Having paid my dues as a teenage indie kid with a barrage of pretty terrible hair cuts, I really see the appeal of Cardiff's brightest young things Los Campesinos!, whose debut album 'Hold On Now, Youngster' dropped this week in the UK. It's giddy, fast, often tracks blend into one another, it's hard to retain whole songs but various lyrics stick in your head. Then you listen to it as many times as I have, and it's a joy. Walking around in the glorious sunshine listening to this album on headphones yesterday was great fun. Especially the parts where shouting becomes mandatory. Phrases like "It's not what you like it's what you're like as a person" or "We have to take the car cos the bike's on fire!" or "We! Are! CONTENT!" or just counting really loudly. Even the album's darker sentiments are buried under bouts of giddy guitar and synths work. There's a lot going on in forty-two minutes, and that it's a great album without 'The International Tweexcore Underground', and that 'You! Me! Dancing!' isn't the best song on here says a lot. That'll be 'Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks', which like the opener, is about sixty times faster than its original demo, and features the gleeful refrain "One blink for yes, two blinks for no!" What are these guys, Jean-Dominique Bauby? I've been waiting to make that joke for weeks. Elsewhere there's a lyric about the Breakfast Club that's pretty sweet, a song called This Is How You Spell "HAHAHA, We Destroyed The Hopes And The Dreams Of A Generation Of Faux-Romantics", references to Meanwhile, Back in Communist Russia, livejournal and a song with "unison" in the title. 'Hold on Now, Youngster' is an album to listen to loads and loads of times, so why don't you do that?
There's an embedded video below. I hope you watch it!
[download Los Campesinos! - Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks (old version)]
Los Campesinos - official site / myspace
Buy 'Hold On Now Youngster' UK
You look desperate! You look pathetic!
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I think what you meant to say was "indie schmindie but not shit"
Good enough to put on a sticker on the CD.
i've spent the past three weeks on work trips in the frozen northern lands of minnesota, wisconsin, and upstate new york, and although i'm now 38 years old old old, this lot still impress me to no end. "hold on youngster" is easily the best "indiepop" CD in years and it's been on permanent repeat for me as well!
Bands should pay for your quotes fella.
I think Bauby would have loved this:
http://in.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idINIndia-32289820080304?rpc=92