Back in the ‘60s, a two-year wait between albums was almost unfathomable. The Beatles, for example, released around 13 albums (depending on your definition) between 1963 and 1970. These days, a two-year gap between albums is often considered the bare minimum. Welsh indie pop group Los Campesinos! bucks this trend with their sophomore album, We are Beautiful, We are Doomed, which follows only eight months after their debut hit store shelves.
This quick turnaround suits the band’s style well. The most formidable weapon in the Campesinos!’ arsenal is the tireless energy they inject into their Belle and Sebastian-gone-punk sound. It makes perfect sense that they’d want to get out as much material as possible while this energy still exists.
While releasing two decent albums in the same year is certainly commendable, Los Campesinos! understandably haven’t had much time to grow since Hold On Now, Youngster, making Beautiful something of a retread. The album features the same guitar-driven, string-and-glockenspiel-laden tales of youthful abandon sung with bewitching boy-girl vocal interplay found on the band’s debut, but nothing more. Though Beautiful maintains the energy of Youngster, it inevitably lacks some of the novelty and, with nothing new to offer, easily ends up as the second best Los Campesinos! album of 2008.
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