Los Campesinos! is Definitely Not Boring

© Jon Bergman

The band that practically invented the scream-the-lyrics genre is at it again with a follow-up to their much loved We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed. This time, romance might be boring, but Los Campesinos! is anything but.  

If anything, Romance is Boring is a raucous, joyful ode. Immediate and urgent, it begs to be heard. And what you hear is, to the delight of their fans, much more of the same. Song after song is high-energy and smart. And, if you start to get the feeling that they’re having more fun than you are, just listen to the lyrics. This band is going for a dark period for sure.

They’ve admitted as much, saying that the album is, "...about the death and decay of the human body, lost love, mental breakdown, and football."

Well, at least it’s a fun take on death and decay. And, while the ode to football is not yet evident, there does seem to be a lot of love and breakdown throughout. For example, just skip to middle tracks, “Straight in at 101” and “Who Fell Asleep In,” which go, respectively, "I think we need more post-coital and less post-rock, feels like the buildup takes forever and you never touch my cock" and, over lush strings, "She turned her back on the church, and put all her faith in me in at the back of the chapel where I taught her to screw and to blaspheme; We turned our backs to the church with our trousers around our knees, and while screaming the Scriptures, she said I was her favorite heresy."

OK, so there’s some heavy stuff here, but Los Campesinos! thinks you can take it. Besides, the morose is in vogue. Just ask Cormac McCarthy, James Cameron, and Will Smith.

Still, if the album’s not dark enough for you, just check out the videos. The first of which features a voluptuous, anguished wife driven to beating her husband to death with a baseball bat while her son enshrouds himself in...well, we don’t want to give everything away.

What’s up next for this big ‘ol band from Cardiff, Wales? One can only imagine, but, because they’re all-but married to each other (they’ve all taken the name Campesinos! as their legal last names, just like the Ramones did way back when) expect them to stay together to come up with more ways to delight and entertain. (Unless of course they return to their studies as band mate Aleks Campesinos! plans to do.) Alas, love can’t last forever.

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