A coupla years ago I had a tussle for LC fans after calling a Webster Hall gig a bore and the dream of a collective Los Campesinos claim, complete bullshit. Well, Friday night at Le Poisson Rouge, the band isn't a bore and the band is Gareth Campesino.
And Gareth Campesino is preaching to the converted for sure in a set where "We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed" gets the same rousing cheer as "Romance Is Boring/". My take on the Welsh punk popper distillers of romantic disasters is pretty well documented: I didn't like their last twoalbums.. And while an hour plus set on high octane rock and roll didn't change my mind much, it definitely change it somewhat.
The set goes back as far as 2007 and stops off at all points, with the second song a terrific, much livelier and deadlier "Songs For Your Girlfriend" and has a late set deep track "By Tundra" and in between hits the hits and hits the misses and the band cream the lot. I mean, the lot. With Gareth, a stockier Gareth with a beer belly, ascending each and every song.
There is that in Gareth which connects well to an audience, he is friendly and a little stubborn, he gives every appearance of liking us and when he reels off all the rooms he has played in nyc and concludes that we've always been great to LC, it is a great non musical moment.
Musical moments don't peak as high but they are very constant, no mid-concert take a song off for this collective, and the wide LPR stage, is crowded with enthisiastic musicians. They perfect "You! Me! Dancing!" into the anthem for white kids it always really was. Gareth's vocal on "Doomed" is a supreme rethinking, the off handedness of the ending has the bands struggle end, not untypically and maybe axiomatically, in failure.
Gareth's songs of major life failures leading to sorrow and depression are a relentlessly UK invention and the bands socialism in action as fakeout is as socialist as the UK Labour party. But even so,LC have a reality of our lives persona and Gareth, despite his cheer and power as a frontman, is a visionary rock star and terrific on stage.
So?
His songs aren't good enough.
Oh, he has his moments sure, and lyrically there is no better poetry of defeat around, but the songs don't have catchy melodies any more and they used and for two albums straight it has hurt him and on stage, in an absolute tribute to him and his band, they are played so well, it is easy not to note. But the proof is that when the audience singsalong they are reacting to lyrical and not musical hooks.
The band end with with "Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks" from 2008 but they better keep those fingers for crossing.
guess I'll be back next time they're in town.
Grade: B+