Los Campesinos! employ a seemingly endless amount of energy to get their point across. Driving drumbeats, sickly sweet guitar riffs and a generally positive force has endeared the Welsh septet to many listeners since they burst onto the scene in 2008 with the simple line of ‘It’s you, it’s me and there’s dancing!’. How much you will like them depends on how you deal with the more twee inspired moments they unleash.
With all this positive, cutesy energy behind their music the lyrics generally deal with the ineptitude or awkward epic-fails of dealing with the opposite sex. Opening track "By Your Hand" gives this tidbit of wisdom, ‘‘Cause we were kissing for hours with her hands in my trousers, she could not contain herself, suggests we go back to her house. But here it comes, this is the crux, she vomits down my rental tux.’ This cringe inducing word work wouldn’t come off as well if this very incident didn’t happen during the after party at last year’s prom. Lead singer Gareth Campesinos! (Each member of the band has taken the surname Campesinos!) delves into this sort of subject matter throughout the album, and it would be tough to get past if it didn’t ring so horribly true.
Lyrically they may still leave quite a bit to be desired, but the actual music of Hello Sadness shows a band that has clearly grown up. Everything, from guitars to synths to drums sounds crisper and is the product of a band that has been playing together for a few years and has a fair amount of studio time under its belt. The heart-aching melodies of "Life is a Long Time" and the title track are clear examples of this, tight, coherent statements, something that’s not easy for a seven piece band.
They even showcase a somewhat darker tone on tracks like "The Black Bird, The Dark Slope", "To Tundra" and "Every Defeat a Divorce" which features the line ‘You can lead a horse to water but it won’t drown itself’. The bleaker sentiments expressed here are a refreshing change of pace from the rest of the record.
If nothing else Los Campesinos! have proven once again that they are masters of a catchy pop song. With all the big guitar build ups and sing along choruses they execute beautifully if the band’s lyricism follows the trajectory of their musicianship then they will be one of the hottest pop acts around. The 10 songs on Hello Sadness are all earwigs that will demand repeat listens, even if you sometimes feel guilty about doing so.
Grade - B
~Steve Dobek
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