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August 16, 2007
Los Campesinos! - Live @ the Mercury Lounge, 08.09.07
* Again due to a girlfriend/photographer workstrike/vacation, photo is Flickr-napped from a man called Jalapeño, whose work you can see here.
Welsh indie pop sensations Los Campesinos! would headline the Mercury Lounge the night after I saw them play to a sparse room in an unusually early opening gig. So there would be no ecstatic sing alongs from the newly dedicated, and not enough arms to support the crowd surfing that was depicted in floating pictures from Saturday night's show. It was a warm up gig, a chance for the band to feel out the space and pick up a few extra bucks. It was also a free pass for me (which explains why I didn't care).
The young band was awfully enthusiastic from the start, members filling every corner of the stage in the manner that we've come to expect from their Arts and Crafts label (home to platoon-ish bands such as Broken Social Scene). Frontman Gareth sported a Casiotone for the Painfully Alone t-shirt and a truly awful haircut. One disembodied strand of hair jutted from one side of an otherwise close cropped head, only to be swept over the front of the face. It came perilously close to personifying a made up hipster hair style I've long longed for; the ironic combover. His male bandmates weren't as folically challenged, but also much more non descript, looking like the sorts who could have been in any indie band from the UK anytime in the last 15 years. Luckily, the were framed by the comely violin player Harriet on the right and the truly delicately beautiful Aleksandra on keys to the left classing up the joint. Also, according to press materials all of their last names are Campesino, so they really had no choice but to form this band.
The early set number, "We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives," was a prime example of the real charm the band can occasionally display. Enough energy to get feet to moving, a dash of delicacy provided by the string swells, and some smart lyrics. Gareth Campesino sings like a less sarcastic Eddie Argos, which could grate on the nerves in the set's duller compositions, but suited this track just fine. The non ironic (or was it, I can't even tell anymore) slip into the Lesley Gore's "It's My Party (and I'll Cry if I Want to)" was especially delightful.
You'd think that competently covering one of my favorite band's very best songs would be enough to win me over, but the band's energetic take on Pavement's "Frontwards" managed to leave me cold. As much as I enjoyed mouthing the words along, the sped up ramshackle version tanked a good deal of the song's unchecked romance. "I've got style/ miles and miles/ So much style that it's wasted..." is just not a line to start pogoing to, after all. Perhaps I'm just being picky though, as it was quite warmly received.
More unequivocally good was the mighty anthem, "You! Me! Dancing!" Harriet did her part to sell the opening minute's stately bait and switch, playing somber violin notes straight out of some daftly titled Mogwai track. But when the fun comes bounding in, motion is hard to suppress. Gareth and Aleksandra traded lines and doe eyes in between his elastic spastic act, taking every few minutes to calm down to a serene place before launching off again. It's in joyous compositions like these that a possiblyu bright future for the band may lie. They're a bit precious and a tad excitable at this point, but there are songwriting chops here, I'm sure.
Posted by Jeff Klingman at August 16, 2007 04:15 PM
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