LOS CAMPESINOS!
Sticking Fingers into Sockets
Arts & Crafts
· It means "The Peasants!" in Spanish.
If Los Campesinos! had a collective spirit animal, it would be an eternally back-flipping puppy that wants nothing more than to make you the happiest person in the world. "Please, please, play it agai," it begs. "Come on, it’s only six songs. Please." Aw, shucks. All right back-flipping puppy, you win.
A self-described stew of glockenspiels, melody horns, cowbells, handclaps, Casiotone keyboards, silliness and indie snobbery, the handful of tracks on Los Campesinos’s debut EP are esoteric, quirky and energetic without succumbing to mere kitsch. When they delve into hipster ostentation, it’s brief, humorously self-effacing and never enough to turn off a casual listener. Simplified – this is wonderful, brilliant pop music.
Despite of the group’s seven-person girth, not one song on Sticking Fingers into Sockets sounds messy or over-complicated. The single, "We throw parties, you throw knives," breaks into a wall of sound around the end, but it’s so modestly done that it actually takes a couple listens to notice everyone’s madly hammering off as many notes as possible rather than carefully placing them exactly where they should be.
As is often the case with such things, Los Campesinos! are able to summarize themselves far better than any barely literate critic could. The second track, "It started with a mixx," begins with the telling line "Trying to find the perfect match between pretentious and pop." Truly, if they can carry the wit and energy of Sockets over to a full-length, it's possible Los Campesinos! will do exactly that.
|
Copyright ©2007 FFWD. All rights reserved.