22nd Feb - Los Campesinos!'s Hold On Now, Youngster...

Artist – Album: Los Campesinos – Hold On Now Youngster

Released:  22^nd February 2008   

Sounds Like: The fountain of youth

Records in which the artists are clearly having as much of a laugh as Los Campesinos are here are even rarer than horseless supermarket beef burgers. Most groups don’t manage this level of pure unadulterated joy in one song, never mind maintained over a full 48 minute set. It’s infectious too: a prescription of listening to this twice a day can actually make you younger (DISCLAIMER: I am not a medical doctor – yet – and I cannot be held responsible if this turns out to be untrue).

Right from the giddy opening that is ‘Death to Los Campesinos!’, the perfect introduction to the album, the excitable collective set their phasers to fun. Gareth and Aleksandra Campesinos! (they’re not related, everyone in the group shares the same surname...) trade part yelped/part spoken verses on such naive subjects as being accelerated readers and dancing in fountains. Even the song titles suggest spontaneity; some of them take so long to read that the actual songs have finished by the time you’re done.  You can only imagine how hard they found it to contain themselves during the slow build intro intro to the otherwise rip roaring ‘You! Me! Dancing!’.

As well as the aforementioned couple of tunes, other highlights include ‘Don’t Tell Me to Do Math(s)’ and ‘Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks’ but to be fair there are no duff notes here. A magical record.

Albumaday... rating: 8/10

1.       Death to Los Campsinos! – 2:52

2.       Broken Heartbeats Sound Like Breakbears – 3:35

3.       Don’t Tell Me to Do Math(s) – 3:22

4.       Drop it Doe Eyes – 2:44

5.       My Year in Lists – 1:51

6.       Knee Deep at ATP – 2:49

7.       This Is How You Spell “HAHAHA, We Destroyed the Hopes and Dreams of a Generation of Faux-Romantics” – 4:20

8.       We Are All Accelerated Readers – 2:54

9.       You! Me! Dancing! – 6:48

10.   ...And We Exhale and Roll Our Eyes in Unison – 2:50

11.   Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks – 4:31

2007: The Year Punk Broke (My Heart) – 4:44 (unlisted)

Listen to ‘Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P41Qdkk6OA

Also released on the 22^nd February:

1993: Radiohead – Pablo Honey

Also released on the 22^nd February:

2000: Yo La Tengo – And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out