We’re just going to have to wait and see.

Maybe if they manage to sell another thousand more of those “Doomed” football jerseys. I don’t care much about football, but goddamn I kinda want one anyway.

LC!4LYF (4/5)

FAVES: “Renato Dall’Ara (2008)”, “Sad Suppers”, “I Broke Up in Amarante”, “The Fall of Home”, “5 Flucloxacillin”, “Here’s to the Fourth Time!”, “Hung Empty”

aaaaand there you have it! Reviews of all the major Los Camp albums! Ahh… fuck

I might do more reviews of different albums in the future, but maybe not. Iunno, maybe I’ll do a few one-shots of albums I wanna talk about, like Gorillaz or something, but I don’t really know what I can really offer for that lol. We’ll see.

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LOS CAMPESINOS! REVIEW/ANALYSIS: No Blues

Ugh… I’m about to do a bad thing and probably make a lot of other Los Camp fans angry. If they actually read this, that is.

Okay, I want you to take a look at this cover art for a second. This kinda lush greenery flushed out with this pink-ish mist. It’s a little funny visual pun of the title of this album (Get it? No blues? Hah), and it probably does bring some form of atmosphere and interest to someone in the right mindset or just has a different taste in visual aesthetics… but I’m sorry, personally for me, it’s kinda flat. Not only is that pink that kind of flat-looking “millennial pastel pink,” but as a whole, this cover feels like it’s lacking contrast.

Honestly, it feels like a bit of an apt summation for the album itself: I can totally see the potential appeal to a certain crowd, and there might technically be nothing much wrong with it, but honestly, I can’t get into it despite it apparently getting a lot more positive response than something like “Romance is Boring.” I’m not trying to be resentful or anything, but it’s kinda confusing because while I can find a lot of arguments as to why “Romance is Boring” is so compelling, I can’t honestly find much about “No Blues” that explains why people love it so much, and it just doesn’t do it for me. That’s basically the “No Blues” right there. It don’t do it for me.

So remember in my first few Los Camp reviews how I said the band has 3 distinct eras? Reminder: “Hold on Now Youngster...” and about half of “We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed” were part of a “Twee Pop Era,” which then bled slightly into the “Noise Rock Era” with “Romance is Boring,” but it was immediately halted with “Hello Sadness,” and since then with this album and the next, “Sick Scenes,” we’ve been in a sort of “Mellow Alt Rock Era.” “No Blues” epitomizes this era very much, and it does signify a lot of the gradual changes to the band throughout the years that I can both appreciate, but also not.

On one hand, I’m really glad that Los Camp have changed their sound as pretty fluidly as they had. While I think I’ll always find their earlier works a bit more compelling, I’m glad to see that a crashing twee-rock band of college students in their 20’s is willing to grow up an adapt to something more mature-sounding and refined with a few more years to grow and personally develop, especially in a music scene that has kind of eschewed the music they had found previous success in, and have shifted to this sort of alt rock scene. One that has much cleaner production and mixing, one with slightly gentler guitars, tighter vocals, and more “grown-up,” much more self-aware themes.

I’m also glad that this was made during a point where Gareth Campesinos! finally seemed to reach a breakthrough and write lyrics and music that was especially HIM. Going once again back to “Youngster,” another reason why he’s not very fond of it was because of his lyrics, which he felt like was from a caricature of himself rather than himself-himself, and it felt rather dishonest or the like. Starting from “No Blues,” it seems Gareth has finally allowed himself to be as freely-moving and esoteric as he wanted, especially since the darkness of his 2011 personal history that resulted in “Hello Sadness” being the darkest album they’ve ever released no longer clouded him. I can totally respect that: he finally found a grip on the type of music that he wants to make, and the band was now free to reach its current goals, and that’s completely appreciable an artist.

MY PROSE IS PURPLE BUT NOT AS PRETTY AS LUCER-ER-ER-ERRRNE! / FOR SWEET NOTHINGS FROM THE LIPS OF A GARGOYLE, NOBODY EVER YEARNED /

HOWEVER... The problem that I immediately have with “No Blues” is that despite all of its admirable artistic intentions, it comes off as pretty pale and boring, to be honest. Musically and lyrically, this album just is not very compelling to me, because it honestly feels way too much of an attempt at the band going “Oh fuck yes, we’re done with being emo like in Hello Sadness, now we can actually write the music that we actually want to make!” But instead of it turning out somewhat adventurous, it feels both very crammed, rushed, and mildly inaccessible (for the band, anyway), and it’s done so in a way that it’s not only lacking diversity, but there’s almost no room for it to properly breathe, and as such just feels samey-sounding and choked a lot of the time.

Two terms I’ve used a lot regarding Los Camp’s discography are “dense” and “engaging,” and I think I need to specifically define what I mean by that. When I say “dense,” it usually means the music or the lyrics are compact with details, sometimes in like a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it rate. This gives a lot of the albums a lot of their relistinability, and you’ll keep finding more and more creative and colorful little moments every time you listen to a song.

But something that you also need to tap on if you want to make them actually worth listening to again is that you have to make them “engaging,” and that comes as a result of a lot of things, such as making the music or lyrics properly digestible, building up empathy or sympathy, building up the listener’s interest in the topics you want to delve into, whether the listener is remotely interested in your topics, etc. It’s not an exact thing and it is very subjective, but unfortunately, I don’t feel that majority of “No Blues” really checks off any of those ticks.

With “No Blues,” what it often feels like is that the lyrics have become very dense, with some of the most obscure references to date -- lots of lyrics about other musicians’ lyrics, politics, obscure postmodernist novelists, constellations, Greek mythology in correlation to those constellations, and European football. Holy shit, European football is everywhere on this album -- but there’s nothing particularly engaging about it unless you actually give a damn about it, because as I mentioned with “Hello Sadness,” one of my bigger problems with it was that it lacked context.

PEOPLE LAUGH, THEY WILL CALL IT FOLLY / BUT WE CONNECTED LIKE A YEBOAH VOLLEY /

Yeah, these may be complex and esoteric metaphors, but not only do they end up being incredibly distracting for me as I have to manually figure out with almost every line what the hell emotion Gareth’s supposed to be conveying, but I have no real drive or motive to actually bother because it doesn’t really say anything as is (That “Yeboah volley” line above? Guess what that’s supposed to mean without googling it. Trust me, context doesn’t really help) In that regard, it’s actually making an even bigger flaw I had with “Hello Sadness” even worse: Los Camp’s first three albums were able to convey a smattering of different, sometimes diametrically opposing emotions. “Hello Sadness” reduced itself to be being more comfortable with trying to convey just one.

But “No Blues”? I can’t really find anything that personal or really that narrative or thematic about what’s going on here other than a really vague… I dunno, millennial liberation? Light humor? Mature upbeatness? This doesn’t feel confusing in the sense that “which one of these  many emotions should I be REALLY feeling?,” it’s more like “what is this one thing I’m supposed to latch onto? Whatever it is, it feels like I’m clutching at straws here.” Or more directly, it’s just one-half an emotion at best, and even then, there’s nothing very engaging or dynamic about it.

And that’s one of my biggest problems with the album as a whole, as well as why up to this point I really haven’t said anything about specific songs yet. It all feels rather flat and too clean for its own good, like a really sharp, hard glowing red, now being reduced into a flat, grayish pink. It might have a little bit more shine to it, but a lot of its actual vibrance has been lost, resulting in all the songs being mostly homogenous, unadventurous alternative indie rock that honestly doesn’t feel like it’s offering anything that new or unique as a now-turned alt-rock indie band. It may have shed the youthful problems that Los Camp themselves felt they were plagued with, but in the end it feels like a lot of that youthfulness is what made them so compelling, and now they’re just… boring.

THERE'S NO BOX TO TICK FOR RED, SO I PUT DOWN BLUE INSTEAD / 'CAUSE IT'S CLOSEST THERE'S TO GREY IN THE CATEGORIES / AND THE VEINS WITHIN THE WHITES ARE A STATEMENT OF DEMISE / DOE EYES, YOU SHOULD STAY AT HOME LICKING BATTERIES /

But I suppose I should get onto individual tracks. Like I said, a lot of it feels rather homogenous and unadventurous, and as such, a lot of it is pretty uninteresting to talk about since most of the tracks feel like they lack diversity, lyrically and sonically.

“What Death Leaves Behind” and “Cemetery Gaits” are I feel what are the album’s more “banger” tracks, but unfortunately, with the cleaner and more sterile production, a lot of it feels a little flaccid. Yes, Gareth’s voice is loud, the drums and guitars are wailing away, and you can totally tell when they’re trying to make the catchy standout moments, but that’s kind of the problem: I can totally expect what they’re doing at this point, and it doesn’t strike any chords for me.

They’re playing chords, they said their lines (which again, since they’re so obtuse a lot of the time, I can’t really hear them as anything except just words instead of, yknow, concepts or ideas), but it all sounds very generic and sanitized, and honestly very stuffed; since there’s not a lot of proper breathing room or actual relief, the progression of these songs are often very uneventful and unsatisfying. In these tracks especially, I don’t feel any sense of escalation, climax or relief despite SOME flatly-mixed-in additional instruments near the end; it all somehow sounds exactly the same and I’m like “Get the hell on with it already! Where’s the actual payoff?”

I feel bad drawing comparisons back to the band’s earlier works, but I kinda have to because it shows the band have been shown to be capable of definite satisfaction (hell, some tracks I’ll get to later on manage to pull this off). Those albums were messier and noisier, yes, but if I could describe them as like a texture, they would be like nice slabs of concrete pavement. Probably really gritty, but not unpleasant enough to walk on barefoot, and you’ll probably get a lot of different consistencies and feels depending on how it was paved, and overall it feels solid.

“No Blues” on the other hand just feels like a sheet of completely smooth, cheap plastic. Brittle, lacking in texture, and completely devoid of life despite it attempting to mimic a popular sound and style, but whether by design or by accident, it’s still cheap, hollow, and feels really artificial, but not even in like a PC Music/SOPHIE way where it’s also trying to be so whacked-out and alien and uncanny-valley-ish on purpose.

This trait also goes onto the slower moments, such as “A Portrait of the Trequartista as a Young Man” or “Glue Me” or “Selling Rope (Swan Dive to Estuary)”, which again, are not only not very musically adventurous, and they get kinda tedious and boring after a minute or so despite any sort of attempts at escalation or being dynamic, and the lyrics that could usually pick up that slack are really unengaging. I’m reading the lyrics, and I’m trying to find the many, many references in this album, but while I can understand them, I don’t “get” them, because I’m like “Okay? So?”

MAKE HIM RECITE THIS MURDER BALLAD / A SOMBRE TUNE TOLD BY A BORE / PUMP BLOOD AROUND THE LIMP AND PALLID / HARMONISING AS YOU SNORED /

However, I will say though, this album isn’t completely devoid of good ideas, because despite me saying this album doesn’t have a lot of standout moments, there are some good concepts here and there. While I think the rest of the song is kinda “meh,” “Cemetery Gaits” has a pretty neat intro, with that small swooping, kinda-windy and radio-wave-sounding soundscape matched with this little looping synth arpeggios, then gradually matched with a gradual increase instrumentation, like guitars, pianos, then finally just exploding with drums, it’s a great start to the track. It’s a shame that it doesn’t quite escalate any further than that, even with the introduction of Gareth’s vocals, multi-man chorus and that... ugh… millennial whoop near the end.

“As Lucerne/The Low” also starts of pretty well, and I think the verses actually do more in getting close to building a vibrancy that Los Camp was sorely needing, especially since the opening lines are just Gareth wailing “There is no blues that could sound quite as heartfelt as mi-i-i-iiine!”, just this wonderful bit of self-deprecating yet such sincere energy that I’ve missed for since previous albums, and is just one hell of an intro (I remember this was the first song of the concert I went to, and it was just like “Yep, that’s Los Camp!”). Unfortunately, by the time you get to the choruses, it all just slows down really awkwardly as all Gareth does is sing “Is what I came for… in the darkness I do adore… is what I came for” and it just doesn’t work, especially alongside those tropical steel drums. Yeah… I don’t really get it either.

I think one of the only tracks I love all the way through is the first one, “For Flotsam,” which admittedly does set a good first impression for the band’s new sound on the album. Refined and maybe a little too pristine, yes, but it actually covers a lot of range instrumentally and vocally, and actually feels like it has an actual atmospheric soundscape, and the mixing actually makes everything stick out a bit more.

Also, while the melody I probably should find monotonous and boring, especially with Kim’s looping vocals in the background that almost sound kinda artificial at times, it surprisingly flows really well, and it actually feels powerful and kinda… grooving at times. It’s got a really catchy hook, the melodies actually feel diverse, the lyrics are nowhere near as overly-ornate and distractingly referential as with other songs, and it provides both a satisfying rising tension AND also a satisfying climactic payoff, I love it.

FLOTSAM, JETSAM AND SPINDRIFT, ALL THE GIRLS I HAVE LOVED / DUMPED TO EARTH BY A SPENDTHRIFT, GILT ANGELS FROM ABOVE! / AND I SAW GOD IN THE BATHROOM, I BAPTISED HIM IN SICK / EMBRACED HIM AROUND HIS CISTERN, "C'EST LA MORT, ENOUGH OF THIS!" /

“Avocado Baby” is also a pretty good track, which also seemed to have a more compelling mix to it, and actually feels like a poppy “banger” track that does have more energy and a few more laughs to it that actually make sense without being a diehard football fanatic. The lyrics here feel a lot less overly-poetic than in other songs, and it manages to have a dense amount of wordplay in a way that’s both more easily digestible, but also pretty playful and kinda cute, especially for this era of Los Camp.

I HAD A FRIEND WHO HAD MADE A FLAG DAY / BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS FROM SHARDS OF A HEARTBREAK / I HAVE KNOWN FRIENDS TO CRACK FROM LOVE'S WEIGHT / BLOSSOM IN RIBCAGE, UNTIL THEIR BACKS BREAK! /

These two songs near the end, “Let It Spill” and “The Time Before the Last Time” also do manage to be a bit more accessible, and are more actually explicitly about something: Sex. Yay! But this being Los Camp, it’s played for a bit more awkwardness and comedy, one of my favorites being with this lyric in the latter song: “The shower-head moaned / and I looked down to the tray / Sons and daughters washed away.” Gross.

These actually do feel more instrumentally engaging as well. I love that descending, actually genuinely energetic and climactic chord progression for the chorus to “Let It Spill,” and that weirdly synthesized soundscape of “The Time Before the Last Time” actually feels both really refreshing, but also kinda beautiful and epic, and something that I honestly didn’t feel like I’ve heard Los Camp make before, but I’m glad they did.

LET IT SPILL, LET IT SPILL / LET IT SPILL ALL OVER US TWO / YOU'LL FIND ME UPSIDE DOWN IN THE BELFRY / 'CAUSE BABY, I'M BATS, IT IS TRUE /

I hesitate to call “No Blues” a “bad” album. I honestly do feel like I am missing something, especially when I write this among a sea of people who find that this album is one of Los Camp’s best. It has a lot of great ideas, and it even has a few really good songs, but the sum of its parts just isn’t making a compelling whole for me, and while I will still listen to those songs, there are a lot of parts of this album that don’t do it for my tastes.

I get the feeling that this really does come down to a lot of personal tastes and biases. I know that everybody has an equally valid opinion, but at the same time I kinda feel as though this album just wasn’t made for my person in mind, and in the end, it probably wasn’t. As I said earlier, this was basically Gareth deciding to go all irreverent and write the lyrics he wanted, and the band the music they wanted, and as it just so happens, it seems a lot of people genuinely appreciate it, so you know what, good for them; I’m glad they still have an appropriate audience (one that I can only assume are just as much football fanatics as most of the band is, and trust me, the football isn’t going to leave anytime soon).

Unfortunately, for me, I’m not that person. I’m less interested in Gareth’s referential humor and poetry and more for him being able to craft those conflicting mental mindscapes through standalone metaphors born from a deep sense of self-deprecating self-awareness, and in a way that anybody can really immediately sympathize with him. When he does come through with those moments in this album, I think it’s great, especially when the production becomes once again able to carry that emotion.

Sadly for me, most of the time, it does not, and what you get is like this weird plastic, beige box covered completely smoothly with a few symmetrical football-themed etchings onto it. If you have an appreciation for uniform, productive smoothness and those football-themed etchings, I won’t hold you back from appreciating it, but as for me, it’s just kinda “meh.” And that’s a shame. (2/5)

FAVES: “For Flotsam”, “Avocado, Baby”, “Let It Spill”, “The Time Before the Last Time”

[mint-sm]

LOS CAMPESINOS! REVIEW/ANALYSIS: Hello Sadness

Okay, so this requires a slightly longer intro for context, because actually quite a lot happened that led up to this album being the way it is. The biggest word that immediately strikes this album is “change,” and it all begins with the stuff that happened outside of it and the band itself.

First of all, according to this interview from early 2011, this then-unnamed next album following “Romance is Boring” was intended to be a “more direct and poppier affair” after “Romance is Boring” started to breach more towards experimental noise pop. It’s likely to assume that it wasn’t going to be like a “Hold on Now, Youngster…” level of pop appeal, because not only did the band at the time not look fondly on that record as I’ve mentioned before, but also, indie music was going through a bit of a change at this point. This type of overly punchy, maximist “indie” style of previous albums was starting to die in its popularity, as it was slowly just kinda blending into the mainstream (and as we all know, mainstream means everything has to be boring now because shut up).

This wasn’t really helped by how the original team had already been in a transitionary period of shifting its lineup, and sadly, much of it entailed band members that really did lend Los Camp a lot of its unique and compelling energy: Drummer Ollie Briggs, violinist/keyboardist Harriet Coleman, and probably the most notable loss, lead vocalist/keyboardist Aleks Berditchevskaia, who actually left before “Romance is Boring” was released. A new lineup with Jason Adelinia, Rob Taylor, and Gareth David���s sister, Kim, was formed for the album, and while I’m comfortable with this shift, and it was inevitable since this is a band that at that point had been around for about 5 years, it’s still a shame, because damn, a lot of what made their previous records so dynamic, lively and colorful came from them.

Also, during this time, Gareth was apparently going through a really nasty breakup, and it shows in the subject matter and lyrics of “Hello Sadness,” and that statement about this album being “more direct and poppier”... well, the end result is definitely more direct, but poppy it is not. It’s the band’s most clear-cut breakup album, and it’s likely the darkest album they’ve ever released by a wide margin. Oh, some of Los Camp’s initial appeal still remains, with the catchy melodies and choruses, intricate poetics, and some genuinely poppier tracks, but here are all the things you have to consider:

The instrumentation has become less vibrant as a result of the moodier atmosphere the album’s trying to convey and possibly as a result of the changed-up band lineup. New vocalist Kim Campesinos!, while not bad, doesn’t have the sing-songy, colorful, or vibrant energy and chemistry with Gareth that Aleks provided in previous albums, and now she’s just more of a backup singer, meaning no more lively call-and-responses from here on in. The surrounding music scene has changed to prefer a more refined alternative-rock sound than the concentrated and blasting noise rock or punky influence of before. And on top of that, the album was recorded and released in what the band’s lead vocalist/lyricist described as “the year of the most upsetting breakup of my life.”

And it’s called “Hello Sadness.” Does it end well?

IT'S NO LIE IF THE WATERS ROSE / AND DROWNED THAT PLACE FROM COAST TO COAST / YOU WOULDN'T SEE THIS SMILE LEAVE / MY FACE FOR ALL ETERNITY /

Well, no, not really, but it does start very well, at least! The first few tracks of this album start off the band at its liveliest and poppiest, though there are some changes, primarily the nitty gritty of the production style. Much of the noise and grit that was found in the band’s previous works is gone, making things a bit more mellow, but tracks like “Songs About Your Girlfriend” come pretty close. It’s a very tight track, there’s a lot of really nice melodies and riffs, and while it doesn’t speak too much differently about Gareth’s lyricism -- it’s basically about being a fucking rock star in the face of an ex and her new boyfriend -- it’s still a fun bit of indie rock with a lot of potential for getting stuck in your head.

The first track, “By Your Hand” is also very catchy; I have to imagine this was one of the earliest songs made for this album before the band started to go in a moodier direction, because it’s just that nice to listen to. Again, it’s not as bombastic or dramatic-sounding as something from any of the band’s previous albums, but it is very lively and has a lot of pop appeal; those little looping e-piano riffs, the brass accompaniment in the background, and the catchy crowd choruses, and the lyrics are kinda just like some cute, kinda funny romantic encounter. I could imagine this playing as like maybe like a theme song to some teen-oriented high school movie or something, it’s basically just a decent, pleasant-sounding pop tune with some really nice choruses and some vibrancy to it.

YOU DO NOT LIKE US CAUSE / YOUR GIRLFRIEND LIKELY DOES / AND ALL YOUR FRIENDS AGREE ON HER SOFT-SPOT FOR ME / I'LL HAVE MY HARD HANDS OVER / HER SOFT SPOTS SOON, YOU WILL SEE /

However, the title track is where I think the band starts getting really interesting. Something I’ll touch on more in a bit is that the album honestly doesn’t do a very great job at presenting conflicting emotions, something that I’ve very much praised the band for, since most of the time, it doesn’t seem like we’re given enough context for any of the scenarios presented to feel anything more than just “sadness.” I’ll explain why I think that’s the case in a bit, but essentially, most songs from this album feel like they’re presenting one strong emotion, but previous songs of other albums presented far more.

The song “Hello Sadness,” however, I think stands alone since it IS able to establish more of an internal conflict, clearly illustrate it for us, and manage to bring us on Gareth’s side, as he just belts these gorgeous-sounding vocal melodies that paint a really strangely hopeful yet utterly futile-sounding and hollow mentality, but in a way that works to the song’s advantage as the production is probably the most simultaneous bombastic and heartbreaking on the entire album, building up to just this epic climax of wailing guitar riffs, epic drums and background vocals, and Gareth just fucking roaring his lines.

Throughout this album, Gareth is trying to bring us onto our side and convince us the idea that heartbreak is pretty much akin to death, and I think this song, more than any other on the album is able to do that and make it just so utterly epic.

I CHRISTEN ALL THE SHIPS THAT SAILED / ON YOUR LITTLE KISSES' SALIVA TRAILS / GOODBYE COURAGE / HELLO SADNESS AGAIN! /

Unfortunately, this album takes a bit of a nosedive starting from the middle section, and that’s where I start having a lot of problems. See, as I’ve said, Gareth is trying to build up a sort of emotional state where much of the enjoyment comes from thinking “wait, what emotion am I supposed to be feeling here?”, and never getting a definite an answer because it just makes their music that much more versatile. Sadness has always been a thing in Los Camp records, but it’s made much less overbearing by covering it under some other conflicting emotion, and Los Camp has shown to already be masters in making things feel equal parts of multiple moods and emotions at once, be it anger, disappointment, fear, sarcasm, or even joy.

However, with “Hello Sadness,” much of the songs feel content in just evoking a single mood of anguish and despair and that’s kind of it, and unfortunately they feel kinda boring after a while, especially since the instrumentals on songs like “Life Is a Long Time” and “Every Defeat a Divorce (Three Lions)”, just feel kinda standard and unsophisticated and not all that diverse or intriguing, sonically or lyrically.

A part to making heavily emotional artwork work is to have the artist(s) be able to bring the audience into their intended mental place, and give them context to be able to relate and convince them towards this feeling. Unfortunately, this album kinda lacks context, and it’s just not that compelling, and that’s a shame.

We can tell from the lyrics of a lot of these things as to what Gareth is feeling, maybe some of the circumstances, but despite how flowery and… interesting some of the lyrics are -- for example, the “three lions” of “Every Defeat a Divorce (Three Lions)” appear to be based on the lions on the English National Football logo, which come to life and start clawing him to death as a metaphor to heartbreak. Yeah. -- they just can’t move me, because I don’t really “get” or really relate to the context most of these songs were born of, and he doesn’t really do a great job of convincing me to get invested.

I can get the high anger and volatility of something from as harsh and abrasive as “Plan A” from “Romance is Boring,” and I can get the mildly cringeworthy but upbeat cheeriness, lighthearted joy of “By Your Hand” of this album, but I just can’t get a lot of the other lyrics that ultimately boil down to “I’m sad. I’m disappointed. Heartbreak is like death. Here’s another lyric about me being brutally killed by a giant animal to illustrate that. Would a bird do this time?”

YOU KNOW IT STARTS PRETTY ROUGH / AND ENDS UP EVEN WORSE / AND WHAT GOES ON IN-BETWEEN / I TRY TO KEEP IT OUT OF MY THOUGHTS /

Not that it doesn’t get a little better by the end, though. That bird line above is referencing “The Black Bird, the Dark Slope,” which does pick up a lot more energy, and honestly kinda feels like a darker-and-edgier reinterpretation of the band’s twee indie rock days. It’s less gritty and raw-feeling, Kim’s vocals, while not bad, are just kinda relegated to a background accompaniment, maybe with a few lines here and there, and the lyrics just get kinda ridiculously too edgy at times (seriously, THE ENTIRE SONG is about a giant black bird tearing him apart limb from limb), but it still works pretty well, again, kind of like a blacker, cleaner response to something from “Hold on Now, Youngster…”

But the ending doesn’t really do this album concept a proper service, I think. “Light Leaves, Dark Sees Pt. II” is just kinda… dull, and while I don’t dislike slower songs just by principle, this just feels kinda plodding and too listing to really make it feel any more than just kinda lazy. I much prefer “To Tundra” earlier on this album, which is still a little too basic lyrically and instrumentally, but it does have a more satisfying climax, or “Baby I Got the Death Rattle,” which is also not the most adventurous song on this album, but does have a little bit more viscerality and punch to it, and as well a pretty nice and funny outro.

AND I CHEWED MY ONLY NECKTIE / FROM THE METAL FRAME OF MY BED / WHERE I TIED YOUR WRISTS TOGETHER / SPENT ALL NIGHT GIVIN' (OH, YOU GET THE MESSAGE!) /

Overall though, this album is kinda boring, but totally listenable. It has a few really good ideas, and some of the songs from here do rank as some of my favorite Los Camp tracks, and overall it’s not really a tedious listen, but ultimately it’s just not the most engaging thing this band has to offer. If you actually do manage to fit that moody or darkly snide atmosphere it’s almost completely consumed with, I think this might do it better for you (there was a time of depression when I considered this my favorite more than “Romance is Boring”, so heh), but as its own thing, it’s kinda just meh.

It’s a shame that this wasn’t as dynamic as I was hoping it would be, or as compelling, but you know, times change, life hits you, and if this is all you can really feel like writing? Eh, go for it. Thankfully after this, Los Camp would later spend a longer while for their next endeavor, something that would stand out much more, and perhaps be… less sad? How could they do that? :O

Eh… we’ll get to that next time. (3/5)

FAVES: “By Your Hand,” “Songs About Your Girlfriend,” “Hello Sadness,” “Baby I Got The Death Rattle”

[mint-sm]

LOS CAMPESINOS! REVIEW/ANALYSIS: Romance is Boring

Let’s talk about a word for a minute: Tryhard.

In an (at the time of writing at least) mildly recent interview with Noisey on the subject of this album, lead guitarist Tom Campesinos! (Tom Bromley) described “Romance is Boring” as “probably the most self-conscious record, and it's probably the most try-hard record as well,” describing it as a reaction to that whole “twee” and “pop” label they were most popularly recognized with from “Hold on Now, Youngster…”, and even after the release of “We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed.”

Like I said on my reviews of both albums, I feel that “Youngster” was an excellent release if only for the sound it ended up with, and not necessarily the band’s initial visions, which would then be addressed and accentuated in “Doomed,” which more clearly defined the groundwork that the band wanted to pursue underneath the indie pop exterior roof formed with “Youngster.” With this album, “Romance is Boring,” they definitely wanted to challenge that idea even further; become more experimental, create much more blaring, aggressive songs in unusual time signatures and beats, with more complex and detailed production alongside Gareth’s self-deprecatingly bitter, but intricate and atmospheric lyricism. In other words, “Romance is Boring” was a self-imposed challenge, and if they wanted to be “try-hard,” they succeeded.

At the same time though, Tom seemed to be somewhat disappointed about what the band would make in the future in comparison to this album, saying “I would never make songs like that again, at the moment I'm not in that frame of mind where I would, so when I listen to them I'm like 'shit I can't believe we made this'.” The sad truth about trying really hard to be as fucking wild and complex-sounding is that it might be something you never wanna try again because you might never, ever reach that adrenaline-fueled mindset you were in to originally craft it again in the future, and as we’ll discuss with “Hello Sadness” next time, reality just might hit you hard enough to stray away from that.

It’s a shame, but as an artist who often gets fatigued of just trying to work on a passion project for years that burns out for a while after releasing a thing, I can sympathize a bit. Creating and experimenting is very tough, and it takes a lot of time, and you will be often be surprised as hell by what you make in the end, but at the same time it can be really straining, only made bearable by sheer passion and emotion (mostly frustration, it sounds like) that, sad to say, can dissipate just like that, and getting it back isn’t something you can just “do.” And “Romance is Boring” is passionate and emotional, and the experimentation clearly did pay off, but was their process something they should be willing to go through again? Well, I don’t know Gareth and the band well-enough to decide for certain, but I’m gonna say… probably not?

CAN WE ALL PLEASE JUST CALM THE FUCK DOWN!?

But anyways, let’s talk about “Romance is Boring” itself. Simply put, as you probably might have inferred from other reviews, “Romance is Boring” is my favorite Los Camp record. They put a lot of fucking effort into this album, likely more than with any other record they’ve ever made, and it shows. It contains basically everything I think the band excels at, and even the parts it doesn’t normally do the absolute best in, they do exceptionally well here. Witty, poetic and dense lyrics, blaring, catchy, and diverse instrumentals, wild and conflicting yet consistent moods, and hauntingly vague but vivid imagery following and exploring complex and dissonant themes and narrative, such as the idea of falling in love, disappointing mental anguish, depression, creepiness, selfishness, bitter sarcasm, and regret, among others. It sounds a lot better than the emo shit it just came off as, honest.

The album is much more narratively flowing than “Youngster” or “Doomed,” and as you might expect from the title, it’s about romance, but not necessarily in a completely despondent way as it also might imply. While an overall theme it provides is one of dissatisfaction and heartbreak, once again, Los Camp’s ability to simultaneously yet fluidly meld together multiple diametrically opposed emotions shines through here.

The second track, “There Are Listed Buildings,” is a very good example of this, because the instrumentation is by far the poppiest and free-flowing track on this album, almost “Youngster”-ey in quality, with these cheery “BAH BAH, BAH BAH, BAH BAH BAH, BADDADA” choruses with what I think is a tuba or trombone, and just a wonderfully-sounding electric guitar riff pre-chorus, it all feels so bright and carnival-ly, and honestly, so are the lyrics, which are playful and strangely optimistic for the band. I think it’s about a like a couple deciding to actually pursue a relationship, with lyrics like “I think I'd do it for love, if it were not for the money / I'll take any scraps that you can give,” which is made honestly kinda cute and sweet-sounding in a sepia-tone, sarcastically hipster kinda way.

I REMEMBER BEING NAKED TO MY WAIST, THOUGH NOT IN WHICH DIRECTION 

[YOU ARE A GLUTTON FOR LOVE, CAN YOU GIVE ME SOME ROMANCE? I'M A GLUTTON FOR SIN]

However, the opposing feeling from this song comes from the exact details and the context in which this song ends up in, because other lyrics seem to reflect more of this idea that the girl is actually really a little too desperate because “You dangle fishing line for crabs, but they're not interested /  I'm your only bite,” which kinda reminds me of that XKCD comic discussing that “nice guy” that at first seems sweet and caring for a lonely girl but is actually disturbingly manipulative and creepy as shit (which some people unfortunately seem to unironically agree with). Plus, as was shown by Los Camp songs before and after, Gareth has simply never believed that “true love” exists, and this budding relationship is uh… yeah, it’s kind of doomed to not end well.

It’s made so much clearer with the song right after it, the title track, and I just love it for how utterly SPITEFUL it is. Whether these characters played by Gareth and Aleks are supposed to be the same throughout the entire album, I don’t know, but this relationship has gotten incredibly bitter and sarcastic, the instrumentation is so fucking blaring and distorted and crashy and violent at times, and the chorus features the band absolutely screaming “YOU'RE POUTING IN YOUR SLEEP, I'M WAKING STILL YAWNING, WE'RE PROVING TO EACH OTHER THAT ROMANCE IS BORING,” it’s so gleefully hateful. I don’t think I’ve heard many tracks of a mutually mentally abusive relationship that sounded this damn cathartic.

WE ARE TWO SHIPS THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT 

YOU AND I, WE ARE NOTHING ALIKE 

I AM A PLEASURE CRUISE, YOU ARE GONE OUT TO TRAWL 

RETURN NETS EMPTY, NOTHING AT ALL

Really, I could go on with these tracks all day and pick apart the little intricacies of each song to dissect how great each one is, because this is probably the absolute densest Los Camp has ever gotten instrumentally and lyrically. There’s so many little moments as to what makes every track work so much, and rarely is it just as straightforward as the title track, but even when it is, the production and poetry just feel so incredibly potent, it’s essentially like instead of listening to a song and being gradually surrounded by atmosphere, “Romance is Boring” fucking clocks you with it.

Just getting out of the way, I think maybe the least experimental track on this album is “Straight in at 101,” because instrumentally, structurally, it really does feel the most straightforward, even with little moments with like a sudden blast of distortion at one point or how it immediately goes from feeling bright and upbeat to somber, then complete silence as Gareth sings about how “the talking heads count down the most heart wrenching breakups of all time / imagine the great sense of waste, the indignity the embarrassment when not a single one of that whole century was mine.”  It, and maybe “A Heat Rash in the Shape of the Show Me State; or, Letters from Me to Charlotte” are probably the most “standard-sounding,” or like baseline to Los Camp, which doesn’t mean they’re bad, but yknow.

I’d still consider it a very strong track because it’s still very consistent, it’s got a very continuous but evolving groove to it, and the lyrics are still jam-packed with wordplay and description that paint just this really fucking selfish, but also really kinda(?) sympathetic narrator, who makes his utter disappointment with what I’m assuming was a one night stand very clear. Los Camp is a very self-aware band and Gareth’s a very self-deprecating writer, but the way he manages to be both really ugly but astoundingly relatable, and also so mean-spirited to a point where you can’t help but really laugh at how much of a shit he is is kind of admirable.

I THINK WE NEED MORE POST-COITAL AND LESS POST-ROCK

FEELS LIKE THE BUILD-UP TAKES FOREVER, BUT YOU NEVER TOUCH MY COCK 

AND WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU MEAN NOW BY, "WHAT CAN YOU EVEN EAT?" 

AND HOW DOES THAT AFFECT HOW I'LL GET OFF THIS EVENING?

Two of the most unusual tracks that I both love from this album are “Plan A” and “I Warned You: Do Not Make an Enemy of Me” (goddamn that title just makes me so giddy for some reason), with “Plan A” being probably the harshest, off-sounding and most punk-like track Los Camp has ever recorded, with its atonal, distorted mashing chords and screaming call/response vocals (it’s so fn weird hearing Aleks sound panicked and frantic, but goddamn I miss her) before suddenly segueing into like this sing-songy, but still distorted and oddly free-flowing, almost twee-like chorus, and “I Warned You” sounding so stilted and awkwardly tense yet cheery with its weird tempo and beat shifts, almost feeling kinda outsider-music-y at times.

BROKE DOWN LAUGHING AND SCREAMING FOR MORE 

BUT IF THIS CHANGED YOUR LIFE, DID YOU HAVE ONE BEFORE?

Another personal favorite track is the intro, “In Medias Res,” which starts off the album just perfectly, starting with like these gentle, but already kinda already compressed and messy acoustic guitar chords before slowly building up into this like surprisingly reverbed, ethereal and charming instrumental, with a backing that almost sounds like it came from like a shoegaze or dark dream pop track, but with like this really, dreamy and cute duet vocals and glockenspiel. It sounds so oddly saddening yet so weirdly uplifting, especially with that little breakdown near the end with all the distortion effects placed against the glockenspiel, keyboards and brass; I’m pretty sure you can hear at some points Gareth screaming some lines, but it’s so blended-in with the instrumental, but it sounds kinda… beautiful.

And the lyrics, oh god, the lyrics. For some reason, the first and last lines just have so much damn atmosphere loaded into something that just feels so… simple. I can’t explain it without the context, but the very first line, “But let’s talk about you for a minute,” just really gets to me for some reason, probably because within this album itself, it just says so damn much about its themes, that while incredibly toxic and awesomely angry at times, can also get really intimate, melancholy, and depressing, especially with the song’s outro lines:

“IF YOU WERE GIVEN THE OPTION OF DYING PAINLESSLY IN PEACE AT FORTY-FIVE, BUT WITH A LOVER AT YOUR SIDE, AFTER A FULL AND HAPPY LIFE, IS THIS SOMETHING THAT WOULD INTEREST YOU? WOULD THIS INTEREST YOU AT ALL?”

Keep in mind, Gareth believes that true love doesn’t exist.

And in a really cruel reality, despite how playful, giddy and sarcastic or self-deprecating it can be dancing around the topic, Los Camp STILL can’t prove to us that heartbreak, however, isn’t anything but incredibly real. The final 3 tracks on this album (not counting the bonus track, “Too Many Flesh Suppers”) perfectly reflect this mindset.

The fan favorite “The Sea is a Good Place to Think About the Future” is simply put Los Camp’s most beautiful, poignant track they’ve ever made (and also one of the most devastating and emo), and it serves as one hell of an emotional climax for the album. While Los Camp hasn’t really been one for imagery and instead prefers mood most of the time, this track is the perfect marriage of the two; everything about it just seems to paint this incredibly vivid mindset about a depressed, suicidal and utterly broken lover (if it’s the same one from “There Are Listed Buildings,” it’s even more so), who I can just imagine is like sitting on the far end of a dock on a very gloomy beach with gray overcast and an sea, maybe like rocking her legs back and forth sitting on the edge with her feet just touching the salt water as she just stares hopelessly out onto the endless horizon. Y’know, happy stuff.

The lyrics on this track are just some of the most utterly concise and madly specific descriptions Gareth’s ever written, with simultaneously pointless yet (ugh I normally hate this word in this context but) deep and precise lyrics, and Gareth’s vocal delivery just slowly escalates to this heartfelt, like pouring-out-his-soul-in-desperation, perfect climax. Everything about this track just works, and it plunges you into this visceral, atmospheric world of gray skies, salty seas and contemplation, where it really does feel like that the sea is a great place to think of the future… or maybe a lack of one.

SHE SAID ONE DAY TO LEAVE HER, SAND UP TO HER SHOULDERS, WAITING FOR THE TIDE

TO DRAG HER TO THE OCEAN, TO ANOTHER SEA'S SHORE, THIS THING HURTS LIKE HELL... 

BUT WHAT DID YOU EXPECT!?

But like I said, Los Camp likes to dance around these sort of maudlin themes, and immediately after one of the bleakest tracks they’ve made, we suddenly get more cheery, upbeat, and snide in “This is a Flag. There is No Wind,” whose first lyrics are literally the band shouting “CAN WE ALL PLEASE JUST CALM THE FUCK DOWN!?”, singing another almost-kinda-sorta indie-twee track about a couple stupidly in love, but we all know that it’s all unhealthy and it’s going to end poorly, right? Like, any song about love that has the chorus “The story of the winter I forgot how to speak, my mind was like a nation's flag but my breeze was too weak / How they dragged me to the hospital saying I had gone deaf / But I heard everything they said, it's just I had no interest,” no matter how crowd-pleasing and roucous and glockenspiel-accompanied it sounds, can’t have a story that ends well, right?

Well, considering how the album ends with “Coda: A Burn Scar in the Shape of the Sooner State,” a much slower, a lot more ethereal-sounding ballad with the lines “Run the water 'til it scalds, you know that I'm listening / Pitter-patter runs the shower, hits the bare porcelain” and “I fall to my knees, my piss-soaked jeans / The first time, the last time, all the times in between”... it’s probably safe to assume yes, it didn’t. Actually, considering “The Sea is a Good Place” and the chillingly repeated outro of “I CAN’T BELIEVE I CHOSE THE MOUNTAINS EVERY TIME YOU CHOSE THE SEA,”  it probably ended VERY horribly. And… that just fucking sucks, you know?

Goddamn, there’s still so many tracks I didn’t cover, but damnit, if I make this any longer, this is gonna just turn into a track-by-track thesis paper, since there’s just so much to talk about. These are basically the major elements I love the most and find the most worth-addressing, but the thing is that this entire album feels worth addressing, because once again, it’s just so damn packed with just about everything I feel makes an album work in my eyes. There’s not a single track that’s not worth analyzing and appreciating, but christ, there are only so many hours in the day! D:

BY NOW IT'S JUST THE THREE OF US

ME, YOUR SHADOW, YOUR ECHO

“Romance is Boring” is just a fantastic album. It manages to contain all of the things I feel an album needs to be heavily engaging, and the fact that most of them came from a band who normally doesn’t do that great in some of those aspects such as actual concrete description or instantly recognizable context makes this feel all the more surprising and welcoming.

And that’s where it all comes down to: it is just really, really engaging. It’s powerful without being overbearing, it’s noisy while being incredibly and consistently precise, it’s descriptive while being pretty accessible, and it’s varied but also manages to maintain a consistent sound Los Camp have finally pinpointed down as that which can be identified as uniquely their own. It plays up the band’s unique strengths just enough that you never feel alienated or feel forced or anything like that, and not only is it as adventurous as the band might ever get, it’s one hell of a fucking adventure. Hail try-hardiness. (5/5)

...So what happens now?

FAVES: “In Medias Res,” “There Are Listed Buildings,” “Romance is Boring,” “We’ve Got Your Back,” “Plan A,” “Straight in at 101,” “Heart Swells/100-1,” “I Just Sighed. I Just Sighed, Just So You Know,” “The Sea is a Good Place to Think About the Future,” “This is a Flag. There is No Wind,” “Coda: A Burn Scar in the Shape of the Sooner State,”

[mint-sm]

LOS CAMPESINOS! REVIEW/ANALYSIS: We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

Last time on the Los Camp review (suspenseful orchestral soundtrack plays), I went over “Hold on Now, Youngster...,” which was an excellent introduction to the band, but I don’t think was completely reflective of the refinement and impact it would later reach. While what was presented was impressive and lively as hell as is, and the foundation for a wittier, more poetic, more intelligent, more refined and diverse sound was there, they just didn’t have the a full-enough grasp on their visions to take advantage of it.

Well, just 8 months after the release of “Youngster,” the world was suddenly sucker-punched right in the face with “We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed,” which had immediately shown a much firmer grip on that path. Bare in mind, prior to the release of “Youngster,” the band had already existed for 2 years, and that album was something of a compilation of different songs they had been performing in university clubs and internet radio shows. It’s an excellent compilation, and it’s still very well put-together, but it likely wasn’t the most precise voice and identity resembling what the band intended to jump for, at least for the future.

With “Doomed,” they finally found ground for their true calling, and it was surprising as hell. Starting things off, the album immediately hits you with “Ways to Make It Through the Wall" with its bombastic opening chords, grimy feedback, incredibly-banging and dense melodies, crashing cymbals and blasting violin, and even MORE shouty vocals from the band, including Gareth almost incoherently screaming “AND A ROOM FULL OF VACUUM AND A ROOM FULL OF AIR LOOK THE SAME!” during the bridge. On one hand, it still somehow manages to feel like the good ‘ol Los Camp we knew, and yet at the same time you ask yourself “This is the same band that just released an album with a song called ‘Drop It, Doe Eyes’?”

(HOW YOU BREAK THE RULES THAT YOU YOURSELF IMPOSED / THINK YOU'VE GOT IT IN FOR US, I THINK YOU'VE GOT IT IN FOR YOURSELVES!)

I kinda mentioned this in my intro, but I would personally divide Los Camp’s discography into 3 periods: A “Twee Indie Period,” followed by an “Noise Pop Period,” then a “Mellow Rock Period,” and “Doomed” is found kinda sandwiched in between the first two. A lot of the fresh-new-vibrant-indie-ness of “Youngster” can still be felt, but it doesn’t quite reach the more experimental and even more noisy magnificence of “Romance is Boring” that we’ll discuss next time. That said, this transitionary period still feels like a massive blow to the head with just how much more powerful the production feels now, but it’s really, really welcome.

While I don’t really think other tracks in the album reach as much of an impact as the intro, it still does consistently have a more consistently… not “tight,” but “punchy” feeling to it. Much of it feels in a way somehow messier than “Youngster,” with a more abrasive side, almost garageband-like than hipster-y (though looking it up, I just found out that “noise pop” is an actual thing. You can see why I’m probably not the most qualified music critic lol).

Later bangers (haha see that I'm an awesome reviewer look at my lexicon) on the album, such as “Miserabilia,” the title track, and "All Your Kayfabe Friends" all have this less-pure, but still clashing feel to them, with more distorted guitars, harsher-sounding percussions, and more compressed vocals, almost sounding cassette-recorded quality at times. Even their comparatively softer tracks, such as "You'll Need Those Fingers for Crossing" and “Heart Swells/Pacific Daylight Time,” still feel very feedback-y and dense, if that makes sense.

(WE GOT NOSTALGIC, ENDED UP FILLING SHOE BOXES WITH VOMIT / COLLECTED SCABS IN LOCKETS, HUNG THEM ROUND OUR NECKS LIKE NOOSES / NONE OF IT MATTERED, NONE OF IT MATTERS, NOBODY CARED)

Now this probably sounds like “Doomed” is maybe too messy or harsh to be really accessible if you’re coming from “Youngster,” but honestly, it’ll all feel surprisingly pretty familiar since a lot of the instrumental sensibilities from that record still shine through and are in the forefront. We still have a lot of those plucky, lo-fi keyboard synthesisers, we still have the violin and glockenspiel riffs, we still have the many call-and-response verses between Gareth and Aleks, and we still have the upbeat, catchy melodies and choruses.

Not much theory-wise has fundamentally changed in that regard, except maybe the softer, lowkey ballads have gotten more distinctive, such as “You’ll Need Those Fingers for Crossing,” which not only has a constant, but soft and occasionally punchy rhythm to it, but again, has that duet aspect, and it flows beautifully.

“Between an Erupting Earth and an Exploding Sky” is also this great, a bit dissonant, synthesized, little screechy, but also rather ethereal and floaty-sounding instrumental, a track that I honestly think is one of the band’s most visual-sounding themes, one that provides one of the most clear mental images, like maybe you’re splayed out while floating midair as both the earth and sky are already exploding beneath and above you all in extreme slow-motion, where everything’s all violent and impatient and tense and shit but at the same time weirdly serene and kinda cosy? It’s like experiencing a terrifying apocalypse and yet it feels like everything’s going to be okay.

There’s also “Heart Swells/Pacific Daylight Time,” which on top of just being one of the band’s very few honest-to-god love songs that’s surprisingly heartfelt (it’ll get more surprising when I discuss “Romance is Boring,” believe me), the muted vocals, the reverbed, feedbacked to hell background ambience, but very crisp guitar and percussion just paint this beautiful, but kinda fading image that’s honestly one of the most sweet tracks the band’s ever made, but also one of the most vaguely tragic.

(I DON'T WANT TO SOUND TRITE BUT YOU WERE PERFECT / THE WAY YOU LOOK COULD SERIOUSLY MAKE NATURE DYSMORPHIC / I WISH THAT YOU WOULD KISS ME 'TIL THE POINT OF PARALYSIS / THE WAY I FLAIL MY ARMS IN FRONT OF YOU, IT JUST EMBARRASSES)

And then we get to the lyrics, and like I’ve said, this is where the band has started to get much more flowery and descriptive, and honestly very funny in a sort of cringe-comedy-ish way, accentuated by once again, dissonant instrumentals. “Miserabilia” in particular is just like a really jaunty, upbeat and smiley-sounding track, and there is a definite playfulness both sonically and lyrically, but at the same time you go “wow, this ‘miserabilia’ (because get it, misery? Memorabilia? Miserabilia!) isn’t something I should cling onto, but at the same time, it’s pretty natural to do so, innit?” There’s also a really cute and funny lyric about “He whispered, ‘Oh my God, this really is a joy to behold’ / I thought he said, ‘It's a joy to be held,’ so I held him too close / It was a grave mistake, he never came back again!”, and I honestly can’t help but smile at just how absolutely DUMB it sounds when I hear it.

But on the more depressing side of sardonic, there’s the title track, and it’s probably one of my personal favorite cuts in the band’s discography, not just because how much it hits close to home for me personally -- it’s about a long-distance relationship falling apart, and how over time you start getting more and more resentful of them and their diverging interests and they get so much more unfamiliar it makes you wanna break their new friends’ teeth in no I’m not still bitter -- but also because how it manages to perfectly encapsulate that snide, but genuinely frustrated catharsis, not just with the banging instrumental or the gradual vocal escalation as the song continues, but the really specifically-vibrant vignettes Gareth provides to really build this mindset, like how “Absence makes the heart grow fonder / fondness makes the absence longer / Length loses my interest, I'm a realist, I'm insatiable / Swapped counting days until I fly, with hours before your reply.” Really, if you can only listen to one song from this band, it’s this one (even if it is for the climax, which is absolutely incredible if emo-sounding as fuck).

(OH, WE KID OURSELVES THERE'S FUTURE IN THE FUCKING / BUT THERE IS NO FUCKING FUTURE / I'M JUST PRACTICING MY ACCENTS, PICKING AT OLD SUTURES)

Admittedly, there are some times when the lyrics really elude me on their exact meaning, probably because I can’t really pin down what scenario or what context they were born from, unlike the lyrics to “No Blues” where I can say “Oh yeah, he’s just making a football reference, right” (we’ll get into that later). Like the song “It's Never That Easy Though, Is It? (Song for the Other Kurt),” which I think is about the narrator meeting with a girl, breaking up with her, and I think like the on-off resentment he gets when she snogs with some other dude? I think? I dunno, I’m reading the lyrics and I’m listening to who’s singing what line, but I still don’t really get a clear scenario.

Though like I said, Los Camp doesn’t USUALLY excel or at least specify in making images, and are more for crafting mentalities, mindsets, and atmospheres, and you still get this kinda-restrained giddiness juxtaposed with deep-seated resentment/fondness about a girl and part of her family, which is a theme that continues on for pretty much the entire second half of the album, like with “The End of the Asterisk,” or “Documented Emotional Breakdown #1,” whose exact meanings also elude me, but they have an obvious, kinda “twee indie”-style jauntiness to them, but haunted by an understated feel of darkness.

(THEY SAID, "THAT BOY'S TOO LAZY", YOU WERE CLEARLY FOREWARNED / A JEALOUS EX SILENCED THE ROOM, HE SAID THAT YOU WERE A WHORE / "DO YOU KISS YOUR MUMMY'S LIPS WITH THAT MOUTH?")

I think that just about sums up this album in a nutshell: Twee indie-style jauntiness with darkness haunting under them, like maybe say, an erupting earth and an exploding sky? It feels like Los Camp have finally identified an ominous, impending feeling of doom underneath their twee pop exterior and is slowly bringing that out with noisier production, more simultaneously specific-yet-vague subject matter, and a lot more honest-to-god atmosphere, brought out with much more concise and evocative lyricism.

It marks the true beginning of what I think the band is all about, and redefined what to expect from them. Once again, the feelings it provokes are a simultaneous yet somehow distinctive mishmash of wanting everything to be raucous and violent and you wanting to break down walls and shit, but also at the same time wanting things to be more emotional and down-to-earth, yet additionally being resentful and anticipating that fearful, inevitable doom.

It really is a great addition to the band’s discography, and it honestly feels like the perfect halfway point between the band’s innocent enjoyment of a time and scene gone by and the massively sardonic bitterness of the future. What happens then? Stay tuned! (suspenseful orchestral music ends) (4.5/5)

FAVES: “Ways to Make It Through the Wall,” “Miserabilia,” “We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed,” “Between an Erupting Earth and an Exploding Sky,” “Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown #1,” “Heart Swells / Pacific Daylight Time”

PS, if you’re interested, I’ve also got an EEP released recently too! It’s electronica/chiptune fusions about a lot of cheeriness and sadness and shit! Thank!