One reason I started rock was because in February 2009, I saw a imindbending show at Bowery Ballroom. I arrived really very early and was very, very drunk (I'd seen Paul Simon at the Beacon the night before and was still jagging)and found myself in the front row of Bowery Ballroom, Titus Andronicus opened and, well, my first sighting of the great rock band, and they blew me away. Los Campesinos were headlining and coming off easily their best album to date We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed (even the title is a knockout). They encored with "You Better Use Those Fingers For Crossing" and I left the space and all I wanted to do was write about how I felt about the nights music.
What happened next was this.
1. A lousy performance at Webster Hall a year later. I rubbished them here.
2. A lousy follow up album, Romance Is Boring. I rubbished the album here as well.
3. And now 2011's Hello Sadness and I got ready to write another negative 500 words.
And then I felt bad. They're not so big I should be spending my life giving them a hard time.
And then I thought, what if it is me? So I wrote two overwhelmingly positive reviews of Hello Sadness in Pitchfork and CoS.
There are two types of music I might not like.
1. Bad bands, say ELP or YES. That's not a dislike of progrock (I love King Crimson), it is a dislike of specific bands because they suck.
2. Bands I can't hear. Something isn't twigging, for instance Fucked Up. In theory, I know exactly why Stickles flips out over them, but in practice, I can't hear it. And to paraphrase Garth Campesinos, I can't rely on him or any one else.
But sometimes, you just have to give up on a band.
The trouble with Los campesinos isn't that the tinny, multi vocal, wordy in the extreme concept has gotten old. It is that the songs don't distinguish the way they need: you don't get the verbal hook any more, there is no "He's gonna get drunk and call you at four in the morning".. The songs are obtuse, wordy, indie pop rock without the pop. They feel impenetrable to me. I just don't like Los Campesinos any more.and I'm sick of trying.
So I will review oy in a weekly albums round-up I write, gonna give it a "B" because I kinda feel I can't meet them half way any more, and I'm gonna pass on the concert and hope the next album gets to me.