Los Campesinos! / Hello Sadness

Los Campesinos!
Hello Sadness
(Wichita)
* * * *

Hello Sadness is Los Campesinos!’s fourth album in as many years. Since the last one – 2009’s Romance is Boring – they’ve lost two members, gained two new members, launched a quarterly periodical, and (AND!) had one of their songs used in a television commercial for a rubbish lager, in one of the more unlikely examples of indie/corporate synergy in recent years.

The first little surprise on the new record comes on opening track By Your Hand, which features frontman Gareth doing ACTUAL PROPER SINGING. It’s a fitting introduction to what is probably their most melodic album to date, if not their most mainstream. Certainly, songs like Life Is A Long Time and Hello Sadness woldn’t be out of place on the soundtrack to a youth-orientated Channel 4 comedy drama, or an independent movie starring Michael Cera.

But, reassuringly, Los Campesinos! have not lost their taste for earthy lyrics and big choruses. At least one song even contains trace amounts of glockenspiel, an instrument that the band have enjoyed a striking love–hate relationship with over the years. Nor have they lost their knack for packing songs with hooks; LC! is, above all else, a band that knows its way around a hook.

Despite its commendable brevity (ten songs over forty minutes), this is not a perfect album – it sags midway through, and ends with the slightly anticlimactic ‘Light Leaves, Dark Sees’. But its highlights are some of the best songs Los Campesinos! have released since Hold On Now, Youngster. If you found them a little hard to stomach in those days, it might well be time for a reappraisal.