I was not going to blog about this gig, because I realise this site is on the verge of becoming the Los Campesinos! Squealy Fangirl Blog but fuck me, tonight was IMMENSE and simply demands an account.
If you want a brief opinion and then to move on: THEY NAILED IT. Every single song. NAILED. IT.
And if you want a slightly more comprehensive version? You’ll get every word after the JUMP!…
Spotified playlist available here so you can tell all your friends that you were there when we all know your dirty little secret – you were at home eating sweet chilli flavoured Walkers and watching Eastenders. You should be ashamed.
At one point mid-set tonight, Gareth Campesinos! begged the crowd not to make them ‘get real jobs’. If tonight was anything to go by, they need never have a real job ever again. Songs from all their 4 releases were performed with hectic energy and incredibly tight musicianship and the crowd in turn went simply mental, the floor bounding and thrashing about at every available opportunity and singing back lyrics as if their plaid-clad and skinny-jeaned lives depended on it. Even the numerous balconies were rocking out. It really did feel like something was turning for the self-confessed ‘middling UK indie band’, and that they could be about to Break Out, big style. Or at least, I hope so. Certainly, triumph and celebration were in the air both sides of the barriers.
Particular highlights were a frantic version of Death to Los Campesinos!, a smack-you-in-the-face-and-run-away My Year in Lists, a completely cathartic You! Me! Dancing! during which only the bodies of the cold and dead inside were still, and a rousing Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks to close the main set, during which Gareth disappeared into the mass of bodies on the floor (how in the hell does he keep singing when he does that?) and Neil Campesinos! also indulged in a spot of crowd surfing as arms and fingers were flung aloft to ‘One blink for yes/Two blinks for no/Sweet dreams, sweet cheeks/We leave alone’. Well worth a mention too were the perfectly pitched and turned The Sea is a Good Place to Think of the Future, which I think may be creeping up to become my favourite LC! tune, an absolutely banging choice of encore performance of This is How You Spell “HAHAHA, We Destroyed the Hopes and Dreams of a Generation of Faux-Romantics!”, and a version of We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed that has never felt so true.
Everything was just spot-on, from the choice and sequence of tracks, to the pace of the performance, from the wild shapes Gareth was throwing (he is bendy!), to the obvious excitement of the entire band to be where they were and doing what they were doing (and due credit must also go to the crowd who, whilst rowdy, were never anything less than friendly, enthusiastic and, as Gareth pointed out, very polite).
No, none of Los Campesinos! need to worry about getting a ‘real job’ any time soon. But Thom Yorke needs to watch his back if that Best Blog award doesn’t turn up by next Monday. He can’t say he wasn’t warned.
